Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Nevan
“Wake up, Lemon.”
Her nose scrunches a little.
Just barely, the slightest creases, enough to make hope punch me directly in the ribs before it immediately dies again when she settles back into whatever she’s doing in there.
Which is apparently not responding to me.
I let my thumb brush gently over the bridge of her nose anyway.
Paul’s whole house smells like plants, coffee, and expensive laundry detergent, and Lennon lies in the middle of it. Somehow, she still smells exactly like fresh lemonade. I genuinely don’t understand how that’s possible.
But God, she’s beautiful.
Even like this.
Even pale and sleeping with a tube in her nose that apparently eats for her and makes this room feel halfway to a hospital, she still looks like herself. Like she’s seconds away from opening one eye and telling me I’m being dramatic.
Lennon’s phone buzzes softly on the nightstand beside me. My eyes flick to it and then back to her, and to her mouth before I can stop them.
Bad idea.
Very bad idea.
Because now my brain helpfully reminds me that I know exactly what she tastes like too.
Lemonade. Sugar. Lennon.
Jesus Christ.
I kissed her, she kissed me back, and now I’m sitting in Ridge Wells’ room in Paul Bennett’s house, trying not to think about kissing her again.
I might actually be losing my mind.
Do not try the fairy tale version of waking her up, Nevan.
You are in a room with the two men who are aggressively acting like she is theirs, one of whom you know for a fact she has been on a date with, and the other who apparently…
I don’t fully understand what the other one has been doing with her.
But that’s the theme of the day, it seems, because I’ve been here an hour, and I understand maybe twenty percent of everything they’ve explained to me. None of which I understand makes any sense.
“Wake up for me, baby,” I whisper near her ear. “I’m so sorry.”
“Nothing?” Ridge asks behind me, and I nearly jump out of my skin.
“No reaction,” I mutter, turning toward them.
I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, putting me almost at eye level with Ridge. Bad choice, honestly. The man looks like he’s five seconds away from fighting someone.
He exhales sharply, eyes blazing.
Beside him, Paul removes his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose for what has to be the fiftieth time since I got here, like his sinuses are the real problem.
“It was worth trying,” he says quietly as he slides the glasses back on.
“It’s worth shit if it doesn’t reach her,” Ridge snaps immediately. “Why did you even think this would work? That’s just—”
The phone buzzes again, vibrations rattling faintly against the wood of the nightstand before stopping.
Paul ignores it. “I read it in a study, Ridge.”
“You and your fucking studies. She is not a clinical object.”
“I know she’s not.”
They’ve been doing this since I arrived.
I came here straight after my logging shift and a shower, swallowed my pride, and dragged myself across town to a house I’ve never been inside before, only to discover Paul Bennett apparently lives inside an enormous and very white house full of plants, which, honestly, makes sense in a way I can’t explain.
I sat in Paul Bennett’s kitchen while they talked to me for an hour about dream levels and a man who lives in someone else’s sleep.
I nodded and said okay and right and sure approximately forty-seven times, and the entire time I was thinking, what the actual fuck?
Because she looks like she’s sleeping.
That’s the part my brain keeps getting stuck on.
She looks asleep, but apparently what’s happening to her has terminology, levels, rules, entire theories, studies, and arguments attached to it.
She’s been doing this the whole time.
And I had no idea.
Bzzzt.
Lennon’s phone lights up again.
I look over at Ridge and Paul, who have somehow transitioned from regular arguing into a new, significantly more intense argument about something called 5D that I have not once understood since arriving here.
They are, objectively, about thirty seconds away from physically fighting.
In a room that is technically both of theirs.
Apparently, Ridge moved in today.
Apparently, there are decades of emotional damage happening under the surface of every conversation they have.
Apparently, I have walked directly into the most complicated friendship in recorded human history.
Honestly, I’m starting to think Lennon has a type.
And it seems Ridge is as messy as her, because how has his stuff already exploded on everything in this room when he just moved in?
My gaze goes to the nightstand, where, besides a glass of water and Lennon’s phone on the charger, is what looks like a collection of small pebbles.
Fifty, maybe. Arranged in no particular order. Just there.
I decide not to ask. Jasper once spent an hour explaining to me why a rock he found “felt sad.” Ever since then, I’ve learned not to question mysterious pebble collections.
Lennon’s phone buzzes again, and Ridge stops mid-argument, then points at it. “Okay,” he says. “Who the fuck keeps blowing up Sleeping Beauty’s phone?”
I stand before either of them can move and grab the phone off the charger.
“Spencer apparently still didn’t get the hint,” I mutter when I see his name on the screen.
“Spencer?” Ridge’s hands clamp around his chair’s push rims, and he rolls toward me fast enough that I instinctively shift back before he snatches the phone clean out of my hand. “Who the fuck is Spencer?”
I frown at him, then at Paul, who looks equally confused behind his glasses.
They don’t know about him?
Somehow, it feels good to be the only person in this room who does.
“Her ex,” I say.
Ridge and Paul exchange a look, something loaded passing silently between them.
“Wanna share with the class?” Ridge asks flatly.
I shrug one shoulder. “I don’t know if Lennon wanted you to know that if she never told you.”
Ridge’s jaw flexes hard enough to be visible before he taps the messages open anyway.
“Not even a passcode?” he mutters while scrolling. “Na?ve little thing.”
There’s something in his voice that isn’t quite a smile but almost gets there, the corner of his mouth softening for half a second before he schools it away again.
“Ridge,” Paul warns. “That’s private, and not ours to go through.”
“I’m just checking what he wants.”
I’m not proud of it, but I drift closer, nearly brushing the back of Ridge’s chair as both of us stare down at the screen.
Yeah, it’s private.
But if Lennon were awake right now, she probably would’ve shoved the phone directly into my hands while ranting about her stupid ex and rambling about the death of romance.
The other two, though.
I don’t know if she would want them to read it.
Maybe I should stop this. Protect her privacy while she can’t do it herself.
But then again, Lennon apparently built entire relationships with them, and maybe I’m not actually the person with the strongest claim to deciding who gets access to which parts of her life.
There are a lot of messages from Spencer. Days of them, but no replies from Lennon at all. Not even when she was still awake.
I can’t fucking read them as fast as Ridge is scrolling through them.
“At least read out loud so we can all hear it.” Paul sighs from where he’s still standing, arms crossed now, and I don’t know if he asked that for his or my sake, but I don’t care right now. I’m glad he did.
Ridge makes a sound, then mutters, “All right, all right. At least she never answered him. Good girl.”
“The messages, Ridge,” Paul presses.
“I’m getting there.” He clears his throat with entirely unnecessary theatricality. “He wrote, I mean it, Lenny. I’ll drive all the way to Oregon if that’s what it takes.”
He scrolls.
“Not answering me is childish, and you know it,” Ridge scoffs. “That guy is calling Lennon childish? I bet he’s the guy in her nightmares. You should have seen the dream projection. He is a fucking child in a suit, probably not even able to grow a beard.”
Disgust crawls slowly up the back of my neck, but Paul just says, “Keep going.”
“You’re acting like you’re the only person who struggled these last few months. I had to settle into a new position. It was stressful. I was working insane hours. Yes, I didn’t call as much, but neither did you. We both had priorities.”
“Priorities?” Paul glances at me.
“Her mom died. Very recently.”
“Fuck.” For the first time, Ridge looks honestly bothered by something.
I glance back at Paul, who lets his thumb glide over his mouth.
“We’re adults, Cherub. We should be able to talk through things instead of running away. God, I hate him for calling her that stupid pet name.”
Yeah, agreed.
Ridge scrolls again, and his voice stays flat.
“Those are from today. I was going to get you, but my car started making a weird noise halfway through packing. The mechanic says tomorrow at the earliest, and by then, I’d barely have any time left before work starts again.
The last few weeks have been a complete disaster.
Everything keeps going wrong since you left.
First, my sink backed up, then my phone died and wiped half my contacts, then I got food poisoning bad enough to miss work, and now this. ”
Of course.
“You can come home, and we’ll figure this out properly. You can still move in with me as we planned. I’m willing to let this go, Lenny. I miss you.”
Ridge makes a quiet, deeply concerning sound, while Paul still hasn’t really moved.
“You can’t punish me forever over one mistake. I never meant for you to hear that voicemail. If you hadn’t heard it, we would still be together right now.”
He reads the next line to himself first. I watch something move across his face, but he is quick to pull it back before he reads it aloud. “What are you even doing in Oregon? You don’t have anyone there. Come home.”
Ridge slowly lifts his head from the phone, eyes dark enough to make me think maybe his being in a wheelchair doesn’t actually lower his chances of murder all that much.