Page 11 of Ex Somnis

“Lennon.” Her name breaks out of me, and I don’t recognize my voice, but she doesn’t move at the sound.

Of course, she doesn’t move.

My hands hover, like I don’t know where to touch her without breaking something, before I grip the footboard instead, the wood biting into my palms.

“Darling. Come back to me.”

Her hand is still open on the pillow beside her head, like she just let go.

I drag in a breath that doesn’t fill my lungs and look at my watch.

4:44 a.m.

My gaze snaps back to her face, then to my wrist again.

4:44 a.m.

Fuck.

“Fuck!”

I hit the side table blindly, searching for something, anything, my hand closing around Alice in Wonderland. I don’t remember deciding to pick it up, but the next thing I know, I’m throwing it across the room.

It cracks loudly in the silence as it slams into the wall where This Man just stood, the pages splitting open as it drops to the floor.

That didn’t help.

Nothing is helping.

Lennon is unconscious, Ridge is living his worst nightmare because of me, and I’m throwing books at walls.

“Please.” I step toward Lennon and brace a hand on the mattress. My other hand hovers over her wrist for a moment before I finally let myself touch her.

Warm, she’s still warm.

“Please,” I repeat. “Don’t do this. You don’t get to just…”

Leave me.

I press my thumb to her pulse like I can anchor her here by force alone.

Tether her to me.

But I don’t know how.

I look at Tessa, at the same stillness and absence, and how she isn’t fighting for breath anymore, when Mrs. Vaughn opens the door.

Her gaze is not going to her daughter in stasis, or the love of my life, but to the book, still open on the floor. She takes that in for a beat, then moves her gaze to me, and the sequence is visible on her face with confusion, recalibration, and then something that is not quite alarm but is close to it. Nora Vaughn does not get alarmed easily, but she is looking at me with an expression I don’t usually receive, and I become aware, slowly, that my face is wet.

I press the back of my hand to my cheek.

Oh.

“What’s going on?” She walks toward me, not rushing but not hesitating either, as her gaze sweeps over Tessa, then Lennon, before coming back to me. “Paul, are you all right?” She’s still in her dressing gown with a crease on her cheek that says she was asleep until she heard something. The book, probably. Or the sound I made before it.

“No,” I hear myself admit.

She’s beside me then. We look at the bed, at the two of them still under the too-bright ceiling light.