Page 108 of Promise Me

The way she moves around this place as if she owns it, the way her things are scattered around as if this has always been her home, the way my heart swells as I think about how I never want to come home and not find her here.

She spins, and as soon as she sees me, a smile breaks out on her lips.

“You're home. How did it go?”

“Good,” I say and wrap my hands around her hips, then lean against the counter as I pull her to me.

She grins, setting down the spatula that was in her hand and wrapping her arms around my neck.

“I’m happy to hear that.” She presses a light kiss to my lips. “Was it my quiche?”

I nod. “Definitely.”

“I thought so.”

She nods again firmly, as if she knew it would be her cooking, and then backs up.

“I made you lemon bars.”

“I can see that. I thought you didn’t like baking.”

“I like baking. I just don’t want to do it for a living.”

“Ah.”

I glance around the small kitchen, a lump forming in my throat.

She made me lemon bars.

“I wasn’t sure how it was going to go today, so I wanted you to have something special when you got back just in case, and you told me a while back that these are your favorite, so”—she tosses her hands up—“I just made them.”

My favorite.

Fuck.

I need to tell her that she was making these the night she fell. Am I the reason she was there? I’ll never know, but I need to tell her.

“I have something to tell you,” I say and then rub the back of my neck.

Her gaze snaps to mine, and she stands a little taller.

“Okay. You look tense. Am I not going to like this?”

“I ... I don’t know.”

“Does it have anything to do with us?”

I nod.

“The us before or after I hit my head?”

Dread sprints through my entire body.

What if I tell her about this and it sparks her memory? All of it. Then, suddenly, we’ll be back to where we started.

Shit.

Shit.

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