Page 52

Talk about immaturity.

I enter the apartment, so tired and emotionally drained, I can barely stand. “I don’t know where else he’d be. Has he answered any of your messages?”

Collin checks his phone again. “Nothin’. I’m sure he’s just staying with one of the guys from the swim team.”

I’ve seen Jonathan’s rage several times, set ablaze by different circumstances. But tonight, he was blind to it. He didn’t have control. It was terrifying to witness. Because I knew if I reached for him, he wouldn’t have known it was me.

“He was so… furious. I keep thinking he crashed his truck again and is lying in a hospital somewhere, or…”

“Don’t go there. This isn’t like that time. Besides, we checked. And he didn’t get into another fight.”

“You don’t know that.”

“He would’ve been picked up by the cops looking the way he did. He was torn up and bloody. Not exactly hard to miss. Besides, we know they don’t have him.”

“Then where is he?!” my voice shrieks, colliding with the walls of our apartment. My chest aches. I know something’s wrong. I can feel it. Something horrible has happened. “We need to find him, Collin. I’m so scared he may have hurt himself.”

“He wouldn’t do that.” He sounds so confident. But he hasn’t been here with him every night, waking to the thrashing that’s only gotten worse. To the point that I’ve had to sleep on the couch more recently. I still wake him from the nightmares, but I can’t handle the guilt on his face when he sees the bruises he’s inadvertently caused when he’s fighting his demons.

I sink onto the couch with a heavy sigh. Then freeze. Something’s different. Wrong. It doesn’t take long to figure it out.

I push off the couch. “He left!”

“We know that,” Collin says, trying to be patient, but fatigue is winning out. “We’ll find him.”

“No! He left me,” I cry out, revealing an empty closet. I yank open the dresser drawer so hard it crashes to the floor, barely missing my feet. “He’s gone. He left me, Collin.”

I am next to fall to the floor, my heart giving out, no longer in my chest. He’s gone, and he took it with him.

On the edge of sinking into the nightmare, I catch myself—waking with a sudden inhale. Rachel’s breathing deep beside me, asleep.

I ease off the bed and pick my shoes off the floor, slipping out the door. I stayed in the room, hoping to give Emma enough time to return to her room or fall asleep on the couch. The third step lets out a groaning creak. I should know by now. Emma lifts her head off the back of the couch. Shit. I ended up waking her anyway.

“Hey,” I say, picking up the blanket off the back of the loveseat and sitting next to her. “What did you find?” I focus on the television where some reality show plays at a low volume.

“Not sure,” she whispers with a yawn. “I have no idea what’s going on.”

Still looking at the screen without taking it in, I risk a question that may not get answered. “Do you always have the same nightmare, or is it different each time?”

"It's different each time," she answers, curling up on her side and tucking her hand under the throw pillow. "But they usually end right when I'm about to die."

My gaze drifts to her. The flatness of her tone causes me to study her. We both nearly lost our lives. What happened to her sounds even more violent. Mine was over in a matter of seconds. I don’t remember most of it.

And she still can’t escape it, even though she survived. Because every night, when she’s meant to be at peace, she’s being murdered again and again. No wonder she screams like she’s fighting for her life.

She is.

A chill courses through my spine.

How do we escape a past that still wants to kill us? Not in the literal sense, but it might as well be. The exhaustion eats away at me. Having to remember. Listen. Smell. Feel. My dreams are an interactive experience of the senses. Leaving nothing out.

I am there, reliving it again. And again.

Sometimes I consider if living is worth it. The torment. The pain. The drain of my life force. I may not be dead, but most days, I question if I’m truly alive.

"I take it yours aren't like that, huh?"

I shake my head and look back at the screen.