Chapter Eight
Follow You Around ~ mid-July
“ I don’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 days in 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 to marry 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.”
He drives out onto the highway, and we’re off again, only the rumble of the tires against the pavement as I wait for him to respond. “Over what? Noah?”
“Yes but…” I trail off, trying to formulate the right words.
“I feel guilty that I don’t remember him like I should.
He’s fiction in my head, but he’s real to you.
I should know him. Remember him as more than a character in my story.
I’m so sorry that I don’t, Ashton. If I did, maybe all of this could have been avoided.
My parents wouldn’t have lied. He wouldn’t be depressed, as you say, and he wouldn’t have disappeared on you.
And I should really give this necklace back to you.
” Panic settles in my chest as anxiety over the situation comes swinging like a wrecking ball to my life.
That heavy weighted blanket feeling from earlier cloaks me further.
I’m running away with a man I don’t know to find another man I don’t know because my family lied to me. I’m crumbling, collapsing, caving.
I reach to unbuckle the necklace, but taking it off feels like losing a part of me. It’s been a physical reminder of survival. Of hope.
Why, God? Why did I have to get amnesia? What’s the purpose of this confusion and chaos? What am I even doing here? I don’t know him. I don’t love him. What help can I even offer?
“Stop, Esme.” Ashton says, his fingers gripping my hand. “Keep the necklace.”
I drop my hands into my lap.
Conversational silence envelops us as Ashton drives.
The rumble of the road grows louder and louder with every passing second.
I fear I might have spoken too honest of thoughts when he says, “Esme, you have nothing to apologize for. Life happened the way God meant it to happen. It sucks, yeah. But you’re not to blame.
Noah’s a grown man struggling. He’s doing whatever he needs to do, but as his twin, I couldn’t sit on the knowledge you were remembering him even if you didn’t realize you were remembering him.
He deserves to know, Esme.” Ashton grins, immediately shifting the mood with him.
“I’m glad you willingly agreed. I might have had to kidnap you. ”
Why would God mean this to happen? What’s the purpose of it all? Great. I’m becoming upset with God over my amnesia again. I thought I had dealt with that many months ago.
Just push it away for now, Esme, I tell myself. Deal with it later.
“Ashton,” I groan, covering my face with my hands, but the building anxiety begins to ease at his playful tone and my decision to forcibly change my mood. “Not the right thing to say at this moment.”
“Saying the right things is my brother’s specialty, not mine. He’s the one with all the game.”
Preach, my brotha! Noah shouts. I hold in my laugh, deciding I’ll bring this up to Ashton later. It’s just… weird.
“You’ve got some game,” I note incredulously. “Confession time. I developed an immediate crush on you when I first met you. You’re obviously hot; you know that. But the way you stood up to Bryan for me, wow . That was something. Real winner, game-like material right there.”
Ashton rolls his eyes, but I don’t miss his smile as he looks ahead at the road. “Don’t let Noah hear you say that.”
Already heard, Noah grumbles. Okay. Maybe I’ll bring it up now.
I inhale a breath before slowly releasing it and saying, “So, don’t commit me to an asylum, but I sort of hear Noah in my head. He speaks to me. All the time.”
Ashton arches his brow at me. “Like, your book character, right?”
Chuckling, I nod. “I don’t think it’s possible that I’m communicating with the real Noah. That’s stuff of fantasy novels. We aren’t in that genre yet.”
“My characters talk to me, too. I think it’s natural for writers to live with a commune inside their heads.”
I hum, knowing he’s right. But my creative mind can’t help but think what if…
My stomach churns, the coffee I was drinking earlier choosing violence in my gut.
Ashton, for sure, is off-limits. There’s no way he’d make a move when his brother loved—loves—me.
And now that I know what I know, I’m beginning to pick up on subtle differences between Ashton and the man who has been living inside of my head.
Whereas Noah (my character, at least) is a bubbly, natural-born flirt, Ashton is more reserved.
Noah has a wild, carefree abandoned look to him, while Ashton is certified put-together.
But there’s something untamed lurking beneath the surface of Ashton.
“Are you the older twin?”
“Yep. How’d you know?”
I grin as if I’ve hit the nail on the head. “You're uptight and take charge. The Noah I wrote about in my book has more of a middle-child complex.”
Ashton snorts. “And that’s true. Branda is the baby.
” Then he grows serious. “I meant it when I said you wrote Noah—for everything that he is—into your story. From the way he swings his legs when sitting on a pier to his extroverted ways, such as doing something as ridiculous as volunteering to have a bunch of women paint him shirtless.”
“I had so much fun writing that scene. I thought—” I release a long breath, staring out of the window at the wall of green passing me by. “I thought it was a rather creative scene. But I guess it might’ve just been a memory.”
“Maybe, but maybe not. Regardless, you’re a great writer, Esme.
Don’t doubt that. You could write your story down all day long and it still be a load of bull.
What you did, however, was bring your story—even your real one—to life.
” He pauses, the road rumbling beneath the tires in the silence.
“Your prose and imagery. The way you utilize figurative language and other literary devices.” Ashton meets my eyes for a brief second. “Never doubt your skill, okay?”
Numbly, I nod. My head is achingly full of questions that won’t have answers until I meet my mystery man, and even then, it might open a can of worms. I’m not the same woman I was.
I’m not the same woman Noah fell in love with.
I was probably spontaneous, reckless, and wild while on my honeymoon alone if my book is an indication of the truth about how I acted.
I imagine any woman would morph into an uncivilized flirt in need of a romantic escape after being left at the altar by a bland box of crackers.
That’s why I wrote Esme the way I did, and that’s who Noah must have fallen in love with, but I’m not her.
Will I only hurt him worse?
Needing a distraction, I reach for the radio and turn on country music. “Is this okay?”
Ashton’s response is to start horridly screeching the words to the song floating through the speakers.
Laughing until my belly hurts—until the sound turns to sniffling tears—I know I’ll never hear “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver the same way again.
The lyrics snuggle inside my brain and wrap themselves up in a blanket, prepared to stay awhile.
Where do I belong?
Who am I now?