Chapter 8 #2
This boy. This twenty-something-year-old boy is running an inn alone on two jobs, sleeping in a bag with mittens on, tying his wrist to furniture, and presenting all of it as simply his life because nobody in it has ever told him it doesn’t have to be like that.
My throat closes up, and Ridge’s voice echoes in my head.
“It looked like it amused him to torture Nevan.”
Fuck.
“There is medication for this. You could manage it almost entirely with the right treatment.”
He shakes his head. “I read about it online. There are side effects. I can’t afford to be drowsy through breakfast service, and I can’t sleep eight hours minimum when I’m working two jobs. It doesn’t work for me. Not to mention it’s too expensive.”
“And walking half naked to the other side of town isn’t a side effect?” I counter.
He shrugs again, and I want to shake some sense into him.
“Given that I’ve probably missed breakfast service, you might have a point.”
“So, do you want me to prescribe you something?” I offer.
“No, thank you.”
I nod once.
Of course.
You don’t drag people into treatment for something they’ve already decided is the cost of functioning.
It has to come from them. Otherwise, they’ll abandon it the first time it inconveniences their life, and judging by the way Nevan is holding himself together, inconvenience is not something he has room for.
“Well, I’m not specialized in sleep directly,” I say instead.
He turns. “You’re not?”
“No.”
“My specialty is lucid dreaming.”
“Oh.” He glances at the spray can in his hands, then back out the window. “Okay.”
I wait for the obvious question, but it doesn’t come. And that, more than anything he’s done or said, irritates me.
He kissed my soulmate. And now he’s… what? Opting out?
“Don’t you want to ask me about Lennon?” I hear myself say, sharper than intended.
“Of course, I do.” The scoff is quiet, almost swallowed, aimed at the glass. “I just don’t see why you’d answer, after…” He trails off.
“After you kissed her while you knew she was with me?”
“Yes.” He finally looks at me. “That.”
There’s something in his expression that isn’t defiance.
Restraint.
Interesting.
“We will address that,” I say. “At an appropriate time. Right now, Lennon is in danger. That takes priority over everything else.”
“What?” He sits up and knocks his head against the car’s roof, then rubs the top of it with a pained expression. “She’s in trouble? Where is she? What can I do?”
He does care after all.
Good.
“You’re familiar with Tessa Vaughn?” I ask.
“Who isn’t?” he says, still a little breathless. “She’s been in a coma for years.”
“Not a coma.” I correct. “Tessa is stuck in her dreams. We’re pretty sure she met someone there, and that person kept her from coming back. Lennon went in after her to get her out. Or so we think.”
“Wait, what?” Nevan stares at me. “That doesn’t make sense. How would you even—” He stops himself. “You can reach someone in a dream?”
“Yes.”
At least Ridge can.
“That’s where the lucid dreaming comes in.” I glance at him. “Are you familiar with the concept?”
“Yeah.” Something shifts in his expression. “I read a book yesterday.”
Not encouraging, but not nothing.
“Ridge and I are working on a way to reach her,” I continue. “But we believe your involvement would significantly increase our chances.”
“How could I help?” He lets out a short breath. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You can do this. Ridge can do this. I can’t. I’m not… I want to help her, but I don’t see how I wouldn’t make it worse.”
The inn comes into view, and I slow the car, pulling to a stop.
“We’ll explain everything. Teach you what you need to know.”
“I’m not as teachable as you might think.”
“You might be more important to this than you realize.” My gaze drops to my ruined cuff, and I let go of the steering wheel to get the mess out of my sight. “Do you know where I live?”
“Yeah.”
“How about you come by this evening? We can talk some more when we’re all dressed.”
“I have work.”
“The season’s almost over. The staff can manage one evening without you.”
I think about Renée, who has shown up every time I’ve needed her to without once asking for an explanation.
She has covered shifts and rearranged her life around a situation I’ve never fully explained to her, and I owe a significant debt that I intend to pay properly once all of this is over, I have my life back, and the person who should be in it.
I’m sure Lennon would love to help me arrange a nice family dinner for her.
“I guess.” Nevan looks at the inn. At the guests milling around the front, two couples with coffee cups and the easy morning energy of people who are on holiday and have nowhere to be, then he looks down at himself.
I reach into the back seat and pull out the spare jacket I keep there. Running jacket, waterproof, never quite made it back into the house. I hold it out.
“Thanks.” He takes it, gets out of the car, and pulls it on. Then he pauses with the door open, one hand on the roof.
“Dr. Bennett.”
“Paul.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “About your face. And your glasses. And just, generally, I’m sorry.”
“I know.” I nod.
He returns the gesture, then closes the door.
I watch him walk toward the inn in one sock, spray can tucked under his arm, and several inches of boxer shorts still very much on display beneath my jacket.
Two of the guests look up with an amused expression.
Absolutely not.
I’m out of the car before I consciously decide to be. “Nevan.”
He turns when I reach him, and I’m already pulling the ruined jacket off my shoulders. “Put it around your waist.”
He doesn’t argue and knots it around his hips, covering the situation.
Better. Not good, but better.
Something faintly amused flickers through his expression. “Thanks, Paul.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I need that back before the paint sets.”
He huffs a quiet laugh and keeps walking, but instead of heading back to my car, I follow him.
We go around the side, through the gate, and into the garden. The cottage sits at the back the way it always has, slightly separate from the inn, surrounded by the herb beds that Seraphine keeps somehow even in this cold.
Mabel is in the chair by the cottage door with a mug. Seraphine is in the chair beside her, hands loose in her lap, looking at the garden.
Mabel takes in the jacket situation, then my face.
“Well, hello, nephew.” She raises a brow. “What happened to you?”
I had a boy in his underwear spray paint me in the face in front of the Vaughn mansion at seven this morning.
“Nothing.”
“You have paint on your face.”
“I’m aware.”
“And the boy’s trousers?”
“He lost them. That’s why I gave him a ride.”
“From where?”
“The other side of town.”
“I’m going to get changed,” Nevan mutters, unknots my jacket from his waist, hands it back, and walks past both of them, ducking under the frame and heading inside without looking at anyone.
As I watch him go, I feel watched, and when I glance around, I find Seraphine’s gaze already on me.
I know her by proximity, but we’ve never had a real conversation since I told Mabel about how I suspected neglect.
Mabel took them in. The boys had the cottage, the stability Aunt Mabel gives freely, the closest thing to reliable ground available, and I told myself it was enough because the alternative was inserting myself into a family situation I had no standing in and no invitation to address.
That’s the clinical framing.
The honest one is that I had one hour of work a day and considerable time I didn’t know what to do with. I chose the version of helping that required the least of me personally. I filed my concern and moved on.
A sleeping bag and mittens.
I should have done more.
“Sometimes a mirror is just a mirror,” Seraphine singsongs. “Sometimes not.”
The blood in my veins stops moving. “I’m sorry?”
“You stand in front of a mirror alone. You see only yourself. And you might think, this is all there is. One reflection, but mirrors can hold more than one person. Stand two people in front of a mirror, and you get both of them. Stand three. Or four.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“You think you’re alone in the glass. You’re not. You never were. People are standing in it with you who you haven’t turned around to see yet.”
“What people?”
“Stop looking at your reflection. Stop looking only at yourself, and you’ll see them. Turn, and you will see them next to you.” She looks past me then, at the middle distance, and when her eyes come back to mine, something in them has shifted.
“Hi.” She gives me a warm, polite smile, as if I’ve just arrived.
I stare at her.
What the hell was that?
“Good to see you, Paul.”
“What you said about the mirror—” I start but cut myself off when her gaze turns confused and flicks to Mabel.
“Could we have some more tea?”
“Of course, we can, Sera.” Aunt Mabel stands, looking at me over the top of Seraphine’s head with an expression I cannot fully read, which is unusual.
Mabel is normally very easy to read.
“Have a nice day, boy,” she says.
I watch them go inside, then stand there in the garden for a moment, in the cold, with paint drying on my face, my ruined jacket over my arm and Seraphine’s words echoing in my mind.
“Stop looking only at yourself, and you’ll see them.”