Page 71 of Ex Somnis

Eleven seconds.

I put my arm over my face.

I have no idea how we’re going to do this.

I know Derek is trying. He will get there eventually. But eventually is not a timeline, and Lennon has been in there for a week now, and we’re not one bit closer to getting her back.

Nevan is learning from scratch, and Paul is sitting in his house doing his clinical patience thing that I simultaneously respect and find profoundly aggravating.

All while I’m lying in the flowers being useless.

I sit up and run a hand through my hair. The flowers move around me in whatever passes for wind on this planet, and I’m about to start the mental list of everything that’s wrong with the plan when the pull happens.

Not the vague directional thing I’ve been feeling for days, the compass needle in my chest that says she’s somewhere that way without providing the actual address. This is different. This is the tether, pulling like a hand around my wrist, as if something on the other end has grabbed it.

My pulse kicks up hard.

Lennon.

I reach back before I’ve decided to, toward it, the thread, and it catches…

…until the planet dissolves into her apartment.

Not her dream kitchen. Her apartment next to mine. Her bedroom’s bare walls , the suitcases on the floor, the yellow pillows. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed with her face in her hands.

I count my fingers.

Left hand, seven. Right hand, four.

I’m still dreaming.

She looks up, and the expression on her face when she sees me does something to my chest.

“Ridge.” She says it like she’s not sure I’m real. Like she’s checking. Her eyes are wet, and she’s already standing. I run her over once, head to toe, looking for wrongness, for the off quality of a dream projection, something too smooth or too perfect.

She’s here.

She frowns, then scrunches her nose and takes a step toward me.

“Ridge.”

She’s real.

The room gets darker around us.

She takes another step.

The edges of the space are going soft and then softer, a black fog coming in from the walls, but I don’t care because she’s right in front of me now.

Lennon puts her hand on my chest. Palm flat, right over the sternum, and the warmth of it goes through me before I’ve processed that she’s touching me. Then I shudder, actually shudder, before realizing I’m shaking.

My hands.

My hands are shaking.

I look at them, at the wrong number of fingers on each one, and they’re both trembling. This is not something that happens to me. It’s not a thing I do.

“Ridge.” Her hand presses slightly, and I feel how my emotions rush out of me in the form of darkness.