Page 55 of Ex Somnis

Lennon’s phone buzzes softly on the nightstand beside me. My eyes flick to it and then back to her, and to her mouth before I can stop them.

Bad idea.

Very bad idea.

Because now my brain helpfully reminds me that I know exactly what she tastes like too.

Lemonade. Sugar. Lennon.

Jesus Christ.

I kissed her, she kissed me back, and now I’m sitting in Ridge Wells’ room in Paul Bennett’s house, trying not to think about kissing her again.

I might actually be losing my mind.

Do not try the fairy tale version of waking her up, Nevan.

You are in a room with the two men who are aggressively acting like she is theirs, one of whom you know for a fact she has been on a date with, and the other who apparently…

I don’t fully understand what the other one has been doing with her.

But that’s the theme of the day, it seems, because I’ve been here an hour, and I understand maybe twenty percent of everything they’ve explained to me. None of which I understand makes any sense.

“Wake up for me, baby,” I whisper near her ear. “I’m so sorry.”

“Nothing?” Ridge asks behind me, and I nearly jump out of my skin.

“No reaction,” I mutter, turning toward them.

I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, putting me almost at eye level with Ridge. Bad choice, honestly. The man looks like he’s five seconds away from fighting someone.

He exhales sharply, eyes blazing.

Beside him, Paul removes his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose for what has to be the fiftieth time since I got here, like his sinuses are the real problem.

“It was worth trying,” he says quietly as he slides the glasses back on.

“It’s worth shit if it doesn’t reach her,” Ridge snaps immediately. “Why did you even think this would work? That’s just⁠—”

The phone buzzes again, vibrations rattling faintly against the wood of the nightstand before stopping.

Paul ignores it. “I read it in a study, Ridge.”

“You and your fucking studies. She is not a clinical object.”

“I know she’s not.”

They’ve been doing this since I arrived.

I came here straight after my logging shift and a shower, swallowed my pride, and dragged myself across town to a house I’ve never been inside before, only to discover Paul Bennett apparently lives inside an enormous and very white house full of plants, which, honestly, makes sense in a way I can’t explain. I sat in Paul Bennett’s kitchen while they talked to me for an hour about dream levels and a man who lives in someone else’s sleep. I nodded and said okay and right and sure approximately forty-seven times, and the entire time I was thinking, what the actual fuck?

Because she looks like she’s sleeping.

That’s the part my brain keeps getting stuck on.

She looks asleep, but apparently what’s happening to her has terminology, levels, rules, entire theories, studies, and arguments attached to it.

She’s been doing this the whole time.