Page 25 of Ex Somnis

As if the rest of me didn’t get the memo that we’re currently regretting things.

Worse yet, I’ve been finding myself in strange places. Apparently, I have been tiring myself out so badly that I fall asleep randomly and not in my sleeping bag.

Not bad places but wrong ones. Woke up the first night on the kitchen floor with my cheek against the cold tile and one of my mom’s books in my hand—this book—which was my own upside-down situation in miniature. Second night, I made it as far as the living room bookshelf before whatever part of me that wanders at night got bored, tired, or ran out of direction. I came back to myself standing there in the dark with my fingers on the spines, reading titles I couldn’t read even in daylight.

No walls or spray cans, only drifting.

It would almost be better if I knew why.

Renée Bennett showed up the evening after my birthday party. She didn’t make a thing of it, just said Paul had asked her to cover the dinner service. She’s been covering every shift since, and I haven’t once gone in to check on it. That tells me more than anything how bad these few days actually are.

High season ended last weekend. There are maybe six guests left, the last stragglers, and even knowing that every one of them deserves to be taken care of properly, I can’t make myself care.

I care about almost nothing right now except what I understood that night, standing in a parking lot, which is roughly that she can go places in her sleep. Ridge can too. Somehow, Tessa Vaughn, who is basically the town’s myth, is involved. That’s it.

That’s the full picture I walked away with.

She is lucid dreaming.

The book is supposed to fill in the blanks, but it’s not cooperating.

I could ask someone. That’s an option that technically exists. Derek was in that parking lot and knows what’s happening. If I asked, he’d probably tell me, even if I don’t really know him.

Except that would lead to Derek telling Ridge I asked. If I wanted him to know that, I would ask that asshole myself. But I don’t have Ridge’s or Paul’s number, and they’re the ones who actually know what any of this means.

So I’m sitting here with a book I can’t read because the alternative is walking up to a man who told me I’m stupid and asking him to explain dreams to me like I’m six years old, or the other man whose girlfriend I kissed and that’s… no. I can’t do that.

I could call Lennon.

But every time I have pulled up her contact, my hands started sweating so badly I had to set the phone down.

She ran.

Whatever that means, it doesn’t mean “call me, and we’ll talk it through.” It means she needed space, and I should give it to her. Also, if what I picked up from that conversation isn’t completely crazy, she may be unconscious anyway, so circumstances somewhat resolved the space issue.

So, the book is the remaining option.

Teach myself. Figure it out from the pages of a book that is genuinely actively fighting me, because at least a book doesn’t know I’m struggling and can’t report back to anyone.

And goddammit, I know this world. Maybe not like Ridge does, or Paul apparently, or Lennon herself, but I’ve stood at the edge of that world my whole life.

My mom was always going somewhere I couldn’t follow, and apparently, Lennon is too.

The letters blur.

I blink, and they blur again. This time I recognize that it’s not the usual problem, because it doesn’t make the page go hot and swimmy like this. This is something else. It’s the thing I’ve been outrunning for days, finally catching up.

My throat closes.

Don’t.

I pinch the bridge of my nose, press hard, but the burn behind my eyes doesn’t care.

This is all my fault.

She’s gone because she ran from me, and if she hadn’t been running, if I’d kept my hands to myself, my mouth shut, and just…

The pages blur again.