Authors: Jessi Gage
Predictably, he didn’t answer. He just kept stretching that lickable body.
A thought struck her with sobering force. Maybe they’d known each other. She doubted they’d been married, since neither of them wore a wedding band and this sparsely-decorated, singly-occupied room paired with the little girl next door screamed
divorced dad
. Ex-wife was a possibility. But wouldn’t that make her Haley’s mom? While she liked the little girl, she didn’t feel maternal toward her. Not to mention, Haley showed no signs of recent trauma, like losing a parent.
Maybe she’d been dating the man. If so, that explained the way her body heated at the sight of him. And it explained why he’d looked so somber last night.
But he didn’t seem overly upset tonight. He had a hard look to him, like he could summon anger with little effort, but he no longer appeared troubled. A pulse of hurt tugged on her stomach. Was it too much to ask for two days’ grief?
She fisted her hands on her hips. “Either you’re a heartless jerk or we didn’t know each other very well.” Without warning, he pulled on one elbow to stretch his shoulder and she had to duck his loose fist. “Hey! Watch it!”
He didn’t acknowledge her.
She folded her arms over her chest and huffed a lock of hair out of her eyes. If not for Haley in the next room, she might throw caution to the wind and try in earnest to make herself known. The thought of taking such a risk sent wonderful, naughty tingles through her.
She refused to be so selfish. Someone or something had put her here to help this man, and if she did a good job, she might not have to go back to the fog.
Patience
. If she paid attention, maybe she’d learn what she needed to do.
The man finished his stretches, used his discarded t-shirt to dab his neck and under his arms, and swiped a hand over the switch on the wall to cast the room into orangey darkness.
While her eyes adjusted, the creak of floorboards and the rustle of sheets told her he’d gotten into bed. She stood by, ready to offer comfort if he had nightmares again, ready to be whatever he needed.
While waiting, she paced the bedroom and considered female names. “Katie?” That was a popular one. But it didn’t feel right. She absently flicked at the immovable baseball glove as she went by. “Mary? No. Liz?” She shook her head and kicked off her flip-flops. The hardwood floor felt cool and smooth under her feet, but it didn’t creak for her, even though she paced exactly where the man had walked. One after another, she tried on every name she could think of, scouring her lamentable sense of self for some sort of reaction. Nothing felt right. Nothing felt like
her
.
Frustrated, she sat on the edge of the bed. The comforter and mattress welcomed her with tantalizing softness. Her whole body stiffened with shock.
How had she not realized it before? Every object in the room refused to react to her touch, except the bed. And for whatever reason, when the man was in the bed, he could feel her. With a rush of excitement, she remembered stroking his hair last night–the strands had moved!
A laugh of triumph bubbled out of her as she wiggled her bottom, settling deeper into the pillowy fabric. The man stirred.
“Haley-girl?” he muttered, but his eyed remained closed, and his breathing remained deep and steady.
She clapped a hand over her mouth. He’d heard her!
Everywhere else, she could only observe, invisible and inaudible. But here on the bed, she was more. Alive. She felt her smile all the way to her toes. Finally, progress.
Chapter 4
The dream started out the same as it had last night. Derek was driving the Honda north on traffic-choked, sunny I-5 when he, uh, cut himself off, he guessed. Even though he knew he was dreaming, fear flashed through him with shocky heat as the crash unfolded. But unlike last night, he never felt the urge to scream. He wasn’t alone. He felt someone stroking his hair and tenderly smoothing sweat from his forehead.
The possessiveness in the touch reminded him of Deidre in the early years of their marriage, but his subconscious would never conjure her up for comfort. Besides, the tenderness in the touch was nothing like Deidre. That was something new. New and intriguing.
He tried to end the dream and wake himself up, wondering if he would glimpse wavy auburn hair and dark blue eyes. But the dream ignored his wishes.
He hung upside-down behind the wheel of the red Honda. Out the jagged remnants of the windshield, the sun glinted off pebbles of glass sprayed across the pale-gray concrete. His chest felt funny, like it lacked the firm padding of muscle he’d maintained since his pigskin days, and oddly swollen and sore from the cutting strap of the seatbelt. His brain throbbed from too much blood going to his head, and the drip-drip-drip sound of thick fluid hitting the upholstered ceiling told him his head wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping all that blood inside. His vision pixilated. Then it went black.
When he could see again, he was no longer upside down in the Honda.
It was dark now. Rain beat down on the intact windshield of a white Nissan. The dream had changed, but he still sat behind the wheel of a wrecked car. Another airbag lay deflated in front of him. Another seatbelt cut across his chest. The nose of the car had crumpled against a tree, and steam curled from the gaping seam of the hood. Somewhere outside the car, the swish of wheels on wet road suggested a freeway close by.
He turned his head to the left, toward the traffic noises, trying to figure out how he’d gotten here, but pain dug fiery trenches into his neck and shoulders. Whiplash.
Testing the damaged tissues, he gingerly tried the other direction, surprised to find a man in the passenger seat. He wore a yellow polo shirt and had blond hair lightened with gray at the temples. Smile lines framed his pale blue eyes and mouth. That mouth was still. Those friendly eyes were open. And still.
His heart dropped. “Daddy?” he said in a strangled voice. When no answer came, he tried again, louder. “Daddy? Daddy, are you okay?” He had a young female’s voice, but he couldn’t care. His father sat beside him, dead.
Wait, his dad wasn’t dead. Dan Summers was alive and making people cower just up I-5 in Dunsmuir, where he lived with Derek’s mom and their two corgis. This guy wasn’t his dad. Not even close. This guy’s face reflected patience and affection, where his dad had little to express other than stern disapproval and outright anger. This guy was khakis and polos, briefcases and BlackBerries, bedtime stories on weeknights and golf on weekends, where his dad was jeans and work boots, Ford pick-ups and hard hats, too much beer on weeknights and too much whisky on weekends.
Okay, so the guy wasn’t his dad. But his emotions, crazed with worry in the dream, couldn’t seem to grasp the fact. When the girl said, “Oh, please, Daddy, wake up!” he felt every shred of her heart wrenching fear.
His too-slender fingers scrambled over the buckle until the seatbelt released him. His neck protested, but he paid no attention as he reached over to shake the man’s shoulder. His clean-shaven chin bobbed on his chest. Those eyes remained still.
He shoved open his door. Clumsily, frantically, he ran around the back of the car and ripped open the passenger-side door.
“Daddy! Daddy, you have to wake up!” His small hands curled around the man’s shoulders. He shook him.
No. Shouldn’t shake him. Might have neck injuries.
He couldn’t tell if the thought belonged to him or the female.
It didn’t matter. The need to save this man consumed him, and he gave himself over to it. A small backpack purse nestled between the seats. Somehow, he knew it would have a cell phone inside. He lunged over the man to grab the bag and dumped the contents on the wet ground. A purple phone caught the light of a streetlamp. He snatched it and dialed 9-1-1.
Rain and tears blurred his vision as he pinched the phone between his ear and shoulder and reached around to unfasten the man’s seatbelt. He argued with the emergency operator about where to perform CPR. He wanted to get the man flat on his back on the hard surface of the ground, but the operator insisted he shouldn’t be moved in case of injury.
He didn’t suspect injury. The man wasn’t bleeding. The passenger-side airbag had deployed. The man’s seatbelt had been secure. He must have had a heart attack or something. Derek needed to get him breathing again.
He wanted to argue with the operator or simply hang up and do it his way, but he heard himself sniffle and say, “Okay. I’ll try it in the car.”
Fuck that. He overrode the dream and tossed the phone. Emergency response was on the way. That was all he’d needed from the operator.
Ignoring the pain shooting up his spine, he wrapped his arms under the man’s armpits and levered him from the bucket seat. Frustrated with his smaller body and lesser strength, he lowered the man to the ground, feeling muscles in his back give. He cried out in agony and fell on top of the man.
Pushing through the pain, he scrambled up to the man’s head, tilted his chin back and breathed into him. He pumped the man’s chest to the count of thirty, breathed again, pumped again.
No response.
He kept pumping, even though his back was on fire, even though he couldn’t stop sobbing.
“Just a dream,” he heard from somewhere outside the terror of the rainy night. It was a female voice, too, but a mature one, trustworthy in its quiet, confidence. “It’s just a dream. It’ll be okay. I’m here with you.”
“But he won’t wake up!” he cried.
“Shhh. It’ll be okay. It’s not real.” Caring fingers brushed his temples, traced the sensitive edges of his ears.
How could he be dreaming two things at once? In the one dream, rainwater drenched his knees through his jeans, a sodden ponytail tugged at the back of his head and he worked desperately to save this man he didn’t know but loved with all his heart. In the other, he was in his bed with someone sitting beside him. A calm feminine voice grounded him, and the scent of honeydew melon chased away his horror.
“Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real. Don’t be afraid. Just let it go.”
That voice pulled at him, encouraging him to abandon the clearly futile effort. The man was gone.
I killed him, said the young woman in his head. Guilt scrabbled for a foothold.
“It’s not your fault,” he said to the girl in the dream, the girl whose body he shared. He wished he could shake her by the shoulders and tell her the man had a weak heart. The accident might have triggered the attack, but it would have happened anyway–next time a balloon popped near him, next time the folks at work jumped out to surprise him bearing party hats and cake. It wasn’t her fault. He desperately wanted to absolve her.
But the other voice, the calm one belonging to what he imagined to be a stone-cold beautiful figment of his imagination, maybe even a figment with auburn waves and dark blue eyes, tempted him. Hmm, roadside tragedy from the perspective of a teenage girl, or warm comfort in the arms of a beautiful woman? No contest. He chose the latter, letting the soft insistence of those stroking hands draw him away from the rainy night.
* * * *
“That’s it. Just relax. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Her chest swelled with fulfillment as the man calmed. His head stopped thrashing back and forth on the pillow, and his pleated brow smoothed. She was actually helping him, and it felt wonderful.
She had a purpose. She didn’t feel lost as long as she had that. She could even bear the fog again if she knew she’d end up back here with this man and have the privilege of easing him through his nightmares. Not that she wished more nightmares on him. But if he was going to have them anyway, she liked being allowed to help.
She traced his stubbled jaw with her fingers, loving the way his normally hard and serious face became open and vulnerable in sleep. She should stop fondling him. He’d passed through his dream. From watching him for two nights now, she knew he typically went into a period of light sleep after his dreams. If she didn’t back off, she risked waking him.
Feeling a naughty thrill, she didn’t back off. She kept petting him partly because she drew as much comfort from touching him as she suspected she gave to him, and partly because she wanted to be noticed. Two nights of being invisible was two nights too long. Now that she knew he could feel her on the bed, she longed to make real contact, conscious contact.
There she went being selfish again. Her conscience reminded her of the little girl in the next room. If she woke the man and scared him, it might upset Haley. Huffing with frustration, she forced herself to stop. To be safe, she scooted back, giving him some space.