Page 5 of Devious Delusions

It was real. I know it was real. The hurt is still there from when he turned and looked at me. It was the last time he looked at me. But it was filled with so much pain that it replaced every other moment I had with him.

With my eyes closed, I know the man in front of me isn’t Kane. His voice is different despite having the exact same DNA as his twin. They always sounded different, and they each made me feel different emotions. Kane’s voice was deeper and somehow softer, whereas Asher was more assertive, sure of himself in everything he did, and his ego would strengthen his voice.

“I’m here. We’ll get through it all again, Delilah,” he says softly while reaching for me. His warm palm ghosts over my cheek and he sighs. “You were better. You can be better again.”

My eyes open and blur as my voice cracks. “This isn’t my life.”

As much as the pain is telling me it’s real, my other senses are all arguing over each other, trying to convince me that it isn’t true. I know it isn’t. I can’t just make up a decade of memories—of a life.

But Asher thumbs my tears away and shifts closer to me. Everything about him is softer as he gently argues, “It is.”

“Were you the person chasing me?” I ask.

Shaking his head slowly, he speaks in his new gentle cadence. “No one has been chasing you.”

Yes, they were.I know they were. I have the bruise and I press my fingers deeper into it as a reminder that it exists.

“He was chasing me on the cliff, and I fell. I nearly went over the side into the water, but he pulled me back.”

I can’t remember his face, but he’s been following me for months. I think he has anyway. Small things would happen, like I would come home from the diner and something had been moved in my apartment or my clothes had been rearranged in my closet. I could have been imagining it or forgotten that I’d cleaned the dishes before I left.

Knock, knock.

Yet the two words are there in my memory. I know them, they send a cold chill through my bones, but neither the man’s face nor his voice are able to be recalled. He grabbed me, stopped me going over the edge, and then it’s just…blank, fuzzy.

Asher shakes his head again and he’s closer; his thigh brushes my limp hand at my side, but there’s no anger in his voice.

“We’re landlocked, baby. What cliff?”

“Where are we?”

“Montana,” he answers easily. “You wanted to move into the wilderness to raise our kids.”

My bottom lip wobbles and I don’t even blink as I whisper, “We have kids?”

I’d remember having children. I think I would anyway. I need to wake up from this strange dream and get back to my life. I’m probably tired from pulling a double at Carol’s Diner and my mind is making up a false reality where I get to rest. Where I get to experience some twisted form of a future I grew up thinking I would have.

But Asher stops me from waking up as he says, “No, we’re trying. You were in a good place, so we thought it was the perfect time. Don’t think about that now.” He smiles as he strokes my cheek. “We’ll have all the time in the world once you’re healthy again.”

My eyes close, refusing to give the obvious argument that I’m clearly healthy. He doesn’t disturb me or force me to speak. My skin warms as he stares at me, and I turn on my side to escape it. The new Asher moves silently and the only way I know he’s standing next to me is due to the sheets sliding up my body. He doesn’t pull them up to my chin and my breathing shallows as grief mixes into my confusion.

Have I spent all this time hoping my best friend will come back?

If I have, why?

Why did my mind create a narrative that left me without Asher or Kane? Why the fuck did it send him away hating me?

A gentle hand strokes over my hair and soft lips brush my temple as Asher whispers, “I’m not a boy anymore. I’m a man now, and I’m not making the same mistakes.”

Tears burn the back of my nose at his low confession. The old Asher would never admit there was anything he did wrong. He’s real though. I can feel each breath he takes against my skin. I can smell him. It’s the exact same scent he found when we were thirteen.

That particular memory is so vivid, yet I don’t know if I can trust it. I can recall the way he puffed his chest out and held his arm out to point at Kane, declaring he can’t steal it because they had to have their own identities. It’s clear as day. Clearer than whatever I’ve woken up to. So, I don’t stay in it, and I don’t fight the aches in my body. I allow myself to feel them all at once without looking for a distraction. It hurts and it’s exhausting.

For the fourth day,I wake up in a dark room with sweat coating my entire body. The seat that has been perpetually occupied by Asher is empty. Only the moonlight filters through the naked branches beyond the hospital window.

He hasn’t been very forthcoming with information about where I am, other than telling me we’re in Montana, but this hospital isn’t normal. I’m not normal either. Yet my senses are alert and I search the shadowed room for the source of my instincts telling me there’s someone watching me.

Knock.

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