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“New medicine?” He didn’t know she took medicine.
“Well, not so new anymore. Been on it for a little bit, but I wasn’t on it down there.”
He wouldn’t ask her what she took medicine for. It was her private business. But he couldn’t help but feel concern for her. What ailed her to the point she needed medication regularly?
A loud noise came through his headphones, and Charlotte jumped on the screen, staring to the right with wide eyes. From the shake in the picture, she was trembling.
“What was that?”
She lowered her head, shaking it, once again laughing without humor. “Probably drunk undergrads stumbling home from a party. Heard them laughing after they hit my door. Probably fell into it, actually. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Something was no doubt going on if things like drunken college kids in her hall made her jumpy. He needed to go see her.
“Enough about that.” Her head canted to the side, a tendril of hair falling from the bundle on top of her head. “Why are you up so late?”
“Bad dream.”
“Again?”
“Yeah, again.”
“Aiden.” The way she blew a quick breath after saying his name in exasperation puffed her cheeks out. “This has been how long now? The nightmares, I mean.”
His shoulders lifted.
He knew the answer, but if he told her, it would lead to questions. Questions he couldn’t answer for her. Still, she worked it out herself—he could see it in how she considered him with a look of concentration. She then asked him what he wished she wouldn’t.
“Did something happen in Europe?”
“What? Why?”
“You’ve had these nightmares since you got back.”
His knee jiggled up and down and he tapped his finger on the desk, glad she couldn’t see below his chest. “Coincidence, I’m sure.” He hated lying to her. Lying went against his nature, but it became necessary to protect both himself and her.
“What do you dream about?”
Charlotte asked him once before what his nightmare entailed when he made the mistake of mentioning it was always the same, but at the time, she had a visitor show up and had to cut the call short. He doubted someone would visit at three in the morning, but he could hope.
“It’s not always clear.” Not a lie. “I’m sure it’ll go away.” A big fat lie.
Until he went to the psychology department and spoke with a professional like both Blaire and Riley suggested, he doubted this would ease. Even then, he wasn’t sure how talking about what happened would change what his subconscious put him through nightly.
He couldn’t remember the last time he experienced a proper sleep.
Charlotte stretched, her back arching and pushing her chest out, exposing a large swath of smooth, pale skin when her tank top rode up to her ribs.
Fuck me.
More and more, he found himself attracted to her. The first time he saw her dressed in the too-tight, too-short, red mini-dress her old boss made his employees wear at the diner, it shocked him how much he found her attractive. Especially when not long before, he had convinced himself he felt something for Blaire.
Discovering that the feeling was connected to their ancestors and the magic of their bond made a lot of the deep feelings of love he developed for Blaire make sense.
Charlotte couldn’t be the same, could she? He doubted it. How could he have the dying will of more than one person inside of him? No. This felt genuine. This felt like a different kind of pull.
“One sec,” she said, taking off her headphones. She stood and moved across the room, giving him an unobstructed view of her bare legs. The tiny shorts she slept in made her legs appear longer; though she was all of five-four, her proportions were perfect.
When she stepped out of frame, he leaned back and sighed.
