Page 131 of Fated

“What?”

“He isn’t real.”

My lungs are tight, my breath short. There’s something wrong here. Something I’m not understanding.

“He’s real,” Uncle Leopold says. “What do you mean, he isn’t real?”

A prickle starts at the back of my neck and climbs, heat flushing over my skin. “I mean I dreamed. It was all just a dream. He’s just a dream.”

“My word. Is that what your mother told you? I told her the watch let you dream your heart’s desire. I told her it let you see what is true. What isreal.”

He says “real” with a hard conviction.

My heart slows and there’s a shrill ringing in my ears. “You’re saying the place I dreamed, the people, they’re all alive?”

“I’m saying they’re real. I’m saying that I dreamed my Annalise and I couldn’t get to her in time. I lost her.” He says this bitterly, viciously. “And you let four months pass? You, who had the watch, let time pass? He’s waiting for you! Just like she was waiting for me!”

The room tilts and my skin goes cold. The smell of parchment and old stone wraps around me, keeping me in the here and now. I stumble, catching myself on the leather chair.

It’s what Aaron said. That he’d be on the island, holding out his hand, waiting for me to take it.

“He’s real?”

“What else could he be? Couldn’t you feel it?”

The heat of the island, the sea-salt breeze, the taste of Aaron’s lips as I lay on a soft sand beach. It was all real.

My legs fold and I fall into the chair, the leather cold beneath me. I take a breath, trying to breathe around the tight constriction in my chest.

I shake my head. “But I wasn’t myself in the dream. I was someone else. Everyone thought I was someone else.”

“And I was a Polish officer in the army. Annalise was a nurse. What does it matter who they see? You’re you. He’s him. My word, you had it all wrong. You aren’t supposed to learn a lesson. You aren’t supposed to dream and then forget. You’re supposed tofindhim. The watch shows you your desire so you can grasp it.”

“Find him,” I repeat.

Aaron’s alive. Aaron’s real. Amy is real. Sean. Maranda. All of them are real. And Aaron’s waiting for me. He might not know it, but he is. He’s waiting forme.

“I have to go,” I say.

“I’ll say,” Uncle Leopold says. “Go find him.”

And then he hangs up.

I drop my phone. It clatters to the walnut desk. My hand shakes as I reach out and unlock the computer.

The room is still, the snowy night quiet and hushed. The chateau, the world, feels as if it’s holding its breath.

The ocean-blue enamel of my watch glistens in the study light as I type in four words.

Aaron McCormick Marathon Swimmer.

And there, on the glowing computer screen, is the biography of the man I love.

46

He’s real.

Aaron McCormick is real.

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