Page 74 of Return to Us
In my dream, I am not afraid to tell him. I close my eyes and the heat of him surrounds me. “Losing you. I never want to lose you.” He lets out a heavy sigh as though I’ve just said something that hurt him. I feel him pulling away, and I clutch at him. “Don’t.”
“Wake up, love. Wake up.”
My throat goes dry, and my eyes fly open. He’s there, hovering over me. I’m . . . in a bed that’s not mine.
Because it’s his. I’m in his bed, and he’s in it too.
I gasp, and he moves to the side. “I was dreaming?”
Grayson grips the back of his neck. “Yeah.”
“Oh, God.” I clasp my hand over my mouth.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, God,” I say again, realizing that I was dreaming of . . . him and not the crash. I sit up, my heart pounding. “Do you know what this means?”
He rubs his forehead and then pinches the bridge of his nose. “That I’m going to be taking a very long, very cold shower after hearing all that?”
“No! It means I was dreaming ofyou. Of us. Not the crash. It means that, for the first time in two months, I didn’t have the same horrific nightmare.”
Happiness feels as though it’s exploding from my body. This is what I imagine a miracle would feel like.
“You were dreaming when I got in.”
I move close to him, feeling alive and happy. “Yeah, but I wasn’t dying. I wasn’t literally shaking and hurtling toward the ground at a speed that meant I would never see you . . .”
His eyes, so close and open, stare into mine, and my heart begins to race. “Is that what you fear?”
I can feel the heat flame my cheeks, and I nod. Dr. Warvel wanted me to be honest, well, here it goes. “Yes. Even now, you’re here, and I feel like I’m still falling from the sky when we’re close.”
“You’re not the only one.”
His confession stuns me. “We’re only going to hurt each other,” I tell him.
“We’re doing that now anyway.”
He’s right. This push and pull isn’t good for either of us. We’re lying to ourselves if we think we can keep going in this circle. It’s madness, and we’re failing.
I scoot closer. “Grayson . . . this house.”
The sun is rising, bathing the room in beautiful rays of light. On our mountain, nothing can hurt us—at least, that’s what I always believed.
He closes his eyes and turns away. “I couldn’t let it go, Jess.”
“Why?”
He laughs once, turning back to me. “Why do you think?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.
Grayson’s hand runs through the thick brown locks as he lets out a low groan. “You hadn’t been back here in how long? I thought that seeing you wouldn’t matter. If I could spend every fucking day looking out my windows and be okay, then it was fine, right?”
I’m not sure what he’s saying, but I don’t interrupt.
“And then you come back. You show up here, broken, beautiful, and not mine to love anymore. Youleftme.Youfucking leftme,and I needed to get over you. Now the tree line that stopped hurting years ago is like tiny needles to my heart. The pencil mountain is sharper, mocking me as I look out. The people, the ones we gave fake lives to, are living our future while I sit here, pretending that you being right across the tracks doesn’t matter. I bought this land because it was ours. The memories, the path to that spot, the entire thing was ours.”
I lift my hand, bringing it to rest on his arm, needing to touch him. “I left you and could never say your name again. I left you and forbid myself to talk about you because, each time I did, it felt like my heart was dying.”
