Dream of You

Lauren Gilley’s Walker Family Series

Better Than You

Keep You

Dream of You

Fix You

Cover Image by Gary Jones
GaryandElainesPhotography.com

Dream of

You

This is a work of fiction
. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Resemblances to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidence. All characters are the property of Lauren Gilley and may not be duplicated.

Copyright © 2013 Lauren Gilley

For my family,
for letting me dream my dreams.

Prologue

             
C
hildren dream of things that can never be – rocket ships, unicorns, leprechauns, imaginary friends, the ability to fly – and yet are somehow never disappointed because, despite what their parents tell them, even if they can’t see their dreams with their eyes, they still believe. Those snatched glimpses, those brief seconds of flight before the bike tires touch pavement…the magic is there, woven into the fabric of every day, winking at them and giving them one of those sly, palm-slide handshakes. Fairies and dragons, magic beanstalks, hidden civilizations and closet monsters – they all exist.

             
Teenagers dream of the here and now. Cars, fast and shiny. Cell phones. Stolen beer. Late nights out. Chapstick kisses and hands under girls’ sweaters. Perfect hair and trendy clothes, swimming pool summers and gossip-between-classes autumns. Football. Yearbooks. And the lofty notion that if it weren’t for parents, or lack of transportation, if only high school was over already, they’d all
be somebody
. Fame and fortune are just out of reach and ninety percent guaranteed. Everyone’s a star on the rise. You can do whatever you set your mind to…and all that shit.

             
Those teenagers grow into graduates, into disillusioned college students who are struck by the unfairness of the world, as shattered as glass on pavement. There are those dogged optimists who persevere in their notion of self-worth. But there are many and more who let go of their dreams completely. Not just the fairytale castles and moon shoes, but the fame and fortune too. The big house on the hill, the thick wallet. All of it turns into hopes for pocket change, groceries and rent.

             
Jordan Walker was no exception. He dreamed of Olympic medals and golden shoes, of cheering crowds and endless stretches of red track laid out before him. Then he dreamed of State and Nationals, of college scholarships. He dreamed of the unending support, the shining face of that angelic, flawless first love that gave him wings.

             
And then reality reached out with jagged claws and crippled him just as surely as if he’d torn an ACL. Reality was more damaging than any injury.

             
Jordan stopped dreaming, and he didn’t see any reason to begin again. It was a nasty habit anyway.

1

Then

              “
O
h, come on. What the hell, guys? I don’t wanna see that.”

             
Tam and Jo were in Dad’s oversized chair, making out like they intended to suck each other’s faces off. Jordan caught a very unwanted glimpse of exploratory hands and out of place clothing while he busied himself with shucking his shoes. The two of them broke apart with a sudden leap, red-faced and breathing hard. Jo straightened her shirt and sat back against the arm of the chair, teeth worrying at what was left of her lip gloss, guilty. Tam was at least cool about it, raking a casual hand through his hair and pretending he hadn’t been caught between
come here, baby
and
oh God, I can’t wait till we get upstairs
.

             
“How ‘bout a little warning?” Jo said, indignation coloring her voice. “I thought you were Dad.”

             
“How ‘bout you guys don’t defile the furniture I sit on, okay?” Jordan returned. He saw a frown forming and didn’t give her a chance to respond, cradling his prized envelope against his chest and going into the kitchen so he could open it under the lights. Forget that it was the middle of the afternoon, he needed all the wattage he could get shining down on the letter when he opened it.

             
As he pulled out a stool at the breakfast bar, he heard footfalls that signaled he’d been tailed, and he glanced up to see that the busted lovebirds had followed him. He didn’t have a problem with the two of them together – he thought they should just fess up to Mom and Dad about it rather than hide – but it was still an odd shock to be reminded that Tam and Jo weren’t just friends anymore. And Jo, seventeen and high as a damn kite on the kind of feminine love she usually wrinkled her nose up at, was emotionally invested to a point that worried Jordan a little. He wasn’t her big brother by much, but he was still older, and it was still his duty, to some extent, to make sure she was okay.

             
“College letter?” she guessed, eyes going to the envelope he’d set on the bar. She put her hands on the counter and an excited gleam stole over her eyes. “Open it.”

             
Tam stepped up behind her and looped his arms around her shoulders and across her chest, his chin on top of her head. “Where’s it from?”

             
“University of Florida,” Jordan said, a grin stealing across his face. He could have just said “Florida” and they would have known he meant the home of the Gators, but something about saying the whole title, throwing the “University” in there, made it all more prestigious.

             
“Open it,” Jo repeated.

             
The little orange and blue wink of the school’s seal up in the corner of the envelope sent a quick flush of excitement flooding through his system as he lifted it and slid a thin finger beneath the flap. The tear of the paper was almost musical. By the time he had the letter out and began unfolding it, his pulse was thumping in his ears. Jo had both her small hands clasped around Tam’s wrists in front of her, chewing at her lower lip, excited
for him
, which seemed to amuse Tam in a good natured sort of way.

             
Before his eyes found the words, he was overcome by a familiar, welcome certainty. He got that way sometimes – certain – so certain he wondered if he wasn’t a touch psychic, deep down, in a secret, curious place. Sometimes, before a meet, before a race, before the starter’s pistol was fired, that kind of certainty was released as if a lever had been pulled, and his whole being filled up with the sure, welcome steam of it. He felt that way now, calmed and cooled by the assuredness that what he thought was in the letter was actually in the letter, and his pulse slowed, his mind sharpened, and he smoothed the paper across the breakfast bar with still, quiet hands.

             
“’Dear Mr. Walker’,” he read aloud. “’We are pleased to announce that you have been accepted –‘”

             
That was as far as he got before Jo gasped excitedly. “I knew it!”

             
“How many does that make?” Tam asked, and even if not excited, he wore the gracious smile of a friend who was happy for him, and not jealous. Tam didn’t do jealous.

             
“Seven,” Jordan said. He fought a smile, but couldn’t help it. He detested bragging, but the truth of the matter was, he had a total of seven colleges – to date – trying to woo him with track scholarships.

             
“And every one of them out of state,” Jo said proudly to Tam.

             
Jordan glanced up at them, at the smile Jo was shooting back over her shoulder, and imagined how sweet it was going to be to pass the news along to Kelsey. Whichever school he picked, whatever city and state lured him in, she was coming with him. She was already investigating the beauty schools in four states, mapping a future around him, and all those whispered dreams that tasted like wine she’d snitched from her mom and smelled of the thick cedar bench in her backyard were starting to come true.

**

Now

             
“You have to be awake in ten minutes.” The voice and the touch of Chapstick-soft lips against his ear, the light brush of little fingers sliding through the hair at the nape of his neck, were all heavenly. The news, however, was not.

             
Tam groaned into his pillow. “Changed my mind. Not going.” Even though he began each night staring up at the ceiling, somehow he woke on his stomach, and this morning was no exception. Exceptionally, though, even after a little over a year of waking up in the Walker house, his wife curled around him, Tam Wales greeted each day with the startling awareness that his life was very, very sweet these days.

             
Jo was already showered and dressed: he could smell the coconut of her shampoo and feel the brush of the white tank she wore beneath her scrubs against his bare back. She was lying on top of him, and the only way that could have been a better wakeup call was if he’d been facing her. She chuckled and her hair teased along his arm.

             
“Yeah, like that’ll fly,” she said, and then kissed his temple, right beside his eye, and her meager weight lifted off him, the bed springs groaning as she got to her feet.

             
He lifted his head and watched her move around the bedroom through a crust of sleep. It was still very much her room – the shelf full of trophies, the candlestick desk with a twelve month horse calendar hanging above it, the walls powder blue and her comforter a red and yellow floral thing. But there was a stick of his deodorant, his watch and wallet on her dresser. A pair of his jeans was flung over her desk chair. The closet, its door open now, was overstuffed with both their clothes. His favorite sneakers were in the middle of the floor and she stepped over them as she went to the dresser and glanced at herself in the mirror while she put on her favorite CZ stud earrings.

             
His gaze found hers in the mirror and she grinned. “You’re not nervous, are you?”

             
“No,” he lied. He was only twenty-seven and about to become a college freshman. He was only eight years out of the school grind. He’d only forgotten every last thing he’d ever learned about British literature, but hey, whatever, he wasn’t nervous. He was
dreading
it.

             
Jo picked a blue scrub top off the bench that was tucked up to her dresser and turned to face him, a knowing smile tugging at her lips. “My first day of college, I had this massive hickey.” She tapped at the side of her throat and he grinned.

             
“I remember that hickey.”

             
“Yeah, well, so did my algebra professor. That thing laughed in the face of makeup and I spent all semester getting creepy looks from the guy.” She had walked back to the bed and now perched on its edge, scrub top in her lap. “So your day’s already starting out better than mine did.”

             
“What’s his name?” he asked. “I’ll knock his teeth in.”

             
“Uh-huh. Go visit my old biology professor too while you’re at it.” She rolled her eyes and leaned down, presumably to drop another of those chaste little kisses on his face somewhere, and Tam struck out like a snake, his hand diving into her hair.

             
She let out a startled gasp of laughter before he pulled her mouth down to his, but then her palms flattened against his chest and her mouth opened against the pressure of his. She tasted like Listerine and Colgate and it was one of those lazy, sloppy kisses he knew she liked, their lips smacking apart when she pulled back.

             
Jo smiled, the curve of it going all the way up to her sea foam eyes, and heaved a contented sigh. “You really need to brush your teeth.”

             
“Ouch.”

             
“And shower and get dressed and - ”

             
“Yeah, I get it.” He flopped over onto his back and watched her stand. She was suppressing a laugh and he didn’t know if it was tied to this moment and his un-brushed teeth, or if it was one of those random fits of good humor that stole over her. The four years they’d spent apart, he’d always assumed he was the one suffering, that someone as resilient and talented as Jo would bounce right back. But when he saw her now, watched smiles and happy sighs steal over her, he wanted to kick his own ass for ever hurting her. He still didn’t understand how she could take her vet school dream and slide it neatly up on a shelf, then turn around and get so excited about buying notebooks and pens for his first day.

             
“Joey.”

             
She was folding her top with crisp motions and laid it over her arm as she glanced at him, brows lifting in silent question.

             
“You know you’re incredible, right?”

             
She rolled her eyes, but there was no hiding the pleased flush that bloomed in her cheeks.

**

              Jordan had begun each day in the same manner since he was fourteen. His alarm, shoved under his pillow on weekends so it didn’t disturb the rest of the house, went off at five-thirty. He did a hundred crunches and a hundred pushups on his bedroom floor – stretches were for after the run, not before – then it was shorts and sneaks, layered short and long-sleeved shirts if it was cool, gloves and a stocking cap if it was cold, or no shirt at all in the summer months. iPod. A handful of plain Cheerios. He went two laps around the subdivision which amounted to about five miles, slowly increasing his pace near the end.

             
Then it was checking his pulse and cooling down, stretching on the front lawn in the dew. Then a shower and clothes and a carb-filled breakfast.

             
His mind was hardwired by the routine of it, and after years of repetition, his body craved the morning exercise like a drug. In high school, no matter how rigorous practice had been the afternoon before, his eyes would always pop open at five-thirty and his legs were screaming for the pavement. At twenty-five, his knees were already feeling arthritic, but he was a runner and always would be.

             
This morning, so much alike so many others, had been dew-drenched and periwinkle, lacy haze clinging to the asphalt. It was already humid and feeling like the August day that it was by the time he got back to the house, a healthy sheen of sweat painted on his bare torso.

             
“Breakfast in fifteen, sweetie,” Beth said from the stove as he snitched a blue Gatorade from the fridge and headed upstairs. She was already dressed for work, an apron tied across her brown slacks to shield her from bacon grease, and he knew that she was making a first day effort. He wished she wouldn’t – he could make toast and microwave hash browns – he didn’t need his mommy to make him a special first day of work breakfast. In fact, it made him feel like a pussy.

             
Jo was coming down the stairs as he ascended. “Put some gel in your hair,” she advised. “It needs cutting but that might help.”

             
“Bite me,” he said flatly and kept moving, up to the top landing.

             
The hall bathroom door was open, steam pouring out like there was a fog machine inside. Tam stood at the mirror in dark jeans and a white t-shirt, pulling little spikes of hair down across his forehead with gel or paste or whatever kind of crap he used.

             
“You’re gonna look so pretty,” Jordan said as he toed off his shoes at the threshold and rolled his socks into doughnuts.

             
“Not half as pretty as you, Coach.” Tam gave his ‘do one final mussing and flashed him a smirk as he entered.

             
“Better a coach than a student.”

             
“Touché, asshole.”