Chapter 49 #2
“Now you’re definitely thinking of someone else,” he says coldly.
Dez is baffled. Only minutes ago, he’d brought up that night. With fondness.
Then she tried to kiss him.
“Weren’t we just talking about that night?” she says. “How I left your bed at dawn? How we watched A Trip to the Moon?”
As Asher stares at her, curious in the way you might be curious about a feral animal, Dez gets the terrible suspicion that he truly doesn’t know what she means. But how is that possible? Only moments ago he did.
“I haven’t seen you since the day we met,” Asher says slowly, “since we filmed your short on the pier. We … never spent the night together, Dez.”
Her face flushes. “But we ran into each other. On the beach. And … I don’t know, one thing led to another …
” She trails off, panicked. She doesn’t have access to the details needed to fill in this story.
Asher’s the one who knows what happened.
Why is he pretending, all of a sudden, that he doesn’t remember that night?
Because maybe, all of a sudden, he doesn’t remember that night.
A sick feeling twists in Dez as she feels how tenuous that beach memory always was. It wasn’t real in the first place. Now, it seems, it’s gone.
Asher turns away from her, gazing out at the ocean.
For several seconds, neither of them speaks.
Dez doesn’t know what to do next. She’s embarrassed.
But no matter how weird Asher thinks she is, she’s still here to save his life.
She wants to tell him he should really take two steps back from the edge. The drop is steep.
But the easy trust they’d had only moments ago is gone.
Asher turns away from the ocean back toward Dez—and startles at the sight of her standing right behind him.
“Excuse me,” he says, stepping around her like she’s a stranger, then continuing on the path.
Without her.
Blood roars in Dez’s ears. What’s happening? She freaked him out, fine. She needs to clear things up.
He walks ten paces before she gathers her thoughts enough to call his name.
“Asher?”
He stops. He turns, looks around like he wonders who’s talking.
The confusion on his face sends fear ripping through Dez. Whatever’s happening, it’s getting worse.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Do I know you?”
“Come on, Asher,” she says, her voice trembling. She puts a hand to her heart. “Desdemona. Dez. You know me.”
He gives her a funny look, a pitying look, and shakes his head. “I’d remember you.”
Then Dez realizes …
Rafe.
He must be in Dez’s Lens, changing Asher’s Lifeline, deleting Dez from it.
“Are you okay?” Asher asks.
When she entered back into time, Rafe would have found her gone from her suite. He guessed where she was going. He went to the Vault …
And deleted the scene she altered in Asher’s Lifeline on the beach.
Fine. Dez deserves that.
But now …
“You really don’t know who I am?” she whispers.
He shakes his head. “I wish I did.”
“Asher,” she says, with so much intensity their eyes lock. For a moment, it’s almost like she can reach him. “In a parking lot in Ventura, outside an Irish pub called Dargan’s—do you know it?”
“Of course.”
She walks to him, reaches for him. “You took my hand. Like this.” She’s relieved when he lets her take his hand. Her thumb against his wrist. “You taught me a secret language. Like this.”
Pulse. Pulsepulse. Pulse.
He holds on for a moment longer, then shakes his head and says, “I’m sorry. I hope you find whoever you’re looking for.” He lets their hands drop, turns from her, and begins up the trail alone.
Fucking Rafe. He took out every trace of Dez from Asher’s Lifeline. Has he destroyed the scene of her in Asher’s halo, too?
He deleted their connection. He turned them into strangers.
Oh God.
Because he’s making Asher’s Life Review.
Because Asher is about to die.
“Listen to me,” she says fiercely. And Asher turns around once more. He’s tiring of this game.
“Something bad is about to happen,” Dez says.
He squints at her. “Do you need me to call someone for you?”
“No.” Dez grips her head. “No. Asher. Something bad is about to happen to you.”
He looks alarmed, takes a few more steps back, away from Dez. “Look, I’m going to go finish my hike,” he says, and turns away, adding under his breath, “I knew I should’ve gone surfing.”
“Please,” she calls out, desperate. Maybe she means nothing to him anymore, but there are still people who matter in his life. Dez has seen them in his Lifeline. She thinks of the dinner scene she observed in her Lens. “If you care about your sisters, about your parents …”
He stops walking, turns to look at her, incredulous. “What are you talking about?”
Her voice is choked with tears, but she keeps going. “If you care about your research in Alzheimer’s and living forever. If you want to stay alive, you need to listen to me.”
“Please,” he says. “Leave me alone.”
“You’re in danger.”
“Not if you stay away from me,” he calls over his shoulder.
And then Dez see it. The white rattlesnake coiled on the edge of the path, inches from Asher’s feet. Now it rises, tail simmering, jaw unlocked. Dez screams, running toward him.
But not soon enough to stop it from sinking its fangs into Asher’s ankle.