A. Taylor - Forget Me Not - A gripping, heart-wrenching thriller full of emotion and twists!

“When did you last see him?” Ange asked.

“A couple of years ago at Christmas I think. At the bar. You were there.”

Ange nodded. “Right, yeah. You really haven’t seen him since?”

“No. Have you?” I asked, unable to keep the trace of suspicion that licked through me then out of my voice.

Ange swallowed a mouthful of coffee and nodded. “Yeah, I was in Chicago for a couple of days last year, remember? I went for a drink with him and Hale.”

I raised my eyebrows, looking between Ange and Louden. “Why?”

Ange shrugged. “Why not?”

I stayed staring at Louden for longer than I meant to, trying to arrange my thoughts in a way that made sense, jigsaw pieces scrambling to find their mate and failing. I knew what I wanted to say: because he might have killed our best friend , and it was almost there, rising higher and higher in my chest until I pushed it down, away, saving it for myself. I wasn’t allowed to say such things anymore.

It had been okay for a while, at least, the wild accusations and rampant theories. Louden’s arrest had come just days after Nora went missing, one of the main suspects, but he’d provided an alibi and been released without charge. It hadn’t stopped my own suspicions of course, and neither had it stalled the small-town gossip, but all these years later there was something childish about those words, an intense naiveté that I wasn’t allowed to indulge in anymore. They were words from another life, another lifetime, the one right after she went missing. Nevertheless, cold sweat pricked at my skin all of a sudden, the airless room stuffy with bodies, my own body still cold from the world outside as Louden turned towards me, feeling my stare, liquid brown eyes catching light. He lifted his chin in my direction and I let out a heavy breath before turning back to Ange.

“What did he have to say for himself?” I asked, my attempt at small talk still managing to sound like an accusation.

“The usual. He’d just started seeing someone, but I don’t know if it stuck.”

“Lucky her.”

“Mads,” Ange said, warning lacing her voice.

“What? All I’m saying is he’s a bad boyfriend, that’s all.”

“That was over ten years ago. People change.”

It was something I wanted to believe, desperately, that people change. And maybe I did believe it, just with certain caveats; that change was glacial, imperceptible, and when it did come it didn’t necessarily mean anyone had changed for the better. It seemed to me as though it was the world that kept changing, often with a loud, deafening crack as life tore itself apart, and we were all left struggling to keep up. Not all of us managed to. I was testament to that; I was still struggling to keep up with the thundercrack that had torn through our lives ten years earlier and led us all there, to that room on a snowy day.

As I stood there, just waiting for the day to end, waiting for that heavy, empty feeling to lessen just slightly, even though I knew it wouldn’t, that it probably never would, I couldn’t possibly have known that another crack was coming, waiting to tear us all apart yet again. That less than twenty-four hours later, Noelle would be dead, and I would be left once again, breathless, desperate, trying to make sense of a world that seemed determined to leave me behind, too broken and battered to even try and catch up.

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