Free Resurrected (Resurrected Series Book 1) by S. M. Schmitz Page A

didn’t recognize. I held it up to her victoriously. She sighed and rolled her eyes. “That’s Lydia’s.”
    “Oh.” I put it back. Remembering the tablet on the coffee table, I asked her, “What about the Nook? Is that yours?” What was I even doing? I had come here hoping to find more evidence that some part of my dead fiancée was still alive and now that I had found it, I was trying to help bury it?
    Lottie shook her head. “Also Lydia’s. I can’t read on it. It gives me a headache.”
    Reading on my iPad always gave Lottie a headache, too, I thought.
    “What else is hers?” she asked glumly, her eyes closed, her head reclined back, like she was getting a headache now. Honestly, I tended to have that effect on people.
    “Well, she shopped at Banana Republic. A lot.”
    Lottie nodded. She opened her eyes and looked at me, waiting for me to continue. It seemed like for the past month, all I had done was walk directly into conversations I wanted to avoid. “That smells like her Bolognese.” I tried to say it casually, but that memory, that association, was too strong and too painful and it stuck in my throat.
    I looked away from her and turned my attention back to the bookshelf to try to buy myself a few pregnant seconds before she started interrogating me again. I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be getting grilled anyway. How had this gotten so turned around?
    A song faded on the television, replaced by a familiar one, and my eyes quickly flicked to the TV before I just as quickly looked away, hoping Lottie hadn’t noticed. I knew she was still watching me. But she had seen me, and she groaned again. “God, even Fallout Boy ? Do I get to have anything of my own?” She threw her hands up in exasperation and let them fall limply down at her sides.
    “Lottie, how do you know it isn’t always like this? Maybe the memories are different for you, but Lydia may be a lot more like Jamie than you could possibly know unless …” I wondered if she would let me meet her. She waited for me to finish but when I didn’t, she slowly shook her head and started fidgeting with the hemline of her t-shirt again.
    “Lydia is just like she’s always been. She hasn’t changed at all. I mean, she looks different, but she’s not different. I’m … not the same. She knows I’m not too. I told her I’m just homesick and she thinks I’m depressed and I’ll eventually get over it, but …” she trailed off now, still picking at some invisible flaw at the edge of her shirt. That sandpapery feeling in my mouth was back. I couldn’t swallow.
    “It’s more than just … memories?” I asked. I think my voice cracked. Jesus, I hoped I had just imagined that.
    “I told you not to come here, Dietrich. Why did you?” She wasn’t mad or accusatory. She wore that same defeated and weary expression from the intersection when I had finally caught up to her and knew trying to escape me would be pointless.
    “You know why, Lottie. I love you.”
    “You love her.”
    “Is there much of a difference?” Goddamn it, Dietrich . I hated myself sometimes.
    I thought she would certainly kick me out now, but she just cocked her head to one side and offered me that sexy half-smile, half-smirk that usually meant I was either about to hear something I didn’t like or I was about to get laid. I didn’t think it was the latter.
    “No,” she finally said, “apparently not. Maybe. I don’t know. I just know I don’t really know who I am anymore and it scares me, and Lydia only came here because of me in the first place. No matter what I do, I always seem to be hurting someone now. This isn’t how I thought any of this would work out. And I want to be me. I don’t want to be someone else. No offense.”
    I smiled. “If it makes you feel any better, you aren’t exactly like her. Some of the words you choose, it’s not the way Lottie would have spoken. And she cursed a lot more.”
    Lottie laughed, a genuine laugh that made