Page 176 of Just This Once

With a nod, I had to draw in a deep breath to keep from crying again.

Before the last two days, I couldn’t remember when I’d last dropped a tear, and now I was a fucking watering pot. I hated it.

“Thanks,” I told Raina as I reached out to grab her hand in appreciation.

She squeezed back and then rested her head on my shoulder. “She’ll be okay, though. I have a feeling.”

“Yeah,” I murmured, hoping she was right. Heaving out a weary breath, I tipped my face toward her and rested my cheek on the top of her head. Then I closed my eyes,prayingshe was right.

The drowsiness bore down on me, and before I knew it, I’d fallen unconscious.

When I came to, I was lying on my side on an outside bench.

Groaning from sore muscles, I squinted through the sunlight and started to sit up, realizing my bench was set in the sand and on a beach.

“Raina never creates a bench for herself to wake up on,” a voice announced from beside me.

I glanced over and arched my eyebrows at the kid I’d seen before: Foster’s dead brother, Hayes, who acted as Raina’s mediator in her dreams.

She must’ve fallen asleep as well and was dream sharing with me by accident.

“Guess I’m already better at this than she is,” I said, glancing around for her.

“Hey,” her voice muttered from nearby. I found her a dozen feet away, picking herself up off the ground and dusting sand from her arms and legs. “I didn’t even know Icouldmanufacture my own stuff to wake up on.”

“Well, itisyour dream,” Hayes teased.

Pausing, she sent the boy a stern frown. “I thought the beach wasyourthing.”

“Oh, it is,” Hayes agreed cheerfully. “But you can still bring anything to decorate it that your imagination will allow.”

“In that case, I want to wake up on a fluffy king-sized bed next time,” she grumbled, only for a huge bed with white blankets and a tulle canopy to appear.

Glancing back at it in surprise, Raina blinked once, then twisted her gaze to Hayes to scowl. “Well, it’s too late forthistrip.”

With a snicker, I shook my head. “So I guess you two are already fighting like brother and sister-in-law, huh?”

Raina transferred her scowl my way, but Hayes only laughed. “Apparently,” he answered, slapping my arm in amusement. “And speaking of family… Yours is still here. They’ve been hanging around my beach since I found them.”

Perking to attention, I shot to my feet. “What? Rightnow? They’re here?”

Smiling, the kid tilted his head to the right. “They’re over there.”

I swung around, only to catch my breath and pull back in surprise.

A man and woman played in the distance, tossing a Frisbee back and forth with a golden retriever barking expectantly between them. The woman laughed and tossed the disc to the pooch. It caught the Frisbee in its mouth and then proudly pranced it over to the man. Barking happily when the man pulled the toy from its jaws and patted its head, it took off running down the sand again.

“Mom?” I croaked, barely uttering the word aloud. “Dad?”

The couple heard me anyway. Immediately, they stopped playing and turned their heads in my direction.

“Parker? Oh my God,Parker!”

The woman started racing toward me first, quickly followed by the man.

“Oh, shit.” I took a nervous step back. “They’re coming this way.”

“That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?” Raina told me, pushing on my back to prod me into moving forward. “So why don’t you go greet them?”

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