Turn The Page (Kissed by A Muse Book 2)

by S. K Munt

‘It isn’t. It was, but it shouldn’t be so I’m getting over it now that I’ve said my piece,’ Leigh said blithely, crossing the path and stepping up onto the deck of the building and making her way down to the dock. ‘But I left you with some reading material so just take my advice already, and read it okay?’

  Please, not another scene! Let me have the last word then go read Miss Praser’s words, so I can stop feeling like I’m needed to step up here!

  ‘You didn’t say ANYTHING that made sense, you nutcase! You brained me with a book and then vamoosed!’ He was panting. ‘Do you have any idea how many customers you scared away?’

  Leigh laughed, increasing her strides to compensate for the way he and his long legs were gaining on her. ‘Hate to break it to you Ryan, if that’s even your real name- which it is NOT, FYI- but you were busking with your guitar case closed...’

  ‘That’s because I’m not trying to earn chump change, Miss Know-It-All. I get paid to play there by one of the local restaurants three days a week, three times a day.’

  Leigh glanced at him over her shoulder, surprised by his jactation. ‘What? Why would they pay a musician to play away from their business?’ And then she laughed. ‘Oh, ha ha! Did you used to play near them and scare every one off?’

  ‘You KNOW that’s not it,’ Ryan smirked, not taking her petty insult to heart for even a second. ‘They do it because I draw a crowd in a crowded area, and while I’ve got them riveted, an attractive young lady comes down and hands out fliers for the meal specials.’ He adjusted his strap over his arm and loped forward, falling in step with her. ‘The crowd sometimes gives me change, regardless of the fact that I have my case closed and nowhere for them to put it, so I stuff in the tip jar at the restaurant and in exchange, the waitresses hand out flyers for my gigs.’

  Leigh tore her eyes away from his face and tried not to pout sullenly. Damn him and his talent! And the way his eyes sparkled when suffering from a cocky spell! ‘Does it work?’

  ‘They make twice as much when I’m there than they do on my days off so I guess so,’ he retorted, in a tone that dared her to laugh again.

  ‘Yeah well, if it’s exposure you want, then you should thank me,’ Leigh said breezily, crossing the footpath. ‘I probably just got you on YouTube.’

  ‘How much you know about my life goals...’ A hand grabbed her arm roughly and spun her round and she yelped, caught off guard by his sudden change of tactic. ‘But we’re not talking about me- we’re talking about you and the screw you’re missing.’ He swiped his hair back off his face, exposing three or four square inches of perfection more, and Leigh felt winded by his beauty. He was just so… bright, but dark at the same time. Contrast of hot and cold, pearly teeth against glossy dark brows, pink lips against olive skin, twilight eyes against the whitest of whites. ‘What happened back there?’

  I can tell you what screw I’m missing… oh cripes! Get me away from this man before I lick him to death!

  ‘I already-’ Leigh wambled her way out of his grip, frustrated and mostly with herself and her physical responses to the man she wanted to snuff out before he set her on fire. ‘Gah! I don’t want to have to spell this out for you! It’s too weird! Just-’ she pointed to the book. ‘Read that, okay? It’ll answer all your questions without my assistance.’

  ‘You think I’m going to take a book recommendation from a woman who threw Fifty Shades Of Grey in my face last night, like it was of some sort of literary import? Ha! Thanks, but I’ll stick with The Times for my picks, while you scrape the bottom of the literotica barrel.’

  Leigh spun around on the steps leading up to the dock and got in his face. ‘Screw you, Weaver, I read everything- from the trash to the classics, so don’t even try to get on that high horse with me, or I’ll toss you off and have it buck you in your perfect face!’

  Ryan recoiled, but he looked more amused than affronted. ‘Again with the face? Honey, if you want me that badly then please for both our sake’s- just try asking nicely and I’ll see if I can’t muster up a pity screw, to replace the one you’re missing.’

  It was the ‘Honey’ that did it this time. ‘Oh you know what?!’ she exploded, fear of confrontation dissolving. ‘After Bruce told me about your condition, I actually felt sorry for you. I actually gave you the benefit of the doubt! But you don’t deserve either- clearly it’s for the best that you’ve lost your memory, because it was probably just twenty years of slimy, worthless data that belongs at the bottom of Niagara Gorge anyway, if who you are without it is THIS grotesque!’

  Ryan looked like she’d punched him in the stomach, and he retreated back a step. ‘Carter told you about my accident? And you’re throwing it in my face like I deserved it? I was almost killed!’

  ‘No! No I came down here to apologize to you this morning! To explain myself calmly, but then you saw me and you made that comment in front of everyone and embarrassed me and I realised that I have NOTHING to feel bad about because memory loss or not- you’re just plain MEAN.’

  Ryan’s eyes narrowed. ‘You came down here to throw my iPad back in my face in front of a bunch of people, yet you’re calling me mean?’ He gave her a disgusted look. ‘I smiled at you yesterday because you were beautiful and I’m a guy, and you had a book in your hands and I love girls who read…’ he snorted. ‘Sorry- I thought I loved girls who read but clearly that’s just one more muddled memory...’

  Leigh felt a flash of some nondescript emotion surge through her but she twisted her heart away from it and focused on the more prominent feelings swirling through her. ‘Yeah, well it must be because I don’t think you could handle a woman smart enough to be literate if you tried- though you have been trying awfully hard, from what I can gather.’

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ His eyes were neon again. ‘Quit speaking in riddles.’

  ‘Fine.’ Leigh stepped down a step and held the book up in Ryan’s face, fit to be tied and ready to do whatever it took to clarify the embrangled situation. ‘What is this to you?’

  ‘Um… What is a Book, Alex?’ He leaned around the outside of it and jogged his brows. ‘Did I pass the IQ test? Did I? Can I ‘Do you’ now and fix what ails yah?’

  Leigh growled and thrust it closer to his nose. ‘Try again!’

  Ryan smacked it down without looking at it. ‘The book you carry around like it’s a pet, but leave behind and thump people with like it’s a weapon?’

  But Leigh was done with the exchange of barbed words. ‘Touché, but all that aside…’ she held it up again. ‘Is this, or is this not, the book you chose to model yourself after when you went with the name, Ryan Weaver?’

  ‘Eh?’ Ryan looked form her, to the book, and then squinted at her. ‘I don’t even understand that question! I modelled? Is that how you know me?’ He rubbed his jaw and glanced out at the river. ‘Huh… that makes sense, and definitely explains the way panties drop-’

  Leigh thumped him with the book again. ‘IQ test FAIL, Ryan! I’ll rephrase so you can understand… Did you, or did you not- name yourself Ryan Weaver, after the character in this book?’

  Ryan was rubbing his head and glaring at her. ‘Okay for starters- I’ve never read that book. Secondly- I didn’t name myself- the woman who rescued me did- and thirdly... my name’s in that book? Cool.’ He swiped it from her hand and flipped it over, his eyes scanning the blurb.

  He didn’t name himself? Oh my gosh!

  After about ten seconds of reading, Ryan smirked ‘...Undying love… erotic romance…’ his eyes lifted to hers. ‘Huh. Case in point…’ he looked down again and read on and then suddenly, his face drew tighter. ‘Musician Ryan Weaver? Niagara Falls?’ He looked up at her, a puzzled expression on his face. ‘For real?’

  Leigh was too stuck on one of the first things he’d said to answer him. ‘You were named by the woman who rescued you?’

  Ryan nodded, flipping the book over and studying the front. ‘Sort of.’ He held up his right hand and wriggled the pewter ring at her. Up clo
se, Leigh could see that it was a simple silver band with deeply etched music notes ringing it, and that the pads of three of his fingers were calloused. ‘This ring was all I was wearing when I was found and it says ‘For Ryan’ inside the band. And Imogen suggested Weaver as a surname, reckoned it suited me and I love the song Dream Weaver so I agreed thinking it would just be temporary, you know? Until my real name came back to me...’ He held up the book and took a step closer to her. ‘Who is Kathryn Praser? I’ve never heard of her before but it seems like she’s heard of me... When was this published?’

  ‘A year ago,’ Leigh said quietly, while her mind slapped desperately at the thought of: ‘His name is ACTUALLY Ryan?!’ To get a grip on it, but slid off clumsily.

  Ryan lifted his eyebrows. ‘But I wasn’t Ryan Weaver a year ago. I don’t know who I was, but I couldn’t have been a busker in Niagara Falls named Ryan Weaver, or someone would have recognised me by now, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘You’d assume as much…’

  His name is Ryan? His name is Ryan!! What the hell?

  Ryan’s face screwed up as he retreated into his own mind. ‘But… but if Imogen correctly guessed my last name… then she must have been a psychic or something, right? Or she knew more about me than she let on...?’

  ‘Or she was just a fan,’ Leigh pointed out; quietly rocked by him, and the certainty she suddenly had regarding his innocence. If he was playing dumb, then he ought to have been going for a Golden Globe rather than a Grammy because he looked genuinely lost. ‘Not of you, as you presumed I meant last night; a reader, not a music lover.’

  Ryan arched one brow at her. ‘That’s what you were saying? When you called yourself a fan?’ He tapped the book with one finger. ‘You meant, of the author’s?’

  No. I meant of the author’s creation, Ryan Weaver. But your answer is a lot less mortifying, so let’s stick with that, shall we?

  ‘That’s precisely what I meant.’ She nodded to the book. ‘It’s my favourite. It’s set here- and I came here because it made me want to see Niagara for myself. Then I step off the bus and- poof- Ryan Clone singing a jukebox track, just like in the book.’

  Ryan’s eyes were hooded with scepticism. ‘So… when I assumed that you meant you were a fan of mine, and that you recognised me because we’d…’ he read the answer in her eyes, and had the grace to redden and look away. ‘Okay… okay I get it now.’

  ‘And I get why you assumed that,’ she admitted grudgingly, ‘but only now that I know that you’re memories have been erased.’ She tugged on her ponytail again. ‘But if other women are constantly running up to you all excited, taking pictures with you- or cussing you out like I did, as Bruce said, then I think it’s safe to assume that they all either associate you with Ryan from the book and get excited to meet a likeness, or think you’re trying to sell them on it to bed them or get money for singing or whatever- basically working it- and offending them.’ She sighed. ‘I was coming down to tell you, after having put a copy on your iPad, when you looked up at me and made that shitty remark.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ryan was quiet for a moment, appraising her- his eyes running up and down her, and softening. Leigh lifted her chin and tried not to look psychotic. ‘So… you thought I was playing some character intentionally?’ his brow creased when Leigh nodded. ‘Okay… but what does it even matter if I was? It’s just a book, for fuck’s sake. That’s like a fan of Joan Jett smacking Britney Spears over the head because she covered I love Rock ‘N Roll.’

  Leigh laughed, thinking of some of the obsessed, fan-girling readers she knew and how crazy they could get, and then thinking of One Direction Fans and how crazy they could get, and shrugged at Ryan. ‘What makes people act more passionately, than books and music? And that book is pretty huge at the moment and has been for a while. I mean, it got me to Niagara Falls when originally, I planned to end the Canadian leg of my tour in Halifax, and then go back to New York via Vermont...’ She held out her hands. ‘But here I am.’ She glanced over her shoulder and sighed with relief when she saw how many blue-poncho wearing people had converged around the gangplank of The Maid Of the Mist. She could bolt before the conversation got any more embarrassing, or before his softened demeanour could make him that much more beautiful in her eyes. ‘And speaking of my tour… I have to-’ she jerked her head towards the boat.

  Ryan stepped up, so that they were eye to eye. ‘Wait… you’re just gonna drop me on this and then leave?’

  ‘Um… yeah?’ Leigh glanced at the book in his hands. ‘I mean, what I else can I say? Okay, I owe you an apology, I guess-’

  ‘By my count, you owe me at least five.’ His expression became contrite, and he lifted his thumbnail to bite down on it again. ‘As I owe you, for being so presumptuous. But… can’t we talk about this? I mean… I have so many questions!’

  ‘But I don’t have any answers for you Ryan, not unless they’re about plot twists and whatnot. If you want to shift what you know about yourself into the non-fiction section, then you need to talk to this Imogen woman, or your friends or-’

  ‘Imogen’s dead,’ he said, looking forlorn. He slid his hand down to tug on his chain again and squint out at the boat, and his eyes were bluer than the ice shelves forming on the top of the falls, even in profile as he added softly: ‘And she was my only friend.’

  Oh my god... he’s all alone! What happened to her? How did he get to be here? On a scale of one to ten, how evil is it that I keep looking at his ass every time he twists around?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, thinking how odd it was that both he and the fictional him had lost a girl via tragedy.

  ‘Yeah, I know…’ he wet his lips and looked back at her. ‘Please, Leigh… I don’t want to be alone right now. I know that you and I haven’t exactly hit it off… but we don’t have to hate on each other now that we’re both on the same page with clear eyes, do we?’

  Leigh felt butterflies flutter within her tummy, and wished that she had a teeny tiny can of bug spray to swallow. She looked him in the eye, and scanned them for traces of deceit. ‘I don’t think it’s the best idea given how easily we manage to piss each other off...’

  ‘We’ll be fine.’ Ryan laughed and patted her shoulder as he walked toward the ticket office, and his sudden upswing in mood made her wonder just how lonely the guy was, to find the prospect of her prolonged company, soothing. ‘People are like songs, you know? The most annoying ones, are the ones that are guaranteed to make you grin every time you think of them forever, even if you do shake your head- they end up holding the top spots on the soundtrack to your life...’ he winked at her as her knees turned to noodles. ‘Anyway, hold that thought- I’ll be back in a minute...’

  Leigh didn’t have to hold that thought however, because he’d just quoted one of her favourite lines from the book verbatim. Rocked all over without him having played a note, Leigh turned to the railing and stared down the river, shaking her head, stupefied and uttered the F-word for the first time in her life.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  The falls poured on behind her, whispering secrets to the wind, and sweeping her question downstream where the answer lay at the bottom of the oblivious waters.

  Seven

  Leigh felt ridiculous in her poncho and began to overheat twenty seconds after she’d first donned it, feeling smothered by the way it clung to her skin of her neck and wrists, while the jacket she’d kept on beneath it, at Ryan’s insistence, warmed her until she began to feel nauseous.

  But the moment that the boat began to move, Leigh understood why Ryan had advised her to keep it on, because the brumal wind whipping up off the white water reached under her clothes like frigid, relentless fingers. She zipped her iPad into her bag after fetching out her phone, choosing to take photos with that and risk losing it over the side of the boat rather than her new ‘baby.’

  ‘I can’t believe you went out and bought an iPad when you had a free one just sitting there,’ Ryan said, taking her bag over
the crook of his arm and steering her towards the side of the boat so that they could get a better view. He had to speak loudly to be heard over the barge’s engine and the whooshing water, but he still managed to keep his tone intimate and conversational. ‘I seriously didn’t want it.’

  ‘I didn’t want a hand-out,’ Leigh said, marvelling at the way his hand spanned from one of her shoulder blades to the other while afraid that she was going to start sweating again because he was touching her. ‘I get them a lot, and I’m over it. If I drop something, I should pay to replace it, you know?’

  Ryan looked down at her, his expression thoughtful. ‘Actually, I sort of do. The woman who rescued me, Imogen?’ He sighed and eased them between two solo figures, sliding his hand down to the middle of her back as he angled himself through the gap. ‘Well, she did a lot more than save me.’

  I’ll bet she did...

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah. She came to see me in the hospital every single day after and took care of me. She brought me clothes and treats and when I was ready to be released, she ordered me to come back to her place and live with her until I found a job and an apartment.’ He shook his head and looked out at the falls, smiling faintly. ‘I was like, this stray animal that she wanted to nurse back to health. Days turned to weeks and weeks to months… and even though I knew that I was taking advantage of her kindness, I stayed because the attention was just so healing, you know? It’s funny how a home-cooked meal can fix what medication can’t.’

  ‘She sounds very… hospitable,’ Leigh ventured, holding out her hand and catching droplets of the horizontal rain blowing across the gorge on her palm, to distract herself from the placement of his palm. ‘You shouldn’t feel bad about taking her help though, because no one offers that much assistance unless they’re getting something from it too- some sort of pay-off.’

  Niagara Falls! I’m touching Niagara Falls! Next to Ryan Weaver! Note to self- get a selfie and upload instantly WITHOUT a caption just to see what kind of reaction I get!