Authors: Samantha Leal
“Honey,” Carl said, shaking her arm. “Where is the peanut butter? I realized I forgot to put some on your toast, but I can't find it anywhere."
“If there isn't any in the cabinet, that means we're out," she grumbled. Her heart was still racing with adrenaline and she sighed deeply as Carl left the room. He was humming pleasantly to himself, not seeming to care that he had just awoken her from an intense dream.
There was no way that she would be able to go back to sleep after this. She sighed and ran her hand through her hair, surprised and disturbed to find remnants of leaves in it. Was it possible that she had really been in the forest?
No, that didn't happen in real life. She was going to freak herself out if she let herself wonder about these kinds of ridiculous ideas. Alisa decided to go back to her study, where the highlander book was open and waiting for her. She began to read the words hungrily, her mind spinning with the vividness of her sleeping life. It felt exactly the same as when she woke up. She wondered if she would ever have a dream that vivid again.
She remembered being chased, goosebumps crawling up her flesh, and she hoped that one was the only vivid highlander dream she would ever have. Whether she loved Scotland or not, she was quite grateful that she wouldn't have to think any more about being chased by the terrifying bearded man with the large sword. Maybe it actually wasn't such a good idea for her to be reading that book. Everything was beginning to seem too real. She decided that she should give it a few days before picking it up again.
Alisa closed the book and chose instead to spend her day focused on catching up with the housework. Carl had left about 10 minutes ago, saying that he was going to pick up some peanut butter for her toast. But she had already eaten, so she wasn't hungry anymore.
Wait, when had she eaten? Surely her body wasn't remembering the breakfast of steaming hot fish in the highlander camp. That couldn't have been true sustenance, and the idea that it might be tricking her into thinking it was, made her nervous. Usually she was a lot more down-to-earth than that. It was obviously just some weird miscommunication between her brain and her senses. She would just have to be more present in the moment, instead of trying to avoid it.
Alisa sighed. She was probably just worried that Carl had gone out to be with somebody else. He had never offered to go out and buy peanut butter before. His sudden interest in household chores was border lining on scary for her. Carl was a traditional type of thinker, who believed that women had their place in the kitchen and he shouldn't have to take care of the home, even if he and his wife had the same amount of work obligations and made the same amount of money. The man didn't normally lift a finger, so what was he up to?
She tried not to worry too much about it as she puttered throughout the house, cleaning and thinking. It wasn't until the sun set that she became truly angry. Carl still wasn't home. He was probably out doing something that he shouldn't be doing. She wasn't sure how she knew that, she could simply feel it. Still, she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, despite her hesitation. Maybe if she did, she wouldn't yell at him the second that he came through the door, which was especially important for their relationship if he didn't deserve it.
Finally, around 8 o'clock at night, Carl pulled in. He wasn't carrying a jar of peanut butter at all, and when she looked at him, he gave her a sheepish smile.
“Some guys invited me over for the game, I totally forgot to pick up the peanut butter. We met in the parking lot. They were leaving and I was just pulling in. It seemed too good to resist, I know you can't stand the sport. It's really important for me to make friends at my age, you never know when things will go downhill and you need someone to talk to. I didn't think that you would mind, I told them all that I have the coolest wife on the block."
He walked over to her and planted a wet kiss on her cheek. She grimaced as he walked away. Carl smelled like cigarette smoke. And there was something on his neck. Something, as if somebody had been getting too carried away kissing and nibbling his neck. If he was with a woman, they had been acting shameless and then thought better of it. However, it was possible that he had simply given himself some razor burn. He was known to do that.
He walked back into the living room, and turned on the TV. He kept his face buried in his cell phone, texting somebody whenever he thought that she wasn't looking. She wanted so badly to grab his phone and go through it, shoving any incriminating messages that she might find right in his face, but she had more class than that. Instead, she went to bed early, fuming and angry, but not knowing what to do about it.
***
“Oy, lass, are you okay?!” Blane's masculine voice rumbled sweetly in her ear. She was out of breath and panting, clinging to him as if they were lost lovers. She couldn't remember what happened after the man had started chasing her, but when she saw Blaine there, worry and concern etched all over his rugged, handsome face, she knew that whatever had happened was over now and she was safe.
“Where did that man go?" She asked, her voice tight and frightened.
“Me and a couple of lads scared that old bastard away. He was ready to make an enemy of me yet, wasn't he? Lord Todd hasn't heard the last of me and my clan."
“Lord Todd?” She asked, her voice filling with concern. For some reason, putting a name to the face brought a wild panic into her heart. “No, I want you guys to stay away from him. Please just trust me on this."
“Why lass? Is something wrong? I always protect you, that's how it goes. Now that he has wronged you, he has to pay the price."
“Seriously, just leave it alone. I don't even like you, there's nothing to avenge. That guy is dangerous. I don't want anything to happen to you okay?”
“If you don't even like me why would you care if something happened to me?” he asked, grinning charmingly. “And anyway, what do you know about him that I don't?" Blane asked. “It's not like he can hurt me. Not with you back. Nothing can hurt me now.”
Alisa found herself extremely frustrated by his cocky Scottish accent. Although Blane was absolutely gorgeous, he was stubborn and reckless as well.
“Lord Todd is a traitor to you and everything you hold dear. He is not a friend of yours. He's not even a friend to the Highlanders. There are some men among you who are not your friends. You're just too stubborn and blind to see it.”
Whether she had memories of this or not, the legends had told her the truth. She felt an obligation to share it with him before he was too badly hurt.
“Now I'm beginning to understand why Lord Todd told me that you came back a loon. None of my men would ever be conspiring against me. And Todd may be a prig who wants to get under your dress, but that's about all it comes down to, lass. My men are loyal. Now hold your tongue before you make me angry.”
But now he had made Alisa angry.
“How could you ever expect me to love you when you are too ignorant to see what is going on around you? Why is it that you're so ready to run into danger when I'm telling you not to? If you feel like you want to test it, go ahead, what do I care? Get yourself killed. But that woman you love would be pretty pissed off, I think.”
“I'd wager," he said, hiding his pain with a stoic grin. “Why don't you tell me what you think you know? It might be more useful than taking that high and mighty attitude. Thought we'd gotten rid of that when we got you out of the lowlands.”
“I'm not who you think I am, okay? This is all just a dream.”
“I know who you are, maybe better than you know yourself,” Blane said, his eyes flashing with an emotion that made her heart thud. “But I also know my men.”
“Suit yourself,” Alisa said, shooting daggers at Blane. “If you don't want to listen to me, fine. But don't say I didn't try to warn you.”
She surprised herself when she was about to follow up with, “Why do you think I left you here in the first place?” She stopped herself just in time. It would have sounded crazy to all of them, and she didn't even know what she meant by it. Whoever had left him hadn't been her. Besides, it wasn't as if she would ever get through to him. She knew what kind of a man he was just by looking at him.
He was strong and fierce and loyal, maybe more muscular than he was intelligent. But that might have just been her pride and anger talking. She would have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the powers around him were conspiring against him, and she didn't have the time or the patience to convince him of something of that caliber. Instead, she wanted to focus on figuring out what to do next.
“So I suppose that you're going to take me back to your camp?" She said grimly.
“No lass, if you want to stay with Lord Todd that's fine. We can leave you right here.”
For some reason, the fact that he didn't seem to care what she did infuriated her more. She felt about him the same way that she felt for Carl when he seemed indifferent to her feelings while they were fighting. She believed that because they were in a committed relationship together, they had an obligation to respect one another's feelings.
Why would she feel this way about a stranger? There was no rule saying that strange men have to respect how she felt just because they were ridiculously attractive and muscular. Maybe she was fantasizing about being with him romantically, but that didn't mean that he had to honor any of her wishes. He didn't even have to save her, and yet he did so. In the dream, apparently she was filling the role of his lover, but why would they be fighting like this if that were true? She didn't want to fill the role of his lover. She just wanted to be herself.
“If that's true and you don't care, maybe I will just stay with Lord Todd. He seems smarter than you are anyway. He might be ugly, but at least he would listen if somebody told him he was in danger."
“The old scoundrel only cares about saving his own hide. He would run off with his tail between his legs whether the threat was real or not,” Blane said, cocking an eyebrow. “Now listen, I know this has been very hard on you. You don't really understand our ways yet. I don't know where you've been, but it's obvious that things are different there. Eventually, I think you're going to be able to fit in again. We'll go back to camp, and you can decide what you want to do after you get some rest and some food in your belly.”
She glumly followed behind Lord Blane, who had brought two men to accompany him as he searched for her. When she looked at the sky, she realized that she must have been missing for hours. He had been frantic with worry, she somehow remembered, when he saved her. But how would she remember when he saved her? She hadn't even been there. Something strange was going on. She wished there was some kind of legend about this, but nothing her mother had told her would prepare her for such a vivid and bewildering dream.
“Come lass, let's get you cleaned up,” he said with a scowl once they made it to camp.
“I'm fine," she said.
“No, you're not fine. I need to see how much harm has been done to you so I will know just how badly to kill Todd next time I see him hanging around here.”
Although she hadn't been asleep long enough to remember the actual confrontation that she had with Lord Todd, she remembered him drawing his sword on her and lunging forward. He'd wanted to take her back to his own clan and keep her for himself, relishing her pale skin and frail frame. He had said something about her being like a flower petal, his eyes wide and crazed with desire. She had tried to run, worried that he would overstep his bounds, and he had chased after her through the forest. He had grabbed her arm just long enough to throw her to the ground when Lord Blane had intercepted with a loud, furious roar and the clinking of metal.
She had never been so glad to see any man in her life, and somehow, the joy and the immense love that she felt toward him had apparently radiated vibrantly. They embraced, sharing a passionate and heated kiss, gripping each other's bodies like they hadn't seen one another in years. Somehow she had stayed with him in real time, losing her confusion and hard edge as she consciously spent her day doing housework and worrying that Carl was cheating on her. Images of her days overlapped and she brought her hand to her head, hissing in pain.
“What's wrong love?” Blane asked.
Suddenly his strong body was in front of her, cupping her face tenderly in his huge hands. She grimaced, still pained by the intense overlapping of memories, and fell limply into his arms, groaning as an agonizing rush of blinding light knocked her off her feet. He lifted her, mumbling to himself about how dead Todd was going to be once he caught him.
She tried to explain that Todd had nothing to do with this strange phenomenon, but she could hardly speak. He rushed to his private tent, laying her on his cot and retrieving a large basin of water and a rag. He dabbed her forehead tenderly, almost reverently, and gently peeled her shawl off, hoping to be able to study her arms and legs, making sure she wasn't physically hurt. She was too groggy to protest.
Alisa's eyes stayed shut as her mind fought for control and understanding. She felt like she had been put on a Ferris wheel, at turbo speed, whipping her around and around until she wanted to throw up. She groaned as he examined her body with a gentleness and love that she had never experienced from any man before. And yet it felt familiar. Right, somehow.