Chapter Text
Ellie had taken the Mustang.
It was arguably one of the worst choices in the entire garage; even when she had the full breadth of her memories, she didn’t like driving it, but it was the only car Jamie had left the keys in and therefore the easiest for her to steal – even if the sound of the engine should have woken all of them up when she snuck out.
“I am going to kill you tonight,” Colt promised as he pulled on his jacket and climbed onto his bike, “As soon as I get home. Don’t make any other plans.”
“Okay,” Jamie agreed nervously, like he believed in the possibility wholeheartedly, “See you later.”
He peeled out of the garage and took off down the street at a speed that pushed the limits of physics. His mind raced as he tried to compile a list of places Ellie might actually want to go, though in his heart he knew there was only one location he was likely to find her at.
Fortunately enough, he didn’t have to ride all the way out to the suburbs. He found the Mustang parked, pulled over onto a side street, just a few blocks from the garage. A knot of tension in his chest unwound at the familiar sight of the girl behind the steering wheel.
Colt dragged the bike to a stop and pulled off his helmet, leaning over to rap his knuckles against the driver’s side window.
Ellie jolted at the sound, and when her head turned towards him he saw that she was crying, fat tears trailing down her bare face. She opened the door, staring sadly up at him. “I’m sorry. I think I broke the car.”
He exhaled. The frantic pounding of his heart that had kicked up anxiously when he found the bed empty was finally starting to relax. “Jesus, I don’t care about the car. You almost gave me a heart attack, El. You’ve got a fucking head injury, you can’t just be out wandering around.”
She nodded, unbuckling her seat belt and swinging her legs out to the side of the open door. “I just… you said all that stuff about what a great driver I am, so I thought… maybe my body remembers how to drive, even if I don’t. But – then the car made this awful noise, and I…”
Colt shook his head, fighting back a smile. Christ, he was so ridiculously in love with this girl – sometimes it made him sick. “It’s a manual transmission. You have to change gears.”
Ellie blinked, then laughed wetly, wiping at her nose. “Fuck!” she said emphatically, through a giggle that only made his smile widen. “Now I feel like an idiot.”
“Don’t,” he said, “The other you doesn’t like driving this one, either. But you could’ve called me if you wanted to go somewhere, yeah?”
Her silence let him know his sinking hunch about where she had been headed was right. After a moment, Ellie admitted, “I want to see my dad.”
Colt sighed. “I know.” He’d been so hoping to avoid this. “Okay. Let me call Raven to come get the car, and I’ll take us on the bike.”
Ellie looked up in shock. “What?” She leaned around him to stare at his motorcycle with wide eyes. “That thing?”
He lifted his gaze from where he was typing out a text message to smirk at her. “Don’t act so surprised. You love that thing.”
“I just… I thought you said we couldn’t see my dad,” she said hesitantly, “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
“Yeah, well… we’ll worry about that when we get there, I guess.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever been in the company of Ellie’s father without him threatening to call the police before, so it wouldn’t exactly be some new challenge. “If you want to go, we’ll go.”
Ellie chewed on her bottom lip, staring up at him silently. “You said you’ve met?”
“A few times,” Colt confirmed. “I’ll be honest, it didn’t go well. I don’t like the way he makes you feel.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, the expression on her face genuinely confused. He wondered what his Ellie would think about her naiveté, knowing what she knew now.
If only she were here to be the one to break it to her.
“Look, you’re brilliant, okay? And I’ve always trusted you to make your own decisions. He doesn’t. And from what I’ve seen, he makes you feel… guilty, for wanting the things you do. And I don’t think you should have to feel that way. I think you should get to have everything you want.” What was this all for, if not Ellie’s eternal happiness, anyway? None of it mattered if she was miserable.
The look on her face seemed to convey that she was cautiously… pleased. Then she asked the question he’d been dreading answering. “So… what happened?”
Well – there was nothing he could do about it now. He owed her an honest answer.
“Things were okay for a while, when you first came back from college. You stayed in touch; you had dinner over there a bunch. I came once. It was pretty tense, but… it was important to you.” He looked away, staring off down the alleyway behind the car as he continued. The memory felt like one from a different lifetime. “After you’d been home a few months you had a big job planned. It was basically your baby. But one of the guys we were lifting the cars from was an undercover cop, and you and Raven got caught. Raven got arrested… but your dad pulled some strings and brought you home.”
“What?” Ellie asked, jaw practically on the floor. “You’re serious?”
He nodded. “You were so fucking pissed. He locked you up in your room. You trashed the place. The two of you were in the middle of a screaming match when I came to pick you up. Your dad said This isn’t how I raised you, Ellie. You’re not like them.”
“And what did I say?”
Colt paused. His fingers drummed restlessly on the open car door. “You’re sure you wanna know?” That was the beauty of amnesia, he supposed. No ugly memories to dwell on. Nothing to regret.
But Ellie said, “Yeah,” and so he continued.
“You said, I’m more like them than I’ll ever be like you. And… that was it. We left. They couldn’t make the charges against Raven stick, so she got out the next morning. You stopped calling, and he did, too.” Ellie wasn’t looking at him, the expression on her face conflicted. “I know it’s a lot to take in.”
“I just never thought adult life would be so… complicated.” She tilted her chin up, then, and their eyes locked. “You’d really go back there with me?”
Colt turned away, scrubbing his hand down his face. “Ellie, I would do anything for you,” he said lowly, emotions rubbed raw by the chaos of the last eighteen hours. “You mean the fucking world to me.”
Ellie fell silent again. She tilted her head to the side as she seemed to consider what he’d said. Then she asked, “Is there somewhere else we can go? Somewhere we’ve been before. Together.”
He knew exactly the place.
Raven arrived to bring the car back to the garage just as he helped get Ellie buckled into her helmet. She was unsteady when she climbed on the bike, but held on just like the regular Ellie always did, resting her cheek against his left shoulder as if on instinct – or maybe she saw the crease in his jacket that had formed after so many years of doing it and drew her own conclusion.
Either way, everything felt normal as he drove them down the coast to Malibu, and eventually they arrived at the deserted cliff overlooking the ocean where they’d had their first kiss, nothing but the sound of the birds and his own heartbeat to interrupt his thoughts.
“This view is beautiful,” Ellie said, voice awed as she slipped off the bike and came to stand beside him. She seemed as impressed as she had been when he’d brought her there for the first time.
So she didn’t remember ever coming before.
“I brought you here when we first met.” Eight years ago. Had it really been such a long time? Some days it felt like he’d known Ellie his entire life, and others like the time they’d been together was just a blip on the radar – like no amount of time could ever be enough. “We stripped down to our underwear and jumped in the ocean.”
Evidently, that wasn’t what she’d been expecting him to say. Ellie threw her head back with a loud, surprised laugh that made his stomach twist for how familiar it sounded. “Really?”
“Yup.” He pulled off his jacket, tossing it carelessly back onto the bike. “Wanna do it again?”
The mischievous grin on her face was one he was intimately familiar with. Just the sight of it made him feel at ease, more peaceful than being alone on the cliffside ever had. “Seriously?” Ellie asked, “You were the one who just said I have a head injury.”
“Maybe the jump will knock something back into place,” he shrugged, kicking off his shoes. Colt paused, then looked back at her over his shoulder. “Unless you’re scared.”
“Okay, you’re on,” she said immediately, pulling off the clothes that he only now realized were things she’d worn before, shorts and a t-shirt she’d taken from the closet with sneakers she’d just bought herself only a few weeks earlier.
He hastily tugged off his shirt, flexing a little when he caught Ellie looking at his bare chest. Her face was flushed when she stepped closer towards him, reaching out to press her thumb flat against the letter E that was tattooed on his bicep. “Is this for me?”
“Actually – I only date girls whose names start with the letter E,” Colt answered flatly, dropping his shirt to the ground. “So there was Erica, and Emma, and then I just kind of lucked out when I met you…”
His grin grew when she whipped her shirt at him, smacking him in the stomach. “Ow, okay! Yes, it’s for you. Hurt like a bitch, and it made you cry. So it’s my only one.”
“Oh, stop,” Ellie said, still staring fixedly at his arm, “I bet I love it.”
Colt’s eyes softened as he stared back at her. “You do,” he said, then cleared his throat and corrected himself, “Did.”
Ellie looked up at him and smiled. “Do.”
His face felt warm. He nodded as he turned to look out over the ocean. “Okay. You do.”
“So, how do we do this?” she asked, “Is it, like, a running start? Count of three?”
“Both, if you want.” He turned towards her and held out his hand.
Ellie immediately slipped her fingers into his and squeezed. “Okay. Here goes nothing.”
Her grin was the last thing he saw before they both leapt over the cliff together, jumping into the water as they had so many times before. The ocean was cold when they hit the waves with a splash, and Colt reached out for her as soon as he resurfaced and saw she was bobbing just in front of him, too, her teeth chattering.
“We were here,” she said, apropos of nothing, when he grabbed onto her shoulder, “And we were talking about Logan.”
Colt blinked. A tiny spark of hope flared to life despite his best efforts to tamp it down. “What? You remember that?”
Ellie nodded rapidly, beaming at him as her head bobbed back and forth. “Yes!” she exclaimed, laughing delightedly, “We came here, and we jumped, and you looked at me like – like…”
Her voice trailed off as they stared at each other. He was pretty sure he was looking at her in the exact same way she recalled he had, intense and wanting and desperate –
…and then Ellie kissed him like she did back then, hungrily, without tenacity, with all the wanting in the world, and out of all the impossible lows the last day had brought he finally felt a high that he’d been starting to worry would never come around again.
Ellie pulled back with a gasp, still holding onto him so tightly she only moved away an inch. “Yeah, that’s… I definitely remember that.”
Colt smiled at her, brushing her wet hair off her forehead. “What else?”
“The club,” she breathed, ducking back in for another quick, insistent kiss. “We kissed at the club. After you danced with me. You were so…”
Ellie threaded her fingers through his hair and kissed him again, more insistently this time, crushing their bodies together in the water. Colt could hear his heart pounding rapidly in his ears, the soft lull of the waves against them fading away into the background when their lips met over and over again.
He pressed their foreheads together when they broke apart to catch their breath, his eyes locked on the beautiful planes of her face.
Before he could say anything, she quietly admitted, “My head hurts.”
He sighed slowly, nodding again. Back to reality. “Okay. Come on.”
They climbed up to the bike quietly, and he lingered around while Ellie dried off and got dressed, waiting to follow her lead on what was next.
He was relieved when she said, “This was really nice. Can we… go back home? I think I want to lie down.”
Home. Yeah, he could take her there. “’Course,” Colt said softly, swallowing a sudden and unwelcome lump of emotion in his throat. When the fuck had he turned into this person? “come here.”
He helped her back into her helmet, though Ellie grabbed his wrist as soon as he’d buckled the strap, stopping him from turning away. “That thing you said earlier?” She asked, eyes bright where they were bouncing around his face, “It’s exactly what I was thinking. Like… I trust me to make my own decisions, too. The other me, I mean. It feels like I’m – seeing this whole life she planned for herself, and… I get why she does all this. She knows what she’s doing.”
Colt stared at her, at a complete loss for words. Ellie looked eager for some sort of reaction, but the truth was that he was too touched to formulate a sentence, very nearly choked up by Ellie’s assurance that all of this was worth it, in her eyes. That she’d chosen correctly – something he still wondered if she ever thought about or second-guessed, even after all this time.
He nodded only once, tightly, but Ellie seemed to understand him perfectly anyway, knocking her helmet into his before he flipped the face shield down and led her back onto the bike.
And if he took the roads back to the garage a little slower than normal in an effort to prolong their moment of peace…
…that was no one’s business but their own.
But the ride was only so long, and Ellie went upstairs to shower and take a nap as soon as they got back, and then he was alone again.
Or as alone as he could be, in a garage that was usually occupied by the three most annoying people in the county.
“Any progress?” Delaney asked, pulling a beer from the fridge in the break room and tossing him one, too, just as soon as he emerged from helping Ellie inside. “Also, if you could reassure Jamie you’re not actually going to kill him, that would be helpful.”
“Or don’t,” Raven suggested, sounding bored. She was draped across the sofa and didn’t look up from where she was filing her nails. “We actually had some peace and quiet for once today.”
“He lives, for now,” Colt said, bumping the cap off his bottle on the edge of the counter and taking a long sip before finally circling back around to Delaney’s initial question. “She remembered something. I think – god, I felt so fucking relieved.”
Delaney pumped her fist in the air, bouncing up and down on her toes. “Yes! I knew she would.” She shot Colt a sunny smile, then whirled around and kicked the sofa Raven was laying on. “Pay up, bitch!”
Colt rolled his eyes at the both of them. “Don’t tell me you two actually bet on Ellie’s memories.”
Delaney sniffed as Raven tossed a crumpled one-hundred dollar bill at her. “Ellie would have wanted us to,” she said.
He shrugged, taking another pull from the bottle in his hand. It was hard to argue with that point; she was absolutely right. There was silence for a moment, and then he said the one thing that had been on his mind consistently since this whole nightmare had started: “I’m going to ask Ellie to marry me.”
Raven’s nail file fell to the floor just as Delaney theatrically spit out her entire mouthful of beer, soaking it. “What?! No fucking way!”
Colt could feel his ears burning and hid the smile that was threatening behind his drink. “Yeah.”
“Dude!” Delaney exclaimed, jumping up to brace her hands on his shoulders and use him as leverage to bounce up and down, “Why is today the worst and best day ever at the same time?!”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Raven said drily, though even she was smiling, “Ellie still has head trauma. But I guess you’d have to, to want to marry Colt.”
“Oh, stop it,” Delaney chided, pulling away to launch herself onto the couch on top of Raven’s legs, “They’re a perfect fit.”
Another point he couldn’t argue with. Before Ellie, he’d hardly believed in the mechanics of a perfect anything. But it was impossible to ignore all the ways they so seamlessly worked together, or how naturally she’d made falling in love feel, so that he’d never even realized he was completely codependent until now.
“Well, this was a good talk,” Raven said sarcastically from where she was trying to shove Delaney onto the floor.
“Let’s never do it again,” Colt agreed, turning around to head upstairs. “Tell Jamie he can come back whenever he wants.”
He found that he was suddenly exhausted, as he bypassed their bedroom to make his way to the couch in the living room, but unable to stop thinking about Ellie, replaying moments of their day together over and over in his mind.
The last twenty-four hours had been a confusing and upsetting whirlwind, and he was still finding it challenging to untangle the emotions that hardly made sense to him without his girlfriend around to talk him to death. Of course he knew he loved Ellie, but the agonizing series of desperation, panic, relief and soul-crushing joy he’d experienced today alone had been… new.
Intense, to say the least, though that was how every moment of their relationship had been thus far.
He thought about it more as he stretched out on the couch, arms folded behind his head. On a regular day, Ellie would have crept into the living room with the claim that she could hear him overthinking from outside, so it was strange to be alone with only his inner monologue for company, especially when said inner monologue seemed intent on arguing itself in circles, droning on and on about the possibility she might never remember everything and the off chance she would, so that he could propose properly in the grand way Ellie deserved.
He knew he was getting ahead of himself but couldn’t stop – not when the possibility of everything their future held seemed so frustratingly close, just out of his reach.
Eventually it was a relief to fall asleep, if only so he could have a brief reprieve from talking himself out of his mind, though Colt was surprised to find that when he woke, there was another body crammed onto the couch with him, two bony elbows shoved in his back.
He stirred carefully, turning around to see that Ellie had been smushed up behind him, awake and staring with only slightly suspiciously wet eyes. Before he could even open his mouth, she said, “So – quick question. Did I actually forget the majority of my adult life yesterday, or was that, like, a weird and horrible dream?”
Colt laughed despite himself, moving to pull her into his arms so quickly that she tumbled off the couch and onto the carpet, very nearly smacking her head into the coffee table.
“Shit,” he said, pushing himself off of the couch and onto the floor beside her, “Are you alright?”
“I think so,” Ellie answered, rubbing at her still-bandaged forehead with a wince. “Who are you, again?”
“Oh, that’s nowhere near as funny as you think it is,” Colt hummed, sitting up and dragging her with him, into his arms.
“Too soon?” she asked, grinning so widely at him her cheeks were creased, her eyes crinkled at the corners. She leaned in and rubbed their noses together sweetly, even as he pulled a face at her that said he was disgusted.
“I know you think you’re being cute, but you need to tell me explicitly that you’re back to normal.” He felt a lot like he imagined getting out of jail, or recovering from almost drowning would. After the torture of the last day, just the sight of Ellie looking like her old self seemed almost too good to be true.
“It’s all me, baby,” she promised, threading her hands together behind his neck. “And can I just say that I think I love you more now? Who knew that was even possible.”
“Don’t fuck around,” he said again, staring at her seriously, “You’re good?”
“I’m so good. I almost don’t even care that your reckless driving could have killed me.”
Colt groaned, dropping his forehead to her shoulder. “This is why you’re my driver,” he mumbled into the fabric of her t-shirt, gratified by the way she twisted her fingers into his hair and promised, “Forever and ever.”
He drew in a breath, looking back up at her. The sun was setting outside the windows in the living room and the way she was lit made her look like an angel, golden all over with the last rays of daylight kissing her skin. He could almost physically feel his heart stop and start again as he watched her.
“It was that bad, huh?” Ellie asked, reading his mind as effortlessly as ever.
“It was pretty much the worst time of my entire life,” Colt said. “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
“I kind of didn’t have a choice,” she pointed out fairly, “And you were doing a pretty good job of re-winning me over.”
Something he’d have no trouble doing again and again if necessary, even as nerve-wracking as it was. He was suddenly so grateful for the fact that he didn’t have to – that Ellie loved him as fiercely and stupidly as he loved her – that he wanted to scream.
“I love you more than anything else in the world.” The words were said lowly and seriously, plainly enough to make Ellie blink at him in surprise. Admissions of love were said sparingly in their relationship, and long-winded explanations attached to them were even fewer and far between. But he couldn’t make himself shut up. “You mean so much to me, I would die without you. I could never do any of this without you, you’re so – you’re just perfect. Everything about you is exactly what I’ve always wanted. I want you to marry me.”
Ellie pulled back just enough to look him in the eyes. Her lips were parted in soft wonder, her eyebrows arched delicately when she asked, “What?”
“Marry me,” Colt said again, “After I ask you the right way.”
“Jesus Christ,” she laughed, “Oh my god. Okay.”
He tightened his grip on her as much as he dared when she still felt so fragile, beaming at him like she was. “Okay?”
“Yes, idiot. Whenever you ask me… the answer’s yes.”
Ellie took advantage of his inhale to press their lips together in a kiss, and he sighed into her mouth as he dragged her closer, fists balled into the fabric of her shirt while she pulled at his hair urgently.
In her kiss he could feel a perfect mirror of the emotions that had very nearly bested him since yesterday – the frustration and panic and loneliness offset with the elation that came from every small triumph, the gratefulness he felt to have her back at his side where she was meant to be and the ironclad knowledge that he would never take a moment of their time together for granted ever again. Knowing that Ellie felt all of the same things that had been driving him crazy with an intensity that so perfectly complemented his own wildness was more comforting than he could find the words to describe.
They really were an exact fit.
“So,” Ellie said on an exhale when he finally let her up for air, “Tell me we at least made a lot of money off Tristan Knight’s car.”
“There’s five hundred thousand dollars cash in our bathtub,” Colt murmured, refusing to lift his head from where he was nosing at the collar of her shirt, dragging his lips across the warm skin of Ellie’s neck.
“Perfect, ‘cause you have a big purchase to make.” He looked up and saw her waving her left hand around, wiggling her ring finger. “I want ten carats.”
Colt rolled his eyes at her. “Eight,” he countered, dipping his head back down to the soft side of her throat.
“Nine, and nothing lower than VVS. Come on, I’m everything you’ve ever wanted. And don’t think I’ve forgotten about the pool.”
“You’re a spoiled brat,” he muttered, scraping first his teeth and then the stubble on his jaw across her collarbone. “But if that’s what it takes, fine. You’ve got yourself a deal. Don’t push it.”
“Like I wouldn’t marry you naked and broke,” Ellie said, pushing his face away so she could catch his eye and smile at him again – the deliriously happy smile that always made him feel like something bad was surely about to happen to offset it. For once, it was unaccompanied by some foreboding sense of doom.
For once, he leaned in and let himself smile back – goofily, ridiculously, foolishly. “There’s an idea.”
“Yeah, a bad one,” she laughed. “I thought I’m the one who’s supposed to be concussed.”
You’re perfect, Colt thought again, but was able to stop himself from saying out loud, this time, drawing close to kiss Ellie instead.
Thinking too much about his own unbelievable luck made him feel dizzy and dazed – like he was the one who’d hit his head. He wondered if their lives would ever stop feeling like a dream he hoped he wouldn’t wake up from.
Then he realized he didn’t care about much of anything, as long as they were together and Ellie agreed to wear some absurdly large diamond ring.
She was right; that was exactly why he had half a million dollars wrapped up in his bathtub. That was what all of this was for.
And the familiar, easygoing, everyday sunny smile she shot him when he pushed her back down onto the carpet more gently than he wanted to was all the repayment he needed.