Chapter Fourteen #4
“I honestly was planning to come back at the end of the month.” Noah, apparently reading the raging emotions in Ashton’s eyes, just as I did, stands and walks around the fire to where Ashton sits on a log.
Ashton stands, and the brothers hug. Tears spring to my eyes, and I can’t help but smile at the wholesome picture in front of me.
From over Noah’s shoulder, Ashton mouths, “Thank you.”
I give him a nod as I wipe a tear from my cheek.
“Man, Noah,” Ashton says after a beat of silence where we listened to the crackling fire while they embraced. They pull apart, beating each other on the back like men do. “I haven’t seen you this happy and light in months.”
“Haven’t seen him at all in a couple of months,” I helpfully remind Ashton with a smirk. Noah turns around and meanders back to sit on the wooden bench beside me.
Ashton grimaces, which matches Noah’s current expression perfectly.
Not the right thing to say, Esme.
“She’s right.” Noah exhales and places his hands on his knees, his fingers gripping the fabric of his jeans as if he’s uncomfortable. “Ashton, I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have disappeared like that. The pain, it was—” He cuts himself off, looking at me with hesitation. “Well, it hurt. A lot.”
Guilt washes over me. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you, Noah. I promise, I wish I did. And I’m trying. But it’s been over a year, and so chances are low that I will ever recover all the memories.”
Noah grabs my hand, and I reel over his touch again, but I don’t pull away.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now.
” Noah sighs deeply, bringing his head to rest on top of mine.
I go still as a statue, but he needs this, and well, I can’t say I don’t like this hot live wire he infuses in me.
Because I do. Very much. “I just want to enjoy you.”
“I’m going to see if Nick needs help in the kitchen,” Ashton comments, standing to his feet and speed walking across the small yard, up the back deck, and through the sliding glass door. I watch my anchor disappear, but unlike when I first woke, I’m more at ease.
Noah lifts his head and releases my hand.
“You’ve got an amazing brother. You know that, right?” I move to straddle the bench to face Noah. A softness ripples over his face.
“Don’t tell me you fell in love with my twin while you looked for me?” Noah quips, but he’s smiling. I see through it, though.
“I thought he had somehow stepped out of my novel for a minute there, but no, Noah. I didn’t fall for your twin.
” He doesn’t need to know the truth of that first encounter with Ashton or how I attempted to reason with myself that it would be a good idea to date my literary agent.
Despite the initial physical attraction, there’s nothing romantic between me and Ashton.
He’s like another brother I didn’t ask for, a new best friend I didn’t intend to make.
Noah stares at me in silence, that sense of wonder from when he first saw me claiming his face. “I’ve missed you so much, Meme.”
“You know my nickname.”
“I probably know a lot about you that you’ve forgotten you told me.” He reaches out to cup my face, but I lean back instinctively.
“I’m sorry, Noah. I—”
“No need to apologize,” he huffs out, running that same hand through his hair and looking at the fire.
“I remember you, so please forgive me if my instincts attempt to go before my brain sometimes.” He looks back at me and smiles.
“That’s something we were working on before everything happened, anyway. ”
I offer him a smile even though he’s not looking at me and I’m freely examining each curl as it moves around his fingers. His hair is thicker and more untamed than Ashton’s. Just as I imagined it. “It’s okay. Seriously. I get it.”
Noah shakes his head as if he’s trying to understand something. “I still can’t believe you’re here. I thought I—” His pretty eyes shine with wetness when he turns them back to me. “I thought I’d lost you forever, Esme.”
“I’m sorry, Noah. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, sweetheart. It’s not your fault.” His expression clears a little as he gives me a lopsided grin. “It just hurt my pride to know I was so forgettable.”
“Except your smile,” I jest back, though he’s attempting to hide his pain through humor. Maybe I just have to play along for now. Allow him the time he needs to open up. “I have a vision board of cutouts of moments you smiled at me montaged in my head.”
He laughs a little easier, and so I add on, “I remember you hunched over a desk in the bungalow, writing. I remember us sitting atop a mountain. I remember—” Heat flames at the base of my neck. “—painting you.” I don’t admit to stealing the painting and hanging it in my camper in my bedroom.
Noah waggles his brows. “I was the most handsome muse Bora Bora has ever seen.”
“So, that’s definitely real?”
Noah nods, and I gasp through a dawning realization.
“Crap, Noah! Your brother read detailed make out scenes that could have very well been real.” It was one thing for it to all be fiction and for Ashton to read it, but it’s obviously not all fiction, and I wrote about his twin!
“I’m not going to be able to look him in the eyes,” I mutter, my hands over my face.
“I really want to read your book now, sweetheart. To see if you captured my immaculate kissing skills correctly.”
“So conceited.” I chuckle, easing my hands from my face. Then another thought hits me. What if he kisses that way? The heat deepens in my face, and if he decides to point it out, I’m blaming the fire that I refuse to look away from. His hands in mine felt like I’d written about…
I let out a long, emotion-filled exhale, an important question dancing around my head. Might as well get it over with. “Ashton said you wanted to marry me. That you texted him that while we were still on the island.”
The masquerading lightness in Noah’s expression fades as the stalking darkness that was lingering beneath the surface makes its grand appearance. His voice is dry and gravelly as he chokes out, “He told you that?”
I nod as Noah swallows and continues talking.
“You utterly captivated me, and when you said yes to continuing to date me once we got back to the States, I knew I wouldn’t date another woman ever again.
I knew you were the one my heart and soul needed, but you had a sour taste in your mouth when it came to marriage.
So, yeah, I told my brother that I found the woman I wanted to marry, but I never asked you.
That would have been completely insensitive of me.
” Noah smirks a little. “I was going to wait until a few months after we made it home. I needed time to make sure my seduction efforts were effective.”
I snort, relief washing over me that we were never truly engaged. But the fact remains: Noah Prewitt wanted to marry me. Is that where he still stands? I shove the thought away for now and focus on the one thing we both did on that island. “How did we do it, Noah?”
“Do what?”
“Fall in love in the span of a week?”
Noah releases a slow breath, pondering his answer. “I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times. From the moment I watched you take down that man who tried to run off with you, I—”
“What?” I bark out, flabbergasted. “I took down the kidnapper?”
Noah stares at me incredulously. When he realizes I’m seriously asking him, he runs his hand down his face as if he’s shocked I didn’t remember that.
“Yes, Esme. A middle-aged bald Hispanic guy tried to take you. I was about to intervene because you looked really uncomfortable with his arm around you, but right as I moved to take care of it, you spun out of his grip and punched him square in the nose. He ran off, and I swooped in to check on you. You mentioned he had a knife, but he’d disappeared into the crowd so we called the police and gave them everything we knew. ”
I soak in every word, attempting to unravel the threads between fiction and reality as he tells me the tale of what really happened when a man tried to take me away in Bora Bora.
Our real meet-cute.
A punch of a thousand Bora Bora suns… I throw my head back and laugh in disbelief. “I can’t believe I fought him. I’m usually one to freeze in high-stress situations.” Way to go, me! I mentally pat myself on the back.
Noah arches a brow and crosses his arms. “You? Afraid? That’s not the woman I remember.
You were a grumpy firecracker on that island.
Mad at the world while trying to prove to it that you were fun, flirty, and free.
Once I wiggled my way through your defenses, we had the time of our lives. ” He winks.
That sobers me up. Not the woman he remembers. Just as I was afraid would be the case. Island Esme was, in fact, much different than the person I am.
“Noah,” I lead, nervously picking at my fingernails.
I bite the inside of my cheek before meeting his eyes.
He needs to hear this. Maybe it will change his mind about me, and he can stop feeling hurt over losing me.
Because I was never the woman he thought I was from the offset.
“I’m not that woman. I never was. The girl you met in Bora Bora was going through a difficult time, as I imagine getting left at the altar would do to someone.
I’m not fun, flirty, and free. I’m a little timid, though I’m working on being bolder.
I prefer plans and schedules to spontaneity.
I have anxiety and get nervous easily. And flirting, well…
I have no game. Not like you do, as I’m told. ”
Noah’s enigmatic expression has me on pins and needles. After seconds pass, I blurt, “Say something.”
And he laughs. Belly laughs . Teeters on the edge of falling off the bench because he’s laughing so hard. A genuine laugh.
“Noah Ashley Prewitt,” I scold, catching myself by surprise. Did I really just use his full name like I’m his mother? But why in the sweet stars above is this man laughing at me?