AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He doesn’t come right back. Hours pass while Milo, Smith, and I wait. We take turns ringing his phone, but he never answers. Our texts go ignored.
Fear creeps in once evening comes with no contact from him. The words he said earlier take on a new weight in my head.I love you. Wherever I end up.
He meant even if he goes to jail, I try to convince myself.
Smith sits beside me. “How are you holding up?”
“You don’t think he’d hurt himself, do you?” My worst fear tumbles out.
“I hope not. He has that tracking anklet on. If we don’t hear from him soon, can we access that somehow to make sure he’s okay?”
“No,” Milo says. “Not without contacting the cops who are monitoring him and we sure as hell aren’t going to alert anyone that he might’ve ran. They’re already threatening to lock him up.”
“He didn’t run. He wouldn’t.”Wherever I end up.
“If he had left the city or took the monitor off, we would’ve already had the cops up our ass,” Smith points out.
All our phones begin to blare with an emergency alert. The blizzard watch has been upgraded to a warning. I completely forgot a storm was coming.
"You should go home before the snow starts,” Milo tells me.
“I need to know when he comes back.” We planned for him to stay with me tonight, but who knows whether he’ll show up at my house or come back here.
Smith holds his hand out. “Give me your phone. I can put the security app on it and activate the alerts for the cameras. You’ll get a notification and be able to see if he comes home.”
I’d rather wait for him, but they’re right. We all need to head home before we get stranded. “Okay, thanks.”
Smith sets it up and shows me how to check the front and back cameras. Milo double checks that the shop is locked up securely since none of us may be coming in tomorrow if the snow is too deep.
“Drive safe,” Milo says. “Try not to worry yourself. He’s got a lot on his mind. He probably needed some solo time to figure shit out.”
“I’ll call if I hear from him,” I promise, before we all go our separate ways.
The traffic is almost nonexistent on my drive home. A couple of salt trucks pass me, brining the road. Hope has me holding my breath that maybe he’ll be parked at my house, but that’s dashed when I turn onto my street. My driveway has never looked so empty.
Where the hell is he?
CHAPTER7
It’s past ten o’clock when I hear my front door open, and Oliver calls my name. Relief floods through me. I’m on my feet and in the foyer before he even gets the door shut behind him.
“Oliver! Where the fuck have you been? You scared the shit out of me!”
His face is lined with anxiety. “I’m sorry. I had to think.” He runs his hands through his hair. “I can’t fucking think! The memories keep coming back now but I don’t know what I can trust. Some of it…just makes no sense, like the one about the polar bear plunge.”
He’s almost in a panic. “It’ll be alright.”
“No! No, it won’t. I can’t prove my innocence at trial when I don’t know what I did. I’m going to go to prison. Fuck, maybe I belong there.”
“No, you don’t! You don’t belong in prison.”
“You don’t know that. And neither do I. I need to know, Ella. I can’t live like this anymore. I’m going to The Stop Along. I need you to come with me.”
My heart hammers against my ribs at the suggestion. The Stop Along is right around the corner, but I haven’t been there since it happened. Neither of us have.
“Do you think that’ll help you?”
He shrugs helplessly. “All I’ve done today is go from place to place trying to trigger memories. And it’s worked…sort of. I went back to places you showed me or told me about. I can remember sitting on the steps of my old apartment. I can remember wading in the stream by the treehouse trying to catch minnows.”
