Page 20 of Only in Your Dreams

I stare at the dark outline of him. “Do you want to know how you make me feel?”

The words feel foreign to me. In the pit of my stomach, I expect him to say no. To brush me off.

Zac stills. “Yes. I want to know how I make you feel.”

Triumph flares in my chest. “You remind me what a silly, stupid girl I am. You make me feel bitter and resentful that you left it the way you did. You confuse me and I don’t trust you. I don’t know what you want from me.”

He nods slowly, as though not a single one of my words surprised him. “Right now, I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine.”

“Then I’d like to explain why I left—”

“You’ve had ten years to explain,” I say, getting to my feet. He follows me up. “I don’t have it in me to sort through the dumpster fire of my last relationship, while revisiting… whatever the hell happened that night. So, unless the reason you never came back involves some horrible tragedy that had you occupied for a decade, I don’t want to hear it right now.” I squint at the dark outline of his face. “Is that what it was? Did something happen to you that night?”

But Zac shakes his head. “No. There was no good excuse.”

My heart splits in half all over again. That’s it. Confirmation that he was just a bad guy. Nothing like I made him out to be in my head when we were younger.

I seem to be an expert at it. Building up men who don’t deserve it.

“Then I’m going to bed. Get out of my way.”

* * *

The inside of our tent is loud.

Deafening. My heart tries to leap out of my throat even before my eyes spring open. Because something feels wrong.

It’s pitch black, and then it’s not. A bluish light appears at my side, and I blink myself to full consciousness to find Summer kneeling at the foot of my blow-up mattress. It takes tipping back my head to stare at the roof of the tent to realize it’s being pummeled by rain, so hard the canvas sags threateningly above me.

“Mel, wake up. Now.” Summer grips my arm, tugging to encourage me into a sitting position.

“W-what?”

I can’t have been asleep for more than a couple of hours. A flash of lightning illuminates the inside of the tent, revealing a purple sleeping bag on the ground. She and Zac must have traded spots after I fell asleep—

Summer tugs at my arm. “Something’s wrong, Mel—this storm—I think we might have to go. This doesn’t feel right—”

“What?”

“Mel, getup—”

Oh my God. She’s serious. This isn’t a dream.

I scramble off the mattress, feeling around for my things just as the top half of Zac’s body appears inside the tent. He’s soaked to the bone.

“We need to get out of here,” he shouts urgently over the pummeling rain. “We need to go. The property owner just came to say the roads are flooding over—trees are catching fire from the lightning. We have to leave—grab whatever you need and get into a car. Now.”

Chapter 5

Zac

As if to punctuate the urgency of the situation, another flash of lightning splits a tree not ten feet away from the tent. Melody pats around her mattress looking for something, and I indicate outside to Summer.

“Get to your car. Brooks is already out there. We’re right behind you.”

She slips past me and the second Mel’s hand closes around her phone, I grab fistfuls of her sweater, haul her out of the tent and on our feet.

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