The dreams hadn’t let up. Instead, they had shifted. I’d had a few more of that dimly lit shop, filled with the smell of leather and lamp oil—of Nicolas coming to meet me there, always with a scuffed boot or a broken heel that required immediate mending, his eyes on me like I was something precious.
But there was another dream, too—of us together in a field of lavender, far from the village where we lived. The sun was overhead, catching Nicolas’s hair and turning it into hundreds of shades of brilliant gold. His eyes—still a light blue, but somehow less electric than the Nicolas I knew in real life—crinkled at the edges when he laughed at my jokes.
The pain in my chest came back each time. It had lessened, but it was still there.
In fact, the only time I’d ever dreamed of Nicolas and woken up without pain at all was when he’d been in my arms.
Though I hadn’t mentioned the dreams to him—not since our disastrous first date, when I’d overshared big-time. The problem was the dreams themselves, of course. They made me feel as though I knew him far better than I did.
It was a small miracle I hadn’t scared him off.
Perhaps I should have been warier of him, but Nicolas in real life turned out to be oddly… nice. And just as attentive as he was in the dreamscape. More so, perhaps.
“Hello, Doctor,” Nicolas greeted me exactly seven days after our trip to Disneyland. He stood beside the doors to the Emergency Room and held out his hand expectantly. I gave him my duffel, filled with my work clothes, and he shouldered it like it weighed nothing. He raised his eyebrows, studying me with a warm smile on his lips. “Did you save any lives tonight?”
He always smiled when he asked me that, as though there was a private joke I wasn’t getting. For some reason, it seemed to amuse him that I helped people live through things that probably should have killed them.
“No more than usual.”
“So modest,” he said, chuckling. “We’ll work on it again tomorrow.”
“I have tomorrow off,” I reminded him. “The next four days, actually.”
His eyes widened. “Oh, yes. You told me that.” He chuckled again, shaking his head. “I suppose I just fell into a routine. It’s odd how quickly that happens.”
Nicolas had been picking me up every single morning. I’d been working double shifts all week because one of the other doctors was on vacation. He got back tomorrow, thankfully—which meant I finally had a day off. I planned to sleep in, but I was sure Nicolas was looking forward to my time off just as much as I was. After all, it meant he could do something else for the night besides waiting around for me to leave work.
When we got to the car, he hit me with, “What’s your biggest irrational fear?”
“Wow, we’re going deep tonight.”
He was like this every single day: intent on asking me questions.
He inclined his head. “If you don’t mind? I want to know who you are.”
There it was—that strange combination of unselfconscious honesty and directness. It was hard to say no to, especially because he hung on every single one of my answers like they were made of gold.
“I know the feeling,” I said, shaking my head. Then I hesitated, realizing I was actually going to answer his question. “It’s not… irrational, exactly. But it is a fear of mine.”
He was quiet as he put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking spot. We snaked around the parking garage in silence. This time, I’d gotten off work on time, so it was nearly four in the morning and few people were around. When he didn’t speak by the time we reached the exit, I realized he was waiting for me to continue.
“I’m afraid I’ll never really know someone.”
He looked at me sharply. “Pardon?”
I grimaced. “My exes—pretty much all of them—were hiding things from me. The last one was married, with a wife and kids. I had no idea.”
He nodded but looked unnerved. “I see. Deception troubles you.”
I snorted. “That’s one way to put it. I don’t like liars, but I always seem to end up with someone who has a secret that ends up ruining everything. The ex before the last one was a pill popper. He tried to get me to swipe some especially tantalizing narcotics from the hospital pharmacy where I was interning. And the one before that—” I broke off, realizing I didn’t want to talk about Eric at all. Instead, I asked, “What about you?”
“Fears or exes?”
“Since I just spilled all my dating-life drama and made myself look like a walking dumpster fire, it’s your turn.”
His expression darkened. “You aren’t a walking dumpster fire, Eli. You couldn’t be, if you tried.”
“Nicolas, come on.”
