32. Niko
Niko
The sun was shining. That should have been the first clue that everything was a dream. Light filtered through the leaves of the trees that hung above me, and everything was warm. It was the perfect spring day. I wasn’t sure where I was or what was happening as I followed the cobblestone path lined with daisies and violets. I guess it didn’t matter where I was.
What mattered was the fact that I had a sense of urgency . I really wanted to see what was at the other end of the pathway. My body propelled me forward, and my heart hammered in my chest. When the trees finally gave way, what I saw was beyond my wildest imagination . It’s just a dream , I repeated to myself as I strode over to the small cafe table. Everything was pristine and white, from the chairs to the table to the stones beneath my feet. When I glanced up, the sky was the most beautiful shade of blue I’d ever seen.
It almost matched his eyes. The terrace overlooking the ocean was nearly crystal colored. You could see right to the bottom of the depths as the waves washed onto the shore. Sometimes, with the ocean, you couldn’t. People who didn’t live on the water didn’t understand that sometimes the sea was green and murky, filled with seaweed, especially after a hurricane.
That was what my life felt like recently. A hurricane.
None of that mattered, though. Later, the details would stick out in my mind, but as it was happening, the only thing I could focus on was that Cam was there. I tried to remind myself that it was just a dream, that he was gone, but my heart didn’t want to listen to reason. He sat there staring at the waves, slowly sipping on a cup of coffee. Even the cup was white. When I sat down, he slowly turned to me and gave me a smile. He pushed a second cup towards me, and I picked it up without thinking.
If this were Greek mythology, I would have been fucked . I drank the coffee without a care in the world. Unlike Persephone, pomegranate seeds would’ve been my downfall or my saving grace. The conversation didn’t seem to matter either. When I woke up, I could remember that there was a comfortable conversation. Our fingers twined together as he sipped the coffee. Occasionally, he would lean over to brush his lips against mine. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.
Part of me wanted to stay in the dream forever to memorize how he looked at that moment—peaceful and happy, without life’s burdens pressing down on him.
A sense of foreboding overtook me as he stood and lifted his shirt. Lean muscle rippled, and his golden hair shined in the sun. He was somehow both beautiful and dangerous. He held out his hand to me, and I took it, unsure what would happen. It’s just a dream , I chanted to myself—nothing more, nothing less. Suddenly, my heart plummeted. I begged myself to wake up.
But I didn’t feel that way as he leapt from the ledge, my hand in his. We didn’t fall, but that didn’t stop the panic from welling up inside of me—not as we floated over the ocean waves. Suddenly, the sun felt too bright; everything was too hot as we flew higher and higher. His hand let go of mine, and I yelled for him to stop.
Cam would never do that, though. He didn’t understand the word stop. He careened higher before diving towards the ocean, and it swallowed him whole.
That was when I woke up screaming, shaking in bed alone. Ivy and Cam were both gone, and despite my attempts to tell myself it was nothing more than a dream, something my subconscious had conjured, my brain still yelled at me. In the dream, Cam reminded me of Icarus, flying too close to the sun.
I didn’t even know I was crying. Even though my cheeks were wet with tears, the only thing I felt was the horror of loss.
My door creaked open, and like a shadow, Trey snuck into the room. An arm wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me to his chest as his finger stroked along my arm. He made small shushing noises, like I was a child. He wasn’t the one I wanted at the moment—the one my heart longed for—but he was offering me comfort. Silently, he told me I wasn’t alone.
It was still well before dawn, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back to sleep, afraid of what my brain would create next. Instead, I closed my eyes and listened to his heart beating. I wondered what Ivy was doing at that moment and where she was. I wondered if she hurt as much as I did.
And I wondered why she’d left me at all.
The next day, I woke up, and the bed beside me was empty. The sheets were cold, and my chest burned. Grief was funny. Sometimes, the ache was so dull that you wondered if the bad thing that had happened had ever really happened. And sometimes, it was so big and all-consuming that you wondered if you could live through it.
Most of the time, it was somewhere in the middle. Over time, it would grow less. I knew that.
I convinced myself to stand and walked to the kitchen. Trey and Caleb sat huddled together, speaking in low tones. “What other options do we have?”
Trey rubbed his glasses along the edge of his shirt. “There has to be something other than that. Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
Caleb’s hand hit the cabinet beside him in frustration. “We’re running out of time.”
I cleared my throat as I walked further into the room. “What are we discussing?”
Trey bit down on his bottom lip, worrying it between his teeth before answering. “Caleb wants to text his grandfather. I told him I should look at property records first and try to narrow down where Ivy is.”
My brain was still fuzzy from my broken sleep, from the beautiful dream turning into a nightmare. It was working slower than usual. Mornings weren’t exactly my forte; they had been Cam’s. “We should list the pros and cons of each.”
Caleb’s hands went to his hair, and he tugged at the wheat-colored strands. “I just hate this. I hate everything about it. My family was bad enough. Knowing what happened to my parents was bad enough. It’s like Ivy has fallen off the face of the planet, and we have no way of contacting her. We should have convinced her to let Trey put a tracker beneath her skin. “
Trey puffed out his cheeks and let out a slow breath. “As soon as we get her back, that’s the first order of business.”
He poured a cup of coffee from the fresh pot sitting on the cabinet. I wondered if I could steal one of Trey’s energy drinks that were stashed somewhere. Maybe it would help me feel more alive.
“So, what are our options? Contact Caleb’s evil grandfather or see if there’s a likely place they stashed Ivy? It’s doubtful they put her in harm’s way, at least yet.”
The thing that kept playing in my mind repeatedly was that there had to be some reason Ivy had met them. Did they have leverage over her we didn’t know about? Why would you feel so comfortable leaving safety and security? Why would she leave me? Why would she leave Caleb, even though the two of them were technically married?
Caleb stood up and found a notebook and pen on the coffee table. He threw them onto the countertop. He drew a line directly down the center of the page, making two columns. One was listed as pros, and the other was cons. They debated each other as I sipped the bitter liquid. Slowly, my brain started working, and the wheels began turning. I waited until there was a break in the conversation. “What if it’s not either or? What if we did both?”
It seemed like the most reasonable thing to me. No matter what, Caleb’s grandfather and the Order still needed to be taken care of. And we needed to find Ivy. Even though she told us not to find her, she had to realize that we would never agree. We were in this together, even if she didn’t like it.
Later that night, Trey climbed into bed with me. He said nothing as he pulled a book from the side table and read it. I lifted an eyebrow at him as I rolled to my side. He cleared his throat as he flipped the page. “I’m just here until you get Ivy back. So that you feel less alone, and maybe you won’t have as many nightmares if someone’s with you.”
I hated he was right. That someone’s presence in the room with me gave me enough comfort to help me sleep.