The Things We Couldn't Forget

Chapter 24.

"Are you sure about this?"

Hours tick by and the darkness outside is like a palpable thing even inside under the overhead lights and the glow of the fire before us.

Kelsea's earlier words still hang heavy in the air, dancing into my subconscious over and over.

"Your backyard is about to be full of bodies."

If the new killer is truly doing things by the book written by John Jacobs, then the next dumping site is in fact right here. So close to where we gather.

Every creak of the house, every whistle of the wind outside the windows, it all feels like it's happening right now.

Like as we sit here huddled together, just outside that door someone is lurking...waiting...watching...

"I can't change my story now, Kelsea." Aries replies quietly. "I know enough to know that if I start changing it, they're going to say I'm lying now or before. Either way, it puts my believability in question."

She laughs a little. "Ok." She shakes out her braids to let them fan out behind the couch. "You were in town with a friend leaving from coffee when you decided to become a cat whisperer and walked into the alley."

The delirium of the late hour is getting to us all because Aries and Kelsea laugh a little.

"But I wasn't a very good cat whisperer, so I lost the cat." He nods, removing his ball cap to run his fingers through his long hair. He shakes it out and then replaces the backwards cap. "So I left. I walked to my car and I drove home and I have phone records where I called work to check in on an issue that puts me at the house for the next few hours." He recounts. "My story isn't that important at this point. I've already given it."

"A freaking cat." I snicker, pulling my knees up onto the couch and resting my cheek on them while I smile at Aries.

"I told you I panicked." We share a glance. The sleepiness in his eyes and the low rasp of his voice taking me back to nights falling asleep together in his bed. How he'd start saying the most random incoherent things as he drifted between sleep and wakefulness.

"You should have told them your great grandfather was a mage." I grin, the lost memory warming my core for even the briefest of moments. "That would have convinced them you were innocent."

"What?" Kelsea sits back up to look at us both.

Aries just covers his face with his hands to hide his sleepy smile. "That was one time, Missy." He laughs and I turn my face to Kelsea.

"One night, when we were falling asleep," I bite back the giggle that wants to come out. "He was just talking about being tired and then his body jerked so I was like what's wrong?" Kelsea raises her eyebrows. "And he rolls over and squeezes his pillow and tells me, you know, my great grandfather was a mage."

"I'm still convinced she's making this up." Aries adds from the other side of me. "I don't remember that at all."

"Oh I won't let you forget." I smile into my knees. "I must have laughed about that for weeks."

My eyes drift closed for a few moments, remembering how easy things used to be. How it was just stolen moments and kisses and senseless words said into the darkness.

I had laughed about that for weeks.

But I didn't know then, that that was going to be the last time I ever fell asleep with him. It's funny when your young how every moment feels like forever. How your present seems like that's all there will ever be, just two happy kids in love. You don't picture the future without them in it. You think there will be hundreds of other nights just like the one you're in.