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[Present]

Axel found himself sitting beside her, holding her hand. He didn’t know when he had moved back to her side.

“What happened next?” he asked quietly.

Alice shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “For me… I drowned. I was pulled into a dark hole in my mind, and the memories poured over me. All of them, all at once.”

Axel remembered how awful he had felt after only regaining the memory of meeting her. However, Alice had recovered a lifetime at once.

He squeezed her hand. She lifted her eyes to him cautiously.

“I was lost in that hole for a long time,” she continued. “By the time I could move again, the sun was setting. Ashleigh was long gone. I have no idea where he took her.”

Axel sighed and nodded. He didn’t like it, but he understood that she had at least tried to stop Granger.

“Why were you working with him?”

Alice took a deep breath.

“For my freedom,” she sighed. “He promised to free me from the treatments. To give me back my memories. So I guess he kept his end of the bargain.”

Alice looked away from Axel._.

“Even without the promise of freedom… I didn’t have a choice. The last treatment I received… was more intense than the ones before. Holden wanted to ensure I was completely scrubbed of any memory of you.”

“Of me?” Axel asked.

Alice looked back at him and then away quickly as she felt a warmth in her cheeks. She continued as though he hadn’t said anything.

“But when I woke up, it wasn’t Holden that said the passphrase. It was Granger.”

“Passphrase?” Axel asked.

“The guidelines for my memories to be routed, Holden has set up many of them. Some make me compliant; others make me violent. One or two shut me down, just in case I get any funny ideas.”

Alice stared at her feet under the blanket. She didn’t want to see what look might be on Axel’s face.

“It’s hard to imagine anyone controlling you,” Axel said softly, touching her cheek.

Alice looked back at him; she swallowed. Her eyes lingered on his face.

“You aren’t hiding it anymore,” she said, touching the bottom of the scar.

“Do you remember everything now?” Axel asked.

Alice looked into his eyes. She saw the hope in them. She looked away.

“No,” she whispered. “As I said, the memories flooded my mind. I should be dead or a vegetable now. I managed to swim to the surface, but everything is pretty jumbled up here.”

“What happened?”

“I have secrets even Holden doesn’t know about,” Alice smiled. “My own routes of memory.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have made backdoors for myself, ways to remember small things. But I don’t know them on my own. So, when Holden wakes me from treatment, he usually sends me to rest. So I go to my room, and scattered through my room are reminders.

When Granger released my mind, there was a life preserver in the flood. Something that kept me going until I could think enough to find my yellow brick road.”

“What is it?” Axel asked, then suddenly realizing that it might be personal. “If you want to share… you don’t have to.”

Alice smiled.

“It’s ok,” she said. “There are two. The first helps me remember my core personality. The second… keeps me going.”

Alice took a deep breath. She looked at Axel, wondering what he really thought of her.

“You sort of know them already,” she said.

“I do?”

She nodded.

“Earlier… when I was still… lost. You heard some of the story.”

Axel remembered her words, the little girl, the red kitchen, and the monsters. He swallowed.

“What kind of story?” he asked.

Alice looked away.

“An origin story,” she said quietly. “I tell it to myself, to remind me where I came from, who I was… what I have become.”

Axel wasn’t sure how to respond. He wanted to hold her, but he felt like that wasn’t the right choice at this moment.

“That’s what woke my mind enough for me to put up walls again… to push back the flood of memories, they’re still there, but now I can sort of try to sort through them slowly,” Alice continued. “For almost two days, I have wandered half-mad. I am not sure what would have happened if anyone else had found me.”

“Why?” Axel asked. “Why didn’t you go to Summer? They could have helped you!”

He suddenly felt worried, scared at the possibility of what could have happened.

“I wasn’t thinking straight,” Alice countered. “My mind was still barely holding onto one thought.”

“Exactly! You could have been killed!” Axel shouted, standing from his place beside her. “What if it had been someone else on that hill, Alice! What if–”

“I had to find you!” Alice shouted back.

Axel stared at her in shock. Alice got on her knees in the hospital bed. Bringing her almost to his eye level.

The blanket that had been covering her fell away, and Axel was suddenly reminded that he had brought her here in nothing but her underwear.

“My life preserver? The thing that kept me from drowning?” Alice said, her chest heaving from the deep breaths she was taking in. “You.”

Axel swallowed.

“The phrase, the one that keeps me going. The one that has held me together all these years. ‘A piece of chocolate to remember me.’,” she whispered.

Axel took a step toward her.

Alice licked her lips and hesitantly placed her hands on his chest.

“Even when I didn’t remember your name or who you were…” she whispered.

Axel couldn’t hold back anymore.

He laced his fingers into her hair, holding her gaze. They stared at each other with the same longing.

Axel leaned in, bringing his lips to her with a soft touch.

Alice gasped. This small act, this warmth. It was indescribable. A tear fell from her eye.

Axel pulled back, and he looked at her with tenderness. He wiped the tear away with his thumb.

He leaned in again. This time, Alice met him halfway.

Alice felt her heart picking up with every centimeter that disappeared between them, the fluttering in her stomach was a feeling she had never experienced before. In all her flirting, never once had she felt something.

But with Axel… Seeing him made her stomach flutter and being close to him caused her breathing to become heavy.

Conversation with him filled her with a warmth that she had never known she was missing. And now, with his lips so close, she ached for him.

The softness of his touch, the smooth press of his lips to hers. It wasn’t enough.

Alice parted her lips; their kiss became heated.

Axel gripped her hair in his hands, she gasped as the sensation echoed throughout her entire body, a heat that rose from her stomach to her chest and spread to her limbs.

Their kiss deepened and with it, every sensation.

Alice wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer to her.

His scent, his taste, so sweet. The rich velvety smoothness of chocolate.

Axel suddenly pulled away, helping her to sit back down on the bed gently. He then moved away, taking deep breaths.

“You need rest,” he said quietly before turning and leaving the room.

Alice was left confused and alone, pulling the blanket to cover herself.