Page 55 of Forget Me Not

A tear slips down his cheek and my heart breaks for him. I don’t want to send him away, but I know I have to. He can’t be here.

“I miss you, baby.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Jack. I just . . . I told you I need space.”

“But I’m trying, Nova. I really am.” More tears slip down his cheeks and he reaches up, tugging a hand through the light, wispy, nutmeg-shaded locks I always loved to run my fingers through. Jack has always been handsome. His sharp jawline. Blue eyes and the hair of a Disney prince are nothing compared to his smile. A smile that always used to make my heart flutter in my chest.

“I know, Jack. I am too,” I whisper. “We can work on this together when I get home. For now, you just have to give me some space.”

Abruptly, he jerks away from me, pushing the hammock so hard, I almost fall out of it. I clamber to right it, an old familiar fear taking over each and every one of my senses. “Jack, please—”

“No,” he grits, whirling on me with an anger in his eyes that I know all too well by now. “I saw the two of you last night. Together.”

I swallow past the lump in my throat, my chest aching at the thought of my kiss with Reid. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but once I started, I couldn’t stop.

I didn’t want to stop.

So much for friends.

“It’s not like that—”

“Bullshit, Nova.” He kicks the tree in front of us, his hands shaking with suppressed rage. “Why am I never good enough for you?”

I have to get out of here. I need to get to the inn. Get to Pap. Reid. Anyone.

“Jack, stop,” I cry, tears burning in my eyes as they soak my cheeks. I hate when he’s like this. When I can’t calm him or when he flies off the handle for no reason. When there’s no reaching the real him.

“Why do you always have to make me feel like I’m not good enough, Nova?”

I hate when he yells. I hate when he breaks things. I hate when he slaps me.

“Jack, please,” I beg, my chest constricting painfully. I cover my face when he kicks the tree again, as if he can push it over and down the cliff to the water and jagged rocks below, dragging me with it. “You have to stop.”

“Look at me, Nova. See what you did?” He tugs my hands away from my face, forcing my gaze to his tear-stricken one. “You did this.”

I shake my head, clenching my eyes shut as hard as I can. I struggle to stand from the hammock, only my feet won’t move and I’m frozen in place, held down by an unseen force.

“You did this to me!” he bellows, so loud a flock of birds fly from the trees behind us. He keeps chanting the same thing over and over again, his voice growing distorted.

“Stop!”

“You left me!”

I wish him away. I wish I was anywhere else. Somewhere he’s not, but . . . it’s no use.

Not this time.

“This should have been you,” he spits, his voice morphing into something entirely different. Something in human. Evil. “Look. At. Me.”

I chance a glance at him and scream, falling back out of the hammock with a crash as the horribly gnarled face surges toward me. Streaks of thick black mud ooze out of his nose, his eyes, and his mouth, splashing at me with each gnash of his teeth.

“No, please,” I beg, fighting against the unseen hands that grab for me, but when I open my eyes, I’m in the living room of the cottage, my ass sore from landing on the ground and Toast looming over me, whimpering.

I surge to my feet before I can really stop and think about what that was and hurl myself out the front door, only to run face first into a new set of arms. My scream tears up my throat and I fight the hands away, but they don’t go.

“Nova,” a voice bites, struggling against my flailing arms as big ones wrap around me.

Reid.

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