Page 8 of Devious Delusions

His lips don’t move away from my skin as he walks us into a room and lowers to sit on the edge of a bed. My biceps tingle from how tightly I’m holding on to him. Not once does he complain. He just holds me. He’s the same person I fell in love with, my first love, and he’s grown up now. Without the arrogance of a teenager, he’s back to being perfect for me

I need to fill the gaps and rewrite over the false memories. There’s no easy way to ask him so I brace for an argument as I ask, “What’s our life like?”

There’s no outburst, when the old Asher would get pissed at me for forgetting things. I’d do the same to him. But now we’re older, we’ve matured, and we’re the same and different. It’s like we’ve kept the parts that worked well when we were teenagers and outgrew the immature habits. He gives me a small smile as I roll my head on his shoulder and look up. Tucking my hair behind my ear, he traces my jaw with the side of his finger.

“Our life is pretty perfect. Do you remember what you wanted when we were kids?” he asks, with hope brightening his eyes. “How you wanted to be able to travel and come home to a library filled with old books so you could feel like a philosopher when you’d really only read the?—”

“The sweet books because old people’s thoughts put me to sleep,” I finish for him.

His smile gets wider and he nods. “Yeah, that’s our life. We had chickens for a while, but they were a pain in the ass when they’d get their feathers everywhere.”

Comfort washes over me because those are things I do remember. I may not know if they happened, but I know that isthe life we discussed. Every stupid thought and whim I had as a teenager is being narrated as an experience rather than a wish.

“We went to Paris after I graduated. We stayed for a few months.”

I nod and deflate. He notices the change and softens his voice to bring the topic to an end. “All the photos are in the case in the living room if you want to look through them. I’m going to shower. There’s food in the fridge, and there are no passwords on anything so you can use whatever you want.”

Sliding off his lap, I sit on the edge of the bed and look around the room. The walkway is in view through the windows and I crane my neck to peer around the edge to see what it leads to. The layout downstairs doesn’t match the outside of the building.

Asher moves around the room and I ask, “What’s in that building?”

He doesn’t pause as he removes his watch and ring. “The last owners had a studio they rented out. It’s separate from the main house.”

“Does anyone live there?”

Clothes rustle, pulling my attention back to the room in time to watch him remove his t-shirt. There’s a scar on his back. It stretches from the center of his shoulder blades down to his right hip. The jagged line is wide, and it must be old. There’s no information in my mind on how he could have got it and I lose all thoughts of it as he turns.

He’s always been muscular, but that’s nothing in comparison to what is standing in front of me. My cheeks heat the longer I look at him. Or specifically, his muscled chest. The arrogance is still there, and he smirks as he teases, “Happy about who you married now?”

I splutter over an excuse and look away to ignore the fact I’m blushing. He walks towards me with his t-shirt held looselyin his fist. The large windows show his reflected image getting closer until he reaches down and holds my wrist.

My gaze follows the movement as he brings my hand flat to his chest. The smirk is darker, as are his eyes. “You’re my wife, don’t shy away from me.” I just blink and he continues, “Does this help you know that this is real?”

I can feel his heart speeding up under my fingers, the warmth of his skin, and the hard muscle. Appreciation isn’t only physical because it soothes my mind. If I can feel him I know this can’t be fake.

“Yeah, it does,” I whisper as I move my fingertips across his body.

His muscles twitch as I trace each muscle group and I don’t allow my eyes to drop from his face. My husband is my first love. It’s everything anyone could want. In spite of the childhood memories, he’s still a stranger, so I pull my hand back to stop petting him.

He doesn’t linger and goes into the adjoining bathroom, leaving the door open a crack. I’m not going to creep on him showering, so I leave the room. Without Asher’s presence, I can’t stop the previous years of memories telling me that they’re the only thing that’s real. No one has visited me. Well, it would be more confusing if they did, since I left my parents with my middle fingers in the air and refused to look back. Their influence stretched further than my childhood home and the paranoia of everyone’s intentions has kept my life insular. But Asher is here and if the magnitude of loss made him into this caring person again, why couldn’t it do the same for the people who brought me into this world?

A parent’s love is supposed to be unconditional, yet all of their rules and requirements for me to be acknowledged as their daughter have only made me wish for them to change that much harder. The toxic, hurtful roots of hope sank deeper every timethey’d give me the silent treatment or pull their care away as a punishment. It created channels in my brain that craved doing everything they wanted to get one little morsel of attention from them. Ruby and Scarlet are better than me. They left and they’ve never tried to contact anyone else. They cut me out too because they knew I was weak and broken.

This can’t be a long dream loop and I’m not going to become the teenage version of myself who spent more time thinking about my parents than they did about me, so I search for evidence to convince my mind that it’s wrong. There’s a laptop sitting on the coffee table as I come down the stairs. I pause and check behind me before going straight to it. It’s already on and there’s no password when I open it, exactly like Asher said. The diner’s name is the first search result, complete with a phone number. The images on the review site match my memory. Even down to the shitty peeling sign on the outside that should read “Carol’s Diner” but the A and last R are missing.

I keep swiping through them all and the faces of the staff members are even familiar. One woman stands outside smoking a cigarette and I whisper, “Eve?” as I zoom into her uniform to see the printed name. It’s blurry but I can clearly make it out. It says Eve. I’m not crazy and whoever that fucker upstairs showering is, isn’t Asher.

Picking the laptop up, I look for somewhere to hide and walk to the furthest point of the house. The stupid glass walls make it harder and I lock myself in the downstairs bathroom.

Once I’m locked away, I sit on the closed toilet lid and a tremor takes over my hand as I search for the most important question I have surrounding Kane’s death. I don’t breathe as the circle moves like a snake eating its own tail before bringing up the results. The name isn’t recognized, so I plug more words into the stupid search bar.

Search: death murder trial Hampshire twin

There are no details on his arrest, the trial, or anything to indicate he existed apart from an old article in a school paper from an award he won. Everything from that point on shows he doesn’t exist. I don’t know why I expected it to be different when his family stopped the news of Asher’s death being reported.

Kane’s death. Not Asher’s. Because I’m married to Asher.

I can’t stop the niggling doubts because I knew the woman’s name in the photo, so I search deeper. Maybe I just altered facts about who died. Either way this isn’t my life. As much as it screams that it is, and all the details match everything I wanted up until the fire, it is not my life.

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