Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Lennon
There’s a sudden draft against my ankles that has no business existing in a kitchen with no windows open.
“Did you feel that?” I ask Mr. Muffin.
“You’ve played this song fourteen times already,” he says instead of answering, too unimpressed with my choice in pop music to worry about drafts.
“Okay, but statistically, fourteen times isn’t that many times for a good song.”
He glares at me from his spot on the kitchen counter. “It is for one sitting.”
“You don’t have a concept of time. You’re a plushie.”
“I have opinions.” He crosses his little felt arms. “And my opinion is that if I hear “Unwritten” one more time, I’m throwing myself into the garbage disposal.”
“You can’t walk. You’d have to ask for help.”
“I’d find a way. Spite is a powerful motivator.”
I’m about to argue further, but the air shifts again.
“Whoa.” The startled, breathless voice comes from behind me. “Okay. Wow. That was actually so much easier than last time.”
I turn slowly, finding Derek Wells standing in my kitchen, smiling in delight.
That’s nice. I like him.
“Hey, want a lemon sweet roll?” I greet. “It’s like a cinnamon roll but with a lemon cream.”
Derek’s smile softens. “No, thanks.”
“I wanted to bake muffins, but Mr. Muffin told me that would be rude,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“How would you like it if I made cookies with blonde hair and blue eyes and ate them?” Mr. Muffin asks.
Ew.
“Oh, come on, he’s not even real.” Derek reaches out to pick up Mr. Muffin like he’s an item at a gift shop. “Melanie would love—”
“Not real!” Mr. Muffin’s stitched little face somehow manages an expression I can only describe as murderous. “Not real, huh?”
“Derek!” I yell too late.
Mr. Muffin launches himself at Derek’s face, landing a solid hit to his nose with his tiny, felt arms.
“What the…” Derek staggers back, trying to defend himself against a twelve-inch plushie. “Lennon, your muffin just punched me, the little shi—”
“Don’t!” I warn, scooping up Mr. Muffin before he can go for round two, clutching him to my chest. “Don’t insult him!” He’s still swinging, little arms flailing against my collarbone, muttering things like, “Say it again, I dare you” in a voice far too deep for something with button eyes.
“Okay! Okay, you’re real, you’re very real, I take it back.” Derek has both hands raised in surrender, nose slightly pink, looking genuinely rattled by the audacity of getting beaten up by felt.
I’m still holding Mr. Muffin, arms locked around his squirming little body, when I finally notice my fingers are breadsticks.
Oh.
“Yeah, okay.” I exhale. “This is a dream.”
…I’m dreaming.
I set Mr. Muffin down on the counter and point at him. “Behave.”
He looks offended when he crosses his little arms again. “I will when he does.”
I turn back to Derek. “Hasn’t Ridge warned you not to tell the background characters that they’re fake?”
“Who are you calling a background character?” Mr. Muffin complains, but I ignore him.
“Right.” Derek rubs the back of his neck, “Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry for not already having been lucid when you came here.
I should’ve had more of Seraphine’s tea, but I think I fell asleep on Paul mid-conversation, which is very embarrassing, but also very on brand for me lately.
Like, not Paul’s chest, but the day before it was Nevan’s, only to find he wandered off the next morning. ”
Derek’s mouth twitches. “Hey, you guys do you, but I don’t need to hear the details.”
I gasp. “And you claim to be the love of my best friend’s life? She would want all the details.”
Derek is grinning now. “Yeah, but it’s a little weird, given that you’re dating my cousin.”
“Oh, he knows about the others, don’t worry. Do you want to…” I start, but a pull in my chest, like a hook behind my sternum, cuts me off.
In the next second, Tessa is standing in front of us.
“Tessa?” Derek’s eyes go wide, but her face falls instantly when she notices him.
“Great timing. We’ve been trying to reach you, girl. We need to talk about the promise.”
“What is he doing here, Lenny?”
“I’ve been learning how to lucid dream, so I could see you,” Derek says, staring at her like she might dissolve if he blinks too hard.
“I’m not doing a very good job yet, but you have no idea how much I…
” He shakes his head, hard, like he’s physically throwing the sentence away.
“No. It doesn’t matter what I’ve been feeling.
How are you? Are you holding up okay? What can I do?
I already told your mom to light the cocoa butter candles in your room, so it smells like you in there again. ”
Surprise lights Tessa’s eyes. “You talk to my mom?”
“Only recently.” His hands keep flexing, opening and closing, like there’s something he wants to do with them, but has no safe options.
“I was a coward, Tessa. Not just back then, but every single year since. I told myself I was doing the right thing, giving you the life you deserved without me weighing it down, but that was my own insecurity talking, and it ruined both of us. I ruined us. I’m so sorry.
I know that doesn’t mean much coming twelve years late, but I’ve been paying for that mistake every single day since—”
“I’ve been paying for your mistake,” Tessa bites out, cutting him off.
I briefly consider grabbing Mr. Muffin and stuffing him into Tessa’s arms as emotional support, but then I remember that the last person who touched him got punched in the face, so I reach out and squeeze her hand instead.
“And it wasn’t even a mistake,” she goes on.
“It was you choosing my life for me. Even though I already chose you, Derek. I chose you. I would have chosen you over every single thing this town ever offered me. I would have slept in my car with no money between us and been happy. But you decided you knew better than I did what I actually wanted, and that was disrespectful. That’s what that was. Disrespectful.”
“I was a dumb kid, Tessa, and—”
“So was I!” She fires back. “And I knew exactly what I wanted.”
Tessa’s hand shakes in mine, and Derek’s hands have that tremor that comes right before someone gets yanked back to the surface.
We’re running out of time. Fuck it.
They were always going to do this the hard way. Might as well let them.
“I get that you’re angry, girl. I get that this is not a one-conversation kind of anger.
But you have to forgive him enough. You have to find whatever piece of that love made you want to leave the waking world in the first place, because that’s the thing that can tether you back to him instead.
And then you’re tethered to more than me in waking life. To this. To all of it.”
She scoffs. “The hurt was enough to make me leave waking life. It’s certainly not enough to make me choose it again.”
“And what about me? What about our dream, Tess? The restaurant? We can still do that. We can buy our stupid little place with our own money, no one telling us how to do it. Give him the chance to grovel in actual waking life. You can still decide you don’t want any of it. We…”
“Lenny.” The fury makes room for sadness in her eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you? I can’t.”
“Because of the promise. I know, but Lucien coul—”
“I could what, Lennon, dear?”
Derek moves on instinct, stepping in front of Tessa, both arms out like he can protect her, just as Lucien materializes.
It’s such a stupidly brave, stupidly useless gesture that my chest hurts looking at it.
Lucien doesn’t even blink at him. He flicks one finger, and Derek is just gone.
“What did you do to him?” I’m ready to let Mr. Muffin loose on Lucien while Tessa goes rigid beside me, eyes darting to the empty space where Derek was standing.
“Relax. I sent him back to his body. I don’t punish people who haven’t done anything to deserve it. Although Tessa would disagree about the deserving part, right, love?”
“So you think Paul deserved all your nightmares? And Ridge? Nevan?” My hands curl into fists. “They deserved what you did to them?”
“They did.” His smile is almost fond. “And if they keep interfering with what’s mine, I’ll have to remind them again.”
“Oh, stop with that.” I throw my hand out toward him, breadstick-fingers and all. “You already are. You haven’t left Nevan alone at all.”
“Because people don’t seem to remember their promises.”
“Then let them go! Relieve them of it. You can do that, you know. You keep acting like your hands are tied, like you’re some force of nature instead of a man making choices, but you’re choosing this. Every single day, you’re choosing to be the thing people think you are.”
“And what do they think I am?”
“The boogieman. But you’re not a monster.
You’re just alone. And you are never going to get what you actually want by making people stay against their will.
You know that. You have to know that. If they’re not staying because they freely chose it, it was never going to be what you were looking for in the first place. ”
He scoffs. “How would you—”
“You are worth choosing, Lucien.”
He gives me a strange look, but then his expression darkens. “Everyone says that right before they choose someone else.”
I don’t get the chance to ask him what that’s supposed to mean, because out of nowhere, a phone starts ringing.
It’s my actual ringtone, the stupid one Jasper picked for me as a joke during a dinner shift, that I never bothered to change.
The kitchen folds in on itself, and Tessa’s stricken face is the last thing to go, gone before I can reach for her hand again—
And I’m awake.
I hold a hand in front of my eyes to check.
Five normal fingers.
The warmth at my back is real, as is the arm slung heavy across my middle. There’s an exhale against the back of my neck that smells like Paul’s brand of soap and absolutely nothing else in the world.
I look around for Mr. Muffin. The actual Mr. Muffin, not the homicidal dream version, and Paul pulls me closer.
I hum automatically, already planning to turn around and bury my face in his chest for at least another ten minutes.
Possibly forever.
But then my phone rings again.
“If that’s Ridge,” Paul mumbles into my hair, voice rough with sleep. “I’m going to go downstairs and strangle him.”
I smile.
“And then,” he continues. “Once he passes out, I’m going to visit his subconscious and do it again. For consistency.”
“No, you won’t.”
His arm tightens. “Probably not.”
“Definitely not.”
“Fine. I’ll mildly inconvenience him.”
“That sounds more like you,” I say, reaching for my phone.
Of course, it’s charged.
Of course, there’s a glass of water beside it waiting for me.
Of course.
“God, Lennon,” Paul murmurs against my shoulder. “I love waking up next to you.”
My heart immediately forgets how to function.
“Same,” I whisper, then I blink at the screen. Derek.
“Wrong Wells,” I mutter as I answer it. “Hey, I’m sorry. I—”
“That’s him?” Derek cuts in, sounding breathless. “That was This Man?”
Yep. Straight to the nightmare fuel.
“No good morning?” I joke, but the only answer I get is silence, long enough that I can hear him breathing.
“Hey.” I sit up, dragging the blanket with me. Paul immediately follows, one hand finding the small of my back. “Don’t do the thing.”
“What thing?” Derek asks.
“The Derek thing.”
“Helpful.”
“The thing where you spiral into guilt and decide everything is your fault. We are not doing that today.”
Beside me, Paul nods in agreement.
Very supportive.
Very psychologist.
“This is exactly what got Tessa into this mess,” I continue. “We need your A-game, not your guilt complex. I am not going back into 5D. Do you understand me?”
Paul nods harder.
Honestly, if he had cue cards right now, they’d probably say GOOD BOUNDARIES.
“So we figure out the rest. Fast.” I push hair out of my face. “Preferably while Tessa is still mad at you, because an angry Tessa is significantly easier to reason with than a sad Tessa.”
Derek lets out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “That’s surprisingly strategic.”
“You didn’t listen carefully, Derek. She said she would have chosen you over every single thing this town ever offered her. She still loves you, but the trust is broken.”
“I—”
My phone buzzes against my ear. “Hold on.”
I pull it away to find Jasper is texting me.
Jasper
Sorry, I know it’s early, but I reached Mom in my dreamscape, and we made a plan.
Bring the guys and a recent picture of Tessa.
“Thank fuck,” I whisper.
“What?” Comes from next to me and from the phone.
“The psychic hotline finally got back to us.” I put the phone back to my ear. “Derek?”
“Yeah?”
“Meet us at the inn.”