Page 5 of Ex Somnis

“Nah, you go check the Vaughn mansion. Derek and I will check her apartment,” Ridge replies, and Derek exhales a long breath.

Then Ridge angles his wheelchair toward me and, with obvious reluctance, says, “I’m an asshole.”

“No shit,” I mutter.

He almost laughs. It’s a small sound, and it’s gone fast, but it’s there. “Anyway. Are you coming?”

I look at him, then at the road where her taillights were, the empty parking lot, then turn toward the fairy lights still going through the inn windows, and the party that doesn’t even know anything has happened.

“No.” I take a breath. “You’re an asshole, but you’re right.”

I walk back toward the inn.

The door swings shut after I step inside, cutting them out, and the party wraps around me again. Someone in a skeleton costume asks if there’s more beer. I point at the bar without stopping and keep walking.

As I make my way to the back hallway, the noise of it all recedes.

Jasper finds me, or I find him, hard to say. He has his tarot deck out, fanning the cards between his hands the way he does when he’s trying to calm himself down, which is how I know he already knew, or knew something, and has been standing here waiting.

He clocks my face, and the cards go still. “You okay?”

I shrug. “Sure.”

Just done something stupid as usual.

“Promise?” he asks.

I look past him at the kitchen door, at the small square window in it, and the warm, yellow light coming through from the inside.

I don’t promise anything.

CHAPTER TWO

Lennon

I don’t remember leaving the party.

I don’t remember the walk, the cold, or the drive.

I’m just here.

Mid-motion, cracking an egg.

I don’t chase the gap. It’s easier not to, because instead of dealing with the nightmare that is my life lately, I’m basking in one that smells like lemons, browned butter, and the sweetness of a kitchen that knows it’s loved.

This one is home.

Not my half-empty apartment in Vernonia.

Home home.

The kitchen where I learned to cook. Yellow curtains on the window above the sink that always let in too much light and not enough breeze. Yellow backsplash that’s slightly crooked on the left side because my dad did the installation himself and refused to admit he’d measured wrong.

It’s even more crooked than I remember, like the mistake has been… nudged.

But it’s all here.

Everyone is here.