The One You Can’t Forget

by Loren, Roni

  Wes finally pressed a kiss to her shoulder, eased out of her, and let out a satisfied sigh. “That was worth the wait.”

  She smiled and turned around to face him. “You’ve only known me for a couple of weeks.”

  He touched his forehead to hers, his eyelashes sparkling with water droplets. “No. The whole wait.”

  “Oh.” The years. Something sharp-edged and sweet bloomed inside her chest. “For me, too.”

  She knew he’d assume she meant the year, but that wasn’t the whole truth. Yes, it’d been a year since she’d had sex.

  But it’d been her whole life since she’d had anything that felt like that.

  She could almost hear Kincaid whispering in her ear, Enjoy it while you can, cupcake.

  chapter

  NINETEEN

  “I’m going to have to get a bigger swear jar. When the kids see the bus, they’re going to lose their shit,” Wes said gleefully.

  “You better add a dollar right now, chef,” Rebecca teased, keeping her voice low against the phone and letting her hair curtain her face from the open door of her office. “And I can’t wait to see their faces. Hopefully, they won’t be offended that it’s not totally clean.”

  He laughed. “We did the best we could.”

  “We did no such thing. We got it half scrubbed and then spent the afternoon in bed.”

  “Well, not technically in bed.”

  Her skin flushed at the memory. She’d left Wes’s condo late last night on a sated high. After the shower, he’d cooked her a ridiculously delicious pasta dish with random ingredients from his pantry and then they’d attempted to watch a movie on his couch. That’d been a wash. They hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other and had ended up naked on the floor of the living room, even though the bedroom had only been a few steps away. “You know what I mean. We should’ve been cleaning poor Adele.”

  “We were up against terrible odds. No reasonable person would’ve expected us to resist each other. But if it makes you feel better, I got up early this morning and finished the job. Adele is all ready for her debut,” Wes declared.

  Rebecca’s lips curved, her chest filling with fizzy warmth for a different reason. Wes liked to play it cool, but she could tell how much he cared about those kids by all these little things he did. She could picture him at the crack of dawn, scrubbing down that old bus. “Did you wear a shirt?”

  He chuckled. “Of course. Didn’t want to be randomly attacked by a neighbor.”

  “Right. Safety first.”

  “So will you be able to get here this afternoon to see the big reveal? I know Mondays can be crazy,” Wes said, his chair squeaking in the background, “so if you need me to postpone it, I can keep it a secret. I don’t want to do it without you. You made this whole thing happen.”

  “I have two new clients on my schedule and one other meeting. I also planned on picking up my canine hero from your brother this afternoon, but Marco said Knight has a minor infection and wants to keep him a few more days.”

  “Knight? He officially has a name now?”

  “Yes, I figured with his black fur and his hero status, it was appropriate. I’m still going to stop by to visit him. Marco said he’s allowed to have a few treats now, so I’m bringing him some goodies, but I should be able to get to you around four. I want to be there for the reveal. I’m excited.”

  “I’m pumped you’re going to be able to get here today. Keeping this a secret has been tough. Oh, and remember to email me the last of the paperwork. The school needs it on file if you’re going to be working directly with the kids.”

  “It’s already on the way,” she said.

  “And bring some extra clothes if you want to jump in on the remodeling afterward. I’d bring some of my extras, but if I see you in those again, my mind is going to go to places it shouldn’t with children around.”

  She smirked. “Have you no self-control, man?”

  “Nope. Not when it comes to you.”

  A tingly awareness moved through her, spreading out to the tips of her fingers. “I know the feeling.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She looked down at her desk and the big calendar she used to keep her schedule straight. She tracked her fingertip over the spot where she’d marked down the details of the charity brunch. She’d written it in hard, neat handwriting, indenting the paper. Angry writing. No, scared writing. She hadn’t even realized she’d done that. Everything else was in looping script. She’d been terrified from the start and all through that morning, until Wes had swept in and stolen her away from the whole thing. “And I forgot to say it before I left, but thanks for yesterday.”

  “Thanks?” he scoffed, his incredulity echoing through the phone. “Rebecca, that’s the last thing you need to say to me.”

  “I just mean for getting my mind off everything after the debacle at brunch yesterday morning. I was kind of a mess. You are…excellent at distraction.”

  He was quiet for a moment, and she wondered if she’d said something wrong, but finally he cleared his throat. “I’m happy to distract you anytime, but know that if you ever want to talk about…anything, I’m here. Remember the friend portion of this arrangement. You don’t have to pretend that yesterday morning was about skipping breakfast.”

  Her ribs cinched tight. “Wes—”

  “I’m not saying you have to. I just wanted to put it out there. I’ve worked with these kids long enough that they’ve taught me a few valuable lessons, and one of them is being able to listen to the hard stuff.” His voice had gone quiet, tentative. “So I know we’re having fun and keeping things light, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be real with me. Don’t act like everything’s cool if it’s not.”

  The truth welled up in her like a tidal wave, ready to bust through the levee and flood out. What would it feel like to tell someone? To tell all of it? What had really happened back then, what she’d seen these last few months, the tricks her mind had played on her. But she choked back the urge as quickly as it came. Yeah, that’d be a fun way to annihilate this new thing with Wes in one fell swoop. Hey there, Guy I Just Slept With, I’m a horrible person, and I might be seeing dead people. What time do you want to hang out tonight?

  She forced an ease into her voice that she didn’t feel. “Thanks, Wes. I appreciate that. But it really was just a breakfast malfunction.”

  He didn’t respond for a moment, but when he spoke again, his tone lacked the ease of earlier. “Okay, but for future reference, my offer stands.”

  “Noted.”

  His chair squeaked again, and he let out a breath. “So, see you around four?”

  She drew an X over the Sunday square in her calendar, blocking out the brunch and trying to erase it from her mind. “That’s the plan.”

  “Great. See you then.”

  She hung up the phone and pinched the bridge of her nose, a headache threatening. She didn’t want the ugly stuff to seep into this thing with Wes. He was her escape right now. She wanted to park him in a place in her life and put an impenetrable dome over it.

  No past. No drama. No ghosts.

  A firm knock on her door broke her from her thoughts.

  Rebecca looked up, bracing herself for her father and the inevitable lecture about her behavior at the brunch, but her assistant, Marian, was in the open doorway with a grandmotherly smile instead. That smile was a diversionary tactic, though, because there was a shrewd look in her eye—her bat signal to Rebecca. Something was up.

  Marian was like the ninja assassin of executive assistants beneath that sensible gray suit, which was why Rebecca had happily taken her on when Marian had come back to the firm after two years of retirement, declaring that being home with her husband all day was going to drive her to drinking. “Morning, Marian. What’s going on?”

  “Your nine o’ clock is running late.” She leaned in deeper. “But two police officers just showed up, saying they wanted to talk to you. Do you have any idea what that’s
about?”

  Marian looked ready to defend her and give her an alibi if Rebecca was being accused of something.

  Rebecca straightened. “Oh. I… Yes, please send them in. There was…an incident a few weeks ago.”

  Wrinkles appeared around Marian’s mouth as her lips pinched together in concern. “An incident? Is everything okay?”

  Rebecca waved a hand, trying to minimize the incident because the last thing she needed was her mugging getting around the office gossip chain and back to her father. “Yes, I’m fine. It wasn’t a big deal, but please let them in.”

  “Of course.” Marian slipped out of the doorway, and Rebecca could hear her down the hall. “Right this way, officers. Ms. Lindt is ready for you.”

  Two cops in plainclothes with badges on their hips walked in, and Rebecca stepped around her desk to greet them and shake hands. The younger Hispanic woman, Detective Flores, was the one who’d called and asked some questions the day after the mugging. The other one, an African American man with graying temples, Detective Montgomery, was in charge of the case.

  “Thank you for seeing us, Ms. Lindt,” he said, giving her hand a firm shake. “I know you’re busy, but we had some new information that we wanted to run by you.”

  “Of course,” Rebecca said, shutting the door behind them and inviting them to take a seat. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, thank you. We’re fully fueled up already, ma’am,” he said, sitting in one of the chairs in front of her desk.

  Rebecca slipped back into her spot behind her desk, and Detective Flores set a big, yellow envelope on top of Rebecca’s calendar. “We’re sorry to interrupt your morning, but we were able to get security footage off one of the cameras from a business a few doors down from where you were attacked. It’s a challenging angle and the distance didn’t give us sharp photos, so we wanted you to take a look.”

  “Sure,” Rebecca said, her voice steadier than she felt.

  She wanted to find out who had done this to her and to Knight, but she also was terrified of thinking about the mugging again and having that trigger something. Her memories felt like a minefield these days. One wrong move and boom, the flashbacks and panic would overtake her.

  Montgomery opened the envelope and pulled out a few black-and-white photos enlarged to the point of graininess. He turned the first one toward Rebecca. The shot was a front view of her on the sidewalk. She was mid-stride, takeout bag still in her hand, a bland look on her face. But a few steps behind and off to the side there was a hunching figure just out of the pool of light thrown by a street lamp. She couldn’t see a face, but the baseball cap was visible. She pointed to him. “That was the other guy, not the one who had the gun. This one ran off when the dog attacked.”

  “Okay, we figured that. We recovered the hat on the scene,” Montgomery said and pulled another picture from the pile and spun it toward her.

  Rebecca sucked in a breath, and her heart picked up speed. The other attacker was behind her now, the one in the hoodie. He had the gun pressed to her temple, and her bag was on the ground. Wine from the broken bottle pooled like blood by their feet. Her eyes were squeezed shut. Even without the fine details, just seeing the fear on her face was enough to make her stomach roil. But she tried to focus on the sliver of face between the edge of the hood and where her body blocked him.

  Young. White. A strand of dark hair hanging out in full view.

  She swallowed past the sudden tightness in her throat. It could be Trevor. If he were still alive. But she knew that wasn’t what was making acid burn the back of her throat.

  The guy—no, boy—with the gun could easily be Steven. Wes’s student. The kid who was excited to make waffle chicken.

  “Do you recognize him?” Flores asked, her gaze probably keen enough to catch Rebecca’s flinch.

  Rebecca knew what would happen if she said yes. She could see the cops rolling up to the after-school program, pulling Steven out of class, singling him out, calling his police officer father. If Steven was the one who’d done this, he needed to be brought in. But on the chance he wasn’t, she would cause him all kinds of trouble he hadn’t earned. Plus, if the kids found out she was the one who’d called, she’d ruin any chance at building trust with any of them while working on the project.

  Steven hadn’t shown any kind of recognition when he’d seen her that day in class. He probably wasn’t the one. Plus, she’d seen the effect false accusations could have on people. After the Long Acre shooting, so many accusations had been flying around—who had been friends with the shooters, who had known something was up, who had angered them. No fingers had been pointed her way because she’d been lying in a hospital bed. She’d gotten an undeserved free pass. But sometimes it didn’t matter if someone had actually done something, anyway. The suspicion alone was enough to ruin lives and relationships.

  She needed to show these photos to Wes first. Make sure she wasn’t seeing things that weren’t there. Wes saw Steven every weekday. He’d be able to pick up subtle differences or similarities she couldn’t. She flattened her hands along her desk. “I’m sorry. I can’t really see much from this shot.”

  “You haven’t remembered anything else from that night?” Montgomery asked with a frown.

  Rebecca shook her head. “I wish I could. I panicked and had tunnel vision. All I could focus on was the dog.”

  He let out a breath. “All right. If anything else comes back to you, Ms. Lindt, please give us a call. We’ve had a string of armed robberies in that area, and I want to catch these guys before someone else gets hurt or worse.”

  Anxiety crawled over her skin like an army of ants. “I understand.”

  Flores reached for the photos.

  “Can I keep these?” Rebecca asked. “Maybe if I keep looking at them, something will click. Plus, I’m seeing the man who intervened this afternoon. I can run these by him for you.”

  Flores perked up. “You think he saw something? That night, he told us that he ran up too late, that the guys were already running off and he’d been focused on you.”

  Focused on her. Her heart gave a little kick. “It can’t hurt to ask him. If anything rings a bell, I’ll tell him to call you.”

  “That’d be great.” Flores slid a business card Rebecca’s way. “Call us if he has any new information or if anything comes back to you.”

  “Will do. Thank you.” Rebecca stood and led the detectives out, shaking their hands and exchanging the necessary pleasantries, but unease had crept into every cell of her body.

  She went back to her desk and stared at the photos, trying to will her brain to see anything she might be missing before she sprung these on Wes. But the minute the guy with the gun started to look more and more like Trevor, she flipped them over and put her head in her hands, her heart racing and her skin breaking out in a sweat.

  No. Enough.

  When she caught her breath again, she picked up her cell phone and did what she should’ve done months ago.

  Taryn answered on the first ring. A clicking keyboard sounded in the background. “Dr. Landry.”

  “Hey, it’s Rebecca.”

  The clicking stopped. “Hey, girl,” Taryn said, a note of concern entering her voice. “What’s up? We missed you at Bitching Brunch yesterday.”

  “I missed y’all too. I had that speech thing.”

  “Ugh,” Taryn said with dread in her voice. “I’m glad the only talks I have to give are academic ones in front of a class or other researchers. I couldn’t do the inspirational thing. How’d it go?”

  “Fine.” Rebecca leaned back in her chair and sighed at her automatic response. “No, that’s not true. It was a disaster. I didn’t do the speech. I had a panic attack or flashback or something onstage. I thought I saw Trevor in the audience.”

  “Oh, honey.” The genuine empathy in Taryn’s voice was like a soft blanket around Rebecca’s frazzled nerves. No judgment. No Let’s call for the straitjacket and a handful of pills. Just understan
ding and an open ear. “That sucks. I’m sorry. Does that happen often?”

  She didn’t know if Taryn was asking solely as a friend or as a psychologist, but it didn’t matter. Rebecca could use her input either way. “It’s a pretty new thing. I think the combination of the documentary and the mugging has stirred up some ghosts. But that’s why I was calling. I’m tired of it happening. You still see that therapist friend of yours?”

  “Every couple of weeks,” she replied.

  “Is she taking new patients?”

  Taryn didn’t hesitate. “I’ll text you her number. Even if she isn’t, tell her you’re a friend of mine and she’ll get you in.”

  “Thanks.” Something tight loosened in Rebecca’s chest. “That would be great. I hate feeling crazy.”

  “No problem. And you’re not crazy. The effects of trauma are like a chronic illness. They can be managed, but there are going to be flare-ups. I’m a psychologist, and I still get blindsided by stuff sometimes. A few weeks ago, I saw some stupid inspirational quote about sisters on a T-shirt when I was shopping. Friends come and go, but sisters are forever. I ended up sobbing in the dressing room like I was at a funeral.”

  Rebecca’s stomach dipped. Taryn had lost her younger sister in the Long Acre shooting. Nia had been on a date with an older boy. Taryn had watched her bleed out. “I’m sorry, Taryn.”

  “It is what it is. We’re all going to get sucker-punched sometimes. But you’re doing the right thing. Seeing someone and talking it out can help.”

  “I hope so.”

  “And hey, since we didn’t get a chance to catch up yesterday, you want to grab dinner tonight? I’m helping a grad student monitor a study until six, but I’m free after that. Or we can do it another day this week.”

  Rebecca smiled, the knot of tension between her shoulder blades easing a bit. Sometimes she forgot how nice it was to have her friends back in her life. Women she could call and who would be there without hesitation. “I can’t tonight, but later in the week sounds great. Tonight, I have a plans with a dog…and a man.”