Page 66 of Ex Somnis

Not despite everything but including it. Every lonely part of me goes painfully still. It feels like what I imagine unconditional love is supposed to feel like.

My breath catches before I can help it.

Then the garden slams back into place.

I stagger slightly, and suddenly his green eyes are close. Very close.

“This is so much more than you can imagine,” he whispers. “Choose this. I’ll show you all of it. You’ll have Tessa. You’ll have me. None of us will ever have to be alone again, Lenny. I’m not a copy. I’m real. And I’m beginning to believe we may be exactly the kind of real both of us have been looking for.”

The afternoon light falls golden through the leaves, and my chest pulls painfully with something I absolutely refuse to examine.

“But if you leave…”

The warmth drains out of the air before he even finishes the sentence. Cold slips under my skin, and beneath the birdsong, I hear it.

Labored breathing.

A body fighting for air.

Tessa.

“If you leave now, Tessa will be pulled back into the in-between, tethered between you and me.” The breathing turns ragged before the garden swallows the sound again. “And her body won’t be able to hold that state much longer.”

I turn my head slowly, bringing us almost nose to nose.

Green eyes locking onto mine.

Beautiful.

Lonely.

Terrifying.

I think about Ridge telling me that lonely things are dangerous.

And suddenly, the ache in my chest hardens into resolve.

“Sounds like I’ll have to be quick then,” I whisper back.

The gravel shifts hard beneath my feet as I sprint toward the restaurant, lungs burning even though I don’t think lungs are supposed to matter here. The garden blurs at the edges around me, roses smearing into streaks of red and white.

Tessa is standing in the entrance when I reach her, my mother beside her, and one look at Tessa’s face tells me she heard everything.

“Lenny,” she says softly. “What are you doing?”

“What I should have been doing since I got here.”

I stop in front of her, breathing hard, chest aching with panic, grief, and the horrible certainty that I’m running out of time.

“Getting you out.”

“Nothing has changed.” Her voice shakes slightly now. “I promised him.”

“And I’m promising you.” I take both her hands. “I’ll get you out of here. I’ll wake you up.”

“Lenny, I’m too tethered to him. You heard what he said. You saw what happens when it won’t work.”

“Watch me.”