Page 66 of Help Me Remember

It wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t going to argue with the only idea we had, especially when our time before the men outside realized their friend wasn’t responding was ticking away. “We’re going out the back. You get us there, got it?”

“We’re running again, aren’t we?”

“We are.”

“I hate this.”

I reached out to him, pulling him close and kissing him. “I know, and I don’t know how yet, but I’m going to try to fix this for you, okay?”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” he said, smiling as I drew away.

I gently pulled him with me. “Let’s find out if I can keep them.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It turned out escaping through the yards of upper-middle-class suburbia was one of the easiest and least exciting things we’d done in the past couple of days. The only person who gave us a curious look was a woman in a wide-brimmed hat, a pair of trimming shears in her hand. She watched us as we hopped over a small fence into the next yard but only shook her head before returning to her work.

Only after we made it a few blocks without an alert or a curious shout did I realize I hadn’t seen many vehicles parked in driveways. There hadn’t been a clock in the house to tell the time, but I had the feeling we were making our escape during working hours.

“It’s just over here,” Eric said as we made our way between a gap in the hedges. “It’s apparently a lot quicker to get here on foot when you ignore all the niceties like respecting people’s private property.”

“I’m not going to argue with something working in our favor for once,” I muttered as we cleared the thick foliage and stepped out onto a sidewalk.

“With the way our luck has been so far, I’m suspicious of anything going smoothly at this point,” Eric said, glancing around before pointing. “There.”

I arched a brow at the large, intricately designed metal archway marking the entrance to the park. “Good God. It’s just a park. Did they have to go so fancy on the entrance?”

“I can never decide if it’s creepy or comforting when you pretty much repeat the stuff you used to say to me,” Eric muttered. As he grabbed me by the hand and pulled me toward the park, we heard sirens approaching. We glanced over our shoulders to see two police cruisers go barreling through the intersection in the direction we’d just come from. “And I’m going to pretend that has nothing to do with what we just did.”

“What I just did,” I muttered as we reached the entrance.

“Like what’s already been said, we’re in this boat together, sink or swim,” Eric said, and then surprised me by lacing his fingers with mine.

“What are you doing?” I asked in surprise.

“We are two men holding hands and enjoying a walk through the park,” he said. The path was smooth, the grass was well maintained, and plenty of large circular planters and trees provided shade and comfortable seating. “In part of the city that likes to brag about how progressive it is.”

“All it takes is one angry person, and all that progressiveness is thrown out the window,” I muttered.

“Good thing I have a big, strong bad boy to keep me safe if anyone gets their underwear in a twist,” he said.

“Bad boy,” I repeated with a huff. “That is…you have issues, serious issues.”

“Well, my taste in men was always a little questionable.”

“Gee, thanks. Also, why are we playing at being a couple?”

“Because it helps me stay calm and think about what we’re going to do next,” Eric said in the same cheery voice. “And not think about the fact that I was an accomplice to assaulting a federal officer. Or you know, all the times people have tried to kill us so far. I’m starting to lose track of the number of times that’s happened, which is disturbing.”

“I have the nagging feeling this isn’t all that new to me,” I muttered, looking around. There weren’t many people around, just the occasional reader or jogger. The path we were on led down the slope of a hill toward a few small buildings around umbrella-covered tables.

“We’re getting food,” Eric told me with a snort. “I’m not going to try to make sense of everything or plan the next move on an empty stomach.”

“Fine,” I said with a shrug. “It can’t make this any stranger.”

At least I was no longer being barraged by the uncomfortable feeling that had filled me while we were still in the house. Maybe it had been the catalyst for me getting more of my memory back, but that didn’t mean I’d enjoyed the experience.

In another world, perhaps we could have visited the house in short bursts to try to shake something loose in my memory, and if it got too uncomfortable, we could just leave. Maybe I could have gone shopping with Eric, eaten out at a restaurant, or just grabbed something and retreated to his apartment, where we could feel safe and comfortable. Not constantly being chased from one place to the next, trying to play catch-up with a past I couldn’t remember.

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