Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Ridge
Natasha Bedingfield is yelling inspiration into my ear at full volume as light floods in, way too much of it.
I blink, squint, try again, and finally register that I’m standing in a bright kitchen.
White tiles, big old farmhouse windows, flour dust suspended in the air, and in the middle of it all is her.
Blondie.
She’s at one of those huge wooden islands, elbows tucked in, hands sunk into a mountain of dough.
The song pours out of nowhere, but she’s humming along, half under her breath, a small smile tugging at her mouth.
A surprisingly beautiful smile, actually, and I like it a hell of a lot better than her sobs.
Her hair is twisted up messily, strands falling down her neck, and there’s a streak of flour on her cheek.
My fingers itch to brush over it as my gaze drops to her working hands.
They’re nothing like the long, spider-thin fingers I give my nightmare creatures.
No bony joints or claws, these are short, capable hands, soft at the knuckles, with little dimples where her fingers meet her palm.
Dough clings to her fingers, and her nails are short and neat, painted yellow as bright as the room. Tiny citrus slices grin up from a couple of them, and for one insane second, I wonder what they’d look like tangled with mine.
Then something small and soft bounces off the side of my head.
“Hey,” I snap, flinching away.
A muffin drifts past my shoulder. It rotates lazily midair, then floats up to join the choir?
Because there is, apparently, a choir.
Dozens of muffins float in the air. Every single one of them has a little smiley face iced on it, and they’re the ones belting the song, harmonizing Natasha-fucking-Bedingfield’s “Unwritten.”
I take three slow steps back, trying to get my bearings, watching another muffin drift by, giggling at me.
“What the actual fuck?”
Blondie doesn’t seem to notice the baked goods choir or the fact that one of them assaulted me. She keeps kneading, her pretty fingers working harder, while she’s now singing along with the muffins, slightly off-key.
I drag my gaze away from her hands and finally look down at my own.
Three fingers.
“This is a dream.” I breathe out…
… light loses its haze. The music stops sounding like it’s filtered through cotton, hitting my ears even louder.
And the scent—Christ, the scent—lemon, sugar, and warm dough rushes in.
The air itself seems to thrum, everything snapping into focus with that familiar jolt of lucidity hitting my bloodstream.
I’m dreaming.
And I slipped into her dream, again?
Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with her? I know a fucking lot is wrong with me, but this shit never happened before she came around.
The muffins keep belting the chorus, and Blondie keeps kneading.
Ridiculous. She’s ridiculous. Her hands are ridiculous. There’s nothing sexy about dough-covered fingers and citrus-slice nails, and the fact that my brain even flirted with the idea makes me want to throw myself into a wood chipper.
Another muffin clips me at the shoulder, and when I turn, a second one grazes my jaw and bursts into crumbs against me, scattering lemon-scented shrapnel down my shirt.
Ouch.
“Oh, come on,” I hiss, brushing at myself. “This is harassment.”
I snatch the next one, which is clearly aiming for my head, straight out of the air.
It’s warm, and I know exactly what kind of muffin this is.
Lemon blueberry. The same ones Derek brought over from her.
The same ones she made for me… or okay, us, whatever.
The ones he wouldn’t shut up about, and Melanie kept insisting I try.
The ones I didn’t touch out of pure spite because I was in a mood and didn’t want to encourage anyone’s enthusiasm.
But I can imagine how they’d taste because the scent of them has been haunting my apartment for hours, making it difficult to fall asleep.
If I try one in a dream, nobody can say I gave in and ate them, right?
Against my better judgment, against every judgment, I lift the muffin to my mouth and take a bite.
My eyes slip shut for half a second in pure, involuntary pleasure. Bright lemon, tart blueberry, soft buttery crumb, that hit of warm sugar that goes straight to the lizard part of my brain.
Oh my God.
It’s obscene.
“This is assault,” I mutter around another bite because, of course, I take another bite. When I let go, the half-eaten thing drifts right back into the air, joining its pristine, perfectly smiley buddies like some undead pastry corpse hovering among the choir.
If that’s not nightmare fuel, I don’t know what is.
“Yeah, I’m out.” I brush some crumbs off my chest. “I’d rather deal with the fucking forest than spend one more minute in Natasha Bedingfield’s Muffin Wonderland.”
I reach for the familiar slipstream.
Leaving someone else’s dream is usually effortless and way easier than entering it. Decide you want to leave, blink, fade, and gone. Except, nothing happens.
Huh? Every time I shared a dream before, even the last time with her, there was room to leave. I didn’t want to, but I could have. There was always a door tucked into the fog somewhere. Now it feels as if the walls have welded shut.
“What the hell?” I take a step back, then another, testing the edges of the dreamscape like pressure points. Every direction feels sealed, and an uneasy prickle climbs up my spine.
Nope. No. Absolutely fucking not.
“Wake up,” I command myself.
If I can’t slip back into my own subconsciousness, fine. I’d rather take another sleepless night than be in here any longer, and waking up is the only thing that always works, no matter what. But again, nothing happens.
I can’t leave my own dream, and I can’t wake up from hers.
Fear flickers, making my pulse tighten. Under normal circumstances, I’d be thrilled.
Dream stability like this? Being able to hold a lucid state this good, there is no chance of my getting bolted because I got myself too excited?
That’s the holy fucking grail. I’ve spent years wishing my mind would let me maintain control like this.
Except it’s not my dream, dammit.
Is she holding my unconsciousness hostage now?
I flick my gaze toward the big window, the heavy curtain beside it, and push a thought toward it. The fabric ripples, then, at my command, long, grotesque fingers slide out from behind it, nails dripping slow beads of red that patter softly onto the floor.
So I am lucid. I can build, twist, bend, and tear things open, then rearrange them however the hell I want. I’m not powerless in her dreamscape.
I just can’t get the hell out.
My stomach drops, and when I look back at her—this small, sweet-looking blonde woman smiling at a mound of dough—my irritation spikes even harder.
How the fuck is she doing it?
“Are you playing with me, sweetheart?” I bite out as rage tangles with the fear prickling at the edges of my ribs. Fear, I will happily deny until the day I die. “Because two can play that game.”
The corners of the kitchen darken at my will, like mold creeping across it. The white grout between the tiles seeps red, bleeding outward in branching veins. Darkness presses from inside the walls, stretching them, building the plaster as if it’s breathing.
A low sound crawls up from beneath the floor as monsters begin to take shape in the periphery, teeth grinding together in anticipation, shadows peeling themselves off the ceiling and slithering down toward the kitchen aisle.
I snicker to myself, adrenaline filling me because I can finally, finally, do what I do best again, but when I look at her, she hasn’t even noticed. Blondie’s shoulders are relaxed, and she looks peaceful. Her little smile hasn’t faltered.
Yet.
I know she’ll scream when I let the blood that is now pooling on the floor reach her feet. When I let the walls scream, her subconscious folds in on itself, and ejects her straight out of sleep with terror clawing up her throat.
That would be effective.
But then I remember how she looked curled in on herself on the floor, sobbing as if something inside her had snapped, and there was no fixing it.
How her fear felt in the air, vibrating under my skin, and how it lingered even after she vanished.
Ah, shit.
I grit my teeth and yank my monsters back. The shadows retreat, and the blood drains from the tiles, leaving them white again, as if it had never been there. The walls smooth themselves, and my monsters dissolve, their unfinished shapes sucked back into nothing.
I drag in a breath through my teeth, anger and restraint grinding together in my chest.
Ugh, fine.
I don’t want her fear sitting in my bones again. And it looks like she’s not even lucid. Maybe I can walk over there, interrupt her weird sunshine-baking montage, tell her she’s dreaming again, nudge her into wakefulness, and…
A new voice joins hers and the muffins, and I freeze. Standing beside Blondie is Tessa-fucking-Vaughn.
What—and I mean this with my whole exhausted, miserable heart—the actual fuck?
Tessa. The name Blondie whispered when I dragged her out of the path of that dream car. I didn’t think much of it. Too many names fly around in nightmares, and half of them aren’t real anyway, but this is not just any Tessa.
This is the Tessa. My cousin’s demise and the other tragedy locals whisper about under their breath.
My brain is fucking with me, or rather, her subconscious is. Hell, something is fucking with me, because she’s looking way too detailed and real for one of Blondie’s dream projections.
I narrow my gaze at Tessa and nudge at the edges of her form. Come on. Turn blue. Purple. Bald. Turn into a muffin.
Not even a flicker. She doesn’t waver or glitch, doesn’t do the translucent shimmer of dream fabric reacting to my interference. She ignores me completely and sings along with Blondie like she’s been here all along.
Fuck, can you even share a dream between more than two people?
Is that a thing?