Page 86 of Ex Somnis

“How?” Ridge asks immediately.

Mom hums softly, like she’s listening to voices far away. “The soul has to remember there’s something to return to.”

Ridge frowns. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means,” she says patiently. “You cannot pull someone back who no longer reaches toward you.”

Paul steps closer slightly. “Lennon is trying to come back.”

“Yes,” Mom agrees easily. “Very hard.”

Before I can even ask how she would know, hope punches straight through my ribs so fast it almost hurts.

“Then why can’t she wake up?” I ask instead, and it’s not more than a whisper.

“Because more of her love is listening to elsewhere.”

A cold feeling crawls up my spine.

“Can that part be forced back?” Paul asks.

“No.” Mom shakes her head. “Love is invitation only.”

Ridge scoffs softly. “Cool. Hate that.”

“You cannot drag a soul home. You can only give it reasons to stay.” Mom smiles faintly, and nobody speaks for a second.

Then Jasper asks quietly, “And if the soul loves someone in both places?”

Mom’s expression changes to sadness.

Real sadness.

“Then it hurts,” she says.

I press two fingers over my nose.

Still can’t breathe through it.

Still awake.

4 better. 4 worse. 4 ever.

Yeah, I think.

Sounds about right.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Lennon

The damn e-reader isn’t working.

I’ve suspected it was broken for a while, but I keep trying to use it anyway, because what else am I going to do? I drag my eyes across the same line for the fourth time, and the letters just… don’t. They’re there, all of them, but they refuse to become words. Like my brain keeps trying to load the page, and the page keeps not loading. I flip back three chapters, thinking maybe I missed something, and it’s the same there too.

Scrambled. A language that isn’t one.

Reality check.