When Lenora nodded, it was Kairon who froze first. He asked her again and again to be sure, and every single time, Lenora stared straight into his eyes, steady and unwavering, and told him she believed him.

  Kairon ended up staring at her like she'd lost her mind. She actually believed that?

  He stopped overthinking it in the end, smiled at Lenora, and offered to buy her a fancy lunch to make up for it.

  But Lenora had another idea. She suggested they grab some snacks and drinks, hike up the mountain to take in the view, and he could tell her his story along the way.

  A bitter smile tugged at the corner of Kairon's mouth. He knew exactly what she was thinking. She might have said she believed him, but deep down, she wanted to test him, to see if what he'd said was really true.

  Lenora was uncharacteristically quiet the whole drive. Except for the few times Kairon struck up a conversation with her, she kept her head turned to the window, staring blankly at the scenery passing by.

  Once they reached the trailhead, Lenora walked ahead the whole time, veering further and further off the beaten path, well past the official scenic route marked by the park.

  Kairon called out to her a few times, but each time she just looked back, smiled, said they weren't there yet, and kept trudging stubbornly up the mountain.

  They looped all the way around to the back of the mountain, and Lenora finally stopped at the mouth of a hidden cave, half buried under overgrown weeds.

  Watching the sweat trickle down her cheek from her temple, a tangled, unnameable emotion welled up in Kairon's chest, a faint, sharp twinge of heartache.

  "Kai, do you remember this place?" Lenora pointed at the cave, her voice soft and quiet.

  Kairon stared at the weed-choked cave, a flicker of confusion crossing his face. He truly had no memory of this place.

  But the nickname she'd just used, Kai, sent a jolt through his chest, a wave of aching familiarity washing over him.

  When she saw his brows still furrowed tight, Lenora walked over to a rock at the mouth of the cave, sat down, and looked up at him. "Kairon, let me tell you a story."

  Kairon sat down across from her and nodded. "Alright."

  "Fourteen years ago, a little girl and a little boy met in this cave. The boy was six, the girl was five, and both of them had been kidnapped here by human traffickers." As she spoke, her eyes never left his face, watching for every flicker of change in his gaze.

  The second he heard those words, Kairon shot to his feet. Memories came flooding into his mind like a tidal wave. His gaze darted across the cave, then snapped back to Lenora, staring at her with a white-knuckled intensity.

  Lenora stood up too, tears already spilling over her lids and streaming down her cheeks. "Kai, you remember, don't you?"

  With that, she ran straight to him and threw herself into his arms.

  "You're… that little girl. You're that Lenora?" Kairon's voice shook as he held the girl in his arms, her body shaking with sobs as she nodded over and over again.

  He remembered. All of it.

  In that dark, damp cave fourteen years ago, when the hood had been ripped off his head, the first thing he'd seen was this little girl, huddled in the corner, crying her eyes out.

  She'd cried and wailed nonstop until he'd finally snapped and snapped at her, "If you don't stop crying, I'm not taking you with me when I run."

  To his surprise, she'd stopped crying instantly at that, her big, tear-filled eyes locking onto his. "You really can get me out of here?"

  The boy had said, "Do you trust me?"

  The girl had said, "I do."

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  After a full week of hell, their chance finally came, on a night of torrential rain.

  The boy had used a sharpened shard of stone he'd filed down against the cave wall to saw through the ropes binding his wrists, little by little. He'd barely finished untying the ropes around the girl's ankles when the traffickers guarding them caught them in the act.

  The two of them had bolted out of the cave in the chaos, but two small children didn't stand a chance against full-grown men.

  They hadn't gotten far when the footsteps behind them grew louder and louder, closing in fast.

  That was when the boy had turned to her and asked, "We jump from here. Ready?"

  The girl hadn't even glanced down over the cliff. She'd answered without a single second of hesitation, "I trust you, no matter what. Let's jump."

  And that was what they did. The boy had her loop her still bound arms around his neck, and the second the trafficker's hand was inches from his back, he'd leaped off the cliff with her in his arms.

  The cliff had a steep, sloped face, and the boy pressed his entire back against the rock, sliding all the way down.

  The man chasing them had slipped on the wet rock and fallen, too, but his luck had run out. He'd gone over the edge completely, plummeting straight to the bottom of the valley.

  When the boy finally skidded to a stop at the bottom of the cliff, his back used as a makeshift sled the whole way down, the two kids landed right on top of the man's body, softening their fall.

  When they woke up, they were in a hospital. They'd heard the trafficker had died on impact, and the rest of his gang had been arrested.

  Three months later, they were released from the hospital, fully healed. The boy had stayed at the girl's house for a week, but in the end, he'd told them he wanted to go back to the orphanage.

  The girl's family was incredibly wealthy, and they'd wanted to adopt him, but he'd refused point-blank. He was set on going back to the orphanage, still clinging to a faint hope that the parents who'd abandoned him would come looking for him there.

  The morning he left the girl's house, her mother had asked him if there was any wish he wanted granted, anything at all, and she'd make it happen.

  He'd thought about it for a long time and only asked for one thing. He wanted a proper meal, with fresh-baked croissants, bacon and eggs, and a hamburger.

  So he'd put his old, tattered clothes back on, and the girl's mother had taken him and the girl, dressed up like a little princess, to the most famous restaurant in the city center for one last breakfast.

  When they left the restaurant, the girl had stood on the sidewalk, waving her little hand to say goodbye.

  He'd climbed into the car driven by the girl's family's chauffeur, and through the window, he'd heard her running after the car, screaming at the top of her lungs, "Kai, you have to remember me! My full name is Lenora Everhart! When I grow up, I'm gonna..."

  The roar of the car's engine had drowned out the rest of her words completely.

  "Kai, this is where we jumped, isn't it?" Lenora slipped her hand into the crook of Kairon's arm, the two of them standing side by side at the edge of the cliff.

  "Has to be." Kairon glanced down at the valley below, a faint wave of dizziness washing over him. There was no way in hell he'd jump off this thing now.

  "You know, I come here every year." Lenora looked up at him, a faint smile crossing her face. "Oh, and let me see your scars."

  Kairon froze for a second, looked at the smile in her eyes, hesitated for a moment, then slowly turned his back to her.

  Lenora stood behind him, her fingertips lifting the hem of his basketball tank top gently. Crisscrossing scars covered his entire back, starting at his shoulder blades, thick and dense, stretching all the way down.

  Her cool fingertips traced the raised scars gently along his spine, and tears welled up in her eyes again.

  "Does it still hurt?" Her fingertips traveled further down, her voice carrying a faint, unsteady tremor.

  "Uh, no. It hasn't hurt in years." When her fingertips brushed the small of his back, Kairon's whole body went rigid, nearly losing his balance. He spun around quickly, pulling his shirt back down, and smiled at her. "Hell, it's more like a suit of armor at this point. Got in a fight once, some guy swung a steel pipe straight into my back, bent the thing clean in half, and I barely felt a thing."

  At that, Lenora burst out laughing through her tears, swatting his arm lightly. "Look at you, all tough now!"

  "Hey, you still got the guts to jump now?" Lenora tilted her chin up defiantly, nodding toward the valley below, and asked.

  Kairon took one glance and shook his head so hard it looked like it might fall off.

  "Then how'd you have the guts back then? And to take me with you?"

  Kairon went quiet for a moment at the question. "Don't know. Doesn't matter anyway. We lived, didn't we?"

  "What do you mean it doesn't matter?!" Lenora's eyes went wide instantly, and she stamped her foot in mock anger. "Kai, you have no idea how much I trusted you to get me out of there. How can you say that doesn't matter?!"

  One look at her about to blow up, and Kairon turned and bolted, Lenora laughing as she chased after him, swatting at him the whole way.

  He hadn't gotten far when he spun around, reaching out to catch her wrist firmly in his hand. "Hey, when I left that day, you were running after the car, yelling something about when you grew up. The engine was too loud; I never heard the end of it."

  "I'm not telling you!"

  This time, it was Lenora's turn to flush bright red. She wrenched her wrist free from his grip and turned, running ahead of him.

  Kairon watched her retreating, and the dark cloud that had hung over him for two lifetimes, all the weight he'd carried, vanished completely in that moment.

  A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and he muttered under his breath, "Whatever you said back then, you're not getting away this time around. I already let you down once, in another life."

  He thought of Liora, the woman who'd stood by his side through everything in the game, in his past life, and made a silent vow to himself.