I blinked hard and eased myself back on my elbows. My mouth was dry. “Baby? Are you okay?”
She didn’t move. Her long dark hair covered her back and she was facing away from me, her face obscured. She was wearing a long white nightgown that had frills at the wrists. It was weirdly familiar but I knew she hadn’t gone to sleep wearing it.
My chest started to feel tight.
“Perry?”
I didn’t want to reach over for her. I was too afraid of what I might find.
“Answer me, please,” I said, my voice shaking. I sat up straighter and stuck out my hand, reaching very slowly for her shoulder.
She felt like ice. I tightened my grip.
“Perry?”
She twitched. I held my breath.
Then she turned around.
It was the face of my mother.
“Declan,” she said in an inhuman voice.
I screamed and screamed and screamed.
Everything went black.
Then I was waking up again in my bed. The clock wasn’t blinking and I was alone in the room. My mother wasn’t at the end of the bed anymore but Perry wasn’t next to me either. I looked at the clock. It was 3AM.
I touched my forehead and found it was wet with sweat. I exhaled slowly, gathering my strength and wits, then got out of bed. I slept bare-ass naked so I slipped on a pair of boxer briefs that were lying on the floor and went out into the apartment. The bathroom was empty.
“Perry?” I asked quietly. Fat Rabbit looked up from the couch, his white head glowing in the darkness, then went back to sleep. I moved closer to the kitchen and saw the balcony door was open a crack, cold air flowing into the room.
I opened it and poked my head outside. Perry was sitting on a chair on my small rounded balcony, bundled in my house robe, staring at nothing. She was smoking a cigarette, her hair being whipped around by the wind.
“What are you doing?” I asked, more horrified that she was smoking than anything else.
She gave me a tired smile. “I just needed to clear my head.”
“Well, clear it inside where it’s not freezing cold,” I admonished her, motioning for her to come in.
“It’s almost Spring.”
I shook my head at that. “Why are you smoking? Where did you get that anyway?”
“Sorry. You had a whole stash hidden in the den in one of your hollowed out books.”
“Ah f**k. Well…please come inside, I’m worried about you.” I stepped out and reached for her arm, ignoring the split second hesitation, the fear that she might turn into my mother. But that was a dream. This was real.
And she felt like Perry, warm and solid underneath my robe. She got up, stubbing out the cigarette on the railing and flicked it over the edge. I didn’t like this one f**king bit. Not just the smoking itself but that it was so unlike her to smoke.
I ushered her inside and brought her over to the couch and took her hands in mine.
“Now talk,” I told her, her face dimly lit by the streetlights outside.
Her eyes darted to my crotch. And no, this time I did not have a boner. I’m not an animal.
“It’s hard to talk to you when you’re in just your underwear. Makes me want to do things to you.”
And shit. My dick twitched.
No, no, no, focus, she’s just trying to distract you with sex, I told myself. I shook my head vigorously and squeezed her hands.
“Later, Perry. I want to know what’s wrong first. Why are you sitting on the balcony at three in the morning smoking? I’ve never seen you smoke before. And why were you going through my books?”
She shrugged but looked slightly chagrined. “I knew that’s where you used to keep your pills. I thought that’s where your pot was too. Didn’t find that either, so I went for the smokes. I don’t know, it calmed me down.”
“Calmed you down from what?”
She sighed and laced her fingers through mine. “I’m just sad, that’s all.”
For a second there I thought she was going to tell me she saw my dead mother too, but this was much worse. It broke my heart in two to hear her say that. And, selflessly, it stung a bit, because if she was sad, it meant I wasn’t making her happy.
I chewed on my lip before asking, “Is it because you’re homesick?”
She nodded, her eyes shining. “Yeah. I guess I am. I just miss…I don’t even know what I miss. I miss Ada. I miss the way my parents used to be around me. I’m…” She sighed loudly, looking up at the ceiling. “I hate that I can’t have everything. I hate that I can’t have both you and them.”
Ugh. It felt like my gut was being filled with rocks. I found myself asking a question that was probably better left unasked. “Would you rather go back to them and leave me behind?”
She looked at me sharply, a pained expression on her brow. “No. No, Dex, I chose you because I…I know you’d never make me choose. And my parents, well, they made it pretty clear what they think of you, think of me, and think of us together. And hell, even if they didn’t have a problem with you, I’d still have a problem with them. As long as I’m seeing ghosts and acting like Pippa, my mother is always going to be afraid of me, a hair-trigger away from trying to get me help. It’s just…it’s not fair. I want that normal life and to be treated normally and to be loved.”
“I love you,” I said quietly, blurting it out more than anything. I remembered what I’d told myself about not scaring her or pressuring her, but f**k, the words kept wanting to come out all the time. It was taking over me.
She swallowed. “Oh, Dex.” I could tell she was fumbling for words, searching for something to say that would placate me but nothing else would do. We both knew it.
“It’s okay,” I told her, bringing her hand up to my lips and kissing along her knuckles. “I just want you to know that I’m here for you. And I will do what I can to give you a normal life here.”
“Thank you,” she said softly. Then she smiled. “Though I don’t think normal is in the cards for us.”
I got up and loomed over her. “That’s true. But do you know what is in the cards for us?”
I stripped off my underwear and threw them across the apartment. From serious to hard-on in zero point five seconds flat.
I reached down and scooped her up in my arms. She squealed with delight, scaring the crap out of Fat Rabbit, and I carried her over to our bedroom.