“Your tattoo is a full sleeve now.” I note the obvious dumbly as I work toremember. Remember anything that doesn’t feel like a hazy daydream only meant for me to use in a novel.
The picture disappears as Ashton places the phone down with a mirthless laugh. “Yeah, I expanded it after I thought Noahwasgoing to die. He was in the ICU for a week, Esme, after having his throat sliced and battling other internal injuries. I watched you and your family leave the hospital after you woke up after a few days, thinking I might hate you for the rest of my life if my brother died and you survived.”
His bitter-sounding words cut me deep and put me on the defensive. “I was in a jet ski accident, Ashton. How could it have been my fault? I think someone would have told me.” Then a montage of memories of the past year plays across my vision, and I realize how weird my family has acted every time I try to bring up the accident, and more recently when I’ve mentioned the Prewitt Publishing or Ashton or my novel.
And finally, I remember that last scene I wrote in my novel. The one where Esme passes out to the image of a knife at Noah’s throat.Oh, God. No. No. No!
I change my tone, my stomach dipping as sour acid rises in my throat. “What did I do, Ashton?”
Ashton lets out a breath and runs his hands through his hair again. “Before I tell you the truth of what happened, I need you to know that I do not blame you and you are not at fault. The way I felt earlier this year is indicative only of a man on the verge of losing his twin brother. Noah pulled through, and he’s alive.” He pauses, and I stare wide-eyed at him until he continues. “Promise me, Esme?”
“I can’t make promises that I don’t know if I can keep, Ashton. But I will try to remember that you believe those words to be true. Now please tell me before I throw up right here in this spot from this sickening anxiety.”
But instead, a young waiter approaches the table. I’m in a blind daze as Ashton orders, and when the waiter turns to me, I simply mutter, “I just need lemon water, please.”
“You’re not getting food?” Ashton asks.
“I can’t stomach it right now.”
“Right.” A flash of uncomfortable sorrow streaks across his face. Ashton dismisses the waiter and turns his attention back to me. He fiddles with his fingers. “I don’t want to tell you the whole story as it’s not mine to tell. And I know what little Noah told me before he went AWOL. You and Noah met while in BoraBora together. He saved you from a guy trying to kidnap you, and you spent the rest of the week with him. On the last night before you both were set to leave, the guy who tried to kidnap you earlier in the week returned. You both almost died, but while he remembers everything, you walked away with amnesia.”
Ashton stares at me, waiting for me to say something. Or to break. Or to scream. Internally, I’m doing a mixture of the last two, but on the outside, I hold my composure. I bite my tongue, sit up straight, and try my hardest not to cry.
But a single tear slips through as I blink.
And then another.
“Ashton, I—” More tears. “I don’t know what to say. Are you sure it was me?” Though I know the answer. The nightmares of a horror-filled face, the daydreams of romance, the plot of the novel that wouldn’t vacate my brain. My weird desire to write a kidnapping into the story. The proof of Noah’s existence is in the photo. His identical twin sitting across from me.
The necklace the nurse gave me before I left the hospital. Because Noah was with me when I lost consciousness, and somehow I ended up with his necklace.
I gasp like a fish on dry land as I try and falter to wrap my bruised and broken brain around everything.
Ashton moves his chair from across from me to beside me as I lose my wits. He pulls me to my feet and wraps me in a tight embrace. My breaths are short and ragged until I’m struggling to take one at all.
“Name five things that are real. Right now. In this moment,” he commands, his strong voice breaking through the attack.
I fight through the haze and the feeling of a pounding jackhammer on my chest, choking out the first word that comes to mind, “Wood. This whole building is wooden.” I search for more breaths. “The smell of catfish.”
“Three more.”
I inhale again, this time catching a faint whiff of Ashton. “You smell like coconut.” He laughs, and I continue to focus on my breaths. The sun pours in through the window and warms my skin. “The sun.” Ashton feels rock solid against me, his arms wrapped around my waist in a snug, warm, safe embrace. “You. It’s really you.”
My breathing starts to slow, and the fog slowly clears from my head. Through it all, Ashton continues to hold me and talk to me. Reminding me we are real at this moment and to hold on to that. He’s grounding me.
No one has ever done that for me before.
When my breaths come even, Ashton whispers in a raspy voice, “I’m not Noah, Esme. I know you’ve written a novel about a man who looks like me, and while I do share a lot with Noah, we are not the same person. You fell in love with him, not with me.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” I say, leaning my forehead on his shoulder. I’m too tired to be embarrassed. I choose to focus on the panic attack instead of my body attempting to recognize Ashton as the man from my novel. “That hasn’t happened in a while.” It’s partially true. It happened last night when I tied all the strings together in my head. Or, at least, thought I had. Ashton isn’t my male main character, but his twin brother is.
Noah is real. The man I thought I created in my head—the perfect man—is real. Is he really perfect?
You know it, Meme,he says, his tone cocky. But I don’t have energy to deal with the voice in my head right now.
I continue to take deep, calming breaths. I used to get panic attacks all of the time when I first woke up in the hospital. They continued for months until, one day, I accepted what had happened to me, and I started to move on with my life.
“I shouldn’t have told you so much at one time,” Ashton says, releasing me. “That wasn’t the brightest move on my end. I had to help Noah through his panic attacks often.”
