AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER 9
Dylan
“Dylan. Wake up! It’s just a dream. Wake up!”
The sound of Kylie’s voice, and the gentle way she was shaking my shoulder, caused my eyes to fly open right in the middle of a loud, raw shout.
I shot up into a sitting position, fighting for air, feeling like I was suffocating.
“What the fuck!” I groaned as I rubbed my hands over my face.
The nightmares always started and ended the same way, but it had been a while since I’d had one, so this one had felt pretty intense.
Real.
And just as horrifying as it had always been.
“I think you were having a nightmare,” Kylie said softly. “I could hear you yelling from my room. Are you okay?”
My hands came away from my face damp with sweat, and my chest was heaving like I’d just run a marathon.
Kylie continued to stroke her fingers through my damp hair, trying to calm me.
The whole scene was familiar, yet it was different, too.
The nightmare was the same one I’d have over and over for two years, but I usually woke up in the darkness…alone.
It usually took me a while to separate the dream from reality, but I was completely aware of what happened almost right away this time.
Maybe because Kylie had been here to yank me back into the real world.
“Same dream every time,” I rasped. “It always turns out the same, even though I try to save her in that dream. I can never get to her in time to stop her.”
The room wasn’t completely dark. I could see Kylie’s form in the dim light from the moon that was filtering through the shutters.
Instinctively, I reached for her, pulled her into my lap, and cradled her warm body against mine, like I needed to protect her from…something.
Or possibly just to make sure she was…safe.
For some strange reason, holding her helped, especially when she wrapped her arms around my neck and clung to me like she wanted to keep on comforting me until she knew that I was going to be all right.
“I know it feels real,” she crooned softly. “But it was only a really bad dream, Dylan.”
“Actually, it wasn’t,” I told her. “It’s what happened that day, except, in the end, I realize it’s a dream. I try to save her, but never succeed. I can never make things right, Kylie. No matter how I try. I never realize I’m dreaming in time to keep her from dying.”
My body shuddered as my breathing started to slow down, and the fear that had gripped me in that nightmare began to subside.
“I’m here, Dylan,” she whispered. “I won’t let you go.”
I squeezed her tightly as the horror of that entire day, and the days after, started to race through my mind.
That brief period of time had changed my life irrevocably, and I’d never seen the man I’d been before that particular day ever again.
“I shouldn’t have argued with her. If she hadn’t taken off angry, it never would have happened,” I confessed in a raw, tormented voice.
“Don’t, Dylan,” Kylie said. “Don’t let guilt suck you dry.”
“You don’t understand,” I growled and buried my face into her hair. “It was my fault. It should never have happened.”
