31. Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty
Allie
W rapping my arms around me, I rub my exposed biceps. It's not too cold out with everyone swarming around me, but I have a chill that won't go away. My eyes never leave the small crane lifting the section of parking curb onto the back of a flatbed truck. It has a plastic bag over the edge, which seems crazy to me. It's been exposed to the elements for over seven years now, but I suppose it's procedure.
"Allie!" Jax shouts and runs over to me.
The sight of him fills me with relief, and I open up my arms to let him pull me into his. "Jax."
"What happened? Did someone attack you? I knew I should've come with you," he says and cups my face. "Why are they taking a parking curb?"
"Yeah, someone did attack me."
His eyes widen, and he looks around. "Where are they?"
"I don't know. They attacked me seven years ago."
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 want to scream and shout and hit and puke all at once. Marriage. Kids. We’ve been robbed of so much time.
“We’re here now,” Jax says, and he cups my face, forcing me to look at him. “We’re here now.”
“We were supposed to—”
“It doesn’t matter. Everything we were going to have, we can have now. I’m just happy to have you back, Allie. That’s all that matters to me. You’re back. Really back.”
He’s right. There’s no point dwelling on the past I can’t change. Whatever we were supposed to have before now can be had now. I just have to figure out how to move past it. Forget that so much was taken from both of us. That’s what hurts the most. It’s not just me this happened to.
Almost like it just hit me, I step out of Jax’s embrace and look at him. Oh my God . "You were engaged to Laura? Laura Dawson?"
Grimacing, Jax nods his head but says nothing.
"Huh," I say and look at Sage. "Wow."
She hugs me, laughing. "That's a whole lot nicer a reaction than the rest of us gave, that's for sure!"
Benji and Drew each take their turns hugging me tightly, and Drew cups my face with his hands. "We're pretty sure Laura played some voodoo magic shit on our boy to get him to date her, let alone propose to her."
"Played on his grief or something. It was creepy. And really disturbing," Benji says.
"Considering some of the girls you date, that's kind of impressive," I say.
He pulls me into another hug. "Girl, I've missed you. Not your sarcasm disguised as cruel truths, but I have missed you."
I laugh and turn to Jax. "I just... I'm having a hard time picturing you two together. Like that. I mean, she was always with you, but not with you."
"Please stop trying to picture it," he says and sighs. "She was there. Every day, she was there."
"Well, yeah. That's kind of what life was like even before Allie vanished on us. She'd just pop up out of nowhere," Drew says.
Jax shoots his best friend a look, but he quickly turns his attention back to me. "I kept getting told I should move on. That it was what you'd want me to do, and it seemed, I don't know. Easier? I was already spending all my time with her by default, but she kind of helped lead me into the idea that we could be more than just friends."
"Did you sleep with her?"
He casts his eyes to the ground and says nothing. Images of the two of them in bed form in my mind, and I'm torn between jealousy and disbelief.
Instead of being upset, I opt to laugh. Jax looks up in surprise. "You're not mad?"
"I was locked in a cellar for seven years with no one knowing if I was alive. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised you didn't turn into Benji and sleep with half the town. I just... I can't quite put it together in my mind. It almost doesn't compute."
I laugh again as he pulls me into his arms. "Please stop trying to picture it."
"She probably let him do all sorts of things you're not into. She seems like the type. You know, offer herself up on a silver platter, do things most guys want but can't get their partners to agree to," Sage says.
The expression on Jax's face as he looks at the ground tells me that's pretty much what happened. "Oh, gross! If that's true, at least you got to do some weird shit. Just... Let's not tell me what those things were, okay?"
"I'm never telling you anything about that. Ever," he assures me. "I'd rather forget myself."
Detective Parsons walks over to us. "You're certain you don't remember who it was who called out your name? Nothing sticks out about them when they hit you?"
I shake my head, all joking aside now. "It was raining, so I was in a hurry. I feel like I recognized the voice through the thunder because I turned around, but it all happened so fast. It was dark, and I think the streetlights wasn't on yet. They were taller than me, but that doesn't narrow much down. The next thing I knew, I was lying next to my Jeep."
"You don't remember being in the car or anything to that nature? Being put in it?"
"No, the last thing I remember was a few moments on the ground watching the blood wash away in the rain. Then I was in the cellar. But since my Jeep is gone, that's how they had to have gotten me there, right? When people came looking for me, it wasn't here. That kind of really pisses me off."
"Why?"
"I loved that Jeep," I say.
For the first time, Parsons actually smiles, and Shields walks up with a surprised look on her face. "I understand that sentiment."
I rest my head on Jax's chest, his heartbeat calming mine as the thoughts start to take over again. Remembering everything, especially the attack, feels very overwhelming. My anxiety starts kicking in, but the moment I feel him beneath my head, I calm down. My heart rate slows, and I feel home. Finally, I'm home.
"Take me back home, Jax."