Blessed (Book 2, The Watchers Trilogy; Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (27 page)

I saw Tara stir on the couch. Malik hadn’t left his position on the floor beside her, and immediately sat up on his knees, hovering over her slightly as she opened her eyes.

“Where am I?” she asked him weakly.

“You’re safe,” he told her, caressing her cheek gently with the back of his hand, unable to hold back his tears of relief.

I went to her, kneeling beside Malik.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“Tired. My neck hurts,” she cried.

“Here,” Elliot said, handing me a glass of water and a couple of pills. “Have her take these for the pain before she goes back to sleep.”

Without asking him to, Malik gently lifted Tara in his arms and sat back down on the couch with her in his lap, to make it easier for her to drink the water and take the pills. Once she was done, she rested her head against his shoulder and quickly fell back to sleep.

I got instructions on how to care for Tara’s pain and wound from Elliot. I also arranged to bring him to our home the next day to check on her.

“I want to keep her close,” I told Brand.

“We can make up the spare bedroom for her,” he replied.

It didn’t take us long to make sure we had everything we needed to bring Tara home with us. Malcolm took Abby and Sebastian back to his house and asked us to call him if we needed anything else.

Will and Malik refused to leave Tara’s side, even after we brought her home and had her resting in the spare bedroom. We brought in chairs for them to sit in to make their vigil more comfortable. Will quickly turned on Brand’s computer in the room, determined to start his own research into Uriel’s cryptic statements.

Brand made me change clothes and lie down on our bed with him.

“You have to be exhausted from what you’ve been through tonight,” he argued. “You’re probably just running on adrenaline right now. Lie down for a little while, and if you aren’t asleep within a few minutes, I won’t badger you anymore.”

I was standing inside the house Malcolm built for me, looking out the picture window at the snowcapped mountain and lake in the distance. My eyes fell on the table in front of me and I saw the beautiful mango-wood bowl we had received as a wedding gift. It was filled with large red apples, because those were what I had been craving the past few months. My hands cradled the large bump of my belly as the child inside me kicked. I knew it had to be a boy. Only a man could kick so hard.

“Give me your hands,” I told Brand as he came to stand behind me. I put his palms on top of my belly just as our son kicked again.

“He’ll probably be a kicker for the NFL one day,” Brand said, kissing me on the side of the neck, making my flesh break out in involuntary goose bumps like his touch so often did.

“Mommy!”

We turned at the sound of our daughter’s excited voice as she ran down the stairs from the second floor of the house. She was almost three years old now, with a head full of chestnut hair like mine and beautiful grey eyes like her father. How quickly time passed when you were enjoying life. Brand bent down as she got closer and picked her up, holding her against his side.

“Mommy, will you come play princess with me?”

“Oh, not again,” I said, pretending I wasn’t interested in playing her favorite game. “Do I have to be the evil witch again, or can I be the beautiful, courageous princess this time?”

“I’m the princess,” she said, as if not understanding how I could even conceive of asking such a question.

“Well, while you girls play princess, Daddy’s going to go make you both some supper.”

Brand kissed our daughter on the cheek, setting her back down on the floor.

“Ok, Daddy.”

Brand kissed me on the lips before leaving us and heading to the kitchen at the back of the house.

“Can we play, Mommy, please?” Our daughter had the cutest look of pleading in her eyes. I wasn’t sure who she had learned that from, probably her Uncle Malcolm teaching her bad habits again.

“Lilly.”

I heard Brand call to me, and turned to see him standing only a couple of feet away from us.

“Aren’t you supposed to be cooking us some fabulous gourmet meal for supper?” I asked. “I’m eating for two, you know, and we’re both hungry.”

“What is this place?” Brand asked, looking around him as if he’d never seen our house before.

“What are you talking about? It’s our home in Colorado,” I replied, wondering why he was acting as if he didn’t know where he was. “We’ve lived here for a while now, Brand. Are you all right? Are you coming down with something?”

“Who is that?” he asked, nodding to our daughter. “And…” he stared at my protruding belly like he’d never seen a woman with child before, “are you pregnant, Lilly?”

“Go up and change into your princess costume, sweetie,” I told our daughter, not wanting Brand’s odd behavior to frighten her unnecessarily. “Mommy and Daddy need to talk for a minute. I’ll be right up.”

“Why’s Daddy acting so funny?” she asked.

“Just go up to your room, please. I’ll be there in a bit.”

Without any more protest, she went back up the stairs.

“You act like you’ve never seen our daughter before, when you just saw her a minute ago,” I said, coming to stand in front of Brand, who seemed unable to move on his own. I picked up one of his hands and laid it on my belly as our son began to kick again. “I swear he’s going to kick his way out one of these days,” I laughed.

“Lilly,” Brand said, taking his hand away from my stomach like what he felt was unnatural. “This isn’t real.”

“What are you talking about?” I was getting worried about him now. “What isn’t real?”

“My love, you’re dreaming.”

“Dreaming?”

“Yes, this is a dream. And somehow, you’ve brought me into it. I thought I would give you a nice dream tonight after everything you just went through with Robert and Uriel, but when I fell asleep, I found myself here, in your fantasy world.”

“But,” I could feel the sting of tears well in my eyes, “
this
is
real. Our daughter…”

“Just a dream,” he said gently, seeing how distraught I was becoming.

“No,” I said firmly, determined to make him understand. “She’s
real
. I can remember everything about her. I know her favorite color, what she likes to eat, her favorite games to play. My God, I know what she smells like! I remember giving birth to her and holding her in my arms for the first time. You saw her. She’s real! And this baby,” I said, touching my stomach. “He’s real! I can feel him moving, living inside me.”

“Lilly, it’s just a dream. You need to wake up before you get more upset.”

“No,” I said stubbornly. “I’m not leaving our children.”

I turned away from Brand and hurriedly made my way up the stairs to our daughter’s room. I found her standing in front of a child-sized vanity, dressed in one of her frilly pink princess dresses, putting on the tiara I had bought for her the previous Christmas. I stood there staring at her, marveling at how perfect she was. It was then that I realized I had no idea what her name was.

She turned to me and smiled before slowly fading away.

I could feel things around me slowly being pulled away from me. I tried to hold on to the image of our daughter’s smiling face and will her back into existence, but nothing seemed to work.

I opened my eyes. Brand was shaking my shoulders.

“Wake up,” he kept saying.

I burst into tears, unable to control the sense of immense loss I felt. My chest felt empty, like the part of my heart where my children lived had been unceremoniously ripped out and thrown down a bottomless pit, forever out of my reach. Brand held me close to him, trying to soothe me as I cried uncontrollably over their absence.

“It all felt so real,” I finally said between sobs. “I had memories of her. I had memories of us in that house. How could that be?”

“I’m not sure,” Brand said, cradling me to him. “I’ve never been able to make a dream like that; not one where everything had a history and felt so real.”

“It did feel real, didn’t it?” I asked, concerned that maybe I was losing my mind.

“Yes, my love. It felt very real.”

I sat there silently trying to etch everything I could remember from the dream into a lasting memory, before it had the chance to fade away as most dreams have a tendency to do over time. I didn’t want to lose the feeling of joy and contentment I had felt seeing Brand with our daughter, and feeling the powerful movements of our son inside me. It was a future I desperately wanted, even if the dream had just been fabricated by some unknown longing I had buried deep inside my subconscious.

The future was uncertain and free-flowing. That was what Uriel had been trying to tell me. I knew the future for everyone I cared about would hinge on the decisions I made from this moment on. Maybe my dream was a sign, showing me a possible future for Brand and me. I held on to that thought, desperately clinging to the hope it gave me. I let myself be comforted in Brand’s arms as he softly sang me a lullaby in a language I didn’t understand. Exhaustion from crying finally made me drift off to sleep. I hoped to meet my daughter again someday, even if it were only in a dream.