Page 35 of Ex Somnis

“You were the only person who didn’t do that.”

He sidesteps again, but the smoothness is gone.

“And then you handed me professional language like that somehow made it better.” I laugh once, breathless. “Boundaries. Necessary separation. Like you weren’t ripping something out by the roots while you said it.”

The apartment darkens at the edges, and plants rustle violently against the walls.

Paul’s expression shifts. It’s a tiny movement, but a devastating one.

“Ridge, I’m…”

“She’s my tether.” The words come out too fast to stop, and I see the exact moment he understands what that means.

“Whatever’s happening between you two, I don’t care,” I say, breathing hard now. “You do not get to walk back into this only to take the one person who looks at me and still sees a fucking person. Lennon is mine.”

Another streak of darkness flies toward him, and I expect him to dodge, but he doesn’t. The shadow slams directly into his chest, and it blooms black across the front of his white shirt. He ignores it, which should tell me all I need to know about how furious I’ve made him.

“What…” he says carefully, “… did you just say?”

“You heard me.”

Every plant in the apartment moves at once. Vines whip free from hooks, shelves, and pots so fast that the air cracks with it. One curls around my wrist before I can react. Another catches my other arm. Then my chest. My waist.

Suddenly, I’m pinned upright against the wall, completely immobilized beneath twisting green things that smell like wet soil.

Paul Bennett is finally losing his composure.

I hate this feeling instantly.

Violently.

My pulse spikes so hard my vision flickers, because apparently being restrained by plants still hits enough like being trapped under a log for my subconsciousness to immediately classify it as absolutely the fuck not.

Paul crosses the room slowly, eyes fixed on me, while a vine curls tighter around my chin and tips my head back until I’m looking directly at him.

“Lennon is mine.”

If that isn’t the wrong thing to say to me while holding me trapped against a wall.

I glare at him while I reach for the structure underneath the plants.

Every dream ever built has seams and weak points. Places where the construction is newer, where the will holding it together thins if you push hard enough. Paul’s dream work is extraordinary. Of course, it is.

But I’ve been doing this for a long time too.

I find the seams and press, and the vines around me twitch slightly.

“That so?” A smile tugs at my lips when I pull at them.

The apartment explodes.

The plants are ripped away from me in an instant. Terracotta shatters across the floor, hooks rip from walls, soil bursts through the air in dark sprays while vines snap violently overhead and plants hurl themselves from shelves in every direction at once.

I’m free in the middle of the destruction, debris raining around us while Paul moves away from me, but not fast enough. Darkness surges out of me and slams around him, pinning him upright exactly the way he pinned me.

I click my tongue softly when I step in front of him.

His eyes blaze.