Page 24 of Help Me Remember

“Yes.”

“And then there was you, one man against three, and you did it without breaking a sweat…and while you’re still recovering from dropping a few stories and getting shot.”

I looked down at my hands, flexing them carefully. “I didn’t—”

“Want to hurt anyone?” Eric asked.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, I wasn’t worried about that. I wasn’t really worried about anything. I just saw what was happening and…did.”

“Did?”

“Acted, reacted, whatever. It was like my body did it on its own, but that doesn’t make sense because everything in your body comes from your brain.”

“You know, you don’t have to be literal,” Eric said, and I didn’t have to look up to know he was probably rolling his eyes. “Your body clearly remembered what it was doing even if your conscious mind had no idea…and you had no idea, right?”

I shook my head. “No idea. I mean, I obviously knew enough to have a bulletproof vest on, but I didn’t have any weapons on me. I didn’t know I could…do that.”

“Which, for the record, makes it all the more impressive and a little dumb that you just wandered into the middle of it,” Eric said dryly. “For all the shit you gave me about making stupid choices, you made a pretty dumb one.”

“It wasn’t fair,” I repeated, flexing my fingers again.

“And you’re not going to hear me argue with you on that,” he said softly.

I looked up. “You tried to stop me from interfering. Would you…have let it happen?”

Eric’s mouth twisted, and he sighed. “I don’t know, Dylan. If I’d seen it was Ryan before interfering, probably, because I would’ve tried to talk him out of it. If it was just three random guys with weapons, maybe not. I haven’t been in a fight with someone in years, and I was never really one for fights anyway.”

“I apparently am,” I said, thinking of how easily the whole thing had come to me. There was no way I could have pulled off what I did with such ease unless I’d put myself through training so thoroughly that the knowledge lingered even after I could remember nothing else about myself. “What kind of person needs to have that kind of knowledge? I don’t even know what kind of fighting style that was.”

“The kind that seriously kicks a lot of ass,” Eric said with a chuckle.

I looked up, unable to help my smile. “Kicks ass, huh?”

“Well, I don’t know what you’d call what you did, but I would definitely call that kicking a lot of ass,” Eric said with a snort. “I’m not exactly what you’d call a fan of violence, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know an ass-kicking when I see one.”

“I’m getting mixed signals on whether or not that’s approval from you.”

“Look, I don’t like violence, and I don’t want to do violence. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that it’s going to happen and that sometimes you gotta do the violence yourself. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if you’d approached things differently—”

“Eric,” I sighed in exasperation. “What was I supposed to do? Politely ask them to stop harassing an old man?”

“But,” he said, narrowing his eyes, “I’m also not going to stand here and tell you you were wrong for jumping to his defense. And I’m not going to say you were wrong for fighting back. They had weapons, and they were going to use them.”

“And you stopped me,” I said, careful to keep any judgment from my voice.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t want you to have blood on your hands,” he said with a shake of his head. “They weren’t worth that. And you don’t…it didn’t need to happen.”

A shadow crossed his handsome features, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was. Despite all the ass-kicking I had done in the alley, there was no denying the fact that I had instinctively gone for the kill on Ryan. The other two might have simply been incapacitated, but I had been willing to use the knife on Ryan without a second thought.

Perhaps Ryan was redeemable like Eric thought and wouldn’t have used the knife for anything more than to hurt me, or maybe he was more than willing to use it to lethal effect. The fact of the matter was I’d been willing not to give him the chance to prove either of us right. If Eric hadn’t interfered, Ryan would be lying on the ground of that dirty alley, a blade stuck in his neck, sightless eyes staring up at the dark, cloudy sky.

So maybe I didn’t have blood on my hands tonight, but I suspected there was a good chance that there was already plenty there.

“Do you…regret not killing him?” Eric asked softly.

I ran a finger over one of my injured knuckles and shrugged. “It…it’s not like I wanted to kill him or was out for his blood. You were right. It was over, and I didn’t need to keep it going. I still think leaving him alone was a bad idea, but that doesn’t mean I was desperate to kill them either.”

Eric sighed. “Maybe I should have let you call the cops. But…you don’t remember what it was like to live here. And honestly, you didn’t see much of it back then. I preferred going to your house rather than letting you come to my side of town.”