Page 130 of My Unfinished Heart

I don’t answer that as the answer should be obvious, but I do pull out a chair and sit down across from him. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

He lifts a hand to run a long, pale finger around the rim of his glass. “Do you ever have nightmares?”

I frown, trying to figure out where this is going so I can do something to prepare myself, but it’s all so bizarre. So out of context. It feels like a dream. “Sure.”

“I have one almost every night about the accident. Only most of the time, in the dreams, you're driving. Sometimes I'm driving, but mostly—it's you. And Tristan is usually there too. He dies along with everyone else.”

I swallow hard, still trying to come to grips with the fact that he’s here. “They’re just dreams, Connor.”

“No,” he corrects me with a bite in his voice. “They’re not just dreams. They mean something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” he says. And then he takes a sip of water. When he puts it back down on the glass table, it lands hard, making a horrible noise. My heart skips a beat at the sound, then takes off at a gallop.

“It was just a fluke we were all together that day, you know? Bryan had a baseball game. Mom and dad were both there, and she made a spectacle of herself. She told Dad if he moved into this house she’d kill herself. In front of everybody. All Bryan’s friend’s parents. The little kids. Anyway, Dad somehow had his shit together enough that day to get her in the car after the game barely started. She was all hysterical, crying, and Bryan was crying and Dad was fucking over it, and then BAM!” he shouts.

I jerk.

“That was that.” He goes calm and quiet again.

I want to crawl out of my skin. The hair all over my body is ready for launch. I can’t speak. This is worse than watching a horror movie. Connor’s next words come out in a rush, like something’s behind them, pushing them from his mouth.

“And I was bleeding and Bryan was screaming, and Mom and Dad—well, they were quiet, and sometimes I hear the screaming, but mostly—the worst thing is when I don't hear it. The worst thing is when I notice the quiet. Like watching a TV show on mute. In the dream I had tonight, it was like the sound was off. And this time you were driving. And you weren't paying any fucking attention.”

My chest tightens. I can’t breathe. It seems like he’s closing in on me even though his body stays completely still.

“The symbolism is obvious, don't you think? I do,” he says.

The symbolism is obvious. Painfully so.

“Why can't you stay out of my life?” he asks. “Why won't you just go?”

He pauses long enough for me to answer, and as my eyes adjust to the relative darkness, I notice the expectant lift of his brow.

“I haven’t been a part of your life for a long time.”

“Oh, Archer. That's not true at all. You know that's not true.”

Fear plunges its icy barbs into the meat of my heart. He’s a powder keg, and I am a trail of gasoline. Tristan is a lit match, hovering above both of us, about to drop.

I want it over with. “Connor—either be more specific or go. You have no business being here in⁠—”

“You have no business being here! No one asked you to stay. No one wants you here. You're fucking everything up—as always—without giving a shit who you hurt in the process. You don't belong here. You need to go away. Far. And never come back.”

I shake my head. “I can’t do that.”

He sighs heavily, like he expected this, and we’re entering the negotiation phase. “Fine. Then how about you just stay away from Tristan?”

The match falls, and we’re on fire. I stare back at him and his creepy-ass eyes. “I can’t do that. I won’t. There’s not a chance in the world I’ll stop seeing him.”

He slides the glass back and forth about an inch either way on the table, creating a different but no less horrible noise. “First it was Jayne, now it’s Tristan. Can’t you find your own dates, or is it just easier to fuck my friends?”

“All right. That’s enough. You need to go home.”

He tsks and shakes his head. “Not until you tell me you'll stop seeing him.”

“No.”