Page 126 of In Somnis

“I’m going to wake you up,” I promise after a long pause. “That’s what I came here for. That’s what I’m going to do.”

The mall flickers once, the lights dipping and rushing back.

“Practice being lucid,” Tessa says instead of answering. “Think about what you could have if you let yourself go. If you stopped holding on so tight⁠—”

“Stop.”

She goes quiet.

“That’s not you talking,” I say. “I don’t know who it is, but I know it’s not you.”

The Tessa I know would have told me to go live my life. Would have been furious at the idea of me giving anything up for her, let alone everything. She told me once, in our second year, when I was joking about dropping a class because she was having a hard month, that if I ever made my life smaller for her, she would never forgive me. She meant it.

This is her voice, her face. The Derek pain was hers.

But this… invitation to let go, this is someone else speaking through her.

A hairline fracture shifts in the expression I know better than my own, like a mask settling a millimeter wrong. Then she smiles softly, sadly, and so completely her that my chest seizes.

“I never left, Lenny.”

The fountain makes a weird crunching sound, and then, between one breath and the next, she’s gone.

The bench beside me is empty, the second milkshake sitting there, still cold and sweating in the mall air.

I sit there for a moment in the ringing quiet.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell the empty mall. “And neither are you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Lennon

“Well, that was… dramatic.”

Ridge is leaning against a closed shop front with his arms crossed and a lollipop tucked in his cheek. His long, dark hair falls loose around his face as he watches me with amber eyes. Then he pushes off the wall and pulls the lollipop from his mouth, holding it between two fingers as if he’s considering it, before letting it drop. It disappears before it ever hits the ground.

As he starts walking toward me, he hooks his thumb under the hair tie around his wrist, tugs it free with his teeth, and gathers his hair back with both hands. The movement is somehow intimate, making something low in my stomach tighten before I can stop it.

Tessa’s voice echoes in my head.

“You are absolutely craving.”

My pulse jumps.

Shit. Maybe she had a point.

Hair up, Ridge comes to a halt in front of me and reaches down to take my hand, pulling me to my feet in one smooth motion and straight into walking without breaking stride.

“Ridge—” I start.

“Come on. I hate this fucking dreamscape.”

“I don’t have shoes on…” I look down. Shoes, exactly where they should be. “But my milkshake…” I look back. The bench is empty. Both cups, bags, the entire rest of our afternoon gone like it was never there. “Ridge, where are we even going?”

“You are not going anywhere.” His hand tightens around mine.

“Well, right now I’m walking somewhere with you, which I didn’t agree to.”