Chapter 45
CHAPTER 45
KINSLEY
For years I’d have these dreams that I didn’t think were anything other than just that.
Dreams.
But now, as I look down at the few pictures in my hand, I’m left wondering if those weren’t dreams at all. What if all these years, piece by piece my mind has been showing me glimpses of my past and I never even knew it?
“You sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Jace asks, wrapping his arms around my waist and resting his chin on my shoulder.
“I think I have to do this alone.” I lay down the pictures and lean into his hold, soaking up all the comfort I can.
“Okay, sweetheart. But I’m only a phone call away, one ring and I’m there before you reach my voicemail.”
I turn my head, pecking a soft kiss to his lips. “Thank you.”
He glances over at the clock on the stove and sighs. “You should get going.”
I hum, moving to gather my purse. He walks me to the door, pulling on my hand until I face him. “I’m serious, Kinsley. If you’re not ready for this, one ring and I’ll be there.”
“One ring,” I echo and he kisses me one last time before I leave.
I make it to the small café we agreed to meet at ten minutes early. Fiddling with the small cup on the table, I try to organize my rampant nerves as I wait.
“Kinsley?” A soft voice draws my attention up to the petite blonde. She gracefully slides into the chair across from me, her smile wavering slightly.
“Lily,” I whisper.
She laughs under her breath. “Hi.”
“Thank you for meeting me.”
“Of course. Thank you for calling.”
I tuck my lips, my nerves clamming up my ability to form coherent sentences when everything is threatening to spill out all at once. Luckily I’m given time to collect my wits when the waiter comes over and she places her order.
“The croissant has hazelnut,” I murmur.
“What?”
My eyes shoot up to hers. “I… I don’t know why I just said that.”
Her lip wobbles and she sniffs wiping under her eye as she quickly changes her order to the strawberry cream muffin. The waiter leaves and she watches me with a warm gaze.
“I’m allergic to hazelnuts,” she whispers.
My mouth opens when our eyes meet but nothing comes out. Our staring contest is broken when her drink and pastry are dropped off and she quietly thanks the waiter.
I clear my throat and lift the small collection of pictures I brought with me, sliding them across the table. “Do you remember any of this?”
She takes the stack and flips through. I watch as her eyes light with every picture, a laugh slipping out at some. “Oh my gosh. We were just babes.” Her finger traces over the photo.
I smile when she flips to the next one, a snort escaping as she breaks into a fit of giggles.
“I remember this. It was the night of your photography showcase. We all went out to get a bite to eat afterwards. You had been complaining about how much your feet were hurting after I had you walking around in those ‘death traps I call heels’ all night.”
She shakes her head and sets down the picture of me and Jace walking down a cobblestone street. “He said it couldn’t be that bad, so you dared him to walk back to the car wearing them. And we all know Jace isn’t one to turn down a dare.”
My lips tip up. “No he is not.”
“He couldn’t even make it to the corner. Said it was because of your freakishly small shoe size. Kept telling us that if he had heels to fit his feet, there’s no doubt he would have been able to walk that distance.”
“Sounds like it was a really fun night,” I muse.
“It was an amazing night.” Her eyes meet mine and she smiles, but it’s tinted with sadness. “I can tell you whatever you want to know, Kinsley. At least everything that I know.”
“Jace said we were best friends?”
She nods. “We were. We met when you transferred to my school during our leaving cert year. It was sisterhood at first sight.”
She laughs and I smile, leaning my chin on my palm, listening as she tells me all about our adventures in the year we’d been inseparable.
I congratulate her when she tells me about her fashion program and how she wound up going on to create her own brand. It is currently small, but she loves every second of what she does.
I tell her about how I got into sport photography and she shakes her head knowingly when I tell her that it was Sydney who’d initially introduced me to it.
“She’s always been a bit of a schemer. I’m honestly proud of how long she held out on approaching you.”
“Why is that? Jace told me that you and her hired a private investigator to find me years ago. Why didn’t either of you come see me when he told you where I was?”
She sighs. “He told us about your amnesia and how the two years before your accident had been erased from your memory. So even if I did come to you, you wouldn’t have had any idea who I was.”
“But Sydney did, eventually anyway.”
“We were heartbroken when you disappeared. We spent years looking for you. And when we finally found you, it was hard to know what to do because of your diagnosis. We read article after article about how to approach someone with amnesia, but everything we saw said that if we did, then we shouldn’t try to tell you about the past. It could distort your memories and create these false realities where you think you know something but it wasn’t actually true.”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “Jace mentioned that’s what he read too.”
“I knew that if I saw you, I wouldn’t have been able to act like you weren’t the best friend I’d been missing all these years. And you seemed happy. I mean, you had a baby, Kinsley.”
I smile, thinking of my little man. “Cooper.”
She tilts her head, eyes glistening. “He’s beautiful.”
“He’s really amazing.”
“You had a family, a whole new life.”
“But I was also apparently missing one, Lily.”
“I know.” She sucks in a shaky breath. “And I’m so sorry. Please know that. I am so incredibly sorry for everything that happened to you. For not showing up sooner. For being too scared to face you?—”
“It’s okay.” I reach out and place my hand over her shaking one.
With my free hand I wipe under my eyes as a few tears escape. “It’s okay. It all happened for a reason. I thought about it over and over the past couple nights. My first thought being, why me? Why did this happen to me? I even wished I could go back in time so that I wasn’t at that bus stop.”
I shake my head and pull out my phone, flipping the screen towards her. “But then he called to tell me about all the fun he was having with Jace’s parents and Beckham.”
She takes my phone, studying the image of Cooper I have as my background while I continue. “Do I wish I could have these memories back? Yes. But I’d be lying if there wasn’t a part of me that is grateful for what happened. Because if it didn’t, then I wouldn’t have my son. We can’t go back and change the past, no matter how much any of us wish we can. It’s something I’ve come to terms with these past couple days.”
She hands me back my phone and I look down at the pictures. “I’m not saying what happened to me is grand, because it’s not. It took a lot away from me—from all of us. But it led me to where I am right now. And right now, I’m happy. I have my son and Rose. I have Jace and Beckham. Sydney and the lads.”
I squeeze her hand. “And I have you. Together maybe we can find the answers of the past but I don’t want it to hinder the future.”
“How are you so okay with all of this?”
I shrug, my lips tipping up as I glance down at a younger Jace. “I have a lot to be thankful for right now. I’ve got my second chance at a real family. I don’t want to waste it this time.”
She laughs through her tears, wiping at her face. “Ugh, look at me, I’m a mess.”
I hand her a napkin as I wipe my own. “We both are.”
She takes a deep breath before slowly blowing it out. “So where do we go from here?”
I smile. “We take it one day at a time.”
The cool morning drifts by as we sit outside the little coffee shop, swapping stories about the past, the years we were apart, and our dreams for the future.
She shows me pictures of her wedding and I gush over her dress, blushing when she says that maybe one day she can make me mine.
By the time we’ve paid our checks, the sun is high in the sky and the breakfast board has switched to lunch. We gather up our bags with the promise to grab lunch one of these days, this time with Sydney too.
I’m stepping out of the patio gate when someone comes barreling around the corner. Cold liquid drenches my front as I stumble back from the collision.
Lily rushes to my side to steady me and I hold my wet shirt off of my chest.
“Do you have any idea how much this costs?” Her high pitched screech draws my attention and I freeze. Blazing ice cold eyes stare back at me and she sneers. “Of fucking course.”
“Angie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you,” I say, taking the napkins Lily hands me to dry off.
“Sure you didn’t. You just keep finding a way to crash into my life and ruin everything don’t you, angel .”
My body tenses at the disdain in her voice when she says the nickname Jace has only ever called me. How does she know about that nickname? And why did she say that I keep ruining her life?
“What are you talking abo?—”
“Save it! God. I thought I was rid of you, but of course that annoying little pixie couldn’t let it go. She was always meddling between me and Jace.”
Is she talking about Sydney?
“Hi, I’m Lily. You are?”
Angie glares down at her outstretched hand and scoffs. “I don’t see how this concerns you.”
“Funny. You’re talking like you know who I am.”
“And you’re an annoying gnat that needs to disappear along with your cow of a friend here.” Angie’s eyes slide to mine. “Again.”
“Okay. What is your—where did you get that?” Lily tenses next to me, her stare fixed on Angie’s neck.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your necklace. Where did you get it?”
Angie fiddles with the gold chain. “That’s none of your?—”
Her words break on a scream when Lily steps forward, yanking it off her neck. She quickly flips the pendant over and her shoulders shake on a disbelieving laugh.
“You know. Next time you commit a crime—” She holds up the necklace, glaring at Angie. “—maybe don’t take a souvenir.”
Angie’s eyes widen and I step up to Lily’s side. She places the necklace in my palm and I look down at the small circle pendant.
And there it is, almost too worn to truly see, a carved L and K.
I slowly look up at Angie. She’s frozen, her eyes bouncing between me and Lily. Everything around us seems to slow as we stare at one another.
Then she pounces.
She dashes to the side, but Lily reaches out, grabbing her by the hair and yanking her back. Angie screams, turning and swatting blindly at her.
She lands an open palm slap to Lily’s cheek, shaking me out of my frozen stupor. I jump forward, grabbing her wrist and she twists.
I stumble back as she steps into my space, pressing her body against mine.
“You couldn’t have just stayed gone, could you? He was mine! We may not be together right now, but he was mine!”
“What are you talking about?” I scream out when she drags her nails down the side of my face. My ankle twists on the uneven pavement and she grabs my shoulders.
“I’m talking about you,” she sneers. “ Kinsley .”
She uses the hold to push me and I fall into the street, the back of my head slamming into the unforgiving pavement.
Stars burst behind my eyes as her saying my name echoes, melding with distant shouting. I close my eyes as an onslaught of images flash in my mind, voices past and present blurring.
Kinsley!
A damn breaks and everything hits me at once, flooding all my senses. My head pounds as image after image plays as if I’m watching them all on the big screen of the cinema. Everything speeds up until all that’s left is a quiet darkness.
Kinsley!
Come on, wake up.
Please!
“Kinsley!”
I suck in a breath and blink open my eyes. Wild blue ones filled with worry stare down at me, a curtain of blonde draping around us.
“Oh my god. Are you okay?”
Lily helps me slowly sit up and I glance around, my heart racing. “Where is she?”
“What are you?—”
“Where is she? Where’s Angie?” I frantically stand up, looking over the growing crowd.
“I don’t know. She must have taken off when I ran over to help you. Kinsley, she pushed you in front of a car.” She looks over her shoulder.
I glance over at the worried driver, standing to the side of his running car in the middle of the street. “I remember,” I whisper. I shake my head, twisting around to see any sign of her as my chest heaves.
“What?” she whispers as her eyes fill with tears.
“I remember.” I spin to look at my best friend. “Everything.”
She pauses before throwing her arms around me and I hold her tight as we burst into tears. She pulls back and takes my hands. “You really remember everything?”
I nod, wincing when my head throbs. “I need to get to Jace.”
“No, we need to go to the hospital. Kinsley?—”
“Please. I’ll get checked out after. I just—I need to talk to Jace. Please.”
She studies me for a heartbeat before sighing. “Okay. I’ll drive.”
We rush to her car and I hold on for dear life as she breaks all the traffic laws to get us out of the city. Coming to a screeching halt outside of Jace’s cottage, she’s barely put the car in park before I have the door flung open.
I race up the steps and swing the door open as I call out his name. Lily runs up behind me, right as he comes running.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, glancing between me and Lily.
A sob breaks free and I throw myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck. His arms band around my waist, holding me to him. Setting me back down on my feet, he cups my face.
“Hi,” I whisper through my tears.
“Hi,” he whispers back, his eyes dancing over my face. His eyebrows furrow and I suck in a breath when he brushes his thumb over the cut on my cheek from Angie’s nail. “What happened to you?”
I shake my head and reach up, threading my fingers through the hair at the back of his head and pull his face to mine. Our lips meet and he hums, relaxing into me. A throat clears and we break apart.
He glances to the side. “Lily?” His eyes bounce between us. “What’s going on?”
I place my hands on his chest. “I remember,” I whisper.
He freezes, his heart skipping under my palm. “What?”
“I remember.”
“You remember,” he whispers.
I nod. “I remember everything .”