What Endures (14 page)

“So you and Tyler are hooking up?” he fired back, although she caught the look of keen interest in his eyes.

“Not that it’s any of your business but Tyler and I are just friends.” She shot him a withering glare. “If you stopped trying to grope every girl that you meet, you might realize that a guy and girl can be friends. Just friends.”

“I don’t grope every girl I meet.” He smirked. “I’m not groping you.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m honored.”

He chuckled and then sat down on the bench by her feet. “So why are you studying here and not in a library?”

“I like studying out here.”

“Why?”

“I thought you were gonna do drills.”

“Can’t wait to see me in action, huh?” He winked.

“Tyler was right, you really are an arrogant ass.”

“Ouch. That kind of stung.” She sighed, which only made him smirk and she hated the fact that she kind of liked his smirk. He tapped her foot. “So. . .why here?”

“It reminds me of my father.” She didn’t know why she bothered answering, much less so truthfully.

“Where is your dad?”

“He died.” She inhaled, always feeling a twinge of pain when she thought of her parents. “Sailing accident.”

“Shit,” he mumbled. His eyes met her and then his large, warm, and surprisingly soft hand was on her knee, squeezing it gently. “I’m sorry.” She nodded, unable to form words as her brain seemed to have rewired itself to solely focus on Jason’s hand on her bare knee. “That must suck.”

“It does.”

He nodded, staring out at the field. “I wonder if it’d be easier if my dad wasn’t around sometimes but I guess I’m lucky huh?”

Megan felt her heart well in sympathy. She had been privy to Bruce Kincaid’s sports obsession via Tyler and she knew Tyler didn’t have it as rough as Jason because at least Marie had been there to run interference. Unfortunately, she couldn’t run interference for her stepson and Jason’s mom had taken off shortly after she and Bruce had divorced. Maybe life for Jason wasn’t exactly a bed of roses, despite how it looked to outsiders.

Jason gave her knee a final squeeze before standing. “Since you like it out here, I guess I’ll be seeing you around. I prefer doing drills here instead of at school.”

“Why?” Their school’s baseball field was definitely in better shape than this one.

“My dad doesn’t like coming here.” He walked toward his gym bag but stopped and offered her a smile that made her heart stop. “The view’s better here too.”

She sighed. No matter what she did, the memories kept at her. Sometimes she didn’t mind. They could be oddly comforting, but other times, they were nothing more than cruel reminders of what she had lost. She drew in a deep breath before retrieving her cell phone. She saw that she had several missed calls and voicemails from Tyler.

“Nice view, huh?”

Megan yelped at the voice behind her and felt herself tumbling off the bench. Luckily she had been sitting on the lowest one so it wasn’t that far a fall. She jerked around to find Jason smiling at her sheepishly.

CHAPTER TEN

“Are you O.K.?” Jason asked as he leaned down, reaching for her arm. She ignored his outstretched hand and scrambled away from him. “Megan?”

Apparently her brain had stopped functioning properly because all she was getting were random questions bouncing frantically around her mind and she couldn’t quite focus on any of them. She managed to choke out something odd sounding as she staggered to her feet.

He had retrieved her cell phone and was holding it out to her. She ignored it and focused instead on him. Part of her was wondering if she had finally lost it and was now just hallucinating. But she knew that she hadn’t. He was real. And he was here.

“You. . .wh. . .”

He stared at her, half-amused and half-concerned, as she struggled to regain her control over the English language. But those damn questions were still zooming around her brain. She finally managed to grab a hold of one. “H-How?”

“How?” he repeated confused.

“How did you get here?” she demanded impatiently. Of course the question could have been better phrased, but at the moment she was just thankful she had managed to get a question out.

“Here?” he pointed at some spot near his feet. “Walked.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Oh, you mean Harbor Bay?” he asked with the most infuriatingly innocent smile. “Flew.”

“You flew,” she repeated dumbly. Again the questions bombarded her brain and again, she seized on any that she could. “I. . what. . .who. . .”

“Which question do you want me to answer first?” He smiled sweetly when she glared at him. “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘what’ so I’ll pass on that. As for who, I came out with Tyler.”

“Tyler?” 
That little traitorous rat.

He nodded. “Tall, blond, blue eyes. Can be annoying at times?”

“I know who Tyler is!” she retorted. She looked at him questioningly. “Tyler brought you here?”

“He came with me,” he corrected.

“What are you doing here?”

“Haven’t we had this conversation before?” he asked, smiling.

“We probably did,” she retorted. “Because you keep. . . .you’re. . .”

He cocked an eyebrow questioningly. “I keep what?”

“Surprising me!” she blew out. “And sneaking up on me!”

“I’ve only snuck up on you once that I can recall, if you count this as sneaking up.”

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, where things apparently still functioned rationally, she was well-aware of the absurdness of her conversation with Jason and them debating the finer points of what actually was sneaking up on someone. She inhaled, held the breath for a few beats, and then slowly expelled it. She willed herself to calm down and think, but questions were still whizzing through her head and her heart continued slamming against her chest loudly.

“What are you doing here?” she repeated.

He shrugged slightly and moved toward the bleachers to sit down. “I’m visiting.”

“Who?”

He looked at her amused. “Why do I have to have a specific person to visit? Can’t I just want to visit my childhood home?”

“That’s all you’re doing?” she asked, not bothering to mask the tone of suspicion in her voice.

“Sure,” he said, and flashed her that innocent smile.

“You being here has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I told you I was coming here?”

He smirked. That endearingly maddening smirk of his. In the back of her mind, she realized that she hadn’t seen him smirk since his accident and she felt strangely happy to see yet another ‘old’ characteristic of his returning. But she was too thrown off-balance, too annoyed and too on edge at the moment to truly appreciate it. 

“Wow,” he said with a slight shake of his head. “I didn’t realize you had such an ego on you.”

“I. . .w-what!” she sputtered.

He grinned, obviously liking the effect he was having on her. “You’d think I’d follow you all the way across the country?  Especially after you had shut me down in no uncertain terms?” That smirk of his reappeared. “That I’d come chasing after you? Follow you anywhere and everywhere you went?”

When he put it like that, it did sound oddly egotistical of her. “It’s. . .”

He stared at her for long moments, and then he smiled, the kind of smile that always had the effect of causing her heart to jump and her gut to start twisting and turning itself into knots. “You could be right.”

She stared at him, pretty sure her mouth was agape. “W-what?”

“If I said I came after you, what would you say?”

“Uh. . .”

“That’s what I thought.” He cocked his head in an exaggerated gesture of contemplation. “Did you know I’m not from Seattle? Only lived there for two years?” He smiled. “Of course you do. What am I thinking? I’m the one who doesn’t remember.”

He looked around. “Turns out I’m from here. Good old Harbor Bay.” He looked back at her. “You know what occurred to me recently?” She shook her head warily. “That if I want to remember, to make sense of those ‘flashes’ I keep getting, then maybe the best place to do so would be where I got most of those memories.”

“Harbor Bay?”

He nodded. “You gave me the idea actually.”

“I gave you the idea to come here?”

His eyes crinkled in amusement at the incredulous tone of her voice. “Yep. When you were talking about heading back here to see people and places. . .about going home, I realized that I needed to go home too. And Seattle, nice as it is, isn’t home.”

“Harbor Bay isn’t exactly your home,” she protested almost automatically. All that was going through her brain right then was that she needed him away. Back to Seattle. Him being here is a bad idea, her head told her.

“Really?” he asked. “Huh. That’s odd.”

“What?”

“We were engaged right?”

“Yes.”

“So how come
you
still consider this home? I thought engaged couples lived in the same places and considered the same places home.”

She sighed. Damn it. She was completely unprepared to deal with Jason right now. “You never said anything about visiting before.”

He shrugged. “Never felt like it before.”

“Before what?”

“Before now,” he replied with a grin. “Speaking of which, you held out on me, Megan.”

“I held out on you?”

He nodded. “You never told me I owned a house here. Actually it’s probably
we
own right? A very cool, kick-ass house with a view of the Chesapeake Bay.”  She opened her mouth to respond but he held up a hand to stop her. “I know, I know. I never asked.” He grinned. “I’m starting to get our compromise now. If I don’t ask, you don’t tell right?”

“Jason-”

“Speaking of,” he continued. “Is that compromise still in effect?”

“It. . .” The way he was bouncing from topic to topic was throwing her completely. And she was already feeling off-balance.

 “Well before you can decide on how to get out of it,” he said casually. “Let me ask you something. Were we friends?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean before we, uh, hooked up, were we friends? Or did we take one look at each other across a crowded school hallway and just fall madly in love with each other?”

She couldn’t help smiling. “No.”

“No?” He looked surprised by her answer. “No, we weren’t friends?”

“No, we didn’t look across a crowded hallway and fall madly in love.”

His eyes flickered mischievously. “Are you sure? I think I’d be the type of guy girls fall madly in love with at first sight.”  He gave her a once over that made her suddenly feel very, very warm. “And you’re certainly the type of girl a guy could fall for with just one look.”

“You’d think so,” she murmured, feeling the heat creep up her cheeks. She was dimly aware that Jason was charming her right now. Quite effectively.
Too
effectively. The accident had not robbed him of his charm.

He grinned. “So we were friends first?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m assuming we stayed friends after the uh, divorce?”

She sighed. “After some time passed, yes.”

“And we were friends before we got engaged right?”

“Jason, what-“

“I’m just trying to. . .” His voice trailed off as he stared out at the field. Moments passed as neither said anything. She looked down at the ground, not sure of what to say. She didn’t know how to handle his sudden appearance in Harbor Bay.

 “You were right,” he said suddenly, breaking the silence. She looked over at him and all traces of teasing and humor were gone. He was dead serious now.

“I was?”

He nodded. “This situation is nobody’s fault.” He looked at her fixedly. “So, how come it feels like we’re both being punished for it?”

“Jason. . .”

He sighed. “Look, I get that this is hard for you, Megan. I mean I can’t even imagine what it’s like for you to look at me and see. . .” He shook his head. “I don’t even know what you see when you look at me now.” He sighed. “But it’s hard for me too and-”

“I know,” she cut in gently. “That’s why I think it’s better if we just, you know, spent time apart right now,”

“No,” he countered firmly. “No. I don’t think we should. It’s just making a bad situation even more miserable. What’s the point in that?” He stood up and took a few steps toward her, closing some distance between them. She knew she should back up a little, but she couldn’t. It was like she was rooted to the spot. “I’m sick of it. Sick of being frustrated. Sick of this dark, depressing feeling that comes over me at times. Sick of wondering and waiting. I’m sick of waiting Megan.”

“Waiting?”

He nodded. “For my memories to come back.” He drew in a deep breath. “So I’m gonna do something about it. I’m gonna get those memories back.”

Part of her felt heartened to know that he was going to actively seek out his memories. And yet, another part of her felt as if that were just going to lead to more heartache. “Jason, what if you can’t remember?”

“Then I won’t be any worse off than I am now,” he said softly. “I’ve lost 15 years. I’m not about to lose another second. So starting right now, I’m on a quest. I’m gonna get my life back.” Again he looked at her in that way that seemed to render her speechless. “And since my life was evidently with you before the accident happened, that’s where I’m going to start.”

A feeling of panic rose in her. “Jason.”

He held up his hand. “Don’t worry. I’m not saying we should pick up where we left off. I know it’s not that simple and that you want us to move forward. But moving forward doesn’t mean I have to leave the past behind.”

“You can’t. . .”

He looked at her, his expression gently understanding. “Like I said, I get that this is hard for you Megan and you know, the last thing I’d want to do is hurt you on purpose right?” He paused, waiting for her answer but she couldn’t articulate any. “And I get that I’m being incredibly selfish by doing this because it might make things harder for you but. . .” He sighed. “I can’t lose any more time.” He smiled. “I’ll understand if you want to take off again but, it seems like our lives are uh,. . .tangled together wouldn’t you say?”