Page 9 of In All My Dreams

I shouldn’twantto see him.

But watching him jump to action the moment Auden was injured reminded me so much of the Ian I knew all those years ago—the one who always rushed in to fix me when I felt so broken.

I’m still reeling over everything that’s happened since Auden fell. I haven’t had a moment to breathe, let alone worry about Ian in the hours we’ve been here. I’m incredibly thankful she’s okay.

Now that I’m able to process everything that’s happened, I can’t help but feel angry—and grateful—that he came storming back into my life like he had never left and helped us during the chaos of today. The ER doctor laughed about the dramatics of it all, but he said it’s always better to be safe and overreact than sorry for underreacting when it comes to head injuries and children.

Still, Ian shouldn’t have this effect on me. This tug-of-war with my heart and head needs to stop. It’s been six years. Whatever help he gave today doesn’t negate the fact that he left me six years ago and never made an effort to come back.

I don’t want him. I can’t.

But I don’t know if there will ever be a moment in this lifetime that I’m not entirely in love with him. And I know I’ll never be loved again the way I was loved by him. The boy who saved my life in so many ways, while never letting his own light go out. We both endured so much loss in our young years. We both lost Irene, then only two years later, I lost my mother—and the version of my father I loved most. Ian was my best friend,my closest confidant. The one who I leaned on heavily on the hardest days. He was my rock in every way that mattered.

Seeing him again after six years, knowing that we share this beautiful, vibrant, amazing little girl...my head and my heart can’t seem to get back on the same page.

A black car pulls up to the front and honks twice.

“Come on, Auden. Our ride is here,” I tell her, helping her get to her feet and grabbing the small prescription bag the doctor left with us. Just some pain medicine to help relieve the headache she’s guaranteed to have tomorrow.

“Are we finally going to the big mansion house?” she asks sleepily.

I chuckle softly as we make our way to the car. “Yes, we are finally going to the mansion. And you, my dear, need to watch your step this time!”

“I will take the stairs very, very slowly this time. I miss Horton too much when I’m away from him,” she mumbles.

My eyes go wide as I process her words. I open the back of the car and help her into the seat before I fit myself in right next to her.

I forgot about the damn cat.

“Don’t worry, G. I got the cat safe and sound into the house.”

The sound of Ian’s voice makes my head snap up. “What are you doing here?” I ask incredulously, my tone slightly angry. My heart starts doing that thing it does when I’m anywhere within five feet of this man, beating furiously against my chest bone. Clawing and biting its way out of my sternum, as if it’s trying to return itself to him.

“I figured you’d need a ride back home, and Maggie at the front desk called and told me you were ready to be picked. I think you might have forgotten that cabs don’t run here, and good luck getting an Uber in this tiny town,” he answers as heputs the car into drive and pulls away from the hospital. “Plus, I wanted to check on my new patient,” he says with a smile.

How do I know he’s smiling? Because I know this man better than I know myself, and I can hear the smile in his voice. It wasn’t always a romantic type of love with him; that came much later. First, he was my best friend, and we knew each other better than we knew ourselves.

“How are you feeling, Auden?” His voice is full of amusement as I catch his eyes in the rearview mirror. My body flushes all over.

“My head hurts a little bit, but I’m mostly hungry,” she tells him over the music coming from the game she’s playing on my phone. “The food at that place literally sucked. So much.”

Ian and I both laugh, and we catch each other's gazes in the mirror again. That invisible string that anchors me to him pulls taut against my heart.

“What’s your favorite food?” Ian asks her as he turns left into town, instead of turning right toward the manor house. “There isn’t much open this late, but your mom and I used to love the pizza at Lucene’s.”

“Who’s Lucene?” Auden asks as she looks up from her game and out the window. Her face illuminates with all the street signs, making her eyes sparkle more than usual. Her freckles glow different colors from the old-school neon signs hanging in almost every shop we pass.

“I actually don’t know who Lucene is, but he makes good pizza. I promise.” Ian winks at her in the mirror as he pulls into the small parking lot behind Lucene’s Pizzeria. The parking lot is still paved with gravel, making the tires crunch loudly over them.

Ian gets out quickly and comes to my side of the car, opening the door for us. He offers me his hand, but I pointedly refuse it as I turn and help Auden out.

“One of these days, you’re going to have to forgive me,” he whispers in my ear as we head inside.

“Forgive you for what?” I snap back over the table once we are seated. The booths are still bright red, and the table is slightly sticky, as they always were when we were kids.

“For making the worst mistake of my life by leaving you.”

Our eyes meet across the table, the silence between us screaming louder than words.

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