How could he know that?
I felt sick. Big Harry saw how distressed I was and kicked him out.
But I remembered the name he gave me. He hadn’t told me last time, or I hadn’t heard it, but he got through to me today.
Tucker.
The name of the boy on my flowers.
Part of my lost history.
CHAPTER 22
Tucker
Ava Roberts was going to be the death of me.
I sat on a bench outside the diner, smarting from getting thrown out like a common criminal. I was tempted to march right back in there and demand she listen to me.
First, she posted her damn name on the internet like it wasn’t important to lie low. She had an evil, psycho mother who was capable of doing terrible things. Ava hadn’t even let me tell her what she needed to know.
She looked so different. Her expression was hard, like she’d seen too much. She didn’t wear her hair soft and loose, but in tight coils on her head. Black T-shirt. Black jeans. She clearly didn’t trust anybody. I had no idea what had shaped her experiences this time, but they couldn’t have been good.
A happy couple walked up to the door of the diner and entered without a worry in the world. It wasn’t fair. I wasn’t welcome. I couldn’t even sit at a table and watch Ava work. That would be better than the hell I’d lived since her mother moved her.
I understood that she didn’t remember me, eventhough I told Bill she would. Obviously, her memory had been reset. Obviously, she’d lost the phone I gave her, and maybe even her journals and flowers were gone.
I had to get through to her somehow. At the grocery store, she acted like we were trying to con her. And at the restaurant, she seemed to think I was stalking her.
Well, maybe I was. But not in a bad way.
Another group came out of the diner, and I couldn’t take sitting there any longer. I launched off the bench and headed to the bus stop. I kept my head down, kicking at rocks, hating the world and everything that had gone wrong in it.
We couldn’t exactly have a meeting of the souls if she was so closed off she wouldn’t even accept a warning from someone who—I just had to say it—knew her better than she knew herself.
She could reject me if she wanted. But I wouldn’t let her forget that her mother was out there.
I’d go back to the diner when that big gorilla of a man wasn’t around. Maybe I could catch her before she went in. If I couldn’t get to her, I’d ask someone else to go over there and talk some sense into her.
I didn’t have much else to worry about, anyway.
Shelfmart let me go completely. I didn’t have a job to go back to, even if I did get better. I was here today only because I’d tripled the pain meds again. I couldn’t keep doing that. Gram would notice.
Life was going great. Just friggin’ great.
But I wasn’t quitting on Ava.
She might not remember my face, or my words, or what we did. But if we could spend time together, we’d figure it out all over again. She’d come back to me, even if she was different. With her memory restart, the events thatshaped her weren’t the same, including the ones she shared with me. But we would connect again. I knew it.
I could carry her memories for her, if she’d let me. I’d written up everything that had ever happened to us. The hospital. The dates. The night we almost went all the way together. I had pictures, anecdotes, mementos.
I’d written down everything she knew about her mother, her neighbors, any note she’d mentioned. I arranged it all into a timeline of her life story, ready to give to her.
But right now, I couldn’t get near her.
CHAPTER 23
Ava
