19. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
Allie
" W hat about Danny Tomlin?" I ask Shields on the phone while Sage heads into the nail salon to check us in.
Jax gave me a phone shortly after I got out of the hospital. He’d kept the line with my old number active on his account, but the phone I’d had before disappeared along with me. He bought a new phone and taught me how to use it.
"Where did you get that name?" Shields asks me.
It's like talking to a shrink. At least like the ones on television and the one I had to see in the hospital before I was released. Answer a question with a question.
"I was talking to someone, and they mentioned how similar my disappearance was to someone else over a decade ago. Ms. Moran?"
"And how did you get to Danny Tomlin?"
Annoyed, I sigh. "When she was brought up, so did the rumor that went around when she disappeared, I guess. That she'd been messing around with a student. And the student in question was Danny Tomlin. I was then told that Danny was someone I apparently got fired from the bank I worked at."
"Daniel Tomlin worked at the bank with you, and he was let go when he stole your car keys and broke into your car. He also harassed you. This was all detailed in his personnel files from the bank."
"That would give him a good reason to want to do something to me, right? And if he was obsessed with me, it might explain why I was kept alive instead of killed."
"He has an airtight alibi the night you disappeared."
Rolling my eyes, I shake my head and see Sage waving to me from the window. "And Jax doesn’t?"
She pauses as I walk towards the front entrance of the salon. "I'll look into it again."
"Thank you," I say and hang up.
"What'd she have to say?" Sage asks as we're led to two chairs at the back of the salon and away from others. "Don't worry, I'm a VIP customer here. You were, too. They won't let anyone harass you."
It feels like someone’s watching me. I almost always feel this way out in public after coming home, but I catch a glimpse of someone walking along the sidewalk in a black hoodie and black jeans, their hands shoved in their pockets. I can’t see their face, but I’m brought right back to the basement again.
Stop it. If that was the person who did this to me, they would have tried to take me. I’m safe; Sage is here, and we’re in public. That was not the person who did this. Breathe. It’s okay. I’m okay.
Slipping off my sandals, I put my feet into the water and push the panic still present in my chest down. I pull the skirt I chose to wear up to my knees to keep from getting it wet. Dresses and skirts still fit better than pants, even with the weight I've gained. I'm still just shy of thirty pounds lighter than I was when I purchased the clothes. At this rate, it’ll take forever to wear the beautiful wardrobe I have.
"She's looking into him again."
"Be careful with her feet. She had cuts and scrapes on the bottoms," Sage says and points to the woman sitting in front of me.
"Tell me if I hurt you, okay?" she says, and I nod.
Handing the nail polish to me, Sage smiles. "This was always your color, but you can choose whatever you want."
I look at it in my hand, and I have a strange flash to my feet with this color on them. They're tangled with larger ones, and I realize it must be Jax in the image. A memory? Another strange swirl in my belly hits, and I can't get over how unexpectedly the desires I have come and go.
"I think I'll take this one," I say with a smile.
"Where'd you go just now?"
"It was a weird flash of a memory, I think. I saw this color on my toes."
She smirks. "First of all, you were always weird because you wore the same color all the time. At least on your toes. Never changed it up. And a memory? What kind of memory?"
The hot water starts to scald, and I pull my feet out. "Can we add a little cool water?"
"Too hot?"
"Too hot."
She smiles warmly and adjusts the water to cool it down just enough to allow me to slip my feet back into the plastic covered basin.
"Allie, come on. What was it?"
"It wasn’t much of anything," I admit. "Just our feet tangled up together."
"Who? You and Jax?"
"I assume so. "
Laughing, Sage leans back into her massaging chair. "You two really did like getting naked together. It's not that surprising."
"We did?"
"Oh, yeah," she says. "Was Laura right? Have you two not had sex yet?"
I caution a quick glance at the two people working on our feet, the lady working on mine being extra careful with the still-fresh scars on the bottoms. "We've only kissed."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"Who's holding back? You or him?"
The ease with which she asks questions tells me sex was a topic Sage and I discussed often. Nothing seems to be off-limits with her. "Both, really."
"He's holding back?"
"Jax is worried about pushing me too far, so he's kind of doing things at my pace. And I feel confused a lot around him. Like part of me knows I want him, but the other part feels like I don't know him enough yet. I guess I never had an issue wanting him?"
Laughing, she shakes her head and moans as the mechanical knob rubs her shoulder. "No, you'd always find a reason to slip off with him to get it on, no matter where we were. Quick or marathon sex, you didn't care. You even enjoyed it enough you let him film you."
My eyes widen, and I gape at her. "W-what?"
Her body tenses. "I maybe shouldn't have told you that."
My mind takes off. Whenever Jax gets excited and leaves to take care of himself, he leaves the room. He doesn't go to the bathroom, but I've never really paid much attention otherwise. "Oh my God," I gasp. "The cops would have taken his computer, right? Did they find them? Did they see those videos?"
"Relax," she says, reaching over and grasping my arm. "Jax is a computer whiz. They wouldn't be on the computer. I'm guessing they’re in the cloud somewhere or something like that. Knowing Jax, he’ll have the folder locked down with a password and an encryption key."
"I did this willingly?"
"Oh, yeah. You two would watch them together sometimes. I always asked to see one, but you said no. Not because you were embarrassed, but you didn't want me to see him naked. You had a bit of a jealous streak when it came to Jax."
Okay, so no one else saw it. Although the cops are usually resourceful, I can’t help but be thankful they dropped the ball this time. Just the thought of Parsons seeing me having sex with Jax, willingly recorded or not, makes me sick. "I did?"
"He was your first and your only. You'd gotten lucky and found someone who you enjoyed in bed enough to keep around for the rest of your life. Me? I had to go through many frogs trying to find a prince, and most of them ended up being douche canoes in the end."
"Douche canoe?"
Sage laughs. "We saw it in a movie or something once, and that's what we call all the assholes I end up sleeping with. I guess I'm still out there looking for my Jax when you were lucky enough to find yours at seventeen."
"Would I be jealous of him and Laura?"
"You'd claw her eyes out. I never understood why you let her stick around, especially with how she acted around Jax. Like a lovesick puppy. No one was really surprised she'd conned him into dating her after so many years, but the engagement was a surprise."
"Why did I?"
Shaking her head, Sage turns and looks at me. "Because you're too nice for your own good. At least until someone threatened what was yours. But you never really felt threatened by Laura. Not back then. And she had to play nice with you in order to spend time with Jax."
"That sounds..."
"Pathetic? Desperate? Ridiculous?" she asks with a smirk. "Yeah, that's Laura. I never trusted her. Not when I caught her trying to sneak a peek at Jax in the shower one trip. It was about a week or two before you vanished. When you found out, you laid into her. She was about to be cut from the group because if you said you didn't want her included, Jax would've sided with you."
"How desperate do you think she was to have him?"
Her eyes widen. "You don't think she'd do something to you, do you?"
"I don't know. Something about her makes me feel uneasy. And if she was as desperate as you say, it wouldn't be surprising, would it?"
"She was desperate," the woman working on my toes says and looks up with a grimace. "Sorry."
"What do you know, Helen?" Sage asks. "Spill."
Helen looks around before lowering her voice. "She'd come in here and get the same polish Allie did. This color. Every two weeks. She'd talk about how eventually Jax would see her. Certain that when he finally noticed her, she'd take Allie's place. She just had to be patient. And for five years, she was. Then one day, she told us she'd kissed him, and her color choice changed. That was until a month ago, when she switched back to this one."
"She's fucking crazy," Sage says. "I don't know if she had an alibi for that night or not. "
"But why would she keep me alive? I mean, she'd get what she wanted if I was dead. What would she gain if I was still breathing, even if I was locked in a basement. There was always the risk I’d get out—and eventually I did," I say as I try to put the pieces together.
"I don't know. I don't pretend to know the inner workings of a crazy woman. But I think it's best if you stay away. If nothing else, you took her fiancé away from her.” Sage shakes her head. “I still can't believe he proposed."
"He didn't," the man working on Sage mutters.
We both look at him, and Sage leans forward to rest her elbows on her knees. "Jet... what do you know?"
"I know he just gave her the ring box. Didn't even ask her to marry him. Just mentioned they should probably make it official or something," he says, and my heart breaks a little for her.
Laura may be a little nuts, but she clearly loves Jax. And that love made her wait a ridiculous amount of time to get him to notice her. Then, when he proposed, it was barely a proposal. Especially after she knew the surprise he planned for me the night I went away.
"How do you know this?" Sage asks.
"She was talking to someone. I think she was on the phone. But then she realized we heard, and she said something about him just being scared for her safety after what happened to Allie," he says. "It was the weirdest thing."
"She also talked far too much about her sex life," Helen says. "It was weird. Like, we kind of had to wonder if she was making it up with how detailed she’d get."
Thinking about Jax with Laura makes my stomach knot. I know they were engaged, and I'd been gone for years by the time they hooked up, but it doesn't make it easier. In fact, I think I'm jealous. He's mine. My mind flashes back to the small memory from earlier, and I shift in my chair.
Wait, maybe that's the ticket. Maybe sex is the trigger to remember everything.
Sage talks about the latest one-night stand she had, but I can't stop thinking about Jax. When I get home, I need to look at Jax's computer. Maybe if I can find the files, I can see what he likes. What I used to do. And maybe, just maybe, that will be the trigger I've been looking for. The thing to unlock these memories I desperately want to recall.