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I sighed. My heart beat rapidly, thumping inside my chest. The tears from the dream carried over, face drenched between this and the sweat dripping down my forehead.
“Fuck. Jemma… are you okay? What a goddamn nightmare.”
A warm hand rested against my shoulder blade.
I shifted. Jamie’s brows knit together to form an upside-down V, a concerned look on his face as his lips narrowed into a straight line. He sat up on the other side of the bed, wearing only an undershirt and boxers. I noticed my own attire, my bra and underwear, remembering how we’d both undressed before I’d crawled into bed, Jamie curled up behind me like he’d been doing every night since I asked him to stay. Like a couple who’d been together for years. Not a spirit who was trying to save his ex-girlfriend.
“Are you okay?” he asked, rubbing his hand along my back. My heart rate steadied at his touch, and I relaxed back against the bed, facing away from Jamie as he continued to touch me. Both his hands rubbed each side of my back deeply, massaging out knots I hadn’t even realized were there.
“A nightmare is right,” I said, insides calming as his fingers dug into my skin. He rested his face against the back of my neck and spooned me from behind.
“Your dad,” Jamie said, obviously aware of the images still running through my mind, haunting me. Dad with the gun popped into my mind again. I heard the shot fire through the room. I could taste the iron of the blood as I nearly choked on the liquid drowning me.
“Mhmm,” I mumbled.
“It wasn’t actually him, Jemma,” he said, his soft voice reassuring. “Your father would never visit you like that. It was a dream just now. Only a dream.”
“Yeah. He would never visit me at all.” The words were bitter in my mouth. Jamie kissed my neck.
“Are you okay?” he asked again. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I bit back more tears that threatened to fall, though it wasn’t long before they broke free.
“I…” I started to say, sniffling. The sniffles then morphed to sobs. “I…”
“It’s okay, dear,” Jamie said, still rubbing my back and kissing my neck. My sobs faded, my heartbeat steady. I rested my hands in front of my face, allowing my fingers to soak in some of the wet. Jamie’s energy shifted in front of me, the vibration resting against my hands and chest. Without being able to see, I knew he had moved in front of my body. His head rested against mine.
“Jemma,” he said.
I lowered my hands. His eyes gazed at me lovingly as he placed his fingers through my hair, stroking me softly.
“You’re safe,” Jamie said. “You’re always safe.” He brushed his fingers through my hair once more, and my face tingled. “No matter what happens. I will always be around watching over you. You’re always safe.”
“What the hell was that dream about, Jamie?” I asked, voice tight. The thought of the blood rushing into my body entered my mind once more, and I gagged at the idea of it. “I’ve never had a dream like that. It… it didn’t feel real like when I was with you… but…”
Though I rested within the comfort of Jamie’s touch, a rush of memories flushed through my system. Things I almost never allowed myself to think of without a filter keeping the entire movie at bay. Of all the times I thought of Dad and what he had done—I usually saw the trailer with the least gory, least offensive material. The censored piece my mind could handle.
But that dream opened me up to the full movie. Making me watch my least favorite title.
The real memory of finding my dad’s dead body in my kitchen floated through my mind—something I didn’t think of often. Something my brain couldn’t quite process.
The blood I found him sitting in shone beneath the window port in our kitchen. Like the dream, Dad had slumped over with the gun next to him on the floor. Like the dream, I froze in place, throat thick, unable to say a word.
Dad grumbled, speaking words I couldn’t comprehend. Incomplete sentences.
I didn’t dare move any closer.
Sometimes I imagined it was me in the pool of blood.
That was the first day I seriously considered death.
The moment when I understood just how fleeting life really was.
We were always just one shot away from meeting the other side of nonexistence.
Except… that last sentence no longer applied. I knew now that we didn’t just cease to exist. That as dead as I had felt, I wasn’t dead. My soul was alive, burning with life I hadn’t known in a very long time. The energy lifted from the very depths of me, a passion so vivid the words that drew from me next lit an imaginary fire into the space around me.
“Why did he never come to visit me?” I asked Jamie, my words coming straight from my gut. “I gave him so many chances. I researched the living shit out of the spiritual stuff. You and I even used a goddamn Ouija board that one time, remember?”
