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“I know I’ve been asking you too much for some time now, but… please help me out again? I know I can’t keep asking you this, you have your own life…”
“No! I mean, yes, of course I will help.”
Yes, yes, yes!
“You sure you’re okay, Cos? You keep putting your life on hold for me.”
“Nonsense,” I say brightly. “You know you only have to ask.”
And if I feel guilty for having my own reasons for wanting to go back, so what? I’m trying to kill two birds with one stone. Help my sis. Find Merc. Get this out of my system.
I’m sure he’s okay, but I need to give him a piece of my mind, show him I’m not okay with being dumped. Not anymore.
Sounds like a plan. Even if Lin will kill me when she finds out.
Chapter Seven
Merc
In my dream, a huge eye is watching me, yellow and unblinking like the moon.
Then I see blood. Rivers and lakes and seas spreading around me. Shallow seas I stumble through, my shoes getting stuck, gluing me to the ground so I can’t lift off.
Someone is after me. Heavy steps follow me as I struggle through the dark mire.
A body is lying on the ground bathed in golden late-afternoon sunlight, and I know… I know this place, and I know how it got there. I saw… I saw things before I started to run, the images flashing in front of me like a film, and I crash through them, shredding them apart.
A meandering stream, a silver swan, a temple, trees sweeping low over the banks—a scream, a crash.
A hand lands on my shoulder, spinning me around, hauling me off the ground. I’m too small, too weak, windmilling as I am lifted in the air, my heart thudding so hard it feels like it might burst out of my chest.
I can’t see his face. I can never see his face. The only thing I see as I dangle from his hand is a symbol drawn on his forearm, a symbol I can’t make out.
You killed her, I try to say, you killed her, you bastard. I try to talk, try to scream, but I can’t, can’t fucking move.
Can’t escape.
But as another scream rises in my throat, I jerk and sit upright, a strangled sound leaving my throat. I bend over, gasping for breath.
Fuck. I’m awake. I’m awake, goddammit. Fuck’s sake.
Breathe. I put a hand over my racing heart and swallow down bile. Calm down.
Just a dream.
I don’t always wake up in time to avoid what comes after, the fall into abject terror that has me thrashing on the bed until I fall off or mercifully wake up, a howl dying in my throat.
See, the problem is that I’m not always that lucky.
Yawning so hard my jaw cracks, grabbing my phone from the nightstand, I shuffle into the kitchen in a pair of boxers I just threw on. I normally don’t bother wearing anything in bed, but JC walking in on me the other day made me wonder whether I should change my habits.
My phone dings, and I glance at it, instantly irritated with myself for still expecting Sophie to be the one texting me. As if she has my number. As if she’d care.
But it’s not her, it’s the blond I took out for drinks the other night. She wants to see me again. I thought I made it clear that wasn’t in the cards.
Even if I’m not hung up on Sophie. I’m over her, remember?
It’s not as if anything had a chance to happen anyway, and I shouldn’t feel so fucking disappointed at the thought. Not when she now pretends not to know me. I’m a popular guy now. I’m not the scared, bullied boy I was back in our little town of Destiny, the fatherless bastard, the scrawny poor boy in second-hand clothes and patches on my knees and elbows.
