Chapter 6 – Morgan #2
"I know. But just so we're clear." I picked up the hot chocolate.
It was exactly the right temperature, exactly the way I liked it.
Which somehow made it worse. "I'm not interested.
Not in Sam, not in anyone." Someday. As if there would ever be a someday when anyone who wasn't Lance could touch me without making my skin crawl.
Amber squeezed my shoulder one more time, then headed back to her own station. "I'll swing by around one for lunch, okay?"
I nodded and watched her walk away, hair swinging, moving with that easy confidence I envied. Everything seemed so simple for her. So uncomplicated.
Must be nice to live in a world where the biggest problems are normal-people problems.
For thirty minutes I tried to focus on the designs I needed to make fixes on, but my mind wouldn't latch on to anything. The sketches blurred together, lines becoming meaningless scribbles. My hand felt foreign around the pencil, like I'd forgotten how to make it do what I wanted.
Wasn't it enough that I'd come in at all?
I could go back to Gwen's, crawl back into bed. Maybe I'd have another dream.
Suck it up, Morgan, you have to start reliving some of your life.
Was it time to stop hiding in my room? I wasn't that bad, was I? I'd gotten dressed, brushed my teeth, made it to the co-op. Those had to count for something.
You can't spend all of your time asleep, hoping for a sex dream from your dead husband. You know full well you think it's real that he's real. He's gone.
The resistance I had to that idea was so strong, I physically winced. I knew it wasn't real. I knew he was gone.
Do you?
Well damn. Way to call myself out.
I opened my laptop and stared at the screen, cursor blinking like a heartbeat. I could force my brain to latch onto the truth. If there was any part of me that believed he wasn't gone. Any stupid, desperate, delusional part, seeing the penthouse footage in 4K would cure that real quick.
He hadn't been there last night. Or the other night. Or any of the times I'd dreamt him. Ghosts weren't real. He wasn't coming back to me.
But wouldn't it be nice if he was?
I had work to do, deadlines that had been pushed back as far as they could go, clients who were being patient but wouldn't wait forever. A life that apparently needed rebuilding whether I wanted to rebuild it or not.
But instead of opening my design files, I navigated to the penthouse security system.
You're being ridiculous.
I'd been having those dreams for a week now, and each one felt more real than the last. Dreams where Lance touched me with hands that felt solid and warm and completely, impossibly real.
Dreams don't leave physical evidence.
I pulled up the camera feeds anyway. Checked last night, the hallway, the building entrance. Nothing. Of course there was nothing.
You knew you wouldn't find anything.
I did. I'd known it even as I was pulling up the files. But some stupid, desperate part of me had hoped—
Hoped for what? That your dead husband is sneaking into your bedroom to finger you in your sleep? That's not romantic, Morgan. That's insane.
I slammed the laptop shut harder than necessary, earning curious looks from a few other designers who probably thought the crazy widow was having another episode.
Get your shit together.
I had work to do. A life to rebuild, apparently.
But even as I tried to force myself to focus on the dress design in front of me. A wedding dress, because the universe had a sense of humor, my mind kept wandering back to the dreams.
Last night's dream had been so vivid I could still feel phantom touches on my skin. Lance's hands on my thighs. His mouth between my legs. The way he'd always known exactly how to make me come apart, exactly what I needed, exactly how to touch me to make me forget everything else in the world.
It felt real because your body remembers. That's all.
That was the rational explanation. The one that didn't require believing in ghosts or supernatural visitations or any other nonsense that belonged in bad romance novels.
Like the alien book you and Micah are reading.
The thought made me smile despite myself. Prince Xarion's glowing blue cock seemed ridiculous in the daylight, but it had given me something to laugh about. Something to focus on that wasn't grief and guilt and the crushing weight of missing Lance so much it felt like drowning.
Maybe that's all the dreams are. Your mind giving you something to focus on that isn't pain.
But they felt so real. Too real to be just wishful thinking or psychological compensation.
My phone buzzed with a text from Micah: How's the first day back?
I typed back: Surviving. Amber wants to do lunch. Sam left me flowers and showed up today with hot chocolate.
Micah: Gwen's old employee? Seems young.
Me: I think you forget I'm 20. He's 25. But I'm not interested obviously.
The thought of anyone who wasn't Lance touching me made my skin crawl. Made me want to scrub myself raw just from thinking about it.
Micah: Right. If you need me, I'm here.
You should tell him.
No. I didn't need his pitying looks, his careful concern, his gentle suggestions that maybe I should talk to someone.
Because having sex dreams about my dead husband and thinking, no, hoping. He was finding his way back to me was definitely a problem.
A big fucking problem.
But not one I was ready to give up just yet.