Audrey’s POV
I studied Blake’s face as he stood there, and I laughed.
“I saved you five years ago. Why would I need to fake that?” I met his gaze, my smile fading. “If you can’t even remember what happened back then, how exactly would pretending to be that woman help me get close to you?”
Blake frowned. “Who told you I don’t remember? The moment my eyes healed and I got back to the Parker family, I started looking for the woman who saved my life.”
His words knocked the air from my lungs. I stared at him, caught completely off–guard.
“You actually looked for me?” My voice came out small.
Blake scoffed, his expression hardening. “Drop the act, Audrey. Laurel saved me five years ago. She and Rachel took care of me together, and I gave that pendant to her.”
“And it wasn’t at this Pinehaven Village place. I was in a completely different village across New York.
I couldn’t move as I processed what he was saying. All this time I’d thought Blake either forgot about me or simply didn’t care enough to look. But he had searched for his savior – he just thought that person was Laurel.
“Why now?” Blake asked, eyeing me with suspicion. “You wanted the divorce. You made it painfully clear you wanted nothing to do with me. So why this elaborate scheme to replace Laurel and worm your way back into my life?”
When I didn’t respond, Blake’s mouth curled into a smirk.
“Did Laurel tell you she was the woman from five years ago?” I finally managed.
Blake’s eyes cooled. “I was blind back then and Laurel couldn’t speak. But Rachel called her ‘sister‘ every day. Rachel only has one sister.”
Everything suddenly made sense. A laugh broke from my throat, part hysterical, part heartbroken. Tears burned at the corners of my eyes as the sound bounced off the crumbling walls.
“So that’s how it happened,” I whispered.
My mind flashed back to five years ago. Rachel had called me her “sister” around Blake – worried that if he knew a stranger had saved him, his male pride might suffer. She never once used my actual name in front of him.
When Blake vanished without a word, Rachel tried to comfort me: “If he cares about you, he’ll find you once his eyes heal.”
I remembered watching Blake and Laurel appear together online, convincing myself he just didn’t give a damn about the nobody who’d saved him.
Now I finally understood. Blake had looked for “me” – but since he only knew me as Rachel’s “sister,” he’d found Laurel instead.
Didn’t he notice Laurel was nothing like the woman who’d saved him? In five years, had he never the clinic where he’d been treated? How could Laurel have known every detail about our time together?
it to revisit the
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Chapter 264
I’d once desperately hoped Blake would remember and come looking for me. Now that I knew he had, I almost wished I’d never found out. The Irony cut deep – a man who promised to be responsible for me forever had so easily believed another woman and worshipped her instead.
Blake’s POV
–
Audrey’s laughter wet with tears – made me uneasy. Something about it squeezed my chest tight, making it hard to
breathe.
“Why laugh like this?” I looked away, irritated by my own discomfort.
“Because you’re just too ridiculous!” She wiped her face, voice sharp with mockery. “Blake. Don’t tell me you’ve been with Laurel all this time because you think she was the girl who saved you.”
I couldn’t deny that my main reason for being with Laurel was the promise I’d made five years ago.
Back at that clinic, believing Laurel had saved me, I’d developed feelings and swore to take care of her forever. When I found her again later, I noticed she seemed different from my memories, but she knew details about our time together, she was Rachel’s sister, and people at the clinic recognized her. All the evidence pointed to her.
