Page 108 of Sweet Nightmare

“So, after you harvested them, they accidentally got loose somehow?” I look at the devastation all around us. “That’s what did this?”

“Not accidentally,” he answers. “This time I deliberately set them free.”

“Deliberately?” I’m so shocked I can’t even be angry. Because I know Jude—I know how conscientious he usually is about everything—well, everything except our relationship. This isn’t like him. At all. “Why would you—”

I break off because, suddenly, it all becomes clear. “For me. The unmeshing. You set them free to save my life.”

“I couldn’t let you die,” he answers, throat working and eyes glazed with something that looks suspiciously like tears. “Not if there was anything I could do to stop it. Even this.” Now he’s the one looking around, a deep-seated horror on his face.

“Did you know?” I whisper, heart lodged in my throat. Because I think I would rather have died than know that saving me meant all these people—meant Eva—would suffer and die the way they did.

“That this would happen?” He shakes his head. “I used the same magic that I use to pull nightmares from people to pull the poison from you. But I was so careful. I worked so hard to pull them all back. I was afraid one might have slipped away, but I never imagined this many could have.”

“That’s why you were so upset,” I say, putting things together now. “When you showed up at Mozart and Ember’s earlier. You were afraid you had let a nightmare escape. Why didn’t you ask for help then?”

“Because no one can help me with this. No one can fix the mistakes I make—not these kinds of mistakes.”

“You don’t know that—”

“I do know it!” His voice raises but ends in a whisper. “I do.”

“The only way you could know is if this happened before—” I break off as the truth dawns on me. “Is that why you were sent to the island? You were only seven!”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” His face closes up like it always used to when I asked about what got him sent to Calder Academy to begin with, so I don’t poke at it. There’s more than enough here to unpack as it is.

“Then when?” I ask. “Because I’ve been here with you the whole time, and nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“The night I first kissed you.”

“What?” I whisper.

“I lost control.” He swallows. “I lost myself in you and I…”

And just like that, it becomes clear. Everything does. Carolina leaving has always been my worst nightmare—way worse than some ugly snake—and after Jude and I kissed… I trail off because the thought is too horrible to fully comprehend.

“That’s why you ghosted me. Not because you don’t care about me, but because—”

“I love you, Kumquat. I’ve loved you for years. But I can’t be with you. Not when there’s a chance that something like this might happen again.”

“You love me?” I repeat the words, like I’ve never heard them before. To be honest, I haven’t. Not the way he means them.

“You really have to ask me that?” He laughs, but there’s no humor in the sound. “I love you so much that I had to cut you out of my life completely because I knew I wasn’t strong enough to be around you and not want you.”

“You love me.” I say the words again, blankly. Because I’m pretty sure my brain has reached its capacity for revelations for the day. The week. The month. Possibly even the year.

“I love you,” he says for the third time tonight, reaching out and running a finger over the tiny indentation in my chin the way he used to.

The small, familiar gesture brings tears to my eyes—I didn’t know how much I’d missed it until right now.

“I love everything about you,” he whispers sadly. “The way you always do the right thing. The way you always care about other people, even when they don’t deserve it—especially here. The way you take a little coffee with your milk instead of the other way around and the way you never, ever, ever give up. Even on me.”

Tears threaten, but I hold them back with sheer willpower and a whole lot of blinking.

“But that’s why I have to do it,” he whispers. “I have to give up on us, because you never will. Unleashing nightmares, destroying people’s lives… I lose control when I’m with you, and I can’t—I won’t—let it happen again.”

I know he’s right. I do. Our happiness isn’t more important than other people’s lives. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Suddenly I can’t hold the tears back, no matter how hard I try.

They blur my eyes, turn Jude—and the whole world around me—fuzzy, until it looks like I’m seeing three of everything.

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