I don't remember how I left that hospital room.

I just left—I couldn't bear to look into his eyes.

They were the eyes of the nineteen-year-old Julian Wright.

Back then, he would smile at me with his chin propped in his hands, follow me around like an obedient puppy.

He'd ask, "Babe, wanna try the new noodle place at school? I already did—it's seriously good."

He wouldn't get tangled up with other girls' hair ties. Wouldn't forget to come home. Wouldn't rub his temples at me like I was a migraine.

I sat in my car in the hospital parking lot for forty minutes.

My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

"Claire, it's me. Julian. I borrowed a nurse's phone."

"Why did you leave?"

"Did I do something wrong?"

"Please come back. I'm scared."

I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel.

The Julian I'd married would never have admitted he was scared. Would never have chased me. Would have let the silence stretch for days, confident I'd fold first.

This Julian—the one who remembered loving me and nothing else—was terrified of being alone in a hospital room.

I drove home. Showered. Changed. Sat on the couch and stared at the wall until it was dark.

Then I called his mother.

"I'll help him recover," I said. "But once his memory comes back, I'm done. For real this time."

His mother cried. Thanked me. Called me a saint.

I wasn't a saint. I was just the idiot who still couldn't say no to Julian Wright's frightened eyes.