Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (19 page)

Dylan caught me by the arm. “You have to let him go—he can’t live in a jar.”

But I’d just grinned and run off.

“What?” Chase said now, tilting my face to his. “What did you see?”

Against my palm, the yellow crystal glowed. “A dragonfly,” I murmured. “I wanted to keep it in my room.”

His shoulders rose, fell.

“But I killed him instead,” I said, the words, the memory itself, shredding on the way out.

“You had no way of knowing—”

But I had.

Wrapping my arms around my middle, I turned and looked out over the mist-shrouded river.

Dylan had warned me.

God, where did that memory come from?

Chase drew me back against him, his arms tight around my waist as he looked out over me. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest, the warmth of his breath.

“Trinity—” Maybe it was his voice, the tension stretched through it, or maybe the way I felt his body tighten, like he was in the starting blocks before a track meet, but slowly I turned, and slowly I saw his eyes, glassy, drenched with the same confusion I’d seen a few hours before at Horizons.

“You stopped breathing.”

He stood right there, his legs against mine, his hands on my hips, but the words came at me from some faraway, distant place, and even as I heard them, they didn’t fully register.
“W-what?”

“That’s why your aunt freaked—she thought you were gone.”

So much hit me at once, slinging in from all directions—the memory of Julian’s fingers against my throat, of Chase reaching for me, holding me. Of my aunt, how shaken she’d been, her eyes huge and devoid, the way she’d talked to me—

—and those last few moments before I’d been pulled away, when he’d promised he would always find me. My eyes had filled, and my breath had—

Stopped.

“No.” It didn’t make sense. I’d been … somewhere else. I’d been in my mind. How could what I felt have bled over …
“That’s not possible.”

But it was, I realized with a quick twist of panic. Julian had warned me: what I felt in the astral was as real as the cold mist stinging my face—and the darkness hollowing out Chase’s eyes. If I ran, my heart rate would accelerate. And if I stopped breathing—

“Oh, my God.” I dove into his arms and held on, needing to feel his arms around me.

He was real. He. Was. Real.

Not the dream.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered against his neck. “I didn’t mean for that to happen…”

“Sh-h-h.” He wrapped me tighter, burying his face against my hair and splaying his hands against my back, as if he was scared to let go. And I didn’t want him to. I wanted to stay like that forever, captured in our own little bubble where the rest of the world couldn’t touch, didn’t matter.

But even as the fantasy formed, reality circled closer. “It’s over now,” I whispered.

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t over. Grace was still missing and the dreams were still coming, and with them, discoveries and memories and possibilities I had no idea what to do with. I’d seen the past and maybe the future, and in doing so—

I’d let down my aunt.

Everything shifted, all the newly discovered pieces—from my dream regression, the aftermath settling into a picture I’d never seen before. Never even imagined.

But Aunt Sara had been there. She’d lived it all. Not only had she lost her brother and sister-in-law, she’d lost her mother. And me. Sure, Aunt Sara had visited, but even as a child I’d sensed the strain in her relationship with Gran.

“All I’ve thought about is me,” I whispered, shivering as Chase eased back to skim a finger along the dampness beneath my eyes.

“I have to tell her I’m sorry,” I said, pulling back and turning away, hurrying toward the street.

“Where did you go?”

On the other side of the railroad tracks, I stopped and turned, didn’t understand why he still stood there, why he hadn’t moved, wasn’t coming with me.

Why he looked like he was standing on the edge of a nightmare, and didn’t know how to turn away—or turn back.

“With Julian,” he clarified as I brought my hand to my heart. “Where did you go after the fire?”

The night slowed. And I think I knew, I think even as I took that first step toward him, the one that was already too late, I knew.

He’d been there. He’d seen—
heard
.

“I waited for you,” I said against the burn of breath in my chest. And I hated that, I hated that I felt like I’d done something so, so wrong, when all I’d done was close my eyes.

“I wanted you to be there.” I needed him to know that.

“I wanted to be,” he said. “Then I could have stopped—”

I lifted my eyes to his, and before I even said anything, he realized he’d just taken Aunt Sara’s side.

“No,” I said quietly. “Stopping isn’t the answer.”

And I could have drowned in it all, in that exact moment, the way he stood there in the cold drizzle, with the river etched behind him and his wet hair falling against eyes that … burned.

“Why did you scream for Dylan?”

Everything fell away. It was all still there, the levee and the stars and the music from the Quarter. I knew that. But I couldn’t find any of it, couldn’t
feel
any of that, only the way Chase looked at me, as if he had no idea who I was, had never had any idea who I was—and the shattering realization that I did not need to close my eyes for the nightmare to return.

“Fourcade’s son.” Chase’s voice was flat, empty, mechanical. “You said his name.”

I looked away, down to the slabs of granite where, a few months before, I’d lost more than just my balance. I knew it was wrong, but the memory was there, as strong as the arms that had dragged me from the river.

I’d done everything I could to whitewash what had happened, not just that night, but other nights, when I’d closed my eyes and found someone else in my dreams. Found them
both
in my dreams. Sometimes we all ran. Sometimes only I ran. Sometimes Chase reached for me—and other times he walked away.

Sometimes Dylan shouted my name—and sometimes he slipped into the shadows.

That’s where I tried to keep him. I’d refused to see his face. I’d refused to give him a name. But after the dream regression, I could no longer deny. I knew who’d been with me in the darkness, who’d crushed me in his arms and promised he’d always find me. Who I’d reached for.

“You screamed,” Chase said hoarsely. “You were …
terrified
.”

Inside, I started to shake. And even with my eyes wide open, the images—
the memories
—kept right on crystallizing. I
had
been terrified … so very, very terrified.

But not because Dylan had hurt me. At least not physically.

Slowly, I made myself look back at Chase—and the doubt I found there, the doubt that glowed despite everything—almost killed me.

“Were you dreaming?” he asked, and his voice was so, so quiet, the kind of quiet that came from holding on tight—from knowing that if you let go, even for a fraction of a minute, your whole world might blow up on you. “Or remembering?”

The cold of the night clawed closer, and finally I understood the way he’d looked at me in Julian’s little white room, the hollow of fear—and hurt.

“I’m sorry,”
I said, but my voice broke on the words, and my breath turned to a sob. Normally what I saw behind closed eyes were movies that had yet to happen, coming attractions hovering in the ether.

But the fire and the field, the dark room … They’d felt sharper and more defined, like …

Memories.

“I don’t understand any of this, Chase. I don’t know why I see what I see. I can’t control it. It’s just there.”

The skin across his face stretched tight. “It has to come from somewhere.”

No, no, no,
was all I could think. “Chase,
please,
” I said, stepping toward him, needing to touch him, to hold on and make him believe—

He took a quick step back.

I winced. “This isn’t what I want,” I said through a hot rush of tears. “All I’m trying to do is help Grace. I have no idea why Dylan was—”

He turned and walked away. Just like that. Chase. Turned and walked away.

Again.

I stood there shivering and trying to breathe, to understand how things could twist so horribly from one breath to the next. How he could just—walk away.

But I knew. Even as the question formed, I knew the answer.

“Chase!” I shouted, doing what I hadn’t done last fall, when we’d both been blinded by hurt and confusion.

Fear was a powerful weapon. It drove us, contaminated us, made us destructive. We became so consumed by the need to protect, we never realized that too often, the knife we were lifting was to our own heart.

“Don’t walk away from me,”
I shouted, my heart slamming as he stopped abruptly, as he stood there on the other side of the tracks, not looking back, but not walking away, either.

I caught up to him and lifted my hand, held it there, hovering a breath from his shoulder.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I said with the same quiet he’d exerted only a few minutes before. Except I wasn’t as good at it as he was, and emotion leaked through. “This is me, Chase. Me. Trinity. And I’m standing right here, thinking about Pensacola, and the beach, being with you, running into the turquoise water you’ve told me about …

“And I don’t know how to make this better,” I whispered. “I don’t know how to fight your imagination—”

He never let me finish. His mouth came down on mine, absorbing my words. For a second I just stood there, trying to process, completely unprepared for the desperateness of his kiss, the way he gathered me close and consumed me, as if somehow he could make all the bad go away, make it better. He’d never kissed me like that, sad and lost and seeking, scared … And even as something inside me quietly ached, I reached for him, wanted to give him what he wanted.
Needed
to give him. Needed him to give me …

Hurting, confused …
scared,
I gave myself to the moment, to him. The kiss deepened, as if we were both trying to get something from each other, something important—a promise, an apology. If we could only get close enough, somehow everything would be better. We could connect—forget. Just … be.

He pulled back without warning, just a whisper away, enough for his eyes to find mine.

“When I heard you say Dylan’s name,” he breathed, “all I could think about was…” Through the damp sweep of his hair, his eyes flashed. “I wanted to hurt him.”

Like Chase had been hurt.

“I was crazy,” he said, still holding my hips pressed against him, but somehow pulling away. “I wanted to hurt him for being in your dreams, when I wasn’t.”

My heart plummeted as his grip tightened.

“I never stopped to think about what he was doing there, only that it was him and not me.”

I reached for him, had to reach for him, my hand sweeping the hair from his forehead. “But it’s
you
I’m touching,” I promised. “You’re who’s real.”

The look in Chase’s eyes didn’t change. He didn’t even acknowledge that I’d spoken. He was trapped in that other place, by something only he saw.

“And then you stopped breathing.”

I was pretty sure I did all over again.

“And everything crashed down and I realized—” His words died hard and fast, his eyes narrowing on something behind me.

I swung around and saw him, the figure at the edge of the Jax Brewery parking lot, standing in the shadows. Watching.

I moved without thinking, tried not to run. Because I knew. I could tell by the way he stood so obscenely still.

“Omigod, what are you doing here?” I asked, rushing up to him. “How did you find me?”

Detective LaSalle’s mouth twisted at the silly question. “I’m a cop, Trinity. It’s what I do.”

“What’s wrong?” A thousand possibilities crashed down on me. “Is it my aunt? Is she okay—”

“No,” he said flatly. “She’s not.” His eyes shifted to the levee behind me, along the perimeter of the parking lot, back to me. “She’s out of her mind, is what she is.”

Chase reached for my hand. “But she’s not hurt?”

The lines of Detective LaSalle’s face tightened. “Depends upon how you define hurt.”

*   *   *

She was unpacking.

I found her in her bedroom, standing at her big poster bed with her suitcase open on the mattress. I could see her coral bikini and flip-flops tucked next to the shorts and Saints T-shirt she slept in. But her black stilettos lay on the floor—and the amazing lavender dress we’d spent weeks shopping for was scrunched in her hands.

For a few moments I watched her, waiting for her to turn or cross to her closet, to do something other than stand statue still. But she didn’t move, and neither did I.

Dave Matthews blasted from down the hall, but I would have sworn I heard my aunt breathing. She was still dressed for the day—in dark skinny jeans and a drapey brown shirt with a studded cross on the front—but I had no memory of the outfit from earlier at Julian’s. I had no memory of anything but the stricken look in her eyes.

Candles flickered. Five of them, small gardenia votives from the huge dresser. Through the triple mirror, I could see the sweep of her long bangs, but not her eyes.

I really wanted to see her eyes.

“I thought you were gone.”

The quiet words barely registered above the music. I hadn’t realized she knew I was there.

I could have pretended. I could have pretended she was talking about me not being home yet. But so much stood unsaid between us, not just about earlier and Tuesday night at Grace’s, but from always. From
forever.

We’d been together six months. We’d shared the condo and meals, the terror of Jessica’s disappearance. I’d shared my dreams. She’d shared stories about my parents. But we’d never gone deeper. Everything had hovered at the surface, warm, pleasant, but never plunging too deep. Never prodding too close to truths we pretended didn’t exist.

Until this afternoon.

Until I’d done something she’d explicitly told me not to, and in doing so, had ripped the “everything’s fine” veneer from between us.