“I can give you a ride.” Landon’s voice came from the doors of the club. He was stepping out just as she had abandoned me. My stomach knotted, and I glanced at Prue. She was grinning at me.
“I’ll stomp you,” I growled with annoyance. She laughed.
“Can’t be worse than when I was trampled flat.” She smacked her hands together, laughing at the way she was accidentally turned into a vampire. “Go have fun. Real fun.” She ordered and turned quickly, leaving me with Landon.
He reached me and glanced at the convertible screeching out of the parking lot. “You walking?”
“No, I’ll ride you. I mean, with you.” I blinked, and blood rushed to my face.
He burst into laughter. “I mean, both sound good, but I can take you home with your purity intact if you’d prefer.” He winked, and my stomach fluttered again.
We went to his car, and he opened the door for me. I started to duck inside, but he reached for my hand, causing me to pause. I looked up at him then and watched him bend down. I closed my eyes and let our lips connect in such a soft, gentle way that I temporarily forgot about the man whose name I still wore around my neck.
21
Nightmares. The fucking nightmares.
Not entirely sure where they came from, but god damn, they were horrible.
It was about a week or so after Gianni and I had come back from California. Nalida, Scout’s old human friend, had let me take some stuff home with me, and I had been going through it all, trying to figure out exactly who the woman I was in love with was.
I fell asleep with the lights on, still in my jeans, with sketches of Gum Man surrounding me when the first dream came.
Scout was laughing and smiling. She looked beautiful. It was the most vivid image I had seen of her since she had run away from me two months ago. I could almost reach out and touch her. I started to, but then I ripped my arm back when I saw who she was smiling at. It wasn’t me.
The face was blurry, but the bright blonde hair was not.
She was with someone else.
Her voice called out to him, but it was muffled. I couldn’t hear clear words. Just the inflection of them. She was happy. And then, she was gasping.
I watched, unable to leave the situation, as he picked her up and sat her on a couch. He bent down and shuffled himself between her legs.
Dream me tried to get her attention. I screamed. I called out her name from the corner, but she closed her eyes as if trying to drown me out. I watched in horror as he slipped her panties off and his head dipped underneath her skirt. I had to watch as she gripped his hair and let her head fall back in ecstasy.
I woke up covered in sweat and blood from my eyes smeared against my cheeks and pillowcase.
I leaped up and ripped my clothes off. I stormed into the shower. Despite watching her come with someone else, I was still hard for her. I hated myself for it. I sat in the freezing water until I could calm down and process what I had seen.
I spent that entire night trying to piece it together. It had been too vivid to be made up by my brain alone. But she wouldn’t. Not my girl. Not my Nerd. Scout would never let someone near her.
Not if she still loved me.
Once again, I fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion, and another nightmare came.
It was her and the blonde again. They weren’t in the bare room from before. This appeared to be an apartment. It was his, I realized. I was able to walk around it as if I were there. But I wasn’t. I tried to ignore the sounds from Scout as he kissed her topless body.
Those were my tits to enjoy. Not his.
I clenched my teeth and worked on memorizing as much as I could before I woke up. I saw a photo and bent down to pick up the frame. My hand went through it as if I were a ghost. What the hell was this all?
Every day for weeks, while I slept, I dreamt of the couple fucking. He took her in every which way he could think of. His place, what I assumed was hers, a car— which was all kinds of hell considering I was stuck up front listening to it, only inches from them.
I knew they couldn’t see me, but I still felt the need to act like it didn’t bother me. I would look away, sometimes yawn, and occasionally I’d even comment on his prowess.
“I’ve made her come so much harder. This is— tepid.” I smirked one time after he took her against a wall. I forced myself in my dreams to pretend as if it didn’t bother me in the slightest. Every night when I woke up, I was either screaming or sobbing miserably for hours. It was killing me.
I started keeping a notebook beside my bed. I wrote down as much as I could recall. These were my clues to finding her.
