Warm hands touch my skin, fingers running up my arm to my shoulder, under my chin, over my lips. A thumb against my bottom lip pulls me out of my dream but I don't open my eyes. I feel breath against my forehead and a quiet voice, deeper than the rest whispers against my temple.
I'm here, Princess.
My dreams are trying to pull me down as I launch up toward the light at a thousand miles a second, bursting into the sunrise with a gasp for air.
He's here.
He's HERE. Shaggy hair, beard and twinkly eyes threatening to spill their tears. Just like I remember him. Just like I wanted him. Back to me.
You aren't real.
He leans forward and kisses me. Does that feel real to you? Jesus, Bridge. I missed you so much. He is almost sobbing. He's real. Oh my God. Oh. My God. Oh my. God.
Then why did you go?
They forced me to.
Who? Who forced you to? I want to sit up but I feel like jello all over. Unlucid, unstructured. Liquid. Fear shoots through me like bolts of lightning, for now everything has to change again. That's the deal.
He settles back up and tells me that my whole beloved army forced him out, made him leave, told him he wasn't good for me, that if he wanted to help me he needed to go. To make something up and make it good, make it about him and that they'd look after the rest. He told me that money, a lot of money appeared in his bank account and that the deal was for ten years, that if he broke the agreement or tried to contact me that they would kill me. That his life would truly be over, that looking in from the outside was better than nothing at all, didn't he agree? That he was warned this would happen if he got too close.
Boy, did he ever get close.
So he did what they asked for my safety. That he's only touched enough of the money to live on, that he looked in from the outside for the entire time, if I felt him.
That he's back now, ten years plus a day later. That they can't touch us anymore. It's done.
I've been alone so long I don't know how to do this but we'll figure it out. He pulls me up into his arms. He's still as big as I remember and I still fit so perfectly in his arms that my heart explodes, taking so much collateral damage with it that I'm a girl in tiny pieces now and the house is blown to smithereens.
I'm sorry. I believed them when they said they'd hurt you.
They did, Jake. In doing this, they did. Oh my God where have you been?
But he talks a mile a minute, answering questions, asking a thousand more, about the children, about me, about life, about Sam, who didn't know or so he's fairly certain. I step outside of myself and watch him while he talks. This isn't Jacob. My Jacob wouldn't have gone. He would have killed every man in the room to keep this perfect dream. He would have fought harder, dug in, held on.
He would have held on. Only one man has held on hard enough so that I don't fall and it isn't this man.
I reach out and put my hand right through Jacob's handsome face. He isn't real so I can't say for sure what he would have done because it's over.
He isn't real.
He isn't real and I'm somehow relieved. I don't want to leave Lochlan. Not now that I just got him back. That was a dream. All of it. Reality burns down my days, sends my nights up in flames and sets fire to the past. Reality holds a torch, just for us.
It's a nightmare, Peanut. It's just the pills. You're safe. Just a dream. You didn't have to claw my face off though. That hurt like fuck.
