Page 121 of Sweet Nightmare

It’s at that moment that I realize that my love for Jude is infinite.

It’s as deep as the ocean, as powerful as this hurricane, as endless as the sky that stretches above me even now. It’s every dream I’ve never had, every monster I’ve ever slain, and it’s…forever. That’s what it is. Forever. No matter what.

And admitting that, even to myself—even alone in the middle of this raging sea that seems hell-bent on killing me—brings me an incredible sense of tranquility.

An incredible sense of right.

Another wave crashes over me, and I’m going down now, sinking farther and farther under the water. Surprisingly, it isn’t so bad. In fact, now that I’m not fighting it, it almost feels kind of…nice.

There’s no pain anymore.

No hunger for air.

No struggle to somehow best a world that doesn’t give a shit whether I live or die.

Instead, there’s an insidious kind of peacefulness to this, an odd, syrupy lassitude that slides through my veins. That quiets my brain and my frantic heart. That makes it almost easy to slip lower and lower and—

All of a sudden, something grabs my wrist and yanks on me, hard.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

HOW DO I LOVE THEE?

LET ME COUNT THE WAVES

At first, I think it’s some kind of shark or something, but there’s no pain in the hold, no teeth slicing into my skin. Just determination, as whatever it is pulls me up, up, up.

I break the surface several seconds later and immediately start coughing as I try to drag air into my starved and waterlogged lungs.

Dawn has broken across the sky, and though it’s still gray and dim inside the storm, I can see my rescuer for the first time.

And somehow, someway, it’s Jude. But that’s impossible—he already went through the portal. He should be at the warehouse in Huntsville.

At first, I think I’m hallucinating, that I’ve blacked out and am about to die and he’s a figment of my oxygen-starved imagination. But then Jude spins me around and drags me against him, my back to his chest. He joins his hands just below my bra line and starts jabbing them into me over and over again.

It hurts way more than drowning did. As does the copious amount of seawater that immediately comes rushing up my trachea.

I start coughing as I vomit it all into the sea.

I’ve barely finished, barely had a chance to take a breath, when Simon surfaces right in front of me. There’s three of him—big surprise—but they all look so different that it’s easy for me to figure out which one is present Simon, even before he grins at Jude and says, “Looks like you beat me to her.”

“I was motivated,” Jude answers.

But Simon is already casting an uneasy glance at the ever-worsening weather. “We need to get to shore, fast.”

I can feel Jude’s nod against the back of my head even before he growls, “Grab onto me, Kumquat.”

I start to protest, but he just shoots me a don’t push me look, and for once, I decide to heed the warning as I wrap my arms around his shoulders.

And then we strike off for shore, with Simon right beside us in case we need him.

The wind is fiercer now, the waves growing bigger, pounding harder. We get rolled more than once, and more than once Jude has to claw his way back to the surface with me on his back.

But he does it every time, his huge, powerful arms eating up the distance between where we are and the shore despite this storm that seems determined to stop us.

I know that’s not true, know the storm is just an inanimate thing that cares about nothing—it just exists. But it doesn’t feel like that right now. It feels malevolent, like the heart of it is determined to get to shore and take all of us down as it goes.

But that doesn’t matter because we’re almost there. The lights on the fence are so close now that it seems like I could almost reach out and touch them. Jude must feel it, too, because somehow his kicks get longer, his strokes more measured until finally—finally—we’re washing up on shore.

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