Page 196 of Ex Somnis

What can I say?

I’m starting to be a crystal person.

“Here.” Ridge reaches over to the pebble collection on his nightstand and hands one to Nevan. “You can borrow one of mine.”

“Um…” Nevan takes the little white stone. “Thanks?”

“Drink your tea,” I tell them as I pick up mine. Over the rim of the cup, I look at them on this too-big bed in this never-dark house, and I think, please, to no one, or maybe to the moonstone around my neck.

Please let us get Tessa tomorrow.

Please let us all wake up after.

Together.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Lennon

Ridge sucks a lemon lollipop and smirks at me. “Question it, sweetheart.”

I look down at my hands. My fingers are breadsticks, and there are too many of them. I don’t bother counting because it’s only a formality at this point.

I’m dreaming…

…This is a dream.

I look back up at Ridge and open my mouth, but I don’t know what to ask first. Where are we, or what are we doing, or how long do we have? There’s a list, a whole plan, a reason we’re…

His lollipop disappears as he grabs my face and kisses me like he’s been waiting all day, and the question dies when his lips meet mine. Then the ground gives way beneath us, and we’re falling. I gasp into his mouth, but Ridge keeps kissing me through it like a man with nothing to lose until we land on something soft that gives under us, smelling like a hundred summers.

He finally releases me, turning me in his arms so I can see flowers. Yellow flowers, horizon to horizon, going up the curve of the world and over it, and the sky above is the whole Milky Way poured out like someone scattered glitter.

I’ve been here before. Almost here.

It’s the planet he built for me once, in my dreamscape, except it isn’t, not quite. The version he showed me was beautiful, but this one is loud. The yellow is somehow more yellow. The flowers are taller and, all of them, very slightly, lean toward us.

“This is my dreamscape,” Ridge says, nuzzling my throat. “My comfort zone. You wanted to know what it is, right?”

“This is the same one you showed me?”

“Yeah.” He chuckles against my skin. “But I wanted you to see the original. Not the copy. The real thing.” He turns my head toward him and kisses me hard, his hand sliding lower, and I almost forget there’s something we are supposed to do here when someone clears their throat.

I jerk back from Ridge’s mouth so fast I nearly headbutt the galaxy.

Paul is standing in the middle of the flowers, maybe ten feet away, hands in his pockets. He looks around at the planet, then at me, then at Ridge.

“Am I interrupting something?”

“Yes,” Ridge says at the same time I say, “No.”

Ridge tips his head at Paul and pulls me harder against his front. “You couldn’t have given us another minute? Two?”

“It’s a group exercise, Ridge.”

“It can be a flexible group exercise.”

There’s a clatter, and we all look toward the noise as Nevan arrives, like someone shoved him through a doorway he didn’t know was there. He stumbles out of nothing, his feet tripping over everything but also nothing, arms windmilling, but manages to keep his feet.