Chapter 15 #2
It’s an itch under my skin I can’t reach.
It’s fine.
I’m going to crawl out of my body.
It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.
“Are you mad at me, darling?”
His fingers close gently around my chin, turning my face toward his, and suddenly all of it comes pouring out.
“She’s gorgeous, right?” I ask, leaning back from his touch.
Paul frowns at me. “Who?”
“Tessa. She’s beautiful, funny, and she’s just…
” I gesture vaguely. “Her. She’s Tessa. So I understand.
For the record, I completely understand.
Derek understood. Obviously he understood, because that’s the whole problem.
And you’ve been sitting beside her for six years, talking to her, not giving up on her, and—”
“Lennon.”
“And I’m not saying you did anything wrong. I’m not accusing you of anything. I think maybe I’m a very convenient—”
“Lennon.”
“—fixation while she wasn’t available, and I’m sure it felt real because I think you actually do care about me and—”
“Lennon, for fuck’s sake.” Paul grabs my face in one hand to make me look at him.
He isn’t calm anymore. Not angry either.
It’s worse.
He looks hurt. Genuinely hurt. His jaw is tight, and his eyes are fixed on mine, and for the first time since I’ve met him, he looks like he has no idea what to do with me.
“A fixation?”
My stomach drops. “Paul, I didn’t mean—”
“No.” His laugh is short and disbelieving. “No, I heard you.”
“Paul.”
“Do you know how many people exist in this town?”
“What?”
“How many women exist in this area, Lennon?”
“I…”
“I spent five years being dragged into nightmares by This Man because I wouldn’t stop trying to help Tessa.
Night after night, I dreamed about killing the love of my life, only to wake up paralyzed.
” His jaw tightens. “I lost my best friend because of it. I gave up relationships. I gave up sleep. I gave up any reasonable expectation of peace.” The hurt in his eyes sharpens.
“And somehow you concluded that I did all of that because I was secretly waiting for Tessa to wake up, but I could replace her with the first blonde who moved into Vernonia because I was bored?”
“That’s not…”
“Because if that were my plan, Lennon, it was an exceptionally stupid one.”
I make a strangled noise.
His eyes close briefly, and when they open again, the hurt is still there.
“You think you’re convenient?”
“I—”
“You do.”
“Paul!”
He moves fast, both hands close around my thighs before he pulls me over his lap in one smooth motion, making me gasp. “I dreamed about you for five years. I painted my house the color of your eyes before I ever met you. I know, with every fiber of my being, that you’re the love of my life.”
My breath catches when his hand slides into my hair possessively, almost angrily. “And after everything, after all of that, after every single thing I have tried to show you…”
He lets his tongue glide over my bottom lip.
Fuck.
“You think I want Tessa?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
“Darling.” His forehead comes to rest against mine. “I spent five years dreaming about a pair of blue eyes. Not Tessa’s. Yours. Do you understand how absurd that is?”
I shake my head, and a sad smile touches his mouth when he pulls back.
“I wanted you, and only you. Even before I knew you existed.” He’s looking at me like I’m something inevitable, and he reached the end of a long journey and found exactly what he was looking for.
It should scare me, and maybe it does a little.
But mostly it feels familiar.
Maybe I’ve completely lost my mind.
He gives me his downward smile, then kisses me, and I kiss him back, but echoes of doubt and the suspicion that I’m going mad hold me back. He senses it, of course, and when he pulls away, I can only describe his expression as the face of a man who has been a great deal more patient than I deserve.
“With Tessa, I always noticed when something changed. A finger that moved. A breath. I was always watching for evidence that she was still in there.”
His thumb traces the base of my skull. “But with you, I forget to watch. I look because I can’t believe my fucking luck.
I dreamed about losing you before I even got to meet you for five years, Lennon.
I woke up every morning convinced that somewhere in the world there was a woman I was destined to kill. ”
The car.
The headlights.
The rain.
Shit.
He said he should have killed me, didn’t he?
“I found you instead. And every day since then has felt like being given something back I never thought I’d have. I know I’m not the only person you want.” His voice drops lower. “I know that.”
His hand settles against the side of my neck.
“But there has never been anyone else for me.”
Nobody has ever said anything like that to me before.
I don’t know what to do with someone looking at me, at all of the weird little things that make me who I am, and still wanting me.
The complete lack of hesitation he has.
The certainty.
This is insane.
“Paul,” I’m barely holding back tears now.
“Tessa was someone I refused to abandon.” His thumb brushes beneath my eye. “You are the person I cannot bear to lose.”
He kisses me again, and this time I don’t hold back, pouring everything into the kiss, the good and the bad.
His hand tightens in my hair, and his teeth catch my lower lip enough that I make a sound I wasn’t planning to, and the insane spiral I’ve been running for the last however-many-hours dissolves into a much better kind of insane.
Still, it is insane.
“Paul?” I whisper against his mouth once more.
“Mm?”
“This is insane.”
“Helpful clarification.” His lips leave mine but only to kiss down my neck, making me shiver.
“We’ve known each other for what? A couple of weeks?”
He pulls back enough to look at me. “A little longer.”
“A few weeks,” I repeat.
Paul nods while he puts a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
It should.
It should feel rushed, reckless, and impossible, but instead, it feels like remembering something I forgot, like finding a book I loved as a child and realizing I still know every line.
“What part?” Paul frowns at me.
“That this thing that I’m feeling. It’s not a knowing-each-other-for-a-few-weeks kind of feeling.”
“Ah.”
“Ah?”
“So you’re finally catching up.”
I groan. “Paul.”
“I just told you I dreamed about your eyes for five years before I met you.”
I put a hand over my eyes. “I’m sorry. I feel like I’m going crazy in here.”
His lips brush my hand, and I lower it.
“I know.” He takes my hand and kisses it again, this time softer. “Don’t be sorry. Just tell me you believe me. Tell me you believe me that you’re the only one for me.”
“I believe you.”
I really do, which might be the biggest sign so far that I’ve truly gone mad.
He hums against my cheek. “Good girl.”
He gives me one last peck before he gently sets me back. He then looks around the apartment properly, at the white walls, the suitcase and the mess, and the e-reader abandoned on the duvet.
“You can’t read in dreamscapes.”
“I know.”
“Then why were you trying?”
I let my head fall against his shoulder. “Because I really wanted a book.”
The admission sounds pathetic even to me.
He grips my thigh, squeezing in sympathy. “Oh, darling.”
I shrug. “I just needed to do something different than staring at the bare walls.”
His other hand moves up and down my back again.
Don’t say it.
“I keep thinking about the tubes,” I hear myself say.
His hand stills.
“Tessa’s been in here for years, and I know that there’s a whole system keeping her alive.
The feeding, the breathing monitoring, the repositioning so she doesn’t get sores.
Now I’m in here, too, and I don’t know if whoever’s on shift tonight remembered to…
” I press my lips together. “I don’t know.
I don’t know what’s happening to my body right now.
Or if Tessa’s breathing is doing that thing it started doing.
And I can’t do anything about any of it, so I picked up the e-reader. ”
“I know exactly what is happening with your body because you’re at my house, under my care.”
I look up. “Tell me, please?”
“Your body is in Ridge’s bed downstairs. My body is currently lying next to it. Nevan fell asleep on the floor beside it, and Ridge… I’m sure he’s somewhere nearby too.”
That pulls a smile from my lips.
“I have the nursing team Nora uses on a rotating shift, the ones I vetted, not the ones on the Vaughn payroll by default. I read everything I could find on prolonged unconscious states in otherwise healthy individuals. I’ve spoken to three specialists in the last forty-eight hours.”
My bottom lip starts to wobble, and he lets his thumb glide over it.
“I’ve got you. That’s not going to change while I’m breathing.”
The tight thing in my chest doesn’t disappear entirely, but it loosens.
“I must look horrible,” I say, because apparently that’s where my mind goes next.
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Ridge refuses to call you anything except Sleeping Beauty now, so I rebuke that.”
“That idiot,” I mutter, but I say it smiling.
He makes a small sound, then stands. And then he starts doing something. I don’t quite know how to describe it. Ridge builds like an artist, like he’s breathing life into ideas. Lucien builds like a god, effortlessly and look-at-me. Paul simply decides something should exist, and suddenly it does.
And the things he decides are yellow.
A yellow throw blanket appears folded neatly across the foot of the bed.
A nail polish set with every shade of yellow settles onto a shelf that wasn’t even there seconds ago.
A citrus-print cushion appears next.
Then another.
Then a ridiculous amount of plushies. All muffins in different colors.
A tiny yellow lamp.
A framed print of lemons.
I laugh despite myself. “Paul.”
“Too much?”
A jar of yellow lollipops materializes on top of a nightstand. Then beside it, a can of yellow spray paint.
My chest squeezes. “Paul.”
I know exactly what he’s doing.