Burying Water (Burying Water #1)(108)

Priscilla . . . Priscilla . . . “Pink.”

He pauses, regarding me with a smirk. “Yeah. She used to wear bright pink lipstick.”

The word association game may work after all.

Nodding slowly, I play my responses back in my mind. Baby = Impossible. That’s why I said that. Because it was impossible for me to have a baby with my husband.

Jesse simply stares at me through those intense eyes, for so long that I have to drop my gaze. “So, we were going to have a baby together?”

“Yeah, we were.”

Despite everything, my heart swells with that knowledge. “This is all just . . . crazy.”

He kicks a stone lying in the grass. “Trust me, I know. It was so hard—first to stay away, and then, when I moved back, to still stay away. You kept saying things and doing things that you’ve done before. I was sure you were going to wake up and start remembering. Half of me wanted you to so we could pick up where we left off, but the other half was terrified that you wouldn’t want me anymore. None of us thought your memory problems would last this long. I almost told you a hundred different times, but then I thought you might not ever talk to me again.” Wet eyes plead with me. “Please don’t hate me, Alex.”

Alex.

So weird. Can I ever be his Alex again?

“And don’t hate my parents. They only went along with it because I told them it’s what you wanted, and that was after days of fighting.”

“But how could this be what I wanted?”

“I can’t explain it. It sounds so stupid when I try to explain. I wish you could just remember.”

A painful knot pops into my throat. “So do I.”

He hesitates. “Do me a favor? Close your eyes for me.”

Without a second’s thought, I do. That’s the thing about Jesse. I’ve trusted him from the beginning. Even now, after all of this, I still trust him.

I sense him stepping in close and I swallow.

“That night on the side of the road, in the pitch black, you stood this close to me.” I feel his breath against my mouth. “We’d never met, you couldn’t even see my face, and yet you leaned in and kissed me.” He skates his lips across mine, so tenderly. Almost cautiously. It sends shivers across my back and makes me believe for a moment that we’ve never kissed before.

“And you asked me if I was happy in my life. You asked, if I could just escape my bad choices—”

“And start over fresh, would I?” My eyes flash open as the words slip out of my mouth unbidden. “It was raining,” I whisper, an image of the faceless stranger from my dream appearing in my head. Not the one who threatened me.

The one who saved me.

It was Jesse.

I gasp, tears of shock and excitement and relief welling in my eyes. “I remember that. I remember you.”

His strong arms rope around my waist, pulling me tight to his body. Part of me wants to push him away, but I don’t have the strength to do anything but melt into his chest, accept his comfort, and cry softly against him.

Droplets land on my forehead that I know aren’t mine. “I was afraid I’d lose you; that what he’d done to you would take you away from me forever,” he explains in a husky voice, ripe with emotion. “I couldn’t handle the idea of that.”

A long, quiet moment stretches out, my sobs the only sound in the vast open field.

And then a new worry blossoms. “What about him? Is he really not looking for me?” Do I want Viktor to keep thinking I’m dead? Do I want him to get away with what he did? It’s probably the safest option. What would he do if he knew that I survived?

Jesse steps back far enough to see my face, his hands finding their way to either side of my jaw. “This past April, Viktor was racing his Aston Martin around the slick roads and lost control. He crashed it into a telephone pole.” He pauses. “Viktor is dead. He got what he deserved.”

I don’t know exactly why, but that news buckles my knees. Jesse’s arms dive down to catch me by the waist, pulling me back into his chest.

“That’s when you moved back, isn’t it?” When Jesse pulled up behind Ginny’s old broken-down truck. And rescued me.

I close my eyes and let him press his forehead against mine. “I just couldn’t stay away from you for another day.”

“Where do we go from here?” I hear myself whisper. I doubt I can stay away from him either.

Jesse’s grip around me tightens, as if he’s unwilling to let me go. Ever.

“I think I still wore Velcro-strapped shoes the last time I was in this house,” Jesse muses, gazing over the shelf of horse figurines. There must be fifty of them.

“It hasn’t changed. Just a little more cluttered,” Gabe admits, sifting through stacks of papers on the kitchen table. For what, I’m not sure.

I fold my arms over my chest, taking in the boxes and bags. In case of the end of the world, Ginny could hole up here for weeks. “How is she?”

“No change.” Meredith sits down in the very chair that Ginny occupied last night, the creak from its worn frame cutting into the awkward silence.

We’ve shared a lot of quick gazes and two-word answers since Jesse drove me home from the field where I was supposed to have died five months ago. Where the old me did die. I’m so tired—both emotionally and physically—from the last twenty-four hours, and yet I doubt I could sleep.