Page 40 of Please Remember

"I wasn't certain you wanted me to," she admits. "Sorry."

Her gaze gravitates to my poorly hidden manhood, and I laugh. "Never be sorry for that."

"I'm sorry you can't take care of it like you're probably used to. How you seem to want to."

"Do you believe I want you now?"

The smile on Allie's face lifts a weight from my chest. "Yes."

"Can I kiss you whenever I want?"

"Yes."

"Good," I say and look at the computer. "So, what do you have questions about?"

She releases a shaky breath and looks at the screen. "I was at work before whatever happened?"

"As far as I know, yes. I'm going to be honest, Al, I don't know if I have many answers for you. I saw you that morning, and we texted while we were at work, but I never saw you again until you showed up outside the house."

"But I was going to meet you?"

I nod, trying to recall if they printed what we were doing. "Yeah, you were meeting me and our friends at the bar."

"A couple of articles mention that you were setting up a… surprise proposal."

And there goes any future surprise. "Yes."

"Why did Parsons still focus so much on you if you obviously were at the bar with witnesses? I mean, it's printed in the articles. Did you disappear for a bit where no one saw you?"

"No." I bark out a sardonic laugh. "Parsons wanted to believe you’d just left me. He didn't treat you as a missing person until weeks after you were gone and there was no activity on your cards or bank account, and no one spotted your Jeep. He was forced to admit that the chances of you taking off without anyone seeing you and not using any money was very unlikely. Then he wanted the easiest answer, which was me."

She rolls her eyes and sighs, leaning back. "I told him he screwed up the investigation by focusing too narrowly on what he wanted ratherthan broadening his horizons a bit. He said at one point he still thought you had something to do with it, but I really disagree. When I look at you, when you watch me when you don't think I'm paying attention, I know there's no way you could have had anything to do with it. Unless I was also involved, which, he also thought at one point."

"I still can't believe he thought that."

"I laid into him pretty good," she says with a smirk. "But it still doesn't make any sense."

"What doesn’t?" I ask.

Allie blows out a breath of air. "Why not just kill me?"

The thought makes me want to throw up. "Don't—"

"I'm not saying I wish they had, but I think that's what's been bothering me. Whydidn'tthey kill me? What did they gain from keeping me alive? Especially when I didn't remember. Is it really harming me to keep me from a life I don't even know exists? And they never spoke to me. Never told me who they were or who I was. What did they get out of it?"

"I don't know," I say. "That could be why Parsons wants it to be me. There are only a few of us who wouldn't have been able to kill you, but I don't know why you'd be taken in the first place."

Shaking her head, she sighs. "Did they have any other suspects?"

"Only two. One was obviously me, and the other was cleared quickly. I don't even know who it was."

"These articles haven't helped much besides ruining a surprise. You would've been diabolical if you harmed me on the day you were going to propose."

"Parsons had a theory on that. He thought we weren't as happy as we made everyone believe, and I'd planned the proposal because it wouldbe the perfect cover. Why would a happy man about to propose to his girlfriend murder her? Oh, he also thought I killed you."

"I'm sorry?"

Clenching my jaw, I let out a long breath. "He was convinced you were dead. That I'd killed you and buried your body somewhere. Had me followed for weeks because he was certain I'd go and visit your grave. Even though you were caught on security cameras at work, as was I, he was sure there was a way I'd gotten around it because I work with computers. That something was doctored."

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