“I think maybe I’m cheating on Max,” I blurt.
“Shit, Han-Han. What happened?”
I sink onto the couch next to her and lean my head on her shoulder. She combs my hair with her fingers, and even though the contact feels awkward and unsure, it relaxes me.
“It’s going to be okay,” she murmurs in my ear.
She doesn’t rush me, and I let myself take my time because suddenly it’s all too much—the last few days, the injuries, the amnesia, the engagement, the whole new life. As much as I’d like Max to be able to comfort me, he’s still a stranger to me in a lot of ways. But Lizzy’s part of me. We sit, letting the minutes pass and the silence slowly stitch us back together.
I don’t know how much time has passed when I finally sit up and wipe my eyes.
“Coffee?” she asks.
I nod and follow her to the kitchen, where I sit on a stool as she prepares us a fresh pot. “While Max and I were dating, do you know if I was…seeing anyone else?”
She turns to cock a brow at me. “Seeing anyone else? Miss Goody Two-Shoes date two guys at once? As if.”
Right. It doesn’t sound like me. But how does that explain what happened last night? Better come out with it, girl. “Max didn’t stay over last night, but I didn’t sleep alone either.”
Her jaw goes slack and those gorgeous baby blues of hers widen. “What? Who? Why? Does Max know?”
“All very good questions.”
She prepares my coffee and hands me my mug. I wrap my hands around it, letting it warm my hands instead of drinking it.
“Are you going to tell me who else you’re sleeping with,” Lizzy huffs, “or are you going to make me guess?”
“Someone slid into my bed last night. I was sleeping and assumed it was Max, but then we started fooling around in the middle of the night, and when he turned on the light, I realized it…wasn’t.”
“Someone slipped into bed with you while you were sleeping, and it wasn’t Max?”
I watch her carefully. “No.”
“Holy shit. Who was it?”
“I have no idea. He was a stranger to me.”
She slams her mug down and coffee sloshes onto the counter. “Why aren’t we calling the cops?”
“Because I don’t think we need to.”
“You’re freaking kidding me, right?”
“I’m fine. Nothing bad happened. Just let me tell it before you freak out, okay?” I wait until the panic clears from her face before I continue. “He was a stranger to me, but I was no stranger to him.”
“I’m not feeling better about this yet.”
“I realized the guy who’d been touching me in…rather intimate ways…wasn’t Max, and of course I panicked.”
“I can imagine. I’m panicking now.”
“I was thinking there was some rapist in my house, and I kneed him in the balls and got the hell out of the bed, but then my phone was dead and I couldn’t call for help. And he was trying to get me to calm down and all the sudden he just…stopped.” I make myself take a breath. “I wasn’t thinking straight, but I think everything changed when he saw my ring.”
“A rapist with morals?”
“He was no rapist, Liz. He looked at my hand and then he got dressed—pulled on his shirt and pants. What kind of sex offender strips down to his boxers and climbs into bed to cuddle with his victim half the night?”
“A really screwed-up one?”