Author’s Note: If you dress up in costume on the car run, random people will take your picture. You just have to accept that because it’s inevitable.
“Have some coffee or something. How are you feeling?” Mackenna asked, shoving a cup at him. He saw the plate full of goodies, baked things full of chocolate and a lot more, and a part of him wanted to eat them, but the rest of him didn’t.
“They are going to make me go home. I know it.”
She gave his brothers and Carrie a look and then shook her head. “You know I won’t let that happen. You need this, need to unlock the rest of those memories, and while it might be hard while you’re in the middle of it, you will be better off in the end. You can’t go on thinking that you’re a killer. You need that part clear.”
He nodded, taking a sip from the cup she’d given him. “I don’t know, though. If I stay with you, I’ll end up costing you and Mac the run, and he hates me enough already.”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“He does.”
“I think you’d better try that old-fashioned thing and ask him for my hand at this point, but I still don’t think he hates you. I think he might have been frustrated with both of us—I think everyone who assumed we were more than we thought we were was—but now that we accept that we are, too, that should change,” Mackenna said, putting her hand on his arm. “You do want that, don’t you?”
“Um… I don’t think we should discuss that until I’ve got my memories back. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“I don’t believe you’re a killer. We’re standing outside a church. You want to grab their minister and make it official that I’m not walking away?”
Carson stared at her. “Did I even wake up this morning? I don’t think this can be real. No. I mean, if it is, and I’m not still dreaming, I don’t want to rush in there and do anything we might regret. I also don’t… I don’t want you doing it because you think you have to convince me of anything. I want you, and I need you, and I think that’s not going to stop any time soon—”
“Sounds like it’s not rushing anything to me.”
He laughed, dropping his coffee and kissing her. If she kept talking like that, he’d do something else stupid, so kissing her seemed like the best way of keeping her from saying anything else. He didn’t want to give in to anything, not when he didn’t have all his memories. He shouldn’t even be kissing her, but he couldn’t resist her right now.
“You are not leaving me,” she said, leaning her head against his shoulder. “You are not allowed to, not even to go home and clear your head.”
He smiled, wrapping his arm around her waist. Both of them jerked when the camera flashes hit them. The light was a bit off-center, not right in their eyes, but he had to blink anyway, and he didn’t like the idea of their moment being stolen like that.
She grimaced. “I should have remembered that we’re kind of… an attraction. The cars are the main one, but since we’re dressed up, we’re almost as entertaining.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have dressed up, then.”
“I don’t know that we wouldn’t have made a spectacle of ourselves anyway. We’re kind of doing that all by ourselves. Well, maybe a lot of it is my reputation proceeding me, since a lot of people on this run or who follow it know me. Let’s just say that… Chambers hasn’t been the only one to make that assumption about me, so I might just have surprised everyone by being with you. I can promise that you are the first guy I ever dragged onto the run, which was part of why everyone believed we were in love from the minute we got here.”
He sighed. “You know… they may have been right about that.”
“Is that your way of saying you’re in love with me?”
“Um…”
She laughed, putting a hand on his cheek and drawing him in for another kiss, and once again the action was a lot better than words.