Chapter 49
“ARE YOU ON THE RUN from something?” Asher glances in his rearview mirror as he pulls out of the parking lot and takes a left toward Ventura.
Dez chooses her words carefully. Soon she’ll tell him everything, but she’s got to take it slow, or she’ll scare him off before she can save him.
“I don’t know how to surf,” she says lightly. “You were going surfing, right?”
“That was my plan.”
“But then I ran into you …”
“And rewrote the plan,” Asher finishes her sentence. “Like you always do when you run into me.”
“It’s our thing.” She smiles at him.
It takes Asher a moment, but he eventually smiles back.
“So we’re just … driving?” he asks.
“We’re just driving.”
Dez is electrically attuned to her surroundings as they wind up Highway 1 with the roof of Asher’s Jeep removed.
After months of darkness at Acheron, the Technicolored daylight assaults her.
The Pacific rages on her left, and on her right, the sun sends dappled light through the trees.
Everything’s too stunning, as if nature’s trying to dazzle Dez into forgetting the danger she and Asher are in.
Which could be lurking anywhere.
After a moment of quiet, Asher rubs his jaw. “Where did you go, Dez?”
“I know I owe you an explanation—”
“When we spent the night together, I thought … this is it. And then you disappeared.”
“I know.” She closes her eyes, crushed.
“I called you—”
“I’m sorry—”
“I got mad. And then I got scared for you. And then I’d go back and forth. But now that you’re here, and I can see that you’re alive, I think I should be furious, but I’m … happy. It’s strange.”
“I’m happy, too.” Dez swallows a lump in her throat. “I’m happy you’re alive.”
“I’m not the one who vanished.” He takes a right into a parking lot, not far from where Dez landed Jet’s plane. He pulls into a spot near a sign for a trailhead.
“What are we doing?” Dez asks, nervously looking around at the innocent trees.
“I just realized I was driving toward my house,” he says. “But if I took you inside, like I want to take you inside, and then we … and then you aren’t there tomorrow …” He shakes his head. “I can’t do that again.” He points out the window. “There’s a trail here. Maybe we can take a walk.”
Dez considers the dangers of a hiking trail, knowing the particular dangers they’re up against could and will come from anywhere.
She feels better that they’re away from the shore, but she can’t tell if they’d be safer sitting here, in his car, or on a trail?
She doesn’t know. But she decides she’ll have better luck explaining the situation to Asher, getting him on her side, if she starts by agreeing with him now.
“Let’s take a walk,” she says.
The steep path makes a switchback out of the parking lot and arcs back toward the ocean. The Pacific waters are alive with waves again, freed from the spell of the Soma. Dez watches them roll toward the shore. She’s back in time. And she doesn’t have much.
As they walk, she peeks at Asher from the corner of her eye.
He’s peeking at her. They laugh. It’s light.
It’s heavy. After all the time she spent wanting to see him again, just like this, she finds the reality hard to believe.
She forgot how much taller he is than her.
How constantly he brushes his golden hair out of his eyes.
He cannot die today.
“You look different,” he says.
“What do you mean?” Dez asks, self-conscious, tucking a long strand of hair behind her ears. Did he remember her differently? Better than she really is?
“You look beautiful,” he says, “don’t get me wrong. You just look like maybe you’ve seen some things since the last time we were together.”
Dez doesn’t know how to respond. All these months she’s felt herself growing closer to Asher, learning more about his world. She doesn’t want to seem like a stranger to him.
“Maybe it’s just your clothes,” he says, reaching out to finger the white silk tie on her blouse, glancing down at her black suede boots. “Can you hike in those?”
“I’m good,” she says. “Watch out!”
She grabs his hand and holds him back because they’ve come upon a cliff ’s edge, fiery California poppies painting limits of the path.
Asher rounds the bend in the trail, giving Dez a curious look.
He offers her his hand to help her round it, too.
His touch is warm and sure, his skin incomparably smooth.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Sure. Sorry.”
“I guess you applied to film school?” he asks as they keep walking.
“You remembered.”
“Not something I’d forget,” he says. They’re still holding hands. “You left my bed before the sun rose to work on your application.”
“Right.” Dez bites her lower lip. It would be just like an alternate version of herself to forsake sunrise in bed with Asher to finish a grad school application.
She knows better now. If she’s learned anything from making films at Acheron, it’s that the life that matters comes from lingering with people you love.
Strange to use the word love to describe a man she’s only met once, but it’s the word that comes to mind.
“Did you hear from AFI?” Asher asks.
Dez used to be a woman who thought her life depended on an acceptance letter from the American Film Institute. Today she knows her life actually depends on this hike, these moments, right now with Asher.
She hadn’t expected him to wonder about her application. It moves her that it’s even on his mind.
His words have opened a door to the conversation Dez fears having. But knows she needs to have. She clears her throat.
“Actually, I got in somewhere else.”
“Congratulations!” Asher stops walking, faces her, and beams. “Where?”
She looks down, toeing a pebble in the path. “It’s a program I wasn’t expecting to go to.”
“Is it still in L.A.?” From his tone, she realizes he cares where she ends up.
Because it matters to him that it might be close? AFI is only an hour away from Ventura. Dez mapped it after she met Asher.
“It’s in the Rocky Mountains,” she says quietly.
“Oh.” A beat of disappointment passes through his voice. He recovers. “I’m happy for you, Dez. I’m sure it’s beautiful there. Are you going to accept?”
“Asher,” she says, looking up and into his eyes. “I’ve been at the school now for six months.”
“Oh.”
“And I haven’t called because—”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”
“We can just enjoy today, you know?” He starts walking again, moving toward a patch of glowing green flowers, dappled red stems. Dez has never seen a flower like that before. Her pulse quickens as Asher reaches out and brushes his fingers over the petals.
Dez grabs his hand, bats the flower away. “I think it’s poisonous.”
“Really?”
“Probably. Don’t want to chance it.” Taking Asher’s fingers, she rubs them on her jacket, trying to steady her racing heart.
Slowly Asher draws his hand away. “Are you always this nervous on hikes?”
“Only when I’m with someone I don’t want to lose.” Dez exhales. “Again.”
“Like I said, I’m not the one going anywhere.”
How do you tell someone their death is destined? That, within the next ten minutes, if Dez doesn’t figure out how to stop it, something terrible is coming?
And even if she does stop it, then what?
Will they find her here? Will Rafe or Jet arrive with a syringe and pry her away from Asher? What will they do with her then? She tells herself she can bear anything as long as Asher’s alive.
“Do you remember the French film you showed me?” Asher asks. “The one where the rocket lands inside the eye of moon?”
“A Trip to the Moon,” Dez says. It’s her first favorite film. An alternate version of her would definitely have shown this to Asher when they were in bed together.
“I watched it over and over again,” Asher says, brushing back his golden hair. “Like it held clues to who you were. Or where you went.”
“I’m back now,” she says, realizing she was always going to come back to Asher, how nothing could have stopped her.
She steps toward him and looks up. The desire in his eyes thrills her, and she knows she’s matching it with her own. She reaches out, puts a hand to his smooth, warm cheek.
She’s going to kiss him. After all this time, she’s going to kiss Asher Ibrahim.
She rises on her toes, leans forward, and—
Asher pulls away, letting his arms fall so that they’re only holding hands.
Did something happen?
Has death arrived?
No, Asher only looks … surprised.
“What were you just saying?” he asks.
“I … um,” Dez tries to remember. What happened? Why aren’t they kissing? “I think the last thing I said was that I was back. I had to come back.” She adds, “After all, you have my favorite sweatshirt.”
Asher tips his head. “What?”
“I’m kidding,” she assures him. “It wasn’t just the sweatshirt.”
But she feels the flinch in his palm, and then his fingers loosening so that she has to hold more tightly than feels natural. Confused, she loosens her grip slightly. Both their hands drop to their sides.
“What sweatshirt?” Asher says. He smiles, but it’s no longer an intimate smile. There’s politeness in it that makes Dez’s stomach twist. What’s happening? Was she too forward?
How could he not have wanted that kiss as badly as she wanted that kiss? It doesn’t seem possible, and yet, something has shifted.
Dez’s mind spirals. Was she wrong about the sweatshirt she saw folded on his dresser?
She doesn’t think so. It’s a distinctive item.
But is he seeing someone else who owns the same one?
She shouldn’t have leapt to this conclusion.
She has no memory, no access to the night he says they shared in his bed.
But the way his Lifeline had zoomed in on the sweatshirt when Dez watched from the Vault, it felt significant. It felt like he’d been thinking of her.
“Never mind,” she says.
“No, tell me.”
“It’s blue,” she says, “with a white hibiscus embroidered on the sleeve. Didn’t I leave it at your house?”
Asher stares at her blankly. “You’re thinking of someone else.”
“No,” she says. “When we spent the night—”