“Fuck, baby, you’re freezing,” he said, tucking the blanket up around my shoulders. “I’m right here. I’m not letting you go.”
I shook my head, wiped at my face, tried to find words. But the dream was already leaking away—faces, sounds, the oily feel of not-blood. I wanted to tell him what had happened, what I’d seen, but all I could say was, “It was bad. Really, really bad.”
He nodded, rocking me a little. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I tried. I really did. But when I searched for the memory, all I could find was the feeling; a cold, sick dread, the kind that sinks under your skin and refuses to budge. The specifics were gone, washed out by fear and shame.
“Can’t remember,” I whispered. “Just that I was scared. And darkness.”
Gunner’s arms went rigid for a second, then softened. “You’re safe now. I won’t let anything hurt you.”
I wanted to believe it, but my wolf didn’t. She curled up in the tightest ball, tail over her nose, and shivered. There was something wrong, something unfinished, but I couldn’t touch it.
I pressed my face into Gunner’s neck, inhaling the deep, honest smell of him; leather, earth. It grounded me, pulled me out of the dream’s gravity well. For a long time, he just held me, whispering soft things I didn’t need to understand. I cried until my head pounded, until my sinuses ached and my chest hurt, but it helped. A little.
At some point, he eased me back onto the pillow, curled around me like a shield. “I’m right here,” he said again. “Sleep, Maverick. I’ve got you.”
And somehow, I did. I drifted off; the sweat drying on my skin, the ache in my body dulling to a manageable hum. The dream didn’t come back, not for the rest of the night. But I woke with the sunrise, head splitting, sheets twisted around my ankles, and a sour, metallic taste in my mouth.
Gunner was already awake, perched on the edge of the bed, watching me with worry so thick it nearly had mass.
“Mornin’,” I croaked.
He smoothed my hair. “Hey, wildcat. You slept through, after…”
I nodded, not wanting to finish the sentence.
He studied my face, like he was waiting for me to shatter again. “You sure you’re okay?”
I wanted to say yes, but the word stuck. Instead, I shrugged, reaching for his hand.
“I will be. Just… hold me a minute, okay?”
He did. He pulled me close, rubbed my back until the last tremors faded.
I still couldn’t remember the nightmare, not really, but the dread lingered, like a bad flavor you can’t scrub off your tongue.
I knew deep in my gut that it hadn’t been just a dream.
But if there was anything worse out there than what I’d just survived, I didn’t want to know about it.
The gallery was so close to finished I could taste the drywall dust in my coffee.
Every morning brought some new evidence of near-completion: the glass-walled mezzanine now gleamed above the main floor, the last of the blue tape was gone from the windows, and the HVAC guys had finally stopped turning the whole building into a wind tunnel. The second floor was my domain, the office and conference nook framed out in matte-black steel and sound-insulating panels, so you could look down into the open gallery without actually hearing the contractors curse below. Lysander called it “The Penthouse,” which made me snort Diet Coke out my nose the first time he said it.
I was curled up in my new office chair—floral, overpriced, worth every penny—staring down at a spreadsheet of RSVPs for Inez Chavez’s show. Lysander was sprawled on the couch opposite, laptop balanced on his knee and a bagel slowly dissolving in his mouth.
“You know,” he said, “If you squint at the RSVP list, you can see the three people who matter and the thirty who wish they mattered.” He shot me a wink. “But that’s gallery business, darling. Half the crowd just wants to be seen.”
I muttered, “Then they can be seen from the sidewalk. Let’s just put all the beautiful people out there and make them stare at the real art through the window.”
He laughed, then clicked his tongue at the screen. “God, I love you. You’re so much meaner than you look.”
It was our fourth day in the new office, and I felt like a raccoon in a luxury hotel: twitchy, caffeinated, terrified someone would discover I had no idea what I was doing. The desk was already a wreck—sticky notes, color swatches, a sketchbook open to three separate disasters-in-progress, and a mug of hours-old coffee that had a design of old creamer swirled on the top. Outside, the sound of drills and hammers echoed up the stairwell.
I checked the RSVP numbers for the third time, then set the laptop aside. “Do we really need to have the wall labels done by Monday? I’m still waiting for Inez to send half her titles.”
“Deadlines, honey,” Lysander said, not looking up from his own spreadsheet. “Nothing like the threat of public humiliation to move an artist’s ass.”
