“He didn’t,” Daisy whispered. “He laughed when I suggested it, and said I better not dare. And that if I tried to trick him and go off the pill without him knowing, he’d get a vasectomy, and I was just…I was just confused, you know? Like, we’d talked about it. Maybe I was a little more baby-crazy than him, but he never once said he didn’t want kids.”

He looked over at her tense profile. “That must have felt like a betrayal.”

She snorted. “It did. It was. But I could have handled it. I mean, he’s allowed to change his mind, right? Maybe he would have changed it back again, or maybe I would have changed mine. No, the real betrayal was him leaving me for his secretary…who was pregnant.”

Lincoln’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel again, although for a different reason. This time, it was to stifle the urge to drive his fist into the face of a man who wasn’t even here. Who wasn’t even in the same state.

“Bastard,” Lincoln muttered.

Daisy merely shrugged. “He was.”

Lincoln nodded, and though he was glad she’d confided in him, he was oddly disappointed. He was damn sure it wasn’t the full story. It was a piece of the Daisy puzzle, but not the last one.

The rest of the car ride was silent, but not unpleasantly so.

Lincoln thought about what she’d said about 95 percent of the time having to be some other person, and needing that 5 percent for yourself—to be you. He wondered if right now, in this car, counted toward her 5 percent. If by being with him, she felt free to be herself.

Because he was alarmingly aware that being around this woman he barely knew counted toward his peaceful time. The first time in a long time when he didn’t feel the need to be “on.”

And then it was over, because they were here. Truth be told, Lincoln wasn’t quite sure who he was on the last Sunday of every month. It wasn’t the charming, devil-may-care Lincoln that he was at work, but it wasn’t the real him either.

It was some strange in-between place where his old life and new life converged in the most painful of ways. It was what might have been and what could never be, all rolled into one, and yet he couldn’t stay away.

Wouldn’t stay away.

Lincoln was grateful that Daisy didn’t say a single word, didn’t ask a single question, even though she must have seen the signs of the facility.

She was patiently quiet as he signed them in. Lincoln Mathis and guest. Even that felt disloyal, but he shoved the guilt aside. It wasn’t as though he was bringing a girlfriend. He didn’t know what Daisy was.

A friend, he supposed, although a record-fast one.

Lincoln wondered if it was that fast friendship that had motivated him to ask her to come with him, when he hadn’t asked it of even his closest friends. Almost as though his and Daisy’s warp-speed connection had ensured that he didn’t have time to slow down and think.

For the first time in a long time, he was being impulsive, and it was as freeing as it was unnerving.

They took the elevator to the second floor, Daisy following just a step behind him down the squeaky clean hallway.

He stopped outside the last door on the right—a private room overlooking the garden. A nurse looked up, smiling when he saw Lincoln. “Mr. Mathis. Good to see you.”

Lincoln smiled back. “Chuck, for the last time, I’ve been coming here every month for two years. Call me Lincoln, man.”

He walked forward as Chuck murmured a greeting to Daisy before slipping out the door, leaving Lincoln to his privacy as he always did.

Slowly Lincoln lowered himself to a squatting position in front of the chair in the center of the room.

It was a new model. One especially designed to move limbs that couldn’t move themselves, to prevent atrophy in muscles that would never otherwise be moved.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said quietly, reaching forward and taking Katie’s hand. He squeezed her fingers. She didn’t squeeze back. He kissed the back of her hand. He thought maybe her eyes glanced over him registering his presence, but maybe not. He swallowed the lump. It got him every time. Every damn time to know that she didn’t know him from Chuck. Didn’t know Chuck from his mother. Didn’t know this chair from her old chair, from the bed, from the floor…

Lincoln swore softly, the grief swamping him, even as he tried to fight it, head dipping forward before he forced it up to look at Katie again. “I brought a friend to meet you,” he said. “I think you’ll like her. She likes Britney Spears too.”

And then he gathered his courage, shifting his attention toward Daisy, who stood nearby. He was relieved to see that there was no panic in her eyes, no pity. Only patience.

“Daisy Sinclair, this is Katie Lyons. My fiancée.”

Chapter 7

Daisy told herself she wasn’t escaping when she’d volunteered to go get coffee for her and Lincoln, but the truth was she needed a moment to process everything.

Lincoln Mathis was engaged.

She didn’t know what had happened to Katie—how long the other woman had been unaware of the world around her—but the reality was heartbreaking. Both for Katie and for Lincoln.

Daisy had figured that perhaps some of the sadness hidden beneath all Lincoln’s charm had come from the death of or abandonment by a loved one, but this…

Daisy took a deep breath as she punched buttons into the coffee vending machine—two mochas, one for her, one for Lincoln—then rested her forehead against the machine as she tried to gather her thoughts.