Page 2 of Ex Somnis

Yeah, no, fair questions.

I’m seriously considering walking straight back inside, grabbing the rest of the banana cake, and setting myself on fire with the candle, because Lennon is looking up at me. Her nose is pink from the cold, and her eyes are doing that thing where they’re wet, but she hasn’t decided yet whether she’s going to cry.

My fingers have memorized exactly how much pressure it takes to smooth out the scrunch on her nose, and they want to do it now, automatically, before I’ve chosen to, before I’ve remembered that I’m the one who put the scrunch there in the first place.

I did that.

I made her look like this.

Paul’s hand falls from Lennon’s back when she takes a few steps away from him.

“You kissed her?” His clinical calm is fraying at the edges, and what’s underneath it is not calm at all. “You know very well that I’m dating her. Why would you⁠—”

“Oh, you’re not dating her,” Ridge cuts in pleasantly, which is somehow worse than if he’d been sharp.

Neither of them is looking at me anymore.

Small mercies.

“She’s mine,” Paul states, and the words come out stripped of everything professional, just bare, certain, and furious underneath.

Something like fury stirs up inside me, too, but I shut it down.

“She is not yours.” Ridge’s voice stays flat. “And who said you were dating? Maybe that’s all in your head.”

Paul looks at me, but I shrug. Because yeah, they’re dating. I know they are.

I made that happen.

Because it was the right thing to do, and she deserves someone like him. All of that was still true before I put my hands on her face underneath the fairy lights and felt her lean into it. I knew exactly what I was doing.

I did it anyway.

Stupid.

“She invited me,” Paul throws back.

“Yeah.” Ridge almost smiles. “Me too. So am I dating her, too, by your standards?”

Paul speaks the next words through clenched teeth. “She asked me as a date. I bet you’re just here as a friend. Come to think of it, she never even mentioned you to me. Can’t be that significant a friendship.”

My gaze drifts to Lennon, finding her talking to Derek a few feet away. I would rather be in that conversation, but the two of them have arranged themselves into a wall, and I can’t easily get past them to her. Not without drawing the heat of their glares again.

“Oooh. The good Dr. Bennett has claws.” Ridge makes a sound that is almost a laugh. “She really does mean something to you.”

“Ridge,” Paul warns.

“I’m just noting the gap between your usual register and whatever that was. You’re a composed person, Paul. I’ve seen you composed under considerable pressure. And yet… you have no idea.”

“No idea about what?” he grits out.

That brings my full attention back to this conversation, because yeah. About what?

“What your precious Lennon gets up to during her nights.”

Paul stills for a beat. “What did you just say?”

“I said,” Ridge repeats, visibly enjoying this. “That you don’t know what she does when she’s sleeping. What she’s been doing. Where she’s been going… who she’s been with.”