Chapter 7 #3
He huffs a bitter laugh. “In hindsight, it all makes sense. He kept me literally pinned, so I couldn’t try to reach Tessa by stepping into 5D. And with the promise, he made sure you’d never try to reach her in 4D with your ability.”
Bile creeps up my throat.
“What did you promise him, Paul?”
“I promised to keep you out of my dreams, or he’d demonstrate on you what he’d been demonstrating on me.
” Paul looks down at his hands in his lap.
“I couldn’t let him do that to you. The paralysis.
Pinned, while he ran through every version of helplessness he could find.
I couldn’t let him make you relive your trauma. Not when I had a way to stop it.”
“So you ended the friendship.”
“I made sure you had no reason to come back. If you were angry at me, you’d stop visiting. You’d protect yourself out of stubbornness if nothing else. And it worked.”
“It worked,” I repeat, while barely being able to swallow around the lump in my throat. “And you did that by letting me think you dropped me.”
Thinking I wasn’t worth the complication.
Thinking the friendship had been more to me than it had been to him.
“Yes.”
“Paul, for fuck’s sake.”
“I know.”
“You absolute…” I stand. I need to move, or I’m going to do something with the shadows again, and this time, I’m going to fucking drown him in them. “You monumentally…”
“I know, Ridge.”
“You self-sacrificing idiot.”
I pace and try to do something useful with the thing currently happening in my chest. Not fury exactly.
It’s still there. It hasn’t gone anywhere, but underneath it is something that has been building since the moment he said, “I couldn’t let him do that to you,” and that something is the warmth of understanding that the worst thing Paul ever did to me was done because he was trying to protect me.
Wait, that means…
I stop pacing and turn back to look at him.
“Three months ago, when I stepped into your dreamscape.”
“I tried to keep you out, but he saw anyway.” Paul sighs and runs a hand over his head. “He told me that he’s had you pinned for the last few months. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe.”
“All because of that promise? How is that even fair when I was the one breaking it?”
Paul stands and starts pacing. “I have no idea.”
“What is it with that guy and promises?” I mutter.
Both of us, pinned in our own nightmares, neither of us knowing the other was struggling in the same way by the same asshole.
A hundred nights for me, five years for him, and…
“The Shaw boy,” I murmur.
“What about him?” Paul frowns, adjusting his glasses.
“I visited his dreamscape because of… reasons. And I found This Man there. He’d been there a while. It looked like it amused him, torturing Nevan.”
Paul freezes, then lets out a long breath. “That’s why he mentioned Nevan. He—” Paul stops, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter right now. I don’t know what Nevan has to do with any of this, other than…”
“Lennon,” we both say at the same time.
Paul exhales while I put the lollipop back between my teeth.
Right. More pressing issues.
We’ll finish dismantling five years of mutual disaster later.
“Right now, she needs us both,” I say after another breath. “So we get her back first, and then we can go back to arguing about who she belongs to.”
Paul studies me for a moment. “That seems inefficient.”
“You’ll survive.”
He sighs again. “Agreed.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
“There is no plan. Plans require information. Right now, we have the fact that she’s still asleep, and you can’t dream share with her, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Correct.”
“You said she’s your tether.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it. “Are you hers?”
I shift in the chair, the lollipop pressing hard into my cheek. “I don’t know.”
“I see.”
“Don’t.” I pull the lollipop out and point it at him again.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re being smug about something that doesn’t help us.”
“You’re right. So, if you don’t know whether you’re her tether, what do you know?”
I think about Nevan. How he talked about her with his whole chest while he thought he was alone in it.
“The Shaw boy,” I say again, hating that apparently, it all circles back to him. “There’s something there. Between them… could be nothing.”
“Or it could be the key to reaching her. You said you visited his dreamscape?”
The image of Nevan’s clouds flickers behind my eyes for a second.
“I did.”
“For… reasons?”
“Yep.”
He apparently decides not to push on that. “And?”
“And his subconscious is very communicative. He cares about her in a way that…”
In a way that makes me want to yeet him through a window but also, objectively, might be exactly what she needs.
“In a way that could matter.”
I bite down on the lollipop harder than necessary.
“So we need him.”
“We need him,” I agree. “She needs him.”
“I know what she needs,” Paul says quietly, picking the watering can back up.
“I knew the moment I met her that most of the time, what she needs and what I want are the same thing. Occasionally, they aren’t.
I’ve been trying to account for that. Nevan is part of what she needs,” he continues, and his fingers tighten slightly around the watering can handle.
“I understand that now. Though admittedly, I believed it was friendship on both sides for longer than I should have.”
“I can assure you,” I say dryly. “The boy was also alarmingly late to that realization.”
The side of Paul’s mouth twitches.
“Are you actually okay with pulling him into this?” I ask, tilting my head. “Or are you professionally self-aware about it? Because those are very different things.”
“Both,” he admits. “I’m working on narrowing the gap.”
“Good.” I step around three hanging ferns and drop into the chair again. “Because I need you emotionally functional, not just clinically organized.”
“When have I ever not been functional?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe when you let your best friend spend half a decade thinking you were a coward instead of just telling him the truth.”
“That’s fair.” Paul looks past me instead of at me. “Nevan might hate us after what we said in the parking lot.”
“I’ll handle it.” I sit up straighter.
“How, pray tell, are you going to handle it?”
“His subconscious loves talking to me. I’ll pay him a visit tonight. Plant the suggestion.”
“Ridge.”
“What? I’m going to see what the Shaw boy is dreaming about and give it a nudge in the right direction. That’s all.”
“That’s…” Paul exhales slowly through his nose and sets the watering can down harder than necessary. “Fine. But do it gently.”
“I’m always gentle.”
He looks down at his still ruined shirt. “Clearly.”
“I’ll fix it before I go.”
“You won’t.”
A leaf drops off one of the plants behind him.
“You’re right.” I shrug. “I won’t.”
I’m about to stand, already reaching for the edge of the dream when Paul says, “I’m moving Lennon to my house.”
That stops me in my tracks. “Your house?”
“Mrs. Vaughn agreed. She’ll continue receiving care there. It gives me direct access to my research materials, and I can monitor her condition more effectively, and it gives you access as well.”
“Access,” I repeat carefully when I finally stand.
“To visit or stay, if necessary.”
Oh.
“Your room is still ready for you. I haven’t changed it,” he continues before I can say anything. “The only thing missing is the stairlift, but I can have that installed.”
“Your room is still ready for you.”
That’s probably going to haunt me for the next several decades.
“I mean…” For the first time tonight, Paul actually looks faintly uncertain. “The offer stands, if you want it.”
I stare at his unsure gaze, and against my will, my brain drags up the memory of a conversation from years ago.
Me complaining about wanting to escape my family before they wrapped me in bubble wrap and medically supervised concern for the rest of my life, him talking about how he could use a roommate, since the house was too big for one person anyway.
“To be closer to Lennon,” I say slowly.
“Yes.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it.
I look away, too, before he can see whatever crossed my face just then.
“Then we have a plan.” I step back toward the edge of the dream. “You bring Sleeping Beauty home, and I’ll make sure her emotional support golden retriever shows up on schedule.”
“Don’t traumatize him,” Paul warns.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” I wink at him, already letting myself fall backward, out of his immaculate white dreamscape…
…and straight into Nevan’s endless sea of clouds.
Nevan sits on a swing suspended in nothing, drifting lazily through the cloudscape, one foot dragging through the air, apparently just there. Existing.
Good for him.
“Nevan.”
He looks up immediately, his face lighting up in that open, unguarded way that tells me he is absolutely not lucid.
“Ridge! Hey.” He shifts slightly on the swing, steadying it. “Everything all right?”
“Everything’s perfect.” I step closer, stopping in front of him. “But Paul would like to talk to you.”
Nevan tilts his head. “He does?”
“Yep.” I grin. “You should go find him.”