The panicked male shout had Emmy shooting out of bed, adrenaline pushing her from drowsy to wide-awake in the span of a second. She whirled around to see an enormous dude, wearing nothing but a pair of plaid boxers, gaping at her.
“What thefuck?” he repeated, with a slightly more interrogative inflection.
“Who the hell are you?” Emmy asked in response, trying to tamp down her panic. Her head swiveled as she took in her surroundings and absorbed the fact that the unfamiliar man came paired with an unfamiliar room. “Where am I? Did you…” She paused, swallowed, and took a small step back. This was bad. Really bad. “Did you drug me?”
“Are you kidding me?” the guy demanded. He ran his hands through his hair in pure agitation. “Jesus, no I didn’t drug you. You’re the one who showed up in my house. You don’t get to make any accusations here.”
“Okay, hold on. Hold on. Just for a second.” Emmy put up both hands, palms out, as if she could press pause on life. Her brain whirled. She wished this were a dream, but knew without a doubt that she was awake. Awake but… possibly losing her memory. Or her mind.
Then her eyes tracked back down to the guy’s boxers.
Plaid boxers.
“Um…” he said, clearing his throat. He didn’t say “What the fuck” a third time, but his expression did. She watched him grab a pair of sweats out of his dresser and slip them on. He’d had them neatly folded, she noted. Who folded sweatpants?
Focus, Emmy, she ordered herself. Then she remembered the book. What about plaid boxers made her think of the book?
Wearing nothing but a pair of plaid boxers, Will flopped into bed and… something, something, something.
She’d read those words recently, more or less. She hadn’t memorized the damn book. But this one detail sure was sticking out at the moment.
“Plaid boxers,” Emmy whispered, and she could feel the blood draining out of her face.
“What?”
Emmy swallowed, looked back up at the guy. Movie star handsome. Clearly worked out—a rigidly defined six pack was on full display and she’d seen the way his biceps bulged when he ran his hands through his hair. Over six feet tall.Tousled brown hair, tan skin, and… he was too far away to tell for sure, but she was starting to think his eyes might be hazel.
“What’s your name?”
She barely recognized the sound of her own voice. Was that buzzing in her ears an auditory symptom of panic?
He looked like he wasn’t going to answer, but something on her face must have demonstrated the importance of the question. “Will.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
Emmy rushed out of the room, found a bathroom, locked herself inside. She pulled her hair back and leaned over the sink, maintaining that position until she was sure that her stomach wasn’t going to turn inside out. Then she looked into the mirror. Yep. She was still her. Still wearing ducky pajamas. Apparently, she had completely departed from reality. Was she still in her apartment and hallucinating the book character guy? Or was her apartment just another layer of the delusion? Maybe she’d never been sane. Except… hallucinations weren’t supposed to be this real, were they? How could she know? Feeling her hands tremble, Emmy reached out to grip the edge of the sink. She needed to focus. Follow the logic. She could do this. Sure, it seemed like logic had abandoned her, but she could bring it back. She could find it. There had to be a reasonable explanation. Therehadto be. She wasnotin a book.
“You’re not in a book,” she said to her reflection. Her stomach threatened to heave again, and she ruthlessly swallowed the nerves back down. “You’re not in a book,” she repeated, forcing strength into her thready voice. “And you’re not leaving this bathroom until you figure outwhat’s really going on.” Her shell-shocked expression stared back at her, and she cursed under her breath. “I’m going to be in this bathroom for a long time.”
While she was in the bathroom, Will pulled on a shirt and tried not to panic. He’d gone to bed alone the night before. It wasn’t like he’d gone on a drug and alcohol binge after a fourteen-hour shift and brought someone home. He’d been lucid… or as lucid as a sleep-deprived person can be. So where the hell had the woman come from? The fact that she was just as uncertain about that as he was made him uneasy.Moreuneasy. When the door creaked open and she emerged from the bathroom, he took in her appearance. Pale. Too pale. But beautiful. God he wished he could ignore that, but he had eyes, didn’t he? Her hair, dark brown with hints of caramel highlights, fell in soft waves down her back. Eyes that were wide and dark. Lips that were perfectly full, slightly parted now as she breathed slowly in through her nose and out through her mouth. No, he couldn’t deny he found her appealing on a physical level. But that didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t supposed to be in his house.
“Okay,” she said, and her voice was strained. “There are only two possibilities here.”
“I think there are more than two.”
She shook her head, dismissing his interjection. Then she met his gaze. Her eyes were… haunted, if he had to pick a word. “I need to tell you what I know. It’s going to sound insane, but this whole situation is insane. I just need you to listen to me.”
Will was trying to recall everything he could about mental disorders from his courses in college. It was clearthis woman needed help, but he wasn’t the man for the job. He was a nurse in the pediatric wing for fuck’s sake. He knew all the names of thePaw Patroldogs, could recite trivia aboutThomas the Tank Engineas if he had created the series. He’d seen so many of Blippi’s videos that he might as well consider the suspender-clad show host a close personal friend. None of that helped him in this situation. How was he supposed to talk this woman down from what was clearly a psychotic break?
Humor her, he decided. Humor her until a better solution came along.
“What do you need to tell me?” he asked, keeping his voice as calm and gentle as he could manage.
It sounded like he was talking to a wounded animal. Emmy tried not to feel offended as she organized her thoughts. She would probably have reacted the same way if the roles were reversed.
“Last night… I fell asleep reading a book,” she began. “The main character in that book was named Will Barrett.” She saw Will’s eyebrows wing up, and the look in his eyes gave her the impression he was deciding between fight or flight. Seeing no other recourse, she plowed on. “Sometime in the first few chapters, Will Barrett fell asleep wearing only a pair of plaid boxers. I fell asleep last night in my apartment—inmybed—in suburban Minnesota, and I woke up this morning in your bed.” She paused to take a breath, then let it out slowly. “Either I have gone deeply and irrevocably insane and you are a hallucination, or I am somehow… in that book.”
Insane was right. Will wanted to take a step back, but the woman posed no real threat. She didn’t have a weapon, andshe was… dainty. He was pretty sure he could take her if it came to a hand-to-hand fight.
