He studied me for a moment, like he was trying to determine if I was telling the truth. “Okay.”
I locked eyes with him. “Okay? You’ll give me the money?”
“No, I’m not giving you money to flee to California. You can stay with me.”
I stared at him. He had light brown hair. Not dirty blonde, but close. Age changed people. And he wasn’t really looking at me like just a friend. He was looking at me like he truly cared. Like maybe at one point we were something more than just friends.Tyler.This had to be him. I breathed a sigh of relief. I could trust him. I knew it. I could feel it in my bones.
Sometimes fate had a funny way of working out. It made me get back onto I-95. It made me come to Newark. It made me walk around campus for just the right amount of time, because then I ran into him. Maybe this was my second chance at doing things right. Tyler had clearly been the right choice for me all along. Melissa had even said so. Now I got to fix everything.
“Do you promise you won’t call James?” I asked.
“We can discuss that once you get settled in.”
“I’m not coming with you unless you promise.” I knew I was being juvenile. But I had bit back the pinky swear promise line from coming out of my mouth.
“Fine. I promise I won’t call your husband. If that’s really what you want, Penny. But you have to tell me what’s going on. Are you in some sort of trouble? After everything that happened, I never imagined you’d run off by yourself. Isn’t the man that hurt you still out there?”
I don’t know.My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten since I had picked at my dinner with James. “I’ll tell you everything if you buy me lunch.”
He laughed. “I’ll do you one better. I’ll cook us something.”
He was handsome and could cook? Why had I not chosen him all those years ago? I was clearly messed up in the head. Who knew that losing my memory was the only way to set me straight?
