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I hear the scream erupt from my lungs as if it comes from someone else.
“Shh, shh.”
I clamp my hand over my mouth, and my eyelids snap open. And then I’m staring into Logan’s eyes, at the ocean waves he carries in his irises.
“Cass, I’m here. You’re home. You’re okay,” he soothes.
Slowly, I register Logan’s palms on each side of my face, the sight of his concerned gaze, the sound of his deep Scottish brogue. I inhale a deep breath through my nose, the familiar scent of salt-tipped air flooding my nostrils.In for two, out for two.
“A nightmare?”
I can feel a headache forming at the back of my skull, and it takes me a moment to understand what Logan’s asking.
“Yeah, I guess,” I answer noncommittally. He doesn’t know about the terrors that haunted my dreams every single night for the first year after that day in the hotel room. My unconscious mind replaying the memory on an endless loop, every viewing becoming darker, more frightening. They’d stopped for a while, when I first moved to Koh Sang, but recently, as the third-year anniversary approaches, I feel my mind constantly returning to that hotel room, and the nightmares have returned, darker and more real than ever.
“What was it about?” he asks.
My heart is still beating erratically, and I swipe away a bead of sweat from my forehead. I force myself to breathe slowly, using the trick I teach my students.In, two, out, two.“I can’t remember,” I lie.
I realize with a start that my fingertips are tracing the line above my heart where my jagged skin has turned soft and stretched. Logan thinks it’s from an accident. A car crash when I was in college. A piece of glass from the windshield piercing my chest. The accidentI managed to survive but that left me an orphan, my two remaining family members torn away in one fast movement of destruction. He thinks that because I’ve made him think that.
I pull my hand away from my chest, not wanting to draw more attention to the scar than necessary.
Logan’s face slowly morphs from concern into his signature lopsided smile: his lips opened slightly, one side pulled up just a touch more than the other, a glitter reaching his dark blue eyes. A stray strand of curls has broken loose from his messy ponytail to graze his chin, and the sight of it sends a flutter to my abdomen.
He leans his face closer to mine. “Well, whatever that dream was, it wasn’t real. But you know what is?” he asks teasingly.
He lifts my left hand up to his mouth, his lips grazing my knuckles, giving me a clear view of the gold band that, as of last night, has taken up permanent residence on my ring finger.
The thought still sends a ripple up my spine.He’s mine. I’m his. We’re all we need. No one else matters.
My eyes travel downward from his face to the identical ring hanging from the chain around his neck, perched on his tattooed chest.
I think back to last night, letting the good memories replace the residual panic from the nightmare. Logan had gently pulled out that ring from where it lay tucked under his T-shirt moments after he’d held out a matching ring in a small red box in my direction. Time seemed to freeze, my brain temporarily glitching, nothing making sense until I watched him lower himself onto the vinyl flooring of our patio, taking position on one knee. He timed it perfectly as the sun descended into the sea, a fiery ball drowning in the water that left the sky smoldering in pinks and shimmering blues.
I held the ring in my hand a moment before slipping it on my finger.
“Look on the inside,” Logan had instructed, and I did. There, engraved in delicate cursive, lay our words. The phrase we say to each other before bed every night or whenever we separate. Our version ofI love you.
“Forever us two,” I managed through the emotion growing thick in my throat.
“Forever us two,” Logan echoed. “It’s official now.”
It was the moment I had been waiting for since the night I first met Logan, two years ago. Since the first time I saw him, I knew. He would be the one to save me.
Tears filled my eyes as Logan continued. “You are everything to me, Cass Morris. When I was a young lad growing up, I dreamed I would find someone as loving and understanding as you, someone I could always turn to and trust. I can’t believe I found you. I must be the luckiest guy in the world.”
All I could do was nod as I listened, the tears breaching the levees of my eyelids. I swallowed hard and tried to enjoy that moment completely, tried to pretend I was really the sweet, shy, loyal woman he fell in love with and not the girl from the hotel room three years ago who would turn on anyone she could to survive.
I lean forward to him now in our bed, craving the feeling of his lips on mine. But just as they touch, a sound crashes into our bedroom.
Thud, thud, thud.
I feel my body go rigid, my muscles clench.
“It’s only the door,” he says, frowning, his statement carrying a question.
“Of course,” I say in a rush, hoping he doesn’t notice my embarrassment. “That dream just felt so real.”
