Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Trevor
Ilook between the reporters still waiting by the mailbox, and Carter Cruz, who’s running after me, and try to decide which is worse.
Carter reaches my side. “Piss off,” he tells the reporters. Then he turns to me. “My ride is over there. Come with me. I have something to show you.”
I huff my frustration. “Man, I’m really not up for any more trips down memory lane.”
“I have a feeling this will be different. Give it a try?”
The reporters start yelling questions at me, so I shrug and follow Carter to a… tow truck? I look at him curiously before reaching for the passenger door handle.
He laughs. “I’m guessing Ava hasn’t told you much about me.
Hop in.” The engine roars to life and he pulls away.
“I’m on towing duty today. I alternate days on the truck with my brothers and sister.
We’re all much happier working in the shop.
” He slaps the dash. “But without this part of it, we’d have a lot less business. ”
“The shop?”
“Yup. It’s just down this street.”
We pull up to a large building with four open garage stalls to one side. Three of them are occupied by cars. To the right of the garages is a storefront. Above that is a marquee that reads Cruz-in Auto Repair Shop.
“Cruz,” I mumble. “So you own it?”
“Well, the bank owns most of it,” he says with a snort. “But yeah, my three siblings and I make the payments.”
He parks around back in front of another large warehouse structure.
“Why are we here?” I ask.
With a mischievous smile reaching his eyes, he says, “You’ll see. Come on.”
We exit the truck, and I follow him to the warehouse where he slides open a heavy metal door. My eyes go wide the second I see the car. It’s identical to the profile picture on Trevor Criss’s Instagram account.
I step forward and run my hand along the side of the hood. Then I stand back and take her in. “Sixty-eight Dodge Charger RT. High performance, front-engine, rear-wheel drive sports sedan with a 426 cubic inch Hemi V8 engine and 425 horsepower.”
“Holy shit,” Carter says. “How in the hell do you know all that?”
I touch my head. “The brain is an amazing yet totally fucked up thing.” I proceed to tell him about episodic versus semantic memory and how I’ve retained a shit ton of knowledge, just not experiences.
“I’ll say it again. Holy shit. No wonder the reporters want a piece of you. You must be some kind of medical miracle.”
“The reporters don’t know about my amnesia. That’s classified information.” I give him a hard stare. “And I’d like it to remain that way.”
“Hey, these lips are sealed, man. No worries there.”
I touch the car again. “How do I know so much about this particular car? Did I used to moonlight here or something?”
“It’s yours.”
My eyebrows touch my hairline. “This car is mine?” I ask with a sudden twinge of excitement.
He laughs. “Has been for almost fifteen years. You bought it from a scrapyard when you were in college. You’ve been fixing it up ever since.
Whenever you come home on leave, you spend hours here tinkering with it.
Your plan was to restore it to the original condition, but it’s proven tricky to find the parts.
Which reminds me…” He walks over to a cabinet and opens it, pulls out a package, and hands it to me.
“The steering wheel finally came in. We’d been searching for it for the past year. ”
“Does it run?”
“Nah. But it will. Someday, it will.”
“And I know how to make it run?”
“You know enough. I help out where I can. It’s kind of our thing. Male bonding and all that.” He opens another cabinet and pulls out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. “We usually save this for after hours, but I figure this is a special occasion. How about it?”
I shrug, because this is the most normal I’ve felt since waking up in Germany last week.
He pours us each a small shot. We clink our glasses, down it, then he gestures to a large toolbox. “How about we install the steering wheel?”
“I think I’d like that,” I say with a slight nod and a smile. “I think I’d like that a lot.”
Several hours later, the steering wheel having long been installed, I sit in the back seat with another shot of whiskey. Carter has come and gone several times—he still has a business to run—and by the time he returns again, it’s after four o’clock.
Pouring himself a drink, he climbs into the back with me and holds up his glass. “May this shot be like your favorite ride… smooth and powerful.”
“Why do I get the feeling this isn’t the first time you’ve made that toast?”
“It’s what we’d say at the end of a long day of working on her.”
I glance around. “Would we always sit in here?”
“Nah. This is the first time.” His phone buzzes and he glances at it. “Your wife has been texting me. She’s worried about you.”
“My wife.” I shake my head. “It still seems surreal that I have a wife. An entire life I can’t even remember.
I’m thirty-five fucking years old, yet my life can be categorized in days.
It’s as if I was born the moment I woke up at the hospital in Germany.
All my memories are of that place, the plane ride across the Atlantic, and my hospital room in Bethesda.
Ava, Dawn, and Chuck are like my tour guides, my memory proxies.
But the more they try and tell me about my past, the more frustrated I become.
” I lean back against the seat. “I know they mean well. And I suppose I was a dick for running out like that.”
“I get it. Everyone was throwing shit at you. It was too much too soon.”
I nod, grateful for his understanding.
“But you should cut her a break. She loves you. You have no idea just how much.”
“You’re right. I have no idea. About any of it.”
“I don’t want to overwhelm you more than you already are.
I’m here if you have questions or if you need to talk.
Or even if you just want to work on the car.
But I do need to say one thing. Your relationship with Ava is one I’ve always envied.
The way you two are with each other is what I hope to have some day. ”
“You’re not married?”
He cackles. “Not even close. The only person I ever wanted ran out on me when our son was diagnosed with cerebral palsy.”
“You have a kid?”
“Not just a kid, the best kid. He’s fourteen.
And damn, he’s the best thing in my life.
But between him and the shop, there’s been no good time to get into a relationship.
Not to mention I know almost every single woman in this town, and I swear none of them are worthy of being a parent to my son.
But I guess that’s just me being the overprotective dad.
” He narrows his eyes. “Not to add fuel to the fire, but did you know you and Ava tried for a decade to have kids?”
“So I’ve been told.”
“You’re great with kids, you know. You helped me a lot with Christian.
And you’re always willing to hold Regan and Maddie’s kids, not to mention you don’t balk at changing diapers.
You and Ava were really torn up when you sank all your savings into IVF last year and it didn’t happen.
You were going to explore adoption and sperm donation after you got home. ”
“I think it’s a blessing in disguise. Can you imagine me having a kid I don’t remember? Someone calling me Dad who I have no emotional connection with? Who I feel nothing for when I look at them?”
He sighs. “Are we still talking about kids? Or Ava?”
I down the rest of my drink. “She’s beautiful. And nice. And smart, I guess. But the same thing could be said about every woman at Dawn and Chuck’s house today.”
He gets the bottle off the floor and pours me another small shot.
“Hey, think of it this way, if you hook up with her, it’ll be like it’s the first time.
” A smile creeps up his face. “Ah, shit, you probably don’t even remember what it’s like to have sex, do you?
Brother, if anything good could come out of this, it’s being able to experience fucking again for the very first time. ”
I almost choke on my drink. “Ava said something like that earlier.”
“About having sex?”
“About experiencing things again for the first time.”
He smirks. “She was definitely talking about sex. Dude…” He gives me a cocky grin. “Do it. Rip off the Band-Aid.”
“It wouldn’t be fair. Especially if we don’t end up together.
” I look out the window at a wall covered in tools.
“What if I don’t get my memory back and we find we’re no longer compatible?
I mean, I don’t even know her. And she might not even want me anymore if I can’t remember anything about her or us. ”
“Hey. Trevor. Look at me. You’ve been together since you were in middle school.
Relationships like that don’t happen every day.
You guys are soulmates or whatever. Even if you don’t remember that now, I have to believe there’s still something there.
Deep down, your subconscious will know it.
” He swallows the rest of his drink. “And honestly, if you two can’t find your way back to each other, there’s no hope for the rest of us. ”
Guilt assaults me as I realize how unfair it is to assume she wouldn’t want me, or me her, after only a few days of us being around each other. My life is confusing as shit, and it’s causing me to jump to some unfair conclusions. I need to sit back and let the dust settle.
“I guess I should go find her and tell her it wasn’t her I was running from. It was just… all of it. But I don’t know where to look.” My head falls back against the seat. “I don’t even know where the hell I live.”
“You need her number?”
I pat my empty pockets. “I don’t have a phone.”
He pulls his out and sends a text, immediately getting one in return.
“I can take you to her.”
“She’s not still at Dawn and Chuck’s is she? I’m not sure I could deal with that crowd.”
“Nope. Not there.” He gets out of the car, puts on his coat, and digs in his coat pocket. “You’ll want these.” He hands me a pair of heavy gloves.
“Why? Where exactly are we going?”
“You’ll see.”