Chapter 83
I’m slow to lift my eyelids, though I’m as alert as I could possibly be. After experiencing something like that, how could I not be? Breathing deep, I try to calm my racing heart, push away the panic holding me hostage.
My palm frantically searches between the sheets for the body that should be there but isn’t. I want so desperately to tug Rose into my sweaty frame, have the smell of her fill me until there’s no room for this petrifying residue left behind.
Her spot is empty—cold. The claws of the nightmare are firmly lodged beneath my ribs, threatening to shred me apart from the inside because Rose isn’t next to me.
My eyes fly open as I shoot up like a missile, tangled in the blanket.
My flower’s water bottle isn’t on the nightstand next to a book, and her clothes aren’t scattered across the floor.
I scramble from the bed, racing down the hall, hoping to find her passed out in front of the TV with a plate of half-eaten toast on her lap.
She’s not there.
Neither is her flying saucer blanket with the floating cow encircled in a green cone of light.
My pulse climbs to a dangerous rhythm, realization making my knees tremble.
I cast my sights over the area. Not a trace of her presence remains.
It’s like she never existed at all.
But that’s impossible.
I feel her there, occupying the once empty parts of my soul.
My eyes catch the dinosaur calendar hanging on the wall. It sways in the breeze blowing through the window, the Ceratosaurus showcasing a month already passed.
Another anomaly I don’t know how to explain.
Looking closer, today’s date is circled in pink highlighter, Kyle’s familiar writing taking up the whole box. INFILTRATION DAY! is written in capital letters, thick black marker standing out against the white background.
Today’s my first meeting with Maximus, and potentially the initial encounter with Rose that sent my future self spiralling out of control.
Was that merely a horrifying dream? Or an omen?
Have I been given a chance to avoid her? A choice to sidestep the mess my life would become by having her in it?
Do I have free will? Or will the universe transect our paths no matter what I choose?
Is she even real?
The clock on the stove tells me it’s early evening. Why the hell was I in bed so early? And why don’t I remember sliding between the sheets at all?
Determination solidifies itself within my bones, chasing away the uneasy feeling. With the handful of hours I’ve been gifted until my meeting, I have to find out if Rose is a figment of my imagination or not.
My phone sits abandoned on the counter to my right, antique tea pot nowhere in site. Though, the Flour canister sits back against the wall, the biggest out of the set of four. One look at it replays the final fragments of a nightmare that was far too lucid to brush aside as nothing.
Snatching up my cell, I swipe to Kyle’s name and press the call button. This plan forming in my mind is unhinged, borderline psychotic, and definitely something that will be added to my crime boss repertoire.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” The groggy tone of his voice garners no sympathy from me.
“Get that sorry excuse for a helicopter ready, I have somewhere to be.”
I’m about to hang-up, not giving an inch of wiggle room on my order.
There’s so many warring emotions waging hell inside me.
I need an outlet for them. Something more than bouncing on the balls of my feet, because that's not doing fuck all to abate the fear-laced anticipation snaking through my system.
“How long?” Kyle shoots back, voice snapping to attention in an instant.
“Immediately, I’m leaving now.”
“Fuck. Okay.”
Kyle ends the call, as I try to rationalize what the fuck I’m doing. Rose may not even exist. But if she does, I’m not about to waste the moments I have remaining that could save her an insurmountable amount of trauma.
If she’s not on that cruise ship, no harm, no foul. It will be another incident added to the list of things I can’t recover from.
If by the grace of some god, she is there, and suffering the same evisceration as me, maybe we can give it a shot, knowing all we know now.
If her face doesn’t recognize mine, kidnapping is always an option.