Help Me Remember (Rose Canyon, #1)(89)

I get down on my knees so I’m level with him. “I can agree to that.”

“I mean it, Brie. I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to hide anymore.”

“I know.”

“Okay. Let me get some pants on and let’s go file paperwork that I want done.” He gets out of bed, and I smile at his perfect ass as he walks by.

“And they say romance is dead.”





Chapter Thirty-Three





BRIELLE





“You brought me back to the park?” I ask Spencer with a brow raised.

“I need to show the kids that I fixed it.”

“Fixed what?”

“Us.”

I laugh. “And how do the boys know you broke us?”

He shrugs. “I may have come here and ran into them. They said I looked like shit and must’ve messed up.”

Well, if that isn’t the cutest thing ever. “And now you want to show me off?”

“Exactly. Now, I just hope they’re here . . .”

“Hey! It’s Brielle!” Kendrick runs over. “You’re back.”

“I am! Hey, guys!”

“Oh, she’s with him,” Timmy says when he spots Spencer.

I laugh because it’s hilarious how much they really don’t like him.

Spencer grumbles under his breath. “Yes, she’s with me. I brought her here.”

“You owe me twenty bucks,” Saint says to Timmy.

“Did you bet I wouldn’t be able to fix it?” Spencer asks.

“I did. I thought she’d be smarter.”

I snort and try to hide my amusement. “Well, as fun as this has been, we have to get going. I am glad to see you all though.”

“See ya,” they say and race off.

I hook my arm around his, and we walk down the path. “This is nice.”

“What is?”

“Our park,” I say as we stroll leisurely. This park may be a bit out of the way, but it’s now ours. That date really changed him for me all over again. It wasn’t about the past that day, it was about what we had together in the moment.

“This is ours.”

“I think so.”

“Maybe we should make a donation or do something in Isaac’s name.”

His suggestion makes me smile, and I look up at him, saying, “I would love that. We could put in a see-saw or something like that.”

He laughs. “A see-saw?”

“You don’t remember?”

Spencer grins. “I guess I don’t.”

“When I was, like, six, you guys would take me to the park and would launch me! I would hold on for dear life and my ass would slam on the ground every time one of you jumped off your side and sent me plummeting.”

“Plummeting?”

“At six, it sure as hell felt that way.”

“I’m not at all surprised we did that. Emmett’s brother would do awful shit to us as kids, and we were all too happy to pay that forward to you.”

I shake my head before resting it on his shoulder. “Lucky me.”

“I think you are.”

I sigh heavily, enjoying the warmth and the sun. “Spencer?”

“Yes, love?”

“Can we go to the grave?” I ask. “I would like to tell Isaac about us.”

Spencer stops, pulling me into his arms. “Of course.”





The mound still looks fresh, and the headstone isn’t in yet, but none of that matters. There is a plaque with a flag, and on the ground around his marker are various things that people have left.

There’s a letter from the high school football team, a pacifier, which is probably Elodie’s, and a lot of flowers and photos. I lean down, lifting the one that had to have been left by Spencer, Emmett, or Holden.

“I brought it here,” Spencer says. “I came home after spending the day with you, and I missed him. I wanted to tell him everything, and yet as I stood here, the words wouldn’t come.”

The guilt I’ve struggled with regarding my brother’s death seems to be never-ending. I didn’t come visit his grave. I didn’t do enough to keep my sister-in-law here. All these things that Isaac would have done if it had been me who died that day.

“I don’t know that I have them either,” I tell Spencer.

“Do you think he needs them?”

I shrug, placing down the photo of them and picking up an origami swan. There’s something about this swan that draws me to it.

“Did you make that?” Spencer asks.

I look over at him. “Me?”

“Yeah, you love doing all this stuff. I still have the star you folded out of my last report card.”

“I forgot . . . I mean, I know I loved origami, even as a kid, but that I still did it.” I turn the paper over. “It’s not mine, I haven’t been here since he was buried.”

“Do you know who else would’ve made that?”

A memory of the kids and I at the youth center when the power went out comes to mind. I wrote a note inside and then folded them. The kids had a lot of fun trying to unfold and then refold them so the word was on the outside. Then we would send notes that way when we wanted to mess with Jax.