Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Nevan
For the last several minutes, I’ve been folded into the passenger seat, watching the road, the details from earlier playing out in the back of my mind. My hands keep flexing against my thighs and then stopping before doing it again.
It’s as if I can feel the strain in my fingers from gripping the windowsill and the soreness around my wrist where Paul held me tight.
The cold stone, the wind.
The nothing underneath my feet.
I was one second away…
“Consciousness inside the unconscious mind functions like a trance state,” Paul says out of nowhere, his hands at ten and two on the wheel.
I can’t help but notice the way he signals a full two blocks before the turn, checks his mirror, and corrects the wheel by maybe a degree, each movement deliberate.
I glance at him. “That so?”
“The barriers are thinner in sleep. Suggestion sinks deeper.” Paul keeps his eyes on the road.
“It’s why hypnotherapy works at all. When the conscious mind steps aside, the nervous system listens.
Lucid-dreaming therapy operates on the same principle, only more immersive.
If a hypnotherapist can plant a suggestion of safety into the mind, a lucid dreamer can do the same. But at a depth no one else can reach.”
I stare at the side of his face, unwilling to accept what he’s saying. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Is he offering to treat me?
“I’m saying that what happened to you tonight is not a permanent condition.
Phobias, old trauma, PTSD, things buried so deep that words can’t touch them.
Dream work can let the mind finish processing what it couldn’t handle while awake.
” He glances at me briefly. “Your sleepwalking, the compulsion, how suggestion works on you in your dreamscape. All of it has a mechanism, and mechanisms can be worked with.”
I look back out the window.
Nothing ever helped before.
“Also medication,” he adds. “We’ll try both. And don’t even start with the costs. I’ve got you covered.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.” I pick at a loose thread on my jeans. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“I’m aware. This isn’t charity, Nevan. You being healthy and safe benefits all of us.”
“All of us?”
“Yes. I enjoy not being woken up at five in the morning by Ridge yelling about you having wandered off.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
“Regardless.” Paul’s mouth pulls slightly at one corner. “Lennon worries about you. So do Jasper and Mabel,” he continues. “And Ridge pretends not to, which I suspect requires more effort than simply worrying about you. And despite my best efforts, I’ve grown rather fond of you myself.”
I feel my face heat. “Don’t make this weird, please.”
“I made it honest.”
I groan and drag both hands over my face. “Jesus Christ.”
The road curves gently ahead of us. Morning sunlight slips through the trees in long strips of yellow, and for a while, neither of us says anything.
I keep my gaze out the window, mostly because looking at Paul feels dangerous right now. He’s been way too nice to me since he rescued me from death by concrete.
The inn appears through the trees a few minutes later, the sign swinging gently in the breeze.
Something in my chest eases.
Home.
But then I think of Lennon in Paul’s house, and I’m not so sure that’s true anymore.
“You’re my tether.”
I don’t know exactly what that means yet, but I do know how it felt when she said it. Something in my chest clicked over, like a key finding a lock I didn’t know was there.
Paul parks in the gravel lot and turns to me, looking me over. “You look better.”
“Yeah.” I flex my hands, which have finally relaxed enough to appear normal. “I feel better.”
Paul nods like that’s what he hoped to hear.
I clear my throat. “I don’t think I’ve said it yet, but thanks for the rescue—”
“Yeah,” he cuts me off, reaching for the door handle with a smirk. “Don’t make this weird.
Before I can respond, he’s already out of the car. I stare after him through the windshield, then climb out and follow him.
We head inside the inn, and Simon looks up when the door opens. His face does its usual neutral to neutral-with-slightly-less-neutrality when he clocks Paul beside me.
“Morning,” I greet.
“Morning.” He glances at Paul. “Dr. Bennett.”
Paul gives him a small nod. “Simon.”
Oookay?
“How’s it looking?” I ask.
“Quiet.” Simon turns back to me. “Four guests, the Whitmore group. They pre-booked dinner but came down to cancel. Apparently, they want to drive the coast and try somewhere local.” He tilts his head toward the kitchen. “Sydney’s running breakfast service, and I’ve been helping her out a little.”
“Sounds like you have it under control.”
“Everything’s fine, yes. You can enjoy your vacation.”
“Right.” I rub the back of my neck. “Thanks.”
Simon nods once and goes back to whatever he was doing before we interrupted him.
Paul falls into step beside me as we head toward the back corridor. “Vacation?”
I groan. “That’s what Marcus called it when I told him I’d take a few days off. Unpaid vacation.”
Paul frowns at me. “A few days off work is an unpaid vacation?”
“Apparently that qualifies.”
And I hate that it does.
Lennon is stuck in her mind, and somehow I’m here worrying about payroll, which is a stupid concern. It’s not even the money. It’s knowing I can never walk away from any of it without someone needing something from me.
“The inn seems to be surviving.” Paul’s remark seems to target my exact thought.
“Yeah.”
“The logging company appears to be surviving too.”
“Also yeah.” I shoot him a look. “I get where this is going, and I don’t appreciate it.”
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Get where it’s going.”
I sigh. The hallway feels too narrow all of a sudden.
“The inn keeps running because I keep it running. The logging job pays because I show up. Jasper needs things. Mom needs things.” I shrug. “That’s just reality.”
“And if you disappeared for a week?”
“I can’t disappear for a week.”
“But if you did?”
I open my mouth to argue, but then have to close it again, because annoyingly, Simon just proved the inn wouldn’t immediately burst into flames.
“I hate when you do that,” I mutter.
“Do what?”
“Psychologist me.”
His mouth twitches as we step outside into the courtyard.
Smoke curls lazily from the cottage chimney, and through the kitchen window, I can see Mabel moving around inside.
“Do you like the logging work?” Paul asks.
I snort. “Not particularly.”
“Why do you do it, then?”
“Money.”
“And the inn?”
“That’s different.”
Paul’s eyebrow lifts. “How?”
The inn isn’t a job.
It’s Mabel teaching me how to make coffee when I was fifteen.
It’s Jasper doing homework at Table Seven because Mom forgot to pick him up.
It’s knowing which floorboards squeak and which boiler sound means we’re about to have a very expensive problem. It’s every Christmas dinner. Every wedding.
Every guest who’s come back and asked for me by name.
“I’ve spent half my life here. I know every stupid thing that breaks.” I stop walking and shake my head. “Hell, half the furniture in this place is stuff I’ve repaired. I built half this place without owning any of it.”
“You love it.” The certainty in Paul’s voice catches me off guard.
I stare at him, then turn toward the inn. “It’s mine.”
Not legally.
Maybe not ever.
But it’s mine anyway.
Paul nods once when my gaze comes back to him, as if I’ve finally solved an equation he’s been waiting for me to finish.
Then he says, “Good.”
I frown down at him. “Good?”
“Yes.”
“That seems like a weird response for someone who is going to inherit this.”
Paul sighs. “Unlike with Lennon, I stake absolutely no claim on this inn.”
What?
“You don’t?”
“I don’t want it.”
The words hit me so hard I’m tempted to pinch my nose and do a reality check.
I’ve been running the calculations for years. How much longer until Mabel decides whether his brother, Marcus, will push, whether Paul will want it, maybe Renee. I’ve been braced for a competition that apparently nobody else was having. A race with one contestant.
Shit.
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“But Mabel…”
“Is perfectly capable of deciding what she wants to do with her property.” He adjusts his glasses.
“And if she were asking my opinion, I’d be significantly more interested in the man who’s like a son to her and already running the place than the psychologist nephew who spends most of his day hiding in a house with an astronomical power bill. ”
I look at the inn and the window boxes Lennon had a strong opinion about last week.
I could actually own this place. For real.
“And for the record,” Paul adds. “I’m coming to terms with sharing her with you and Ridge.”
I glance back at him. “You are?”
“I am.” He holds my gaze. “So you should probably start coming to terms with sharing your life with the rest of us.”
Movement in the kitchen window catches my eye again, but this time, it’s a small silver-haired woman moving between the counter and the stove.
Mom.
“Come on.” Paul nods toward the cottage. “I want to get this done and get back to our woman. And we need to grab all of your things before we go.”
I start walking. “All of my things?”
“You’ll need more than a change of clothes if you’re going to stay.”
“Stay?”
“At the house. Yes. You can grab one of the rooms upstairs. Make it yours. It’s now your home too.”
“You can’t just decide that.”
“Apparently, I can.”
“That’s not how houses work.”
“It’s my house. It works how I want it to.”
“Jesus Christ, fine.” Honestly, I’m done trying to question the ways of Paul Bennett.
If he wants my ass in his house, then I will plant it there.
I duck inside the too-low doorway to the cottage, the smell of incense hitting me immediately. The thick sweetness of palo santo, sage, or whatever phase she’s in this week.
My face does something involuntary, and then I catch myself because Paul is right behind me. I don’t need him to have a complete picture of my childhood right now.
He’d psychologist the shit out of that.