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DELILAH

“ T ell me again,” I demand as I sit myself up.

Asher doesn’t even hesitate as he lowers to sit on the edge of my hospital bed. His mouth opens and he traces the scar on his hand as he repeats the same information he’s been telling me in the days since I woke.

“We’re married,” he says to the scar before he tilts his head and looks at me with his lips in a flat line. There are small creases in the corner of his eyes. The last time I was in front of him, he was laid in a silk-cushioned casket wearing a suit. Now, he’s sitting in front of me in a dark t-shirt and jeans. Normal. That’s the only thing that springs to mind, that he is normal. Other than the sadness and worry in his eyes, that’s new.

I shake my head and keep my voice low, so the doctor doesn’t hear outside of the doors. “No, how are you alive?”

He turns to face me fully and the ring on his finger is what my eyes choose to focus on as he lifts his hand to cup my cheek. The Asher I remember was not gentle—he wasn’t kind, or caring. Especially when we were alone and I’d done something he found embarrassing. But this one is. This one doesn’t have the arrogance that initially drew me to him. This Asher is kind and patient. He doesn’t force me to do anything or reap satisfaction from my misery.

His eyes are muted as he softly whispers, “I have always been alive.” He runs his fingers through his hair and blows out a long breath that slightly puffs his cheeks out. It’s the same tell he had when he was alive. The one that would buy him time before a difficult conversation.

“You struggled after the fire,” he says, before drawing in a breath. “You wouldn’t accept that he was dead. That you caused it?—”

“I didn’t,” I weakly defend.

Kane was alive. He ran to me, I remember it. He wrapped his arms around me and made sure I was safe. But Asher is in front of me. Asher, who should be dead. He should be dust, but his palm is warm as he presses it deeper against my cheek.

“It’s okay, we’ve gotten past it.”

I pinch my thigh, feeling the dull ache that tells me this is real. The bruise is already purple, and it covers my entire hip from where I fell near the cliff edge. The only time Asher has left me alone is when I went to the bathroom, but he was waiting for me. The hospital is too silent now that the monitor isn’t attached to me. There’s no beep to show I’m alive and I freeze as he stretches his thumb out. It’s not a violent touch. He strokes my brow. In the exact same way he always did.

But his eyes are different.

Everything is.

So, I stick to the facts to find a tether in my memories to prove I know what happened.

“You hated Kane,” I say.

He shakes his head, his eyelids dropping as he continues tracing my brow. It takes too long for him to speak, and when he does, his jaw tics.

“He’s my twin—” He takes a deep breath. “— was my twin. I didn’t hate him, Delilah, I couldn’t hate him when he was part of me, and I was part of him. We were kids. Some of us do stupid shit because we’re not mature, but growing up changes that perspective and petty sibling rivalry doesn’t mean anything. Not anymore and not even then. It was just childish.”

I can’t marry up the person I know, my last memory of Asher, with the man in front of me. I lean away from his hand as I ask, “Do you even remember what you did?” He just stares at me, so I add, “This might be the truth to you. You might be alive, but you are not a loving husband. Whatever this is, a fucked up dream or some psychosis I’m experiencing, doesn’t mean shit.”

The last time we were together, he wasn’t a loving husband. He was a dickhead, screaming at me. Then he died. I hated him in those final moments, but I mourned him. I grieved the loss of both brothers. They were gone after a childhood of only ever having them and I was alone. I lost them both and as much as I hated Asher in the lead up to his death, I still missed him because there’s a familiar comfort in knowing someone since childhood. Even when they possess hands that are only ever capable of harming you.

My eyes close and I know it was real. His eyelashes were burnt, and the smell was putridly sweet. Everything that happened around that time is foggy, but I can clearly remember that Kane wasn’t allowed at the service until everyone left. The prison guards escorted him to the gravesite in chains, each step clinking, and he looked so broken as he mechanically placed a handful of dirt on his brother’s already-filled grave.

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.

Knock.

The two words flash against the wall. A muted gray light like a laser pointer. It speeds up and the size changes. Each repetition changes the beat of my heart.

Knock.

Knock.

The corresponding words stick in my throat, and I can’t force them out. They choke me. There are only two—who’s there—but I can’t get them out.

Knock.

Knock.

I don’t blink as I stare at the patch of wall where the words were projected, waiting to see them again. There’s more discomfort without them than the fear of seeing them. If they’re real then so are my memories. If they’re real, this isn’t.

Asher isn’t. He’s really dead.

But they don’t come.

My heart leaps out of my chest, pulling a scream from me at the soft thud against the door. The room slowly illuminates as a strip of light works its way through and I scramble off the bed. In my haste to get away, I slam into the rolling table, and it trips me. A shadowed figure of a man steps through the door he’s just opened, and my senses are distorted as I continue screaming.

“Delilah, it’s me,” Asher says softly as I huddle in the corner of the room.

He holds both hands up before slowly reaching for the light switch. My eyes burn as electricity hums, and the fluorescent lights blind me. The coaxing voice continues as his steps come closer.

“Do you know who I am?”

I shake my head to get the fractured pieces of my mind to fall in the right place and whisper, “Asher?”

It comes out as a question, and I squint as my vision adjusts to the new light. It’s still blurry around the edges and distorts his features, so they’re all hard lines, and it adds tension to his jaw. Blinking it away, he’s softer again. He takes small steps forward like I’m a threat, with his voice slow and melodious.

“Yeah, Lilo, I’m Asher. Do you want to get back in bed?”

My breath stutters, and I shake my head.

“It was on the wall,” I whisper, pointing in the direction of where the words were.

Without looking over his shoulder, he asks, “What’s on the wall?”

“Knock. Knock.”

His steps don’t falter, and he’s standing in front of me. I have to look up, more than I did when we were teenagers. That out of all things makes it all real. The fact I look up after years of keeping my chin tucked to my chest because I never knew if my parents would pop out and drag me back to the institution. It’s what made me push everyone away before they could get close and why I’m fucked because there’s no one who can tell me that my memories are real.

Wrapping both arms around me, Asher pulls me into his chest, and I slam into hard muscle. A man’s body. It’s stiffer and he mechanically strokes down my back as he softly kisses the top of my head.

“We’ll change your meds, and the words will disappear again,” he says carefully.

I don’t know who he is. If he’s real or not. But I break down, despite the fact I don’t fully recognize him. I don’t recognize me . It’s all too much and the information is drowning me, weighing me down, and pulling me beneath the surface where my own mind is fighting against me.

I want to go home but I don’t even know where home is. It would be a feeling of somewhere that would be familiar and if I don’t have the correct memories, I’ll never be able to find it.