Dreamers (The Dreamers Series) (26 page)

“Why are we here, Heather?” I ask, stunned.

“Well, I need you to listen to me, and I want you to try your best to do something—it’s important.”

“Anything, Heather. Name it.”

“I need you to go to your room and take a nice long nap. Find Nick and make this the best night of your life.”

Is she serious? We are in the middle of a crisis, and she calls in back up so they can fight the bad guy while they lock the helpless pregnant girl in the safe tower. I don’t think so.

“I know we didn’t call my sister and Cayden here for help and you just expect me to sit on the sidelines and let everyone who means anything to me risk their safety. I won’t do that. I might be pregnant, but damn it, I am as capable as any of you are. I could knock you to the ground with one hit, pregnant or not. I don’t know what your plan is, but I am part of this. I will not be shut out any longer.” I stand firm.

She seems humored and entertained by my outburst, yet not at all surprised.

“Somehow I knew you would act like a baby about this.”

“Whatever. I’m not abandoning you guys; you’re my only family. Ride or die.”

“Wow, that was super ghetto, Syd.” Mia chuckles. “Look, honey, we will be fine. I don’t know what’s going on either, but I trust Heather. She wouldn’t do anything to risk our safety. Trust her,” Mia coaxes.

Heather pulls me into her arms and kisses the top of my head, the way only she does. Her breath feels comforting on my hair. I love the closeness, but with that also comes a somber feeling. She is comforting me, preparing me—something bad is about to happen and she knows it.

“Sydney, what we are about to do cannot involve you. It is going to unlock the most important secrets regarding Dominick. You know you are at risk of losing him once he has all the answers. If tonight is the end for him, I want you to have this memory forever. I don’t know what is going to happen, but I know this could be your last chance to see him. Please just do this for yourself—for Little Monster.”

That has to be the first display of selflessness regarding Dominick that I have ever seen on her. As much as I know it sickens her to think of Nick and me in that way, she loves me enough to want me to have that memory forever.

“You really think tonight is the night?” I sob into her shirt as her words melt my insides into a mess of emotion and fear. The pit of my stomach stings with a blazing emptiness on the horizon.

Cayden watches Heather warily from the sidelines. Stress creases his forehead and I think I catch a shine developing in his eyes. If Nick disappears tonight, he will lose his brother—for the second time. My heart aches not only for myself, but for this wonderful man standing by my side, willing to fight for me—willing to save the soul of his tormented, beloved brother. He keeps his words tucked neatly in his brain. It’s obvious that if he were to open the flood gates he might not be able to focus on tonight’s task—doing right by his brother, righting the wrongs of his untimely ending.

Heather pulls back slightly, observing my face carefully. Concern clouds her eyes, turning them into a deeper, more concentrated shade of chocolate brown. She’s scared—that terrifies me.

“Sydney, I don’t know what will happen after tonight. Just know that I will be here—always. No matter how difficult, I will get you through this. I promise you as long as I’m still breathing I will make sure you’re okay. Just don’t give up hope yet. If we can’t accomplish what we are setting out to do, he might still remain here until we can figure out the rest of this mystery. Tonight has the potential to either be the best or worst night of your life. We just don’t know which yet, honey. Put all that out of your mind, just for tonight and focus on love. Leave the rest to us. Okay?” She kisses my forehead lightly.

I shake my head, pitifully. She is right. If everything comes out tonight, Dominick could very well disappear, but maybe it won’t. Maybe she won’t find what she’s looking for—whatever that is.

“Now, go get your man. I love you. We all love you.”

We are united—finally—as we all fall into a circle of comfort for each other. Tears fall from every eye in the room, as I begin my march to the end of the road.

“I’ll tell him you love him, Cayden.”

He nods as his face lowers into his palm. Mia takes over, laying his head on her shoulder.

“It’s okay, baby. We’ll see him again. A brother’s love will survive everything—even death. I’m here, baby,” she whispers as his shoulders quake in trying to retain his sad whimpers.

That is all I can handle watching. I mentally document their somber faces as I turn away, willing myself towards my worst nightmare. It’s time.

The air in the room is electric, as if it were waiting for me. There is a telling chill in the air. This
is
the night Dominick will leave this dream world. I can feel it in the depths of my soul. Somehow I drift into sleep easily, excited and terrified of seeing my love for the last time of my earthly life. My world has never felt so black.

***

“Why the dark mood, Kitten?” he asks sweetly.

“I need it to be dark right now, just for a minute,” I whisper.

“Baby, what is it? Did something else happen?”

For once I will shelter no emotion, I won’t protect myself from harm, and I won’t protect him with silence. I am giving him everything which is pure and true. Our last night together will be of love and honesty.

“This is our last night together.”

He looks at me expressionless, yet nodding in agreement.

“I feel the same thing. There is something different about the air tonight,” he adds.

The only option for us is to forget about what will be, and enjoy what we have for the moment—right now.

I close my eyes and take us to Savannah, the same courtyard I saw him in the first night I ever laid eyes on him. Tears pool easily, as I begin reminiscing our first encounter.

“When I saw you standing there, I couldn’t take my eyes off you. You were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I knew in that moment my life would somehow be different forever.”

His arms wrap tightly around my waist from behind as he lays his chin on my shoulder, turning sideways every few seconds to softly kiss my neck.

“You took my breath away, Sydney. You still do. Maybe that’s what I’ve been waiting for—to experience true ecstasy, passion, love and harmony. That’s what I feel from you. You completed me—I can move on now because I have finally lived every emotion offered in this life. I found the missing piece of my soul—I’m whole again because of you. My beautiful, Sydney. I only wish I could have married you and held our son, our sweet little Dominick Michael—Mikey, if that’s okay.”

A smile spreads across my trembling lips.

“Heather told you the name I like?”

“Yeah, I think she and I have finally found our middle ground. I guess she isn’t so bad after all. We had a little chat when I asked you to leave earlier. I needed to make sure she would be here to take care of you when I can’t. I know she will. She and I made nice—she’s not the enemy. She’s a friend.”

With those words I feel a weight lifted off my shoulders. This is something I wished for more than anything. To think of Heather and Nick as team makes me indescribably happy.

A past promise Nick made not too long ago chimes into my thoughts. I use my dream powers to alter the scene, just like we had agreed on if this time ever came.

The road spins quickly into shards of sharp glassy ice, statues of monsters and goblins constructed of frozen liquid paint a freezing picture for us. Smoke clouds stream from our mouths as we breathe. The shocked look on Nick’s face is priceless as he wonders where exactly I’ve dreamt him into.

“What kind of place have you taken us to now, Sydney?” His eyebrows rise.

“Well, Nick…it’s hell. And it appears to have frozen over.” I giggle.

His eyes light up as he catches the drift, remembering how he had claimed hell would freeze over before he would ever befriend Heather.

“You’re so freaking funny, aren’t you, little girl? I love you so damn much.”

We walk hand in hand, morphing back to Savannah, to our beach, to the rainforest where we had such a magical night.

“What do you want to do, princess? Tonight is all yours.” He pulls me a mere breath from his face.

I touch his creamy pale cheek, drinking him in to me like a water-deprived flower.

“I want you to close your eyes and imagine you had just one more day on Earth—alive—and I want you to do everything that would make you feel like you had the best life a person ever had—like you lived the life of an eighty year old and weren’t cut short. Can you give me that?” I ask.

“I can do that. Now, close your eyes. Open them only when I say.”

My mind is taken by what magic Nick is creating. I can’t wait to see what he would wish for if he could have anything. My eyes threaten to open as wind begins brushing my hair against my cheek. It feels like we are outside. I struggle to be patient.

“Open your eyes.”

The world before me is so simple. I’m at a park in Lawrenceville, a place I’ve been a hundred times. Funny, it’s nothing extravagant. I’m sitting on a park bench with an old rail car on some tracks behind us. It’s the same rail car that has sat there behind the park for years and never been removed. It still sports the same graffiti as the last time I saw it in person.

Nick is next to me; we are holding hands. He is simply wearing a pair a blue jeans and a Social Distortion t-shirt. The weather is warm—like a Georgia May. The sun is nestled behind a few clouds with a damp and teasing threat of a spring shower on the horizon. The wind whips his scent across my face and I lean into him, breathing in every last fragrant drop of his signature aroma.

“Welcome to our REAL first date, Sydney.”

“It’s perfect, Nick. I love it.”

We walk a circle trail around the park ending up at our bench again where we started. I stand before him, considering if it would be proper to kiss him on the first date. I move closer to him and offer an innocent hug, inhaling him once again. As I pull back our eyes meet and I move in closer, fighting with myself on being proper and exercising good etiquette. As thunder crashes through the empty park I lose control of my senses, leaning forward and catching his deliciously pink lip between my teeth, pulling back and flicking his bottom lip with my tongue. He is so beautiful. His eyes are closed and his body is tense as he waits for me to move in and take some more of him, but I stop myself, trying to react as if everything were truly happening in sequence and this was actually our real first date.

“We shouldn’t be doing this. It’s our first date.” I smirk deviously.

“You’re right. But that’s okay, we have more stops to make. In a second it won’t be our first date anymore, and you can’t kiss me all you want. Close your eyes.”

I do as I’m told, anxious to see what he has in store for us next.

“Open,” he commands.

I laugh as I realize where exactly we are. He shrugs with a brilliantly beautiful smile.

“What can I say, I was a simple dude. Plus, who doesn’t love a waffle joint anyway?”

“I hear you on that. Let’s go in. I want you to order for me; I want what you would order when you came.”

“Alright then, if you think you can handle it.”

The waitress is lifelike and honestly looks like one of the waitresses who keeps my coffee cup consistently full when I visit my local waffle joint on a late night photography gig.

“What are you two love birds having?” she asks politely.

“Well, I’m ordering for her and she’s ordering for me,” he says with a smile. “Ladies first.”

“Okay.” I hadn’t even considered what to order for Nick. I quickly decide to go ahead and order what I would typically order for myself. “He will have a chicken melt, add bacon, and hash browns with chili, cheese, onions, and top it with pickles.”

“Wow, my lady did good, huh?” he brags to the waitress. “Now, she will have a Texas cheesesteak, add bacon, and hash browns with cheese and mushrooms. We will finish up with some heated and treated pecan pie.”

“What’s heated and treated mean?” I ask curiously.

“They take the pie and heat it with butter and it melts all over the place. So good,” he answers with an excited smile.

“That sounds…um, gross.” I giggle.

“You’ll see.”

We devour our meals, both quite impressed by the other’s selection. And he was so right, the pie was amazingly delicious. He walks me to the car, which seemed to appear out of nowhere, opening the door for me to step into the passenger’s side. I make a mental note of everything around me, even noticing that the car was entirely trashed from the inside. Soda bottles and junk everywhere.

“Is this your car?”

“Yes. It’s a Sunfire. I should have cleaned it out, but I never would have done that if this were really real.” He blushes.

“So you were a slob? I love it.”

“Admittedly, yes.”

The clock reads 2:06 a.m.

“Sydney?”

“Yes, baby?”

“Will you marry me?” He looks serious, and tears glisten his eyes.

I pause momentarily, wondering if this were a hypothetical, or if we are living his life—our life—in real time. In any event, I answer.

“Yes, Nick. I would love nothing more than to be your wife.”

He pulls a small gum wrapper from the center compartment of his junky car, twists it into a long silver string, and then makes a circular ring out of it, placing it on my finger. We finally enjoy that long passionate kiss we were impatiently waiting for since our first date. It’s perfect.