Page 157 of Sweet Nightmare

If Jude wasn’t the Prince of Nightmares.

If Carolina wasn’t so wild.

If I didn’t have the fear of losing her.

If my mother wasn’t such a hard, unyielding woman.

If my family—if this school—actually did their jobs and taught the students how to control their powers.

So many what-ifs. So much waste. Because if any one of those things weren’t true, maybe Carolina would still be alive. Maybe she’d be here with us right now.

Maybe everything would be okay.

But they are true. Every single one of them.

Yet, out of that whole list, the only one that couldn’t have been changed is who Jude is.

He is the Prince of Nightmares. Blaming him for that is as nonsensical and unfair as blaming rain for being wet.

So I do the only thing I can do, the only thing that’s right. I bury the pain, at least for now, and focus on the love instead.

I step forward, cup his face in my hands so that he can’t look away. Can’t look anywhere but in my eyes so that he knows that I’m telling him the truth now. So that he knows I mean every word I’m saying. “I love you.”

He just shakes his head. “You can’t.”

“But I do.” I look him straight in the eye. “I know who you are. I know what you did. Just like I know that you’ve beaten yourself up about it every day. Just like I know you’ll be beating yourself up for many years to come. But here’s the thing. And I need you to listen to me. I need you to believe me.” I take a deep breath, let it out slowly. And tell him what I know is true. “It’s not your fault.”

“Clementine, no.” He tries to step away, tries to back away from the truth, but I hold him fast.

“It’s not your fault,” I tell him again. “It wasn’t your fault when you were seven and just beginning to understand what your power is. It wasn’t your fault when you were fourteen and you had a momentary slip. And last night wasn’t your fault, either. You were seven years old when you were put in an untenable situation, at a school that promised to protect you and instead left you to fend for yourself. It isn’t your fault, Jude.”

He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t even move. He just stands there staring at me, his face carved in stone until fear tightens my stomach and makes me wonder if I’ve made everything worse.

But then it happens. I watch, breath held and heart in my throat, as his eyes—his mystical, magical, marvelous eyes—start to change, and for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, he lets his walls down. I can finally see all the way to the depths of his beautiful, broken soul.

And what I see there nearly brings me to my knees. Because Jude loves me. He really, really loves me. I can see it. More, I can feel it. And nothing in my whole fucked-up life has ever felt so good.

“I love you,” he says, and this time he doesn’t need a game to get the words out.

“I know,” I answer.

And then I go up on tiptoe so I can press my mouth to his.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

I’VE BEEN TOTALLY

THREADING THIS

The second our lips connect, everything stops.

My heart.

Our world.

Even time itself.

Everything grinds to a halt, until there is nothing but Jude, nothing but me, nothing but us and this moment that’s been a lifetime—an eternity—in the making.

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