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“Do I look like I am?” I try to keep my voice calm, even though my jaw is clenching, and not only because of being hard, but because she responded to Winter and not Lia.
“No. But it felt so real, so visceral…” She palms my cheek and freezes when she feels my jaw tightening under her hold, then swiftly drops her hand to her side.
“Another nightmare?”
She nods once.
It’s not the first time I’ve had to wake her up because of a nightmare. It’s happened twice in the past week, but she didn’t really open her eyes and talk. She just fell back to sleep, so I doubt she remembers them.
I do, though.
The gurgling, choking sounds she makes is like my custom-made hell. Sometimes, I hear it even when I’m awake and I have to check on the cameras in case it’s happening in real time.
“Lia was there,” she says quietly. “She wanted to kill me and then…then…”
I touch her arm gently. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
She stares up at me with those huge eyes. They’re lost like she doesn’t know who she’s looking at and she’s somehow still trapped inside the nightmare.
“Why did you bring me here, Adrian?” she murmurs, her voice pained.
“You know.”
“Because I look like Lia?”
I nod.
“I’m not her. And the more you compare me to her, the more I feel myself being erased, forgotten. I don’t want to be forgotten.”
I grab her by the arm and try to put her under the sheet. “Sleep for now.”
“No.” She yanks her arm free. “I don’t want to sleep.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Winter. For once, just call me Winter.Please.”
I did and I hated it. I hated it so much that I want to pour bleach down my fucking throat.
“No.”
“Please…” Tears cascade down her cheeks. “Please don’t erase me. Please, Adrian.”
“Don’t beg me for something like that. You’re Lia. Get used to it.”
A sob tears from her throat, and her lips purse, one of them battered and cut from how much she bites down on it.
That has to heal before she’s ever seen in public. She needs to snap out of it, but I know it won’t be easy to have her comply. That is, if it’s possible at all.
This time, she doesn’t resist as I tuck her under the covers. She willingly closes her eyes and whispers, “I wish I’d never met you.”
My lips brush against her forehead. “I’ll meet you over and over again if I have to.”
23
Winter
Three days later, we go to the party.
