Fate's Return (Twisted Fate, Book 2)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sleep came quickly after Suzie left, and I was too tired to fight it.

I wasn't sure if it was because the sleep I'd had while I was in the hospital was like a coma—all medication and no dreams—but I was exhausted. I opened my eyes after drifting off and gasped. My dream world was the same yet completely changed, like the same bedroom decorated by different designers. The white had faded to gray, the shadows had encroached so far from the back of the building to the front. It no longer looked sick, but as though it was dying, already embraced in Death's stronghold—one more breath and it would be gone.

Only the doors of the front of the structure remained as they once were, while the rest was black like the night outside my bedroom window in reality. The air was heavy, no longer filling me with warmth as the fresh scent was absorbed by mildew like untended towels gathered in a pile, completely forgotten until they were stiff and stuck together, growing things that couldn't be named and should never touched.

I wanted to wake up and clear it from my sight, but I couldn't—I didn't know how. So, I shut my eyes and waited, hoping that soon I would wake up. Then it would all go away.

"It's getting worse."

I blinked. The boy, still shrouded in the concealment of light, stepped into view. The blue of his eyes had deepened to polished sapphire, glowing through the dark of the grey fog around us like lights beaming from a lighthouse, telling the ships to come home. There was no question: his eyes, the warmth and familiarity I saw within, was home.

"Who are you?" I felt silly now that I remembered the times before. Why hadn't I just asked instead of worrying about a world that didn't exist to me? If it existed at all.

"You don't know?"

"How would I? All I can see is your eyes, and while they are..." I swallowed the lump in my throat "They are very nice to look at, but they don't tell me who you are."

"Sure, they do."

"No, they don't."

He stepped forward and the air between us became charged with static zinging along my skin, which not even my clothes could protect me from. I stepped back. Not because I was scared, but because I'd only felt that once before, and that was gone.

"Who are you?"

"Who do you imagine I am?" He took another step forward and I kept my feet stationary by force of will.

"Who I imagine doesn't matter, does it?" I would not show him how much he affected me. "I asked who you are, not who I want you to be."

He took two more steps forward and a moment later, we were less than an inch apart. He ducked his head, and my gaze followed his eyes until I couldn't see them anymore, his dark, almost black hair falling down to block my vision. His breath tickled my ear as he chuckled, deep and throaty, like it was delivered straight from his soul.

"You already know, don't you?" He brought his thumb up to trace the ridge of my cheekbone and shifted so that I could once again meet his gaze.

"Don't go," I whispered, and brought my hands up flat against his chest, trailing the ridges of his muscles until his biceps were cupped, too big to fit in my hands.

It was familiar, but still strange.

"I have never left you, Alyssa—no last name."

My breath caught at the beginning of a sob and everything around us fell away until there was no darkness and no light. It was just us, a bubble of togetherness. I knew the name my heart called him; my head screamed I was wrong. It just couldn't be. Then again, I was dreaming. Anything was possible when you were dreaming.

"Don't think about it," he said in a whisper that mingled with my breath. "Just feel. Believe."

"I-I can't. It's just..." I searched his eyes and lost what I wanted to say.

"Do you see the truth? Who I am?" He rested his forehead against mine. "The eyes will never lie. It doesn't matter where you are or who you are with. If you look into somebody's eyes with true intentions, you will find truth. It's the only real thing I know anymore."

Closing my eyes, I blocked out his truth. The person I saw... Well, he didn't exist anymore. Making up dreams wouldn't bring him back. Nothing could.

I dropped my hands from his arm and felt the light and dark that warred against each other around us. Still, I kept my eyes shut; I squeezed them as tightly as I was able. I couldn't allow myself to believe because, when I woke up, he would be gone. So would my memory of this, but somewhere deep down I would know. I would feel his absence, just as I had every day over the past year.

"I can't." I shook my head and tried to step away, but his hands clasped my shoulders, rooting me in place.

"Open your eyes," he said.

"No."

"Alyssa—"

"No!" I shook my head again as though it would discard the pain in his voice. "I-I... I can't."

But he was finished trying to get me to listen, he was finished trying to make me see for myself, and he was finished asking me to admit what only my heart had accepted. Oh, my head knew, but he was finished waiting for it to discard reason. And where he finished, we began.

Without a thought of being gentle, he pulled me up against his chest and dipped his head. Our breaths mingled like hot cocoa infused with mint, just as I remembered, and were as fierce as our words. He pushed forward, and I pulled away, taking a step back, only to repeat the dance over again. Fierce, charged, inevitable. There was only two ways this could end: I woke up or I gave in.

But there was only one answer.

I reached up and yanked his head down the final inch. When he was just a millimetre away, he paused, his eyes searching mine with unspoken questions. I didn't care about his so-called truths, though. I cared only about this moment and the memory I wanted to make despite knowing that I would inevitably forget it.

If he was who he claimed to be, he would have known without looking—his last chance was fading. Take it or leave it, but if you leave it, it'll be gone for good. He blinked, and it was like I could see the moment it changed, the second it took for him to decide. His lips met mine and my heart demolished the thoughts in my head until it was as though they never existed at all. I was exactly where I needed to be. How could I have forgotten?

My hand slid from his neck so that my fingers could tangle in his hair. Our bodies pressed closer, closer... never close enough. His hands fell from my shoulders to my hips, and then circled my waist to clasp together against the small of my back. How could I ever find the words to describe what I felt?

Brilliant? All-consuming? Perfect.

I pulled away, wanting to see his face, but I couldn't see past the light. Physically, he wasn't who my heart knew him to be. He was too tall, his hair too dark. But his eyes... His eyes were as familiar to me as my own.

I exhaled a breathless laugh and leaned forward to fall back into the warmth of his kiss.

Falling, falling, falling.

It was a hard landing.

When I opened my eyes to look into his eyes, he was gone. The maroon walls of my bedroom were empty and dark and without light. Lifeless. I'd fought the truth too long. Why couldn't I have given in sooner so that I could have enjoyed him longer? Why had I questioned it at all?

I reached over and turned on my bedroom lamp, my fingers grabbing for my notebook and pen before the room was lit. How had I forgotten? Light and dark, prepare, blue-eyed boy. I had listed only Mike, Gabe, Raffy, and Brenan, but there had always been another. The one boy who would always mean more: David.

I scratched out the others and wrote one line in their place: David came back to me with another's face in my dreams full of light and dark.

Good and evil? I added beside light and dark. I crossed out light and dark and added, Shadows? Then, almost as an afterthought with a line of its own at the bottom of the page, I added, Eyes are the windows to the soul. They cannot lie. Look for the impossible.

Whatever the hell that meant.