When Rafe heard that plan B entailed a jaunt across an unpredictable landscape in a raging storm, he immediately vetoed it.
Gen lifted her eyebrows in amusement. “I don’t think I asked.”
His expression grew rather stormy. “And if I am here to save you, what good is it if you don’t listen to me?”
Gen waved him off and stood to put the dishes in the sink. “Which reminds me,” Rafe said evenly behind her. “You were going to tell me how you knew who I was.”
That brought Gen to a sick halt. “This is all so bizarre,” she admitted miserably to the refrigerator.
“Can I be the judge of that?”
She turned around, leaned back against the closed door for support. “I guess you might as well,” she said. “I sure can’t come up with a decent answer.” She took a deep breath, but it didn’t help. So she launched into her explanation cold. “I met you for the first time five years ago when I first stayed in this house. I saw you periodically over the years—more frequently as time went by, I think. But since I’ve been here this time, I’ve seen you every night for the last five nights.”
“Seen me?”
“You’ve died in my arms.”
That silenced him.
Gen tried to smile. “Iknow. It doesn’t sound any better to me. I really wish I knew where you got that scar from, because in my dream it’s from a miniball.”
“Your dream?”
She nodded, that awful feeling of inevitability overpowering her again. The terrifying knowledge that every night, no matter what, she would lose him again and scream and scream with a grief she’d never known. Gen wiped her palms against her legs and struggled for control. She drew in a ragged breath to calm her.
If only the dream hadn’t been so vivid. If only it wasn’t Rafe she was explaining this to.
“My dream. Every night. I know I’m working in a hospital in Richmond, that it is the middle of May and we’ve been receiving a flood of wounded from the Wilderness. A charnel house, a slaughter like the world has never known. And then I hear that you have managed to get to my hospital, all the way from Spotsylvania. A miserable little corner of hell there they nicknamed the Bloody Angle, where you were cut down. But you made it to me, when you should have died out there with your men. You made it to my hospital, where I find you, where I gather you into my arms. Where you promise you’ll never leave me. And then you die.”
Gen didn’t even feel the tears that coursed down her face. She didn’t hear the funny little sob that caught in her throat. She couldn’t take her eyes from Rafe as he climbed to his feet.
“What year was that again?” he asked.
“1864.”
“And what year is this?”
“1993.”
He stood there a moment, disconcerted and uncertain. Looking so much like the Rafe of her dreams, dressed in those old clothes. Reminding her vividly of just what she’d lost.
“I can’t do it again,” she insisted in a small voice. “I just... can’t.”
Rafe came closer. Gen tried to back away and couldn’t. “What do you mean?” he asked.
She shook her head, the words overwhelming her. “All my life, people have left me. Died. I... thought that was what I was so afraid of all these years, but it wasn’t. It was you. You terrify me.”
“Why, Gen?”
“Because you’re not real!” she snapped, wiping at her tears. “You can’t be!”
He shrugged, stepping closer. “Why not? I feel real enough.”
“You’re only real in my dream. You’re a figment of my neurosis, kind of like I’m trying to prove to myself that what I’ve been through isn’t so bad after all. Because when you die in my dream... when you...”
“When I what?”
She did sob now, unable to stop the pain she’d been suppressing. “You promise me!” she shrilled, wanting to hurt him. Wanting to hurt him for hurting her, even if it was only in her subconscious. “You promise you’ll always be there, and it’s a lie!”
