AllFreeNovel
Share Us
ONE
BLAKE
I often had a recurring nightmare where I would find myself standing in the center of a crowd with everyone’s focus on me. The venue differed each time, but no matter where I was, from an opera house to the pitcher’s mound, the rest was always the same.
I’d be surrounded by people—some familiar, some strangers—as they urged me to do… something. It was the “something” I could never figure out and would send me into a frenzy.
I’d stand there frozen, zooming from one face to the next as they waited for me. With each face I peered at, I hoped to discover the secret of what I needed to do. That someone would give me a clue on how to make the staring stop.
I really needed the staring to stop.
The longer I felt their stares, the more I panicked. My heart would speed up, my skin would flush, and I’d feel the telltale signs of sweat as it beaded beneath my shirt. My breath would become shallow as I continued to search the crowd for someone to rescue me.
Please, someone, rescue me.
Eventually, the panic would wake me, and I’d bolt upright, sweating and heaving as I tried to orient myself to my surroundings, relieved it wasn’t real.
But the thing about recurring nightmares… they have some origin in reality, which was why it always felt so authentic.
And the nightmare I was currently having was the most realistic one yet.
Pinching myself for the third time, I prayed this was a vivid nightmare, not my actual life. It had to be some cosmic joke because there was no way this was real.
Brandon wouldn’t do this to me. He just couldn’t.
Blinking as I tried to keep myself upright, my head swiveled around the dancing bodies, looking for a clue to my rescue. Nothing but smiling faces greeted me as they step-ball-changed in synchronization with the beat. The music finally trailed off as their choreography ended, and they blended into the crowd, melting into the growing onlookers like what had just happened didn’t.
The growing crowd outside the baseball stadium peered at me—that ever-present sense of waiting pressing into me—with twinkles in their eyes as the scene unfolded, their phones recording it for everyone to see.
Okay, nightmare, I see you’ve upped the imagery this time—nothing like a full-blown threat of embarrassment to really freak me out. I can wake up now.
Sweat trailed down my back, my shirt sticking to me as the humidity grew around me, pressing in and invading my lungs. It might be autumn, but that didn’t seem to matter in Florida. My breathing grew more rapid as reality clashed with my nightmare, and I pinched myself one last time.
The sharp sting of pain, the sweltering sun, and the buzz of conversation around me pushed me to accept the truth. There was no waking up from this nightmare.
This was so fucking real.
And now, not only would I have a massive bruise on my skin from the self-torture, but I had to face the fact that my boyfriend had just proposed to me in a crowd full of people with a flash mob.
A freaking flash mob!
The few dancers who lingered had ended their pose around Brandon, their arms stretched out as they highlighted him with their jazz hands, and I wondered for the first time in five years if I even knew him. If he even knew me.
Because of all the ways I’d ever imagined a proposal, this wasn’t even on the list. In fact, it was so far off the list it would take all the trees in the world to make enough paper to reach it.
Glancing at the smiling faces around me, I became overwhelmed as they urged me to respond to my boyfriend.
Okay, that so wasn’t the urge I wanted.
This would be a great time to develop some superpowers. Warp manipulation, teleportation, flying… I really wasn’t picky.
With no rescue in sight, I finally dropped my eyes and stared at my boyfriend.
Brandon Cupley was before me on bended knee, his light brown hair lying perfectly flat against his head. I never knew how he did that, considering he didn’t spend much time on hair maintenance. But it was always flawless. His white button-down shirt was crisp, starched to within an inch of its life, and his black suit pants held no wrinkles, almost like they were afraid of disappointing him. He had a strong jaw, an average nose, and eyes the color of melted caramel.
And on occasion, when he smiled at something he really liked, a dimple would pop out of his right cheek, just as it was now. I gulped as I stared at it. Stupid dimple!
I’d never felt so betrayed by a dimple before.
