Page 92 of Sweet Nightmare

The words go through me like one of Izzy’s knives, slicing what’s left of my defenses to ribbons and tearing me wide open. “It feels like we’ve spent the past few years unintentionally hurting each other,” I whisper back. “Maybe it’s time we try something new.”

He doesn’t answer right away—at least not with words. Instead, his lips graze my temple slowly, gently, before sliding oh-so-carefully down. He presses kisses to the curve of my cheekbone, along the line of my jaw, to the sensitive spot just behind my ear.

And just like that, he has me. All of me. The lover and the fighter. The good girl and the rebel. The skeptic and the woman so desperate to believe that she’s standing in the rain and literally begging a boy—begging the boy—to let her help him carry his burdens.

My arms wrap around him of their own volition.

My fingers clutch at the damp, rough fabric of his sweatshirt.

My body melts into his, and I hold him as tightly as I can. So tightly that maybe, just maybe, I can keep him from shattering, too…if he lets me.

Lightning flashes across the sky, and still I hold him.

Thunder shakes the ground, and still I hold him.

Rain pours from the sky like a waterfall gone wild, and still I hold him.

And I can’t help thinking that I want to hold him like this forever.

But then he lets go. He pulls away. He takes several steps back and tells me, “I can’t,” in a voice gone gravelly with sorrow.

“Can’t what?” I whisper, though I already know what he’s going to say.

“I can’t tell you what’s going on. And I can’t be with you—not the way you want us to be together. It’s not safe.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that,” he answers with an intensity so strong his eyes glow. “I knew it three years ago, when I kissed you. And I knew it this afternoon, in the forest. I just couldn’t stop myself. I ruined everything three years ago. I can’t let that happen again.”

My heart speeds up at his words, but in a very bad way as I think of everything that happened three years ago. As I think of Carolina. “What did you ruin, Jude?”

But he just shakes his head as he steps off the porch and into the rain. “You need to give me that tapestry, Clementine.”

I shake my head even as his words about what happened in ninth grade continue to reverberate through me. Is he just talking about us? Or is he talking about something more ominous?

But before I can ask, he shoves a frustrated hand through his rain-soaked hair and growls, “I don’t want to fight, Clementine.”

“You never want to fight,” I tell him as I walk straight into the wet. “That’s the problem, Jude. I just hope one day you find something or someone worth fighting for. Maybe, if you’re lucky, it will be yourself.”

And then I turn and walk away, praying with every step I take that he’ll follow me. That just once he’ll fight for me and for us.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

DON’T GHOST

THERE

But he doesn’t, and all my worst fears come true in an instant.

I fought as hard as I could. Tore myself open—laid myself bare—and none of it mattered.

I’m still walking home through the pouring rain…alone.

Only now it’s worse—so much worse—than it was before. Because now I can’t stop thinking about what Jude said about ruining everything three years ago. Can’t stop wondering if somehow, he was referring to so much more than just us. If somehow, maybe, he was also referring to what happened to Carolina.

I’ve always thought it was so strange that the night Jude kissed me, the night I went to bed thinking that, for once, everything was right with my world, is also the night everything fell apart.

I woke up the next morning happier than I could ever remember being only to find Carolina gone.

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