Page 72 of Please Remember

The rest of the group makes it through the barriers, and Jax looks at me with confusion. "What?"

I step out of his arms and walk over to the parking space with the number six on it, pointing to where the curb had been. "I'm pretty sure that's what I hit my head on. Where the scar came from."

"Baby, what are you talking about?"

"I've had this feeling all night that the veil blocking my memories was lifting. I just had to figure out what and how and where. Sage and I retraced my steps from that night."

Looking back at Sage, he shakes his head. "How can you retrace your steps? No one knows what happened."

"We talked about the possibilities of what happened, and there is someone who knows what happened. Two, actually," I say. "The person who did this and... me."

Everyone walks closer to hear me better, and the concern on his parents' faces almost hurts my heart. His mom is the mom I always wished I had.

"What are you talking about, Allie?" Jax asks, and I hear the fear of too much hope in his voice.

"I forgot my phone charger at home. My phone was about to die, and I knew you were planning something. You kept saying it was a surprise, and I knew I'd want pictures. That's why I came to the parking lot instead of walking to the bar like we'd planned. Spot six was my parking spot, and my Jeep was right here. It was raining, and I was going to hurry to the house, charge as much as I could on the drive to the bar, knowing at least I’d have some battery life on my phone to last the evening. But someone called my name. I turned around, and everything went black."

Sage holds back her smile, while everyone stares in silence, waiting for me to continue. I know most are scared this is just a logical assumption, not my memory.

"There was a moment I woke up, and I was lying next to my Jeep. I saw the blood washing away from the rain. That was the last thing I remember before waking up in the cellar."

Jax steps closer and sets his hands on my shoulders, his breathing heavy. "You remember... You remember the attack?"

"I remember everything," I say and smile. "Our first date was at the fair, and you spent seventy-five dollars to win me a two-dollar teddy bear. You had to borrow money from your dad the next week to pay for gas until you got your paycheck that following Friday. My favorite ice cream is rocky road, and Benji threw up on my senior year prom dress. My dress was yellow, and his vomit was a brownish-green."

The look on his face makes me laugh, and he turns to Sage who stands beaming. "This is real?"

"We were walking out front, and she kept saying she felt like she was going to remember everything tonight. I didn't really believe her because I didn't want to be disappointed, but she remembers something only she knows. Something between us from when I was fifteen. When she told me, I knew. So we walked back here, talking through the most logical possibilities."

"What did she remember?"

"Something only she and I know. And it's something only she and I will ever know," she says. "Anyway, she bent down to the curb. I didn't know if she was right when she said it was her spot, but I had no reason to doubt her. Then she fell over like she’d been knocked down or something. I ran over, and she told me to call Detective Parsons."

I look at Jax and sigh. "I knew something would trigger it all, but I just didn't know what it would be. Don’t ask me why I didn't think of trying to figure out what happened that night, but at least we got here in the end."

Jax's lips are on mine before I know it, and the tears sliding down his cheeks make the kiss salty. I wrap my arms around him to hold him as close as possible. He's been through a worse hell than I have, and I don't know how he managed to make it through as well as he did.

It takes a few moments before he releases me enough to wipe his tears, and I smile up at him. "I remember. I'm here, and I remember."

"You really remember?" Seth asks. "All of us?"

Walking over to him, I ruffle his hair like I used to, which was a lot easier when he was closer to my height. "Jax and I took you and your first girlfriend on your first date because you thought we were cooler than Mom and Dad. You guys didn't come out of the movie theater after it ended, and we went in to find you making out in the back row with your hand up her shirt while hers was down your pants."

"Yep, she remembers," he says and laughs, giving me a giant hug and lifting me off the ground.

The unsettling realization dawns on me as he sets me back down, and I hold back the vomit rising in my throat. How could I have overlooked the obvious reality that comes with remembering?

“Allie, what’s wrong?” Jax asks.

I’m almost paralyzed as I stare into his worried eyes. “Seven years,” I whisper.

“What?”

“I lost seven years. This person… Oh God. They took seven years from me. From us.”

He wraps me up in his arms quickly, and he whispers words of reassurance in my ear. The tears sting at my eyes, and I can’t breathe.

The problem with getting what I wanted this whole time is knowing what I lost. Everything I could have had plays in my mind, and I wantto scream and shout and hit and puke all at once. Marriage. Kids. We’ve been robbed of so much time.

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