Chapter 17 #2
“You don’t have to explain anything, okay? Do what you want, but please help me get her back.” The words spill faster. “Help me wake her up. I swear I’ll do whatever it takes, I’ll—”
He moves faster than thought. One second he’s standing there, pinned and not amused, and the next he’s free of the honey, and his lollipop is pressed firmly against my lips, the sour-sweet scent of artificial lemon flooding my nose.
“Sweetheart,” he murmurs, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Shut up for a minute, yeah?”
I glare up at him when he pushes the lollipop past my lips, and they part anyway, the candy sliding inside. Sour lemon flavor fills my mouth, and my tongue curls around it on pure reflex, sucking once before higher reasoning catches up and freezes me in place.
Ridge’s eyes darken to the same color the molten honey had, pupils blown wide, his gaze fixed on my mouth like he’s forgotten lungs are a requirement for survival.
Maybe they aren’t in dreams.
A low sound rumbles in his throat, barely audible, but I feel it in my bones. Then he draws the lollipop back out, dragging it along my lower lip before bringing it to his own. He then pops it between his lips and sucks on it.
Instead of giving me the ick, it does something else entirely. Something hot, treacherous, and very much not supposed to happen in a dream or with the guy my best friend is in love with.
I mean… shit.
This is a dream.
I’m lucid, standing here in my dream with a man I don’t know, who is tied to the reason my best friend is trapped in hers and…
My breath stutters. The ground tilts beneath my feet, wavering as if it’s about to give up on pretending it’s solid. I squeeze my eyes shut as fear slowly starts to claw up my throat.
“Shh.” Ridge presses one finger to my lips, right over the spot the lollipop was, and my eyes snap open.
“You want answers? Earn them. Stay lucid, keep breathing, and stay with me.” His thumb traces the curve of my bottom lip, grounding and intimate in a way that makes my pulse stutter even more. “Don’t let the dream collapse.”
The command sinks in, but something in me recoils. I don’t want to be steadied by the very man who is at least partially responsible for my best friend’s suffering.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath and then a step back, folding my arms over my chest. “Then answer my questions. How did you just get free?”
He mirrors me and steps forward, close enough that I catch the tang of crystallized ginger and dry cedar, close enough that my body reacts even while my spine stays stiff. His mouth curves, but this time, it’s not amused. It’s assessing.
“Your stubbornness only managed to steady the dream.”
“Ridge,” I say flatly, “I swear to God, I will wake myself up if you don’t start talking.”
Something flickers in his eyes, then he exhales and leans back a fraction, easing the pressure. “I don’t know what Tessa told you, but she and I were never—”
“She didn’t tell me,” I cut in. “It was in her journal. She wrote about being in love with a guy called Wells, which was apparently not a good enough surname for her parents.”
“Ah. You know, your landlord’s name is Wells too.”
“Derek?”
Why didn’t I even think of that?
“Yep. They were each other’s demise.”
I frown at him. “They loved each other.”
“Sure, in the same way Romeo and Juliet loved each other,” Ridge says dryly, inspecting his fingers. “Except Romeo was an orphan taken in by his aunt and uncle, who paid the bills by renting out apartments instead of owning a mansion.”
“And Juliet’s parents shut the door,” I murmur, a bad feeling creeping up again.
“Hard.” He meets my gaze. “Derek let her go to make sure she’d be happy, even if it almost killed him. Now look where that brought them.”
And me.
This isn’t just Tessa’s tragedy, it’s mine too. The sunlight through the windows flickers, and somewhere above us, something cracks again.
“But what’s with Melanie’s mom?”
“She’s a bitch, and not worth the air it takes to explain her.
Listen.” His voice drops, serious now. “A lucid dream can stretch into hours or days inside your head, even if only maybe minutes have passed in waking life, but holding lucidity and stability at the same time is fragile as hell. Even if your control is impressive, you’re still triggered by emotion.
So if we want to talk, you need to get them under control. ”
“What? Want to tell me women are too emotional?”
“Nah.” His mouth curves into what I already can tell is a signature half smirk. “I’m saying you are too emotional to lucid dream right now, and I’m not in the mood to get emotionally waterboarded tonight.”
I huff at him. “Don’t act like I’m the one being difficult.”
An invisible pressure is pushing against the walls of this place, and I don’t know how I know it’s him doing it, but I do.
“Looks like you’re right.” Ridge’s eyes flick to the side, scanning the space. “You locked the dream down again.”
“What? No, I didn’t do anything.”
“You did. Whether you realize it or not. Let me make sure you’re not freaking out.” He reaches out slowly, and his fingers slide between mine again, breadstick-crumb-dusted and warm, tangling us together. His shoulders drop half an inch, and tension bleeds out of his jaw.
His touch brings me the same kind of relief.
But why?
“Okay,” I say hoarsely. “I’m not freaking out.” Ridge snorts, but I steer us back on topic. “What happened to Tessa?”
“I don’t know, and believe me, I tried to figure it out.”
“You did?”
He shrugs. “Derek’s a dick, but he’s still my family, and I wouldn’t wish that kind of trapped in your own body on anyone. Ever.”
“But you couldn’t help her?” The words come out smaller than I mean them to.
Another shrug, this one heavier. “Just because I’m good at lucid dreaming doesn’t mean I’m Superman.”
I sigh. “Pity.”
He grins as if an idea struck him and pulls me closer. “Come here.”
“Come where—”
The kitchen drops out from under us, and I scream, shutting my eyes tight. Cold wind roars past my ears, and for one horrible second, I’m sure I’ve finally lost my mind.
“Relax.” He chuckles as though we’re on a mildly aggressive amusement park ride. “Flying’s the best part of being lucid.”
I crack an eye open, only to find that we’re in the sky. Not metaphorically, but literally, with stars smeared across the dark like someone scattered glitter. Earth stretches beneath us, blue, white, and breathtaking.
“Oh my God,” I breathe out.
“Right?” Ridge leans forward into the wind as if he were Superman after all, and because I’m still holding his hand, pulls me with him. My body follows his lead, suddenly not falling anymore.
I’m flying. We’re flying.
Laughter rips out of me, bubbling up from somewhere deep in my chest.
“This is…” I gasp. “This is amazing!”
He glances back at me, eyes bright. “Told you.”
We cut through the stars until a small planet that’s suspended in the dark comes into view.
As we draw closer, I can see that its surface is covered in yellow flowers, endless fields of them rippling in a soft golden wave.
There’s water, too, lakes and rivers that mirror the sky above, reflecting the Milky Way back at itself, while a faint rainbow arcs over the horizon.
I don’t even realize we’ve slowed until my feet touch ground. Ridge plops down in the middle of the flowers and tugs on my hand until I sit beside him. The blooms brush my legs, feeling almost ticklish.
“This is so beautiful.” I let my free hand glide over the top of them.
“I almost forgot how good my brain is at building stuff.” His hand twitches in mine, and for a moment, we sit and breathe while I take all of it in.
“I could get used to this,” I say without thinking.
“Careful. Dreams are tempting.” He glances at me sidelong. “At first, I wanted to stay here all the time. Ignore the real world and my reality entirely.”
A lump forms in my throat as Tessa’s words from the journal surface in my mind, echoing too closely to what he just said.
“If I could just stay here with him, I would.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Nope.” He leans back into the flowers, propping himself up, and gestures with our joined hands. “Found a balance that works for me. I dream up the stories I want to write… then I go back and put them on paper.”
I study his side profile. “You’re a writer?”
“I’m a dreamer.”
“You think being this ominous is funny?”
“A little.” A smile tugs at his lips, almost shy, and if this information wasn’t that damn important, I might notice how much it softens his face.
“So what do you write?” I press, because now that I have a crack in the wall, I’m not wasting it.
He tilts his chin toward the sky above us, toward the stars and the planet we’re sitting on, built entirely from the inside of his head. “I used to write about places like this.”
I glance around and let out a short breath. “Sci-Fi?”
“It was only a hobby. Something I did to make sense of what was up here.” He taps his temple once.
“Wasn’t going anywhere with it. And then…
I figured out lucid dreaming.” He plucks a flower, rolling the stem between his thumb and finger.
“I could come here and actually walk around in it. Feel the wind…” He pauses. “Change things.”
“I can see why.” I look down at the blooms brushing my knees, soft as anything. “So what do you mean you used to write places like this?”
“I changed genres.”
“To what?”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “Horror, actually.”
I blink at him. “Horror.”
“Mm.”
“You…” I gesture widely at the universe he’s constructed around us. “You have all of this, and you write horror?”
“I’m better with dark things, apparently.” He says it simply, like it’s obvious, and when I follow his gaze out toward the edge of the planet, the landscape has shifted. Just at the periphery, where the golden fields thin out and the light doesn’t quite reach, something moves.
It doesn’t touch the ground.
It drifts in spiraling loops. Beautiful at a distance. A thing your eyes want to follow, but the longer I watch it, the more wrong it becomes with how it turns and its shape against the sky.