Page 53 of Please Remember

"Did she have an update?"

Shaking my head, I sigh. "No, we're still where we were. There was a suspect that seemed promising, but he has an airtight alibi. Back to square one."

"Back to me, you mean," he says and sits on the recliner. "They will never give up on that, will they?"

I decide to come clean. "There's a hole in your alibi, I guess."

"A hole?"

I shrug. "I don't know if someone said they couldn't find you for a short period of time or not. But their theory is that you and Sage were having an affair, and you both cared enough that you couldn't kill me. When I lost my memory, it was enough of a reason to keep me alive."

"Me and Sage?" he asks, his face scrunched up. "No offense to her, but she's not my type."

"I guess someone told them your plan to propose came as a shock because we were having problems."

"Who the hell would tell them that?"

I shrug again. "She couldn't say. It could be my mother. It could be Laura. It could be someone else entirely."

"Come here," he says and holds his hand out to me. Standing, I take it, and I let him lead me into the office where he pulls up the folder of our videos. He clicks a few buttons, and it pulls up the data of the file. "Look at that date."

Sitting on his lap, I read the screen. "September 27th."

"That was the day you went missing. We made this the morning before I planned to propose. We watched it last night. Did something in that video tell you that we were anything but happy and solid and so into each other that some might call it unhealthy?"

Smiling, I shake my head. "No, that video told me I should really let you try a few things because I really, really looked like I enjoyed the things you did."

He bites my shoulder. "You did. Trust me. And we'll get there. We still need a little more time to get to a point where we can read each other to that level,” he says, but I know he means me reading him. He reads me like a book. “But I love what we're doing now. No complaints on my end."

"Mine, either," I say with a smile. "It would help so much more if I just... remembered. Do you have any idea how many times a day I thinkPlease rememberto myself?"

"Probably triple the number of times I do," he says.

Turning on his lap, I narrow my eyes. "You think that?"

"Sometimes, when something reminds me of a particularly good memory of us, a time that means so much to me, I will you to remember. To share it with me. And then there are those big moments, the times we shared that mean so much to the two of us, only you don'tknow they do."

"I'm sorry."

He smooths his hand over my hair. "Don't be. I'd rather have you here with no recollection of our times together than not have you here at all. I just wish they'd start putting more effort into finding the real person who did this. Or at least the house you were kept in. Something."

"Sage and I were good, right?"

"You were like sisters," Jax says. "Are they trying to make you question her, too?"

"I guess she doesn’t really have an alibi. It's really conflicting because the doctor said to trust my instincts, but everything people tell me seems to contradict them."

He runs his tongue over his bottom lip before he bites it. "And what do your instincts tell you about Sage and me?"

"That I can trust you. That everything you say is the truth. I feel a connection with the two of you that I can't quite explain."

"God, I love you."

Smiling, I gently kiss his lips. "You mentioned something earlier about needing to talk to me."

"Oh, yeah. I was practically accosted today for keeping you all to myself. Well, Sage and me. My family's having a barbecue, and they want me to invite you. They haven't had a chance to talk to you since you’ve been back."

"Who will be there?" I ask, suddenly feeling unsure.

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