Oh, God. I am mad and resentful over this. I’m going to feel it because You know I don’t have any other option right now, but please, help me to move past it. Eventually.
“Love. It’s not a ‘might.’ It’s not a past tense. Noah loves you, Esme. You need to know that loud and clear before we go tracking him down. Are you okay with that?”
So many unspoken things pass between me and Ashton, but what else can I do? I want to know what really happened in Bora Bora, and the only one with the answers I desperately seek is Noah Ashley Prewitt.
I firmly nod.
Chapter Eight
Follow You Around ~ mid-July
“Idon’t remember the last time I’ve left state lines. Or went anywhere outside of central Mississippi for that matter,” I state as Ashton parks the truck in front of a pump at a Chevron gas station. We crossed the Alabama state line not too long ago. The moment the “Welcome to Sweet Home Alabama” sign flew past, a heaviness covered me like a weighted blanket.
I’m really doing this. I’m embarking on a journey to locate the man of my dreams and the character who has spoken loudly to me over the past year, directing my story as I’ve typed word after word. The guy I used to show the world that real men can be just as good as fictional men.
Through my own fictional novel, of course.
I’ve yet to prove that a real man measures up, which is why what Lane told me still stings. And apparently, Bryan had told me something similar based on the way he apologized to me at Gunnar’s. Am I really that delusional? To believe a bookish love can exist in the real world?
Not at all, sweetheart. Keep on believing. Don’t lower your standards,Noah says, and my heart warms. Then I once more remember he’s real and get a little freaked out by the voice in my head.
Surely not…
Ashton tosses a mischievous grin my way as he opens his door and hops out of the brown lifted truck, responding to my comment. “Probably because you lost three years of memory. Maybe you were a grand explorer during the time you lost your mind.”
I scowl, but I can’t hold the false expression long. A smile breaks across my face, and I laugh. “Touché.”
“Too soon?” Ashton asks, scratching his tattooed arm. “To joke like that? It’s been almost a year.”
“Not at all,” I remark, talking to him through the open door as he approaches the gas pump. “It’s refreshing, actually. People typically look at me as if I’ve lost my mind when I make dark jokes about losing my mind.”
I can’t fully see Ashton as he pumps gas, but I hear his throaty, rich laugh. It sounds just as I imagined the Noah from my book did. I guess the real Noah probably has the same laugh. Or something very similar.
And it’s a sound I could bottle up.
Noah’s real.The thought hits me once more. It’s been doing that quite often during this drive to Ashton’s house. Once we made the arrangements to go to Bora Bora in two days, and Ashton mentioned telling his family, I made the spontaneous request to do it. To meet his family—a group of people who I’ve unknowingly hurt through their missing son. Mostly, I wanted to immediately create space between my family and myself. But honestly? Meeting Noah’s family is something I need to do to start to make up for the emotional harm my parents’ verdict toward Noah caused. So, I’ll spend the next two daysin Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with the Prewitts, praying they don’t secretly harbor hate for me. Ashton says it’s the opposite—they’ve wanted to meet me. They want to know the woman Noah messaged home about, saying he was going to marry her.
But who is that woman?
Yes, she’s me. But who was that version of me that fell in love in a week and potentially decided to marry a man she’d just met? I’d like to meet her, too. I’m not completely the woman I was before the accident—er, attempted murder—but I don’t think I’d fall in love in a week with an unknown man, either.
Gah, I have to figure out the truth.
If any aspect of what I’ve written is genuine, then this man is one of my wildest dreams—passionate, living without abandon. He is flirty, kind, and loving. The perfect man. We must have had one whirlwind of a week together.
He loved me.
Protected me.
Because he apparently wanted tomarry me.
Will he still feel the same way? Ashton thinks so. But me? I can’t say I love him. I can’t say I want to marry him now, nor do I know if he even proposed to me on that island as I’ve written in my novel. I love him as a fictional character, but he’s just that—fiction. Not real. At least, he was. He’s becoming more real with every passing moment I dwell upon him. Is he truly as great as I wrote him to be? Can someone that perfect for me exist on earth?
Regardless, I feel like an enchantress. I made this man fall in love with me then I forgot about him.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Ashton says, pulling me from the topsy-turvy process of figuring out my inconsistent and ambiguous emotions. He shuts the door and cranks the truck, pulling out of the gas station.
I fiddle with the necklace, refusing to meet his eyes. “I feel guilty.”
