Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lennon
Tessa was right.
Sometimes, you can hear people in waking life when you’re asleep. Not clearly, more like catching pieces of a conversation through a wall.
When Lucien made Nevan jump from that window, his dreamscape collapsed, and I screamed myself hoarse, only stopping when I heard them. Three distinct voices. Three men who decided to sit beside my sleeping body and emotionally devastate me even more.
Nevan talking about his mother telling him he’d die young.
Paul admitting things he normally keeps locked behind cardigans and therapist qualifications.
Ridge making jokes about things that shouldn’t be jokes at all.
And now I’m once again trapped in my subconscious comfort zone—my dream kitchen—and I can’t stop thinking about them. They don’t deserve the horrible things life has dealt them.
I need to think about something else. Immediately.
If I don’t, I’m going to go insane for real this time. Because knowing they’re out there hurting while Tessa is somewhere in here hurting, too, while her body is struggling out there, and my body is…
No.
Think of literally anything else, Lenny.
I look around my kitchen, which at some point, stopped feeling like a kitchen and started feeling like a waiting room, but I don’t want to cook anything.
It’s empty without someone to share it with.
Maybe I should build something instead. Create like Ridge does in his dreamscapes.
Gummy bears.
If I were in waking life, I would absolutely be reaching for the biggest bag of my emotional support sweets right now. I’m also willing to bet Lucien is somewhere in the distance watching, waiting for me to have some sort of existential meltdown.
He’s right. I am.
But I refuse to make it a boring one.
A pile of gummy bears appears on the counter.
Red, green, yellow, white, and orange.
Ew.
Apparently, dream magic has no quality control.
I pick up one and stretch it between my fingers. It stretches out way more than it should and is sticky without actually being sticky.
Not real.
But close enough.
I make another handful, then another, and another.
Soon, the countertop disappears beneath them, followed by the floor, the walls, and everything else until the kitchen melts away entirely.
Green gummy grass spreads beneath my feet in rolling hills.
A blue gummy sky stretches overhead, and a giant yellow gummy bear hangs where the sun should be, smiling down at me with deeply unsettling enthusiasm.
“Oh. You’re horrifying.”
The gummy sun takes that as a compliment, looking even happier.
A laugh bursts from me, too loud for the joke that caused it, and some small, still-sane part of me clocks that.
Notices that I built an entire sky in the time it took to have one bad thought, and that I would very much like to keep building until there’s no room left in my head for anything else.
Ridge would be so proud.
Thousands of people-sized gummy bears cover the landscape in every color imaginable, standing shoulder to shoulder like a tiny army of fruit-flavored weirdos. A path winds between them, and every few feet, a gummy tree sprouts from the ground, its branches drooping with gummy worms like fruits.
I step tentatively onto the path, and the ground bounces.
I take another, and by the fourth bounce, I’m skipping.
By the tenth, I’m cackling, and it doesn’t feel entirely like a choice anymore, more like something I’ve fallen into and can’t quite climb back out of, not yet.
Not while it feels this good to be nowhere and no one.
The entire world jiggles around me every time I land.
“This…” I announce to absolutely nobody, “… is art.”
I spin in a circle and admire my work. It genuinely looks like a very enthusiastic eight-year-old had unlimited creative control of this dream, and for one long, unbothered stretch, I let her have it.
I don’t think about Nevan and the window, Paul’s nightmares, or Ridge’s dark thoughts.
I don’t think about Tessa’s body giving out somewhere I can’t reach, or mine, whatever it’s doing without me.
I flop onto the spongy ground with a delighted oof. The orange gummy bear is still in my hand. The unwanted one, the last one left in the bag. I stretch it between my fingers again and watch the sunlight shine through it, turning the center almost yellow.
For a moment, I let myself sit, surrounded by a world made entirely of nonsense, watching it glow, and it occurs to me, distantly, that I’ve built myself an entire kingdom rather than feel one single thing.
That is either very smart or very bad, and I genuinely do not care which right now.
But when I go to find a yellow gummy bear for scientific comparison, a pull in my chest makes me freeze.
“This is what you’re doing when we leave you alone for five minutes?”
My heart does a full somersault as I jump to my feet, spinning around so fast I nearly fall back to the gummy ground.
“Ridge.”
He’s standing in the middle of the gummy bear apocalypse as if he belongs there in his black hoodie and black jeans, his dark hair half fallen out of its usual tie.
The giant gummy sun beams down on him, practically begging for attention, and a gummy worm falls out of a nearby tree.
Ridge is unimpressed by both.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
Relief hits so hard, it almost hurts. “Nevan?”
I am pretty sure he’s fine, but I also spent an unknown amount of time talking to a plushie and building a gummy civilization, so my confidence in my perception is not exactly at an all-time high.
Ridge’s expression softens. “Nobody jumped out a window.” He glances toward the gummy horizon. “Your baby boy is fine. Successful day, all things considered.”
“Paul?”
“Also alive and awake. They’ve gone to see Seraphine. Figure out some things. Work on getting you home.”
Home. Yeah, I want home.
“And you?”
“I’m here to keep you company.” His gaze sweeps over me, his eyes heating. “We’re very good at passing time together, don’t you think?”
Then he smiles.
God.
That smile.
The last time he looked at me like that, I ended up on my back with his tongue between my thighs. It does things to my central nervous system more dangerous than any monster he’s ever built.
But then I remember what else happened and what he said.
“What happens in the dreamscape stays in the dreamscape.”
And based on the way we haven’t once talked about what’s happened between us…
Yeah, absolutely not.
The honey rises from the ground before I consciously decide to conjure it. Amber gold spills across the gummy grass, sliding over Ridge’s boots, ankles, and calves. Then it wraps around his knees and hardens.
Ridge frowns down at it. “What are you…”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Stay where you are.”
“Wait, are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“You just trapped me in honey.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m mad.”
His eyebrow lifts. “Historically speaking, it usually does.”
I point at him. “I’m not letting you do this again.”
“Do what?”
I only stare, and the man has the audacity to look genuinely confused as he holds my gaze.
“The thing.”
“The thing?”
“You know exactly what the thing is.”
His expression remains perfectly innocent. “I genuinely don’t.”
“Don’t make me define the thing.”
“Sweetheart, I have no idea what the thing is.”
“The thing where you make me forget my name.”
“Ah.” A smirk blooms on his lips. “Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy the thing last time.”
“That’s not the point.”
He chuckles. “Oh, I’m pretty sure enjoyment is the point of safe sex.”
“I will not let you do that to me again when we’re not talking about anything. This unsaid shit between us is driving me crazy, and I can’t keep doing it.”
He frowns and tries to take a step toward me, but the honey doesn’t budge. “That’s strange. Last time, I could.” He tries again and glares down at his knees, then back up at me. “Why are you stronger than me?”
I shrug. “Weren’t you the one who told me, the longer you’re in here, the better you get?”
“I mean, yes, that’s how it works, but not like that.” He tries again, then scoffs. “Lenny, come on. Let me go, and we can talk.”
“I won’t, because if I let you go, you’ll come over here with your stupid eyes and stupid hair and do stupid things to me.”
He stops struggling against the honey. “My stupid hair?”
“Yes.”
He lifts one hand and lets it slide through said hair. “That seems unfair.”
His eyes lock onto mine, trapping me with their intensity.
That’s also unfair.
“Let me go. I want to talk to you, but not like this.”
“No. You will say something, and I won’t be able to think anymore. You’ll call me…” I trail off.
“I’ll call you what?” He raises an eyebrow, waiting.
Just the thought of what he calls me makes warmth bloom low in my stomach.
“Dirty things,” I hiss out. “And I will not let you call me a greedy girl and kiss me and…” I trail off again, realizing my mistake too late.
Because now I’m thinking about it, his voice rough while he had me on the edge of the bed, fingers curled deep, mouth on my clit, demanding I come on his hand as if I owed it to him.
My pussy clenches at the memory, in time with the heat that floods my face.
“Huh. Looks like you have to concentrate to keep it up.”
Wait, what?
The honey fights him for another second before it gives, and Ridge steps out of it, closing the distance between us in a few long strides. I back up fast, but my shoulders slam into a giant gummy bear, causing it to wobble under the impact.
Ridge cages me in, close enough that I can smell sour lemon, ginger, and him. “You don’t want me to call you my greedy girl?” He squeezes my waist, gently. “Not even a little bit?”
I lean into him like a magnet, but then I shake myself and push his chest. “No.”
He lets me move him but only backs up one step.
“No, no, no.”
I turn and walk away from him, moving fast over the spongy gummy bear floor, which is a tactical nightmare with everything bouncing slightly. I hate this floor. I made this floor.
In a blink, he’s beside me, keeping pace with no apparent effort.