Page 53 of Forgotten

“Absolutely,” he said. “Do you think it is imperative that you get back right away, or can you enjoy one last meal with me? As friends?”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I must look like a mess.”

“You look beautiful, as always. This Jesse, he is a very lucky man. Let us toast to him, eh? To Jesse and Charlotte. For love. And when you are good and fed, you can either spend the night in Paris or leave under the cover of darkness, but either way, you can take my jet back. And these. I don’t need them. I want you to have them. Keep them, sell them, whatever you like. They were a gift to you.”

He slid the box of jewelry across the table to me and smiled, raising his glass. “To love?”

“To love,” I said.

He clinked his glass against mine and took a deep sip, smacking his lips playfully afterwards and sitting up in his chair.

“Now let’s eat. I am absolutely famished.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Jesse

I’d tried to get to my feet a dozen times and fallen each one. But each time, I had slightly more strength, made a little more progress, and protected myself a little more on the fall. Now as the day turned to evening, I struggled again to my knees. Progress. Just a little progress.

The heat was finally starting to die off as the sun disappeared. But the heat would simply be replaced by an encroaching darkness that was just as dangerous. I was dying of thirst, and I had lost a lot of blood. I was pretty sure I wasn’t bleeding a lot anymore, but the wound on the back of my skull was pretty bad. Bad enough that they thought they’d killed me, sobad.

My head throbbed as I tried to crawl toward a tree. If I could get to that, I could use it to rest in a sitting position and not have to struggle so much. I could also use it to help me stand. Any help was appreciated at this point.

I made it to the tree and leaned against it, letting my elbows rest and trying to will the world to stop spinning. Everything hurt. I couldn’t believe he’d gotten the drop on me like that, and what’s more, I couldn’t believe he thought he’d killed me and just dumped me in the woods. On top of being the biggest idiot I’d ever met, he was even more callous than I thought he was.

And Lacey… My God, Lacey.

She was the one pushing for him to shoot me. She was colder than ice. She led me to believe that child was mine, knowing it wasn’t, just so they could take the ranch? I wasn’t even sure I followed their logic, but then again, I had been hit in the head pretty hard, so I might just not be thinking correctly.

I felt another wave of strength and hoisted myself up on my knees. Moving one leg out from under me was painful as hell, but I got my foot planted firmly on the dirt. Step one, as it were. Reaching for the tree, I wrapped my arms around it like I was hugging a long-lost friend and leaned into it, sliding my other leg out from under me and planting that foot as well.

Then I stood.

Everything was spinning, and I felt like I might throw up, but I was upright. Knowing how close I had come to taking a dirt nap, I was going to count that as a win. Now I needed to get the hell out of here and find some help. Fast.

I stumbled a bit as I walked, reaching for the next tree to guide me as I made my way out of the thin forest area toward the road. Occasionally, I heard a car zoom by and wondered if I could flag someone down. Not after nightfall, I was sure of that. If I came out of the woods all bruised and bloody, and tried to flag someone down in their headlights, they would think I was some ghoul and likely run me over on purpose. People around here were convincedThe Walking Deadwasn’t just a TV show, it was a prophecy.

Going down to one knee only once, I made it to the edge of the treeline with a little daylight left. There wasn’t much of a gap between the trees and the road itself, so I didn’t have a lot of space to stand and try to get someone’s attention. My best bet was to try to get to where I could dive back into the woods if Ineeded to and wave as frantically as my exhausted body would allow.

I stepped out into the space between the road and the grass and saw a car coming in the distance. I raised one arm and tried to wave. The car seemed to be completely oblivious of me until the absolute last second, when it swerved away, spun in a circle, and came to a stop facing the other direction.

“Holy shit, Jesse?”

My ears were telling me one thing, but my mind was telling me that, rationally, it wasn’t possible. I must be hallucinating. There was no way that the person coming out of that car and heading toward me, mouth agape, was Kevin. Kevin, my bandmate and brother on the road for a decade. Kevin, who should be down at the Gulf right now.

“Kev?” I asked.

“Jesus, Jesse, what happened to you?”

“I… help?”

Kevin caught me as I fell forward and dragged me as best he could toward his car. A woman got out, her voice so hysterical that I didn’t even realize it was his girlfriend, Sarah. They stuffed me into the back of their car, and I got a sick feeling at how familiar it felt.

“Hand me the phone,” Kevin said, and I heard them shuffling around in the front.

“Thank God we were here,” Sarah said. “My God, what happened to you? We were coming to spring you out of jail!”

“What?”

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