Stay strong, I remind myself. You’re in control here.
“I was wondering when you would,” he continues, still staring out.
Something about that bothers me. My hackles raise despite myself. “Oh, so you assumed I’d try and find you in dreamland.”
“You’re stubborn,” he says, turning to face me. “That will never change.”
Fuck. He looks good. Too good. It’s not fair.
“It’s good to see you,” he adds, giving me a faint smile. I forgot that about him, how rarely he smiled, how damn serious he was.
“Where are we?” I manage to say.
“Arizona,” he says. “Just outside Tucson.”
“Oh.” I swallow. “So I assume this is your house?”
He nods. “I’m just renting it. Came fully furnished.”
“It’s nice. The décor.” Oh my god. I’m visiting him in my dream and we’re having small talk?
“Do you like it here?” I add to the small talk. I can’t help myself. This is awful. Everything about this is awful. Wrong. It shouldn’t be like this between us.
He shrugs. “The weather is nice,” he says slowly.
I walk toward him but stop in the middle of the room. “Why is your room like this?”
“It’s not really a room right now,” he says. “Your mind is manipulating it. Lucid dreamer.” He pauses. “I’m glad you came to see me.”
I cross my arms. “You seem overjoyed.”
Another stiff smile. “I’m trying to be on my best behavior, Ada.”
“What’s your worst behavior?”
He shakes his head. “Something I won’t indulge.”
The lump in my throat gets bigger. I try to swallow it down, tears burning behind my eyes. “Are we not even going to talk about this?”
“That would be my worst behavior. I’m sorry, Ada. I can’t. I have to stay focused.”
“On what?” I practically yell. “I’m right here in front of you!”
“You know you’re in my past now.”
My mouth drops open, my whole body reeling like I’ve been kicked in the stomach. “In your past? How can you just say that so callously? Do you have any idea what I’ve gone through? Do you have any feelings at all?”
“Ada,” he says patiently.
Fuck his patience. Fuck him for being able to so neatly and easily tuck me away into the past like that.
“You’re an asshole,” I spit out. “How dare you tell me that! I was something to you once. You loved me, Jay! And I know it was real, you’re not that good of a liar. I know you loved me.”
God, the words hurt to say.
He winces, looking pained for once. “I never said I didn’t.”
I march over to him, stopping inches away, staring up at him, using the anger to ground me, because if I let myself feel sadness for one second, if I let myself feel what it’s really like to be standing so close to him after all this time, I’d probably dissolve before his eyes.
“You left me,” I tell him, my voice trembling. “You just…disappeared from my life. You didn’t even say goodbye.”
He stares down at me, his eyes searching mine. “I wasn’t strong enough.”
“Bullshit!”
“You have no idea what it was like. I had to leave. You know this.”
“But you didn’t. You could have…”
“Said no?”
“You chose this,” I say angrily, waving my arms around. “You chose a life in Ari-fucking-zona with someone else. I don’t even know who!”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s someone who needs me, just like you needed me.”
“I still need you!” I yell.
“Do you?” he asks, raising a brow. “This is who I am. You knew that from the beginning.”
I flinch like I’ve been slapped. “Oh, so this is my fault? Because I believed you when you said you loved me, when you said we could make this work.”
“I said we’d try!” he snaps at me, eyes blazing, throwing dark energy around that makes my hair stand on end. “I said we’d try, and we did try and we had a good fucking run.” He runs a hand over his face. “You changed my life, Ada. You showed me what it was like to love someone. You made me…whole. Better. And I’ll always be grateful to you for that. But you can’t ask me to throw away who I am for you. And the fact that you’d ask…”
I shake my head, close my eyes, a tear spilling down. Great.
“I wanted you to love me enough to stay,” I tell him, just letting it all out. “That’s all I wanted. Because I would have given anything to keep you.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder, his energy seeping into me. My eyes snap open and I pull back out of his grip.
“And I would have never asked that of you,” he says softly, taking his hand back. “That’s the difference between us.”
A low blow. So I’m the selfish one here?
I take another step back, feeling cold air swirl around me, feeling the pull back into my body, back into sleep. The dream is coming to an end.
There’s a chance I might not see him again.
I swallow my pride. I take a leap. Bury my anger.
“I’ll wait for you,” I tell him. “When you’re done here. I’ll be waiting for you.”
He gives me the saddest smile. “Ada,” he says softly. “There’s nothing to wait for.”
That’s all it takes.
The cold grabs hold of me.
Pulls me back away from him as he disappears from view, the air turning into a vortex of snowflakes in the darkness until suddenly I’m back in my bedroom, awake.
Staring out my window at the Knightly’s.
Tears running down my cheeks.
Snowflakes starting to fall from the sky.
Jacob is knocking at the front door just as I’m pouring myself my much-needed third coffee of the morning. I can’t actually see him from here in the kitchen, but that little antennae in my head is telling me one of them is here. I wonder if I’m trouble for some reason, for giving Max a ride or food or being nice to him or something.
It isn’t until I open the door and see Jacob’s stern face, his eyes more yellow than normal—though that probably has a lot to do with his mustard-colored scarf—that I remember why I think Jacob is mad at me.
It’s because I went and got Max out of the Veil without telling him.
He doesn’t even have to open his mouth.
“Before you say anything,” I say quickly, “you might want to ask yourself why you didn’t tell anyone that Max was waiting in that house for eternity.” I finish my sentence with a sip of coffee.
Jacob raises an eyebrow, stares at me. “Interesting way of saying hello.”
I lean against the doorframe, holding my fluffy bathrobe closed around my pajamas. “What do you want?”
“Not much better,” he says carefully in his English accent. “But expected. I take it you had a good vacation up in Seattle?”
“Wouldn’t quite call it a vacation. More like a rescue mission.” I take another sip, anticipating a lecture.