CHAPTER 19

LIAM

"Tell me why we're here again?" Clint asked as he skulked behind me. "There's something very illegal about the whole thing."

"You mean breaking and entering?" I shot back, trying my best to ignore him as I did my best to pry open the front door without it looking like it had been opened. I had never broken into anything before, and it was a lot harder than the movies had made it seem.

"Well, there's that. Plus, the fact that it's your girlfriend’s place. So, we'll add an ethical conundrum onto the list, too. How about that?"

"You're supposed to be keeping a lookout. That's why I brought you. If I wanted my ear talked off, I would have, well, I don't know what I would have done. But it wouldn't have involved asking you along."

"All right, all right," he said. "Just double checking that you want to do this. Someone has to be the calm voice of reason."

"Like I said, I don't want to do this. I have to do this. It's the last thing that threatens to bring my world crashing down, and I have to take care of it before it's too late–ah, there you go!"

I felt a light click coming from the door lock, and a second later, the door slowly inched open. Unlocked and open.

I waved Clint in, who casually strolled through the door and into Kate's apartment. I was right behind him, closing and locking the door behind us.

"Okay,” I said. “You know what to do." He did, and so we began.

The last week with Kate had been going perfectly. Our last fight was the incident with Danny, and since then, we had both fallen into a rhythm that defied explanation.

That day we spent in bed together was probably the best day of my entire life, and by the end, I came out knowing more about her than I had when we were dating. And what was amazing, too, was how much I was willing to tell her.

I was usually very closed off when it came to my personal life and my work, in particular. That was actually one of the things that led to our original break up. It was my inability to tell her how I was feeling that resulted in me ending it so suddenly and abruptly. But that was in the past. I was living in the present, and the present was wonderful.

There was only one, very small problem. Well, there was the obvious larger problem of her remembering everything. But I tried not to think of that. I liked to worry about things that I actually had some control over, and last night, as I lay in bed, one hounding problem suddenly reared its head.

About two weeks ago, when I had first started seeing Kate, she mentioned that she had stumbled upon her old journals and that in them, I was mentioned. I didn't even know that she kept journals, but it only made sense that I featured in them. I was, after all, a very big part of her life once upon a time.

Now, at that point, when she first told me about them, I had bigger things to worry about, and as such, they faded from my memory and were all but forgotten. That was until last night anyway, when she brought them up again. She mentioned that she might like to start writing in a journal again and documenting her thoughts. It would be fascinating for when her memory came back, and she could compare new thoughts with old ones.

I couldn't argue with that point. It would be rather interesting. I also couldn't help but see the glaring problem with her plan. She would most likely go back and read her old journals while writing her new ones. There was every chance that my name in full was written down somewhere, and if she came across that, well the jig was up.

On the one hand, a part of me wanted her to find out. I hated lying to her. I hated it. Every time that my past came up, or even hers, I felt a stab of pain in my stomach, like my gut was literally being torn out. It pained me to put her in that position, and each time it happened, it was on the tip of my tongue to tell her.

But then I would think about what that meant and how she would react. I just needed more time. We had been seeing each other for about two weeks, and I was certain that we were close to where I wanted to be. I just needed one or two more shots of adrenaline to be pumped into our relationship. That way, when she did find out, she would love me too much to just drop me. Sure, it was going to be hard to come back from that, but it would be possible, and that thought, that cold and isolating thought, was all I had to hang on to.

And so that was why I was in Kate's apartment with Clint. It was early morning, and we were on our way to work. I also knew that Kate would be out running and then get her morning coffee at this time, so the apartment would be empty. It was going to be a simple job, find the journals and get out. I only needed five minutes. Five minutes and I could ensure that Kate and I were going to be together forever.

"What do they look like?" Clint asked as he fell to his knees to look under Kate's bed.

"Books, Clint. They look like books." I was rifling through her closet, doing my best to not look through her personals. The journals were the only things I wanted to find.

"Look, if you're going to be sarcastic I'll just—"

"I don't know what they look like," I snapped, closing the closet. "I assume they look like normal journals. Hand-written. That kind of thing. She implied there was more than one, so there will probably be a whole stack."

"And what are you going to do once you find these journals?" Clint asked, wandering over to the kitchen where he started looking through drawers and cupboards. The odds of them being in there were slim, but I did tell him to look everywhere.

"I don't know. Burn them. Throw them in the trash. Just so long as she doesn't see them."

"Can I ask you a serious question?"

"Sure," I said, now looking through her bookshelf. It was stacked full of classical reading, but nothing that fit the description I had mapped out in my head.

"Where do you see this going?"

"What? The journals?"

"No, not them. I mean this relationship?" Clint had all but stopped looking now. Instead, he wandered toward me, looking at me with a serious expression. "If you do find the journals, then great. You've fooled her for another day."

"I'm not trying to fool her."

"I know. Poor choice of words. What I meant was that eventually, you are going to have to tell her that you know her, that you two used to date and that you are now pretending that the whole history you two had never existed. You will, eventually, have to tell her everything. Doesn't that ever worry you? Doesn't that keep you up at night?"

For that, I stopped what I was doing and turned back to face Clint. I wanted him to be looking into my eyes so that there could be no miscommunication. "Every damn night," I said seriously.

"Okay," he said, nodding his head. "Just making sure that you have thought about it."

For the next few moments, the two of us searched the apartment in silence. I knew that he was judging me, but I didn't care. I was doing what I was doing out of love, and that was all that mattered.

The journals were eventually found by Clint. They were in the bottom drawer of her dresser, tucked away behind some knick-knacks. I had already looked in there but must have missed them.

"And the lord said, let there be journals. And there were, and he saw that they were good," Clint joked as he piled them onto the bed. There were five altogether. They were old and worn looking, like they had been opened and used over a hundred times.

I picked one up, flipping through it without reading it. Really, I had no desire to read it. I didn't want to know what she used to think of me, and besides, I was already cheating her so much, there was no way I could add to the mess I had created. But Clint didn't have that same reservation.

"Boy she was not happy with you," he said, flipping through one of the journals. "She was really not happy.”

"Hey!" I said, going to snatch the book from his hand, only for him to jump out of the way.

"Seriously. She is a great writer, though. Some of the language she uses here. Very colorful. Although slightly exaggeratory. I wouldn't say that you had horns growing out of your–woah! Come on I was kidding."

I leapt forward, snatching the book from his grasp with a snarl. "Don't read that."

"What? We can break in and steal them, but reading is where you draw the line?"

I didn't answer. Instead, I fixed him with an icy glare that all but told him my answer. I was aware of the morals, or lack thereof, around my actions. But, as said, I was doing it for a higher purpose, and keeping that in the forefront of my mind was the only thing that kept me going.

"Come on," I began, snapping the book shut. "Let's get out of here before—"

I was cut off by the sudden sound of the door handle to the front door rattling. I froze, eyes wide as I looked from the door to Clint. He wore a look of fear on his face that I was sure matched my own, and it compounded to even greater depths as the door handle gave another rattle.

"Shit!" Clint hissed at me. "What do we do?"

My eyes darted around the apartment, looking for a way out. The only one that might have worked was the fire escape. It was old and rickety, but it was also our only bet.

Without saying a word, I rushed toward the escape, indicating for Clint to grab the books and follow. As I reached the window, I pried it open, only too aware of the sound of the lock in the key coming from the front door. I didn't look back, praying that I made it in time as I slipped through the window and onto the old fire escape.

Clint was right behind me. We didn’t even bother closing the window, instead, we all but leaped down the escape to the opposing platform just as the front door to Kate's apartment opened.

The moment I landed, I froze, grabbing Clint and holding him steady so as not to make any noise. I could hear movement coming from inside the apartment above our heads, but it sounded calm and normal. No indication that something was amiss. Letting out a deep sigh, I grabbed the journals from Clint's hand, shoved them into my coat and proceeded to climb down the escape.

I was so shaken and so relieved at our success and escape that I didn't even bother to count the journals that Clint had given me. As such, I had no way of knowing that he had handed me four books, as opposed to the five that existed.