Page 77 of Ghost Ribbon

“Alexei—!”

He just lifted me effortlessly and held me against his chest. My arms automatically looped around his neck for balance, the oversized shirt riding up my thighs.

“Relax,” he murmured again, the same word he had used earlier when he was cleaning me up, only this time it didn’t make me want to argue. This time it actually worked a little.

When we reached the bedroom, he simply lowered me onto the massive bed as he climbed in after me, and before I could even think about moving, he was pulling me back into his arms.

He settled on his back and drew me against his side, one arm wrapped securely around my waist while the other rested loosely across my shoulders.

I curled into him instinctively, one of my legs sliding between his as I rested my head on his chest.

Alexei’s fingers traced absent patterns along my back through the fabric of his shirt. The touch was soothing in a way I hadn’t expected from him.

I closed my eyes.

With him.

In his bed.

I dreamt of a garden I had never walked

and a boy whose name my heart somehow already knew.

He was too tall for his age, with eyes so green

they looked as though spring had drowned inside them.

He sat beneath a lemon tree, its fruit hanging like captive moons,

too bright for the darkness around us.

He didn’t smile, but something in his face suggested

the smile was trying to find its way out,

pressing against the surface like light through a crack.

I dreamt I told him about the stars,

about my grandmother and her blanket of dark,

about the light that goes on forever behind it,

about the little holes where it pokes through so the light can breathe.

When I reached for him, the dream split apart.

The garden withered. The tree collapsed into ash.

His face vanished before I could learn it.

Chapter 21 - Alexei

I woke before him.

That wasn’t unusual. Sleep had always been a shallow thing for me, more habit than need. Even when I was younger, I never understood how other people seemed to collapse into sleep. My mind didn’t trust the dark enough for that. It never had.

But this morning I didn’t mind waking early.