The Tucker X Olivia Trilogy Book 3: My Husband Tucker
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Katie Keane
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“In a landscape of parched bones and dry secrets, love is the water that keeps them alive.”
Tucker Brunello attempts to spark Olivia Walker’s mind after her earth-shattering accident. Through the long drought of her recovery, he shoulders Elysium—her family’s dusty empire. With every scorching day, he hopes she’ll choose to either tend to the roots of her inheritance or allow the dunes to bury it for good.
Unaware that something as fragile as a cactus flower blooms inside her, Olivia drifts through a haze, her mind dispersed like windblown grit. She clings to Tucker, whom she believes to be her husband, though her memory lies buried deeper than water beneath cracked earth.
However, just beneath the surface of their fragile peace, danger lurks like a scorpion buried in the sand.
When heat rises and water runs scarce, Tucker travels a path where escape is uncertain and survival is unlikely to save the woman he loves. He dives into a narcotic world of shadows with two unexpected partners—an alliance stitched from cactus needles and shared thirst.
As the sands of time slip through Tucker and Olivia’s fingers, only one question remains: Will they survive the wastelands, distance, and the scattered secrets?
Chapter 1: Prologue
TUCKER
When all is lost, we have our memories. So, what happens when the ones most important to us are reset? Erased. How do those left behind move on? The answer is, we don’t.
Without her, my life would be a black hole. One where time ticked slowly, painfully. My heart would become an empty vessel. One that beat, but wasn’t alive.
I leaned against the back wall of Olivia’s hospital room by the tiny porcelain sink, biting the tip of my thumb and gawking as Dr. Patel questioned her.
My stomach twisted tighter with each wrong answer Olivia gave, and I couldn’t help wondering what her lack of recollection meant for us and our future.
Every once in a while, she glanced at me skeptically, the stranger standing in her space, like she was curious about why I was there.
Olivia sat pretzel-style on the hospital bed with a thick, bleach-white blanket sprawling over her lap.
Her white, blue-dotted gown draped from her shoulder, revealing her collarbone, which I’d craved to get my lips on ever since she opened her eyes. However, that wouldn’t be happening since she couldn’t even remember my name.
Her lengthy, dark-brown locks were side-swept and dangling alongside her arm as she fiddled with the sparkling ring on her finger in her lap. Ellie’s engagement ring. The one I had found in my pocket that night and slipped on her finger because I was unsure if I would ever get the chance to see her wear it.
Not a shred of makeup lined her eyes or painted her cheeks, but it didn’t affect her beauty in any way, shape, or form.
“Olivia, what year is it?” Dr. Patel asked.
“2019.”
Wrong. It’s 2024.
“Where do you go to school?” he asked.
“Penn Oak High.”
Wrong. UPenn. Your college.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” he asked.
Her terrified, watering, ocean-blue irises, staring up at me as she rested on her father’s office floor, bleeding out due to a gunshot wound, surged through my brain like a flash flood.
“Um… I don’t know. I guess our maid, Rosa, was helping me shop for the new school year,” Olivia said.
Wrong. Your father shot you.
“One last question. How old are you?” Dr. Patel asked.
Twenty-one.
“Seventeen.”
My eyes swelled, and the pressure of my incisors on my thumb’s tip lessened in shock. My girlfriend, who was pregnant with twins, thought she was seventeen and attending our old high school.
How was this possible? Why were her responses so wrong?
Dr. Patel twisted, knocking me from my staggered state. “Tucker? Can I speak with you outside for a moment?”
I nodded, following him out, Olivia’s eyes glued to us in confusion.
As Dr. Patel and I halted in the hall, the scent of dinnertime hospital food flooded my lungs. Phones chimed in the distance, and the colors of nurses’ scrubs reflected in the glass panes of each ICU room as nurses wandered about.
Dr. Patel twisted toward me and folded his arms, keeping his tone low to avoid Olivia’s ears. “So, because of the trauma, I believe she’s developed dissociative amnesia. It explains why it took so long for her to wake.”
“So, what? You’re saying she didn’t want to wake up?”
“Her body at least. Dissociative amnesia is like a defense mechanism the brain can use after something traumatic.”
I sighed, running my fingers through my curls. “Well, can we reverse it?”
“Well, any other time, I would recommend medication.”
“But she’s pregnant.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“So, what’s the other option?”
“She needs to feel safe and cared for, and her parents are obviously…unavailable.”
Yeah, that was a nice way of putting it.
“It might take time, but maybe try taking her places the two of you spent your time together. It might jog some of those memories.”
“Okay, yeah. Anything to help,” I said. “But do you think it will work?”
“It’s worth a shot. Just avoid anything involving the trauma that caused it. Her parents, her home, anything. It might traumatize her further.”
It was good Ellie left me her house then. I didn’t have a home, and I couldn’t take Olivia back to Thistle Hill. I could only imagine what seeing her family walls lined in caution tape and blood stains would do to her psyche.
“On top of that, there’s also the option of group therapy with people like her who are suffering from conditions causing memory loss,” Dr. Patel added.
I couldn’t believe this was happening. How could Olivia forget me? Should I be hurt over this? It wasn’t her fault, but it didn’t mean it didn’t suck.
The brain was a powerful tool, and mine was going haywire. I could barely process all the information, so I couldn’t imagine how Olivia was feeling.
“So, is there like…a percentage or something of how likely she is to get her memory back?” I asked.
“It’s not an exact science. These things aren’t able to be predicted,” Dr. Patel said with a shrug. “All we can do is help in the best way we know how and pray that she regains at least a few memories.”
A few? Can at least one be of me? “Okay, um, is there anything else I should know?” I asked.
“Yeah. She’s about seven weeks pregnant,” he said. “For now, I would keep that under wraps.”
Did he mean keep Olivia in the dark about our babies? That couldn’t possibly be the case.
My brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“At the moment, Olivia feels like she’s seventeen. Informing her of her condition might panic her. The fear she may experience will only set her back.”
His point of view was sound, but it meant keeping a giant secret. Colossal even.
“But I can’t lie about that,” I snapped. “How can I do that to her?”
He perked a brow. “Well, you’d be following her doctor’s recommendations and doing everything in your power to help her.”
“So, that’s what I’m supposed to tell myself to make that okay?”
“Tell yourself whatever you need to,” he said. “Because in the end, this isn’t about you. It’s about Olivia.”
I sighed heavily. My finger and thumb pinched my temple as my eyes squeezed shut tighter than the pressure currently forming inside my skull.
The entire situation was giving me a headache. I’d cried for a good two days and hadn’t slept well, so my eyes were burning with a swelter that could rival a pit of coals.
This needed to end. I needed my Olivia back by whatever means necessary.
“All right,” I said. “All right, I’ll…I’ll do whatever I have to.”
“Okay.” Dr. Patel nodded. “I’ll schedule an appointment for her in two weeks to discuss a few things and see how she’s adjusting.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“Now comes the hard part,” he added.
Great. I furrowed my brows. “Which is?” It was already hard enough.
“We have to tell her that she’s actually twenty-one, that her parents were arrested, and that you’re her husband.”
Husband. That was a lie I’d told to get into the intensive care unit to see her when she was unconscious.
I’d be damned if I was going to correct him now, though. I was all Olivia had. Even if she didn’t know it.
“Great,” I muttered sarcastically. “This is gonna go really well.”
