Chapter Thirty-Seven
DREAMS OF THE WORST KIND
“NOOOO!”
I shot up in bed. My lungs gasped for air like a baby taking its first breath, but it felt more like my last as sweat beaded along my brow and rolled down my whole body, soaking my nightshirt.
“Lake!” Cage pulled me into his arms. “Shh … I’ve got you.”
I sobbed.
“It’s OK … shh … it was just a dream, baby.”
It wasn’t. Dreams didn’t sink their claws into your soul and rip it to shreds. I wrapped my arms around his neck and squeezed him. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.”
“It’s three in the morning. I’m not going anywhere.”
Keeping a death grip around his neck, I shook my head. “I’m scared.”
“Hey.” He pried my arms off his neck and turned on the lamp.
We both squinted against the initial burning of our pupils.
“Look at me.” He cupped my face. “What’s going on with you? This is your third nightmare in the past week.”
“You’re on the field … h-hurt.”
“I’m here. I’m fine. It’s just a nightmare. Okay?”
“It’s so real …”
“It’s not. I’m here. You can touch me. I’m fine. You’re fine … we’re fine.”
“Don’t go …” I whispered.
He peeled off my soaked shirt and grabbed his white tee from the end of the bed and slipped it on over my head. “I’m not going anywhere.” After switching off the light, he pulled my back into his chest and held me tight until sleep came for me again.
“Must be serious.” Luke smiled, standing at the door.
My whole family and Cage’s were in Minneapolis for the Super Bowl that was just three days away. Cage had a big house, but not big enough for the entire Jones clan, so everyone except our parents stayed at a hotel.
“Where’s Jessica and the kids?”
“They stayed back at the hotel. You said you needed to talk to me … you said it was really important so I came alone.”
I nodded, closing the door behind us.
“Where are Cage’s parents?”
“They took Hayden and Isa shopping. Mall of America.”
Luke nodded, making himself at home in the black and white striped side table chair nearest the kitchen windows.
“Coffee? Tea? Beer? Wine?”
“Water.” He smiled. “You look off.”
“You mean a fucked-up nervous wreck?” I handed him the glass of water and sat down across from him.
He took a sip. “Brother to sister? Yes. You look like a fucked-up nervous wreck. I was playing the polite doctor role.”
“Do you believe in premonitions?”
“The sixth sense? I’ve dealt with patients who have had premonitions. It’s not a well understood phenomenon, but I’m not opposed to the possibility that some people have them.”
“God!” I shook my head, running my fingers through my hair. “This is why I never talk to you about shit. It was a simple yes or no question.” And just like that … it hit me how much this feeling had affected me. That’s not what I meant to say to Luke.
His brow furrowed. He knew it too. “Yes,” he said in a soft voice.
“I believe people have premonitions … feelings in their gut that are absolute truth. Sometimes it’s just a feeling.
Sometimes it’s more vivid, something that comes to them in a dream.
I had the feeling with Jess. My gut knew something was terribly wrong before my head could make sense of it. I just … knew.”
I nodded, staring out the windows at the sun shimmering along the snow like diamonds.
Swiping the tears from my cheeks, I drew in a shaky breath.
“It started out as a feeling for me, like cancer eating away at my gut. I had physical pain with it, but then…” I swallowed hard “…I had the dream—nightmare. It was so clear, so real. The field. The game clock, it had exactly one minute left. Cage was …” More tears raced down my cheeks. The pain was real. The dream was real.
“Cage was?”
I looked up at Luke. “Lifeless.”
Luke let my confession sink in as he nodded slowly. “Hurt?”
“Paramedics. Coaches. Players taking a knee. And the crowd … silent. But Cage, he doesn’t move—not one muscle.”
After a few more moments of silence, I laughed through the tears. “Tell me it’s crazy. Tell me I’m crazy. Tell me it’s impossible. Please, please tell me something to make it go away.”
Luke said nothing, he just eyed me with what felt like pity.
“Say something,” I pleaded.
“I’m sorry.” He shook his head.
I bolted out of my chair, sending it screeching across the tile floor. “You’re sorry? What does that mean? You’re sorry I’m going crazy? You’re sorry there’s nothing you can do? There’s nothing I can do?” I tugged at handfuls of my hair. I was crazy. Crazy felt like shit.
“All of the above.”
“This is not fair. You’re a goddamn shrink! Tell me what to do.”
“Tell him.”
I laughed, the certifiable lunatic kind of laugh. “Tell him? Brilliant, Luke. I’ve told him I’m scared. He knows I’ve been having nightmares.”
“Did you tell him why you’re scared?”
I shook my head. “It was just a feeling for the longest time. There wasn’t anything to tell.”
“And you’ve told him about the dreams?”
“He knows I’ve had them, but he doesn’t know exactly what they were about.”
“Tell him.”
I grunted. “And then what? Do you really think he’s going to not play? It’s the pinnacle of a football player’s career. It’s the whole damn reason they do what they do. He’s not going to just not play because I had a feeling or a dream.”
“You’re right. He’s still going to play the game.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“The point is you will have done all that you could do.”
“But he’ll still play?”
“Yes.”
“And get hurt or die or whatever the hell my dream meant.”
“It might just be a dream.”
“Or it might not.”
Luke nodded slowly. “Or it might not.”
“God hates me. I don’t even know what I did, but he hates me.”
“I think we give God too much credit for things he doesn’t control and not enough for the things that he does control.” He stood. “I have to go. I have a wife who wants a shower.” Pulling me into his arms, he whispered next to my ear, “Tell him and then … pray.”
It should have been easy to make Cage understand my feeling.
After all, the whole team stuck to a rigid schedule—meals, practice, interviews, bedtime.
No one changed anything. For a bunch of men who didn’t want to deviate one bit from their normal schedule for fear of jinxing things, my premonition should not have been such an absurd phenomenon.
Wrong.
“Security will be tight. The number of crazy people will be doubled. Stay with Flint or one of your brothers at all times. Got it?” Cage zipped his suitcase.
I didn’t have a single fingernail left, and the inside of my cheek and my bottom lip were gnawed to about nothing. “How do you feel about premonitions?”
Cage laughed. “I get them all the time. Usually about plays in a game.”
“And they’re right?”
He shrugged as he shoved his feet into his sneakers. “Sometimes. Why?”
“My nightmares?”
“Yeah?”
“They’ve been about the game and in them you get hurt.”
He eyed me, quirking a brow. “Seriously?”
I nodded.
Cage seemed to think about it and for a fleeting moment I thought he would do or say something to change what felt like fate. “I’ve had some crazy dreams lately too.” He stood. “Come here.”
I took cautious steps toward him. The impending-doom feeling felt like every step and every touch would be our last. “I’m not so sure it’s crazy. What if it’s not?”
He cradled my face in his hands and smiled. Everything about me in that moment was an illusion. I wasn’t holding it together on the inside. I was dying and he couldn’t see it.
“In your dream, did we at least win the game?”
“Fuck you.” I pulled away.
“What? Hey …” He grabbed my arm and pulled me back to him. “What’s going on? I was kidding.”
“Well I’m not! I’ve had this sixth sense about the game.
Before I ever had the dreams, I felt physically sick and I just had no idea—no words—to adequately explain this impending sense of dread.
But then I had the dreams and you were on the field completely lifeless with everyone surrounding you and the stadium was frozen in silence and …
and … the clock was stopped at one minute. One!”
“Lake …” he shook his head. “I’m not trying to dismiss your feelings. I just don’t know what you want me to do? Not play? Is that what you’re asking?”
I didn’t know what I was asking. I wanted him to play as much as I didn’t want him to play. It was the most impossible question to answer. It was the most impossible decision to make.
Wiping my face, I relinquished a sad smile.
The pain reached a dull numb. All I could feel was the beat of my heart because it—he—stood before me.
“I don’t know what I’m asking, so I guess I’m not asking anything.
I just had to tell you, and I’m sorry because I know how selfish it is of me to give this to you right now, but I—”
He hugged me so. Damn. Tight.
“I love you,” I whispered. “That’s all you really need to know.”