Page 31 of Only in Your Dreams

“How’s the pain?”

“Bearable, as long I stay perfectly still,” she sighs over the sounds of the lake crashing on shore. “I think I’m going to try to go to bed. Every sleep means getting closer to our rescue, right?”

Don’t remind me.

I need the time with her. If we don’t leave here on better terms, with some kind of reassurance that she won’t go avoiding me when we’re back in town, I don’t know what I’ll do.

I unfold my legs from underneath me. “I did get a pretty terrible night’s sleep last night.”

Mel shimmies off the mattress, gingerly crawling toward the tent opening, careful not to jostle her swollen ankle. “Yeah, about that—”

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“I need some private time in the woods.” She circumvents me and I hurry to steady her as she balances on one foot outside.

“Where do you thinkyou’regoing?” She holds up a lantern to cast its light over my face. Her eyes have turned to slits so narrow it’s impressive she can see at all.

“I’m coming with you. It’s one thing to hop into the woods in broad daylight. You’re not doing it in the dark. Think of all the chipmunks you’ll trip over.”

She throws me a look of pure venom—the kind I remember fondly from back then—and it’s so good that I have to force down an exhilarated laugh.

“You’re really asking if you can come with me to the bathroom?”

“Who says I’m asking?” I lift her up before she can argue some more, marching us across the campsite and into the tree coverage.

“The blows just keep on coming, don’t they?” she grumbles. “It’s not enough to get dumped and be so broke I had to flee the city for lodging. Now I need an escort to relieve myself.”

I let it out. The question I’ve been dying to ask since yesterday. “Were you ever happy with him?”

As much as it pains me to think about Mel with another guy, I desperately need her answer to be yes. Knowing she’s been unhappy for six years might cause the excessive amount of chocolate chip cookies and M&Ms I’ve eaten today to come right back up. Thinking about how both our lives could have been different if I hadn’t been an idiot that night.

“You know what? I was, for a while.” Mel thinks a moment. “But now… I can’t stop overthinking it all. These things that never phased me in the moment and now, I can’t believe I was stupid enough to fall for them.”

“What do you mean?”

She fixes her gaze on a nearby tree. “He was always very caring. Very invested in me and what I did, how I was doing. Loved to look after me, spoil me. Looking back, I realize everything always had some kind of ulterior motive. Strings attached.”

“Like what?”

“The apartment,” she says, considering. “He bought it, moved me in rent free. Said there was no need for me to work full time because he could afford to look after us both, that I should go out and enjoy life instead of being stuck behind a desk. And he was incredibly gracious about it all until we’d argue or… I’d point out something I wasn’t happy with and he’d list off everything he’d ever done for me. All these ways that I was suddenly indebted to him.”

I stare grimly. “So you let it go? Whatever you were fighting about?”

“Every time. I never had the room to be upset over anything.” She shakes her head, releasing a frustrated breath. “He’d always find a way to turn whatever I was upset about on me. I’m ungrateful. I don’t see the good in him. I’m moody.Youknow—you grew up with me. You know I’m not a sunny person, but…”

“You aren’t moody, Mel. You’re discerning. You’re playful in a different way, and that’s beside the point. You’re allowed to be angry. You’re allowed not to shit rainbows and butterflies at all times, and you’re sure as hell allowed to put someone who hurt you in their place—me included—without being called moody.”

“Bitchy, then?”

“He called you names?” I ask sharply.

She shakes her head. “It was neverbitch. And he’d never callmebitchy—it was always something I did or said that was bitchy, so it never occurred to me. In hindsight, he was just covering his own ass, right? It was his way of calling me names without doing it outright. He’d give me a kiss right after, and that was always a good sign he was tired of arguing, so… that was it.”

God fucking damn it, I willdismemberthat guy if I ever meet him.

Crickets chirp as I step around a lantern-lit bush on our path into the woods. “Why’d you put up with it? I never knew you to let someone walk all over you. Hell, I can barely get you to look at me without murder in your eyes.”

“That’s because I don’t care if you like me.” She smirks, but I can’t return the humor.

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