I sigh, hating that she’s falling asleep thinking about it. “I’m worried,” I tell her. “I don’t want it to happen again. But I’m not scared, because this time I know where you are.”
If it were possible to hear a smile, hers would be a love song.
“Goodnight, Silas,” she says quietly.
Her shoulders rise and fall when she lets out a deep sigh. Her breathing begins to taper off after only a few minutes, and I know she’s asleep.
Before I close my eyes, she readjusts her position slightly and I catch a glimpse of her tattoo. The silhouette of trees is peeking out of the top of the back of her shirt.
I wish there was a letter that would have described the night we got these tattoos. I would give anything to have that memory back—to see what it was like between us when we loved each other enough to believe it was forever.
Maybe I’ll dream about that night if I fall asleep thinking about it.
I close my eyes, knowing this is exactly how it’s supposed to be.
Charlie and Silas.
Together.
I don’t know why we ever started drifting apart, but I’m certain of one thing: I’ll never allow it to happen again.
I press a soft kiss into her hair. Something I’ve probably done a million times, but the drunken, one-winged moths fluttering around in my stomach make it feel like the very first time.
“Goodnight, Charlie baby.”
I wake up to sunlight.
It’s streaming through the window and warming my face. I roll over to look for Silas, but his pillow is empty.
For a moment, I’m afraid that he’s left me, or that someone has taken him. But then I hear the clink of a cup and the sound of him moving. I squeeze my eyes shut gratefully. I can smell food. I roll over.
“Breakfast,” he says. I crawl out of bed feeling self-conscious about the way I must look. I comb my fingers through my hair and wipe the sleep from my eyes. Silas is sitting at the desk, sipping on coffee and writing something down on paper.
I pull up a chair and seat myself across from him and grab a croissant, tucking my hair behind my ears. I don’t want to eat, but I do anyway. He wants us to be well rested and fed before the clock strikes 11:00 am. But my stomach is full of nerves, thinking about how it felt waking up with no memory two days ago. I don’t want that to happen again. I didn’t like it then, and I won’t like it this time.
Every few seconds, he glances up at me and our eyes lock before he goes back to work. He looks nervous too.
After the croissant, I eat bacon, then the eggs, then a bagel. I finish off Silas’s coffee, drink my orange juice, and push my chair back from the table. He smiles and taps the side of his mouth. I reach up and dust the crumbs off my face, feeling warmth rise to my cheeks. He’s not laughing at me though. I know that.
He hands me a toothbrush still in its package and follows me to the bathroom. We brush our teeth together, eyeing each other in the mirror. His hair is standing on end, and mine is tangled. It’s sort of comical. I can’t believe I’m in the same room as the boy from my dreams. It feels surreal.
I look at the clock as we leave the bathroom. We have ten minutes to go. Silas has his notes ready, as do I. We lay them out on the bed so it’s all circling us. Everything we know is here. This time is going to be different. We’re together. We have Landon. We’re going to figure this thing out.
We sit, facing each other on the bed, our knees touching. From where I sit, I can see the red letters of the alarm clock hit 10:59.
One minute. My heart is racing.
I’m so afraid.
I begin the countdown in my head. 59…58…57…56…
I count down to thirty, and Silas suddenly leans forward. His hands cup my face. I can smell him; feel his breath on my lips.
I lose the time. I have no idea what second I’m supposed to be on.
“Never never,” he whispers. His warmth, his lips, his hands.
He presses his mouth to mine and kisses me deeply and I…
Copyright © 2016 by Colleen Hoover and Tarryn Fisher
All rights reserved.
Cover Designer: Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations, www.okaycreations.com
Interior Designer and Formatter: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Colleen Hoover: http://colleenhoover.com
Tarryn Fisher: http://www.tarrynfisher.com
For Jo Popper.
The first thing I notice is the pounding in my chest. It’s so fast it’s painful. Why would a heart need to pound this hard? I breathe deeply through my nose and open my eyes on the exhale.
Then I throw myself back.
Luckily, I’m on a bed and I tumble onto a mattress. I roll away from the man staring intently at me, and land on my feet. I squint at him while backing up. He’s watching me, but he hasn’t moved. This eases the pounding in my chest a little. A little.
He’s young. Not quite a man, maybe late teens or early twenties. I have the urge to run. A door…I need to find a door, but if I take my eyes off him, he may…
“Who the hell are you?” I ask. It doesn’t matter who he is. I just need to distract him while I find a way out of here.
He’s quiet for a moment as he sizes me up. “I was about to ask you the same thing,” he says.
His voice makes me stop shuffling sideways for a few seconds. It’s deep…calm. Deeply calm. Maybe I’m overreacting. I make to answer him—which would be the reasonable thing to do when someone asks you who you are—but I can’t.
“I asked you first,” I say. Why does my own voice sound so unfamiliar? I raise a hand to my throat and wrap it around my neck.
“I…” he hesitates. “I don’t know?”
“You don’t know?” I say in disbelief. “How could you not know?”
I spot the door and edge closer, keeping my eyes on him. He’s on his knees on the bed, but he looks tall. His shoulders are wide and pull against the t-shirt he’s wearing. If he comes at me, I doubt I’d be able to fight him off. My wrists look small. Look small? Why don’t I know that my wrists are small?
This is it. I have to do it.
I dart for the door. It’s only a few feet away; if I can get it open I can run for help. I scream as I run. It’s bloodcurdling, a real ear sore. My hand wraps around the knob and I look back to see where he is.
He’s in the same spot, his eyebrows raised. “Why are you screaming?”
I stop. “Why…why aren’t you coming after me?” I’m right in front of the door. Technically I can open the door and run out of here before he’s even off the bed. He knows that, and I know that, so why isn’t he trying to stop me?
He passes a hand over his face and shakes his head, sighing deeply. “What’s your name?” he asks.
I open my mouth to tell him it’s none of his business, and then realize that, I don’t know. I don’t know what my freaking name is.
In that case… “Delilah.”
“Delilah…?” he asks.
It’s pretty dark, but I swear he’s smiling. “Yeah…is that not good enough for you?”
He shakes his head. “Delilah’s a great name,” he says. “Listen…Delilah. I don’t know exactly what we’re doing here, but right behind your head there’s a piece of paper stuck to the door. Can you pull that off and read it?”
I’m afraid that if I turn around he’ll attack me. I reach a hand back without looking and feel around. I pull the piece of paper off the door an
d bring it in front of my face.
Charlie! Don’t open this door yet! That guy in the room with you…you can trust him. Walk back to the bed and read all the notes. They’ll explain everything.
“I think it’s for you,” I tell him. “Is your name Charlie?” I look back up at the guy on the bed. He’s reading something too. He looks up and holds a small white rectangle toward me.
“Look at it,” he says.
I take a step forward, and then another, and then another. It’s a driver’s license. I study the picture and then his face. Same person.
“If your name is Silas, who is Charlie?”
“You are,” he says.
“I am?”
“Yes.”
He bends to pick up a piece of notebook paper from the bed. “It says so right here.” He holds the paper out to me and I hand him back his driver’s license.
“Charlie isn’t a girl’s name,” I say. I start to read what’s written on the pages and everything else falls away. I drop heavily to the edge of the bed and sit down.
“What the hell?”
The Silas guy is reading too. His eyes trace over the paper he holds in front of his face. I sneak looks at him while he’s reading, and when I do, my heart beats a little bit faster.
I read more. I grow more and more confused. The notes are supposedly from me and this guy, but nothing makes any sense. As I’m reading, I grab a nearby pen and copy the paper I found on the door, to see if I really did write it myself.
The handwriting is a perfect match.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I say. “This is nuts!” I put the page down and shake my head. How can any of this be true? It’s like reading a novel. Lost memories, fathers who betrayed their families, voodoo. My god. Suddenly I feel like I want to barf.
Why can’t I remember who I am? What I did yesterday? If what these notes say are true…
I’m about to voice this when Silas hands me another sheet of paper.
You only have 48 hours. Do not focus on why you can’t remember things or how weird it all feels. Focus on figuring this out before you forget again.
~Charlie
It’s my handwriting again. “I’m convincing,” I say.
He nods.
“So…where are we?” I turn around in a full circle, noticing the freshly eaten food on the table. Silas points to one of those little paper tents on the nightstand. A hotel. In New Orleans. Great.
I’m walking toward the window to take a peek outside when there’s a knock at the hotel door. We both freeze and look in that direction.
“Who is it?” Silas yells at the door.
“It’s me!” A voice replies.
Silas motions for me to go stand on the other side of the room, away from the door. I don’t.
I’ve only known myself for a few minutes, but I can tell I’m stubborn.
Silas unlatches the deadbolt and pulls the door open just a little. A scruffy brown head bobs around the door.
“Hey,” the boy says. “I’m back. 11:30 sharp, just like you said.”
He has his hands stuffed in his pockets and his face is red like he’s been running. I look from him to Silas, and back to him. They look alike.
“You know each other?” I ask.
The younger, lookalike version of Silas nods his head. “We’re brothers.” He says this loudly while pointing first to Silas and then himself. “I am your brother,” he says again, looking at Silas.
“So you said,” Silas says with a slight grin on his face. He glances at me, then back at Landon. “Mind if I take a look at your ID?”
The boy rolls his eyes but pulls a wallet out of his back pocket.
“I like that cool, rolling your eyes thing you have going on,” Silas says as he opens the boy’s wallet.
“What’s your name?” I ask him.
He tilts his head, narrowing his eyes at me. “I’m Landon,” he tells me, as if I should know this. “The better-looking Nash brother.”
I smile weakly as Silas looks over Landon’s ID. He’s a good kid. You can tell by his eyes.
“So,” I say, looking at Silas. “You don’t know who you are, either? And we’re trying to figure this all out together? And every forty-eight hours we forget again?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Sounds about right.”
This feels like a dream. Not reality.
And then it hits me. I’m dreaming. I burst into laughter, just as Landon hands me a sack. I think my laughter caught him by surprise.
“What’s this?” I ask, opening the sack.
“You asked me to bring you a change of clothes.”
I look down at the gown I’m wearing, and then at the clothes. “Why am I wearing this?”
He shrugs. “That’s what you were wearing last night when Silas found you.”
Silas pushes open the bathroom door for me. The clothes have tags on them, so I pull them off and begin to change. A cute black top with long sleeves and jeans that fit like they were made for me. Who gets new clothes in their dreams?
“I love this dream!” I yell through the bathroom door.
When I’m finished changing, I swing open the door and clap my hands together. “All right, boys. Let’s go. Where to?”
I make a quick check of the hotel room as Charlie and Landon file out. I grab the empty trash sack out of the small can under the desk and shove all of our notes into it. When I’m certain I have everything, I follow Charlie and Landon outside.
Charlie is still smiling when we reach the car. She honestly thinks this is a dream, and I don’t have the heart to tell her it isn’t. It’s not a dream. It’s actually a nightmare and we’ve been living it for more than a week now.
Landon climbs inside the car, but Charlie waits for me by the back door. “You want to ride in the front with your brother?” she asks, forming air quotes with her fingers.
I shake my head and reach around her to open the door. “No, you can ride in the front.” She begins to turn when I grab her arm. I lean down to her ear and whisper. “You aren’t dreaming, Charlie. This is real. Something is happening to us and you need to take it seriously so we can figure it out, okay?”
When I pull back, her eyes are wide. The smile is gone from her face and she doesn’t nod. She just gets in the car and closes the door.
I claim my spot in the back seat and pull my phone out of my pocket. There’s a reminder set on it, so I open it.
Go to the police station first. Get the backpack and read every note and journal entry you can…as fast as you can.
I close out the reminder, knowing I’ll get about five more reminders in the next two hours. I know this…because I remember setting every single one of them last night.
I remember writing all the notes in this small hotel trash bag that I have clutched tightly in my hand.
I remember grabbing hold of Charlie’s face right before the clock struck 11:00a.m.
I remember whispering never never to her, right before I kissed her.
And I remember ten seconds after our lips touched…she pulled back and had no idea who I was. She had no memory of the last forty-eight hours.
Yet…I remembered every single minute of the last two days.
I just couldn’t tell her the truth. I didn’t want to scare her, and making her believe I was in the same situation as her seemed to be the more comforting option.
I don’t know why I didn’t forget this time, or why she did. I should be relieved that whatever the hell has been going on with us seems to be over for me, but I’m not relieved at all. I’m disappointed. I would rather have lost my memory again with her than to have her be alone in this. At least when we were in it together, we knew it was something we could work out together.
What seemed to be a pattern has now been broken, and I feel like this just makes it even more difficult to figure out. Why was I spared this time? Why was she not? Why do I feel like I can’t be honest with her? Have I always shouldered this much guilt?
I still
don’t know who I am, or who I used to be. I only have the last forty-eight hours to go by, which isn’t much. But it’s still better than the half hour of memories Charlie has.
I should just be honest with her, but I can’t. I don’t want this to scare her, and I feel like the only comfort she has right now is knowing she’s not alone in this.
Landon keeps glancing back at me, and then looking at her. I know he thinks we’ve lost our minds. We sort of did lose our minds, but not in the way he’s thinking.
I like him. I wasn’t sure if he’d show up this morning like I asked him to, since he’s still doubtful. I like that he doubts us, but his loyalty to me trumps his reasoning. I’m sure very few people have that quality.
We’re mostly quiet on the way to the police station, until Charlie turns to Landon and glares at him.
“How do you know we aren’t lying to you?” she asks him. “Why would you even humor us unless you have something to do with what’s happened to us?” She’s more suspicious of him than she is of me.
Landon grips the steering wheel and glances at me in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know that you both aren’t lying. For all I know, you’re getting a kick out of this. Ninety percent of me thinks you two are full of shit and have nothing better to do. Five percent of me thinks maybe you’re telling the truth.”
“That’s only ninety-five percent,” I pipe in from the backseat.
“That’s because the other five percent of me thinks I’m the one who has gone crazy,” he says.
Charlie laughs at that.
We pull in to the police station and Landon finds a parking spot. Before he turns off the car, Charlie says, “Just to be clear, what do I need to say? That I’m here for my backpack?”
“I’ll go in with you,” I tell her. “The note said everyone thought you were missing and that I was suspected in your disappearance. If we go in together, they’ll have no reason to pursue anything further.”
She gets out of the car, and as we’re walking into the police station, she says, “Why don’t we just tell them what’s going on? That we can’t remember anything?”
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