My bedroom was dim. I almost never turned the lights on. The summer before I’d started high school, my mom had gotten me a light shaped like a giant branch that sprawled across my wall, and with each stem, there were dozens of twinkling lights intertwined in the twigs. If I was home, it was plugged in. It may be a little childish now, but I’d always adored the soft glow of light scattered throughout the corner of my room. It was on now, and it only made Walker’s chiseled jaw more alluring . . . and more out of place.
Why had I brought him here? I guess because I couldn’t live without him, or I didn’t know how to anymore. He was still a ghost, and I was still a dreamer, regardless of which realm we drifted through. But if that wasn’t hard enough to wrap my mind around, the truth was, this wasn’t my bedroom at all. This wasn’t my reality, but a phantom of one I used to know.
I couldn’t walk out that door and converse with my mom and dad. My brother wouldn’t barge in at any moment trying to find my candy stash. And if I walked out that door, I wouldn’t see the spindled stair rail of my house or the family photos my mom made us take every year at Christmas. I’d see wandering strangers looking for a private bathroom in the cabin at Baylor Lake. If I jumped out my window, I’d land on the grassy knoll of Rock Creek Cove. It would probably be the party trick of the night, and I would be thrust up on the shoulders of two or three muscular guys and paraded around like I was a demigod. Maybe that wasn’t a half-bad idea . . .
But the part that was real was the connection I had to Walker. My feelings for him, regardless of backdrop, were unmatchable. I’d never felt this way about anybody before. My feelings for Noah stemmed from attraction, friendship, and maybe even the need to fit in. Noah had always been so comfortable in his own skin and so popular that I felt like maybe, if he liked me back, I would finally have a chance to relax and be accepted. I wouldn’t have to try so hard to fit in.
But all of that was different with Walker. Walker never tried to fit in. He couldn’t. He wasn’t even alive. Actually, he stuck out like a sore thumb, and he owned every bit of it. I think it was one of the things I’d fallen in love with first.
High school is hard. It has its own little ecosystem. It’s delicate, and difficult to find your place. But from the moment you graduate, that little world opens up—growing on a scale that is impossible to imagine at the time. The ecosystem you live in becomes the one you create. But I was neither in high school nor out in the real world. I was somewhere else entirely. I had my own realm laid out in front of me with infinite possibilities to create . . . and destroy. If I’d thought the real world was a big place, it paled in comparison to the silo of my imagination.
Living in a realm where anything is possible, and the path you choose could go on indefinitely, is a scary thing. Worse when you must do it alone. I didn’t just want somebody like Noah, where I could fit in by his side. I needed somebody like Walker, who knew himself and was confident enough to allow me to find myself. I didn’t have to change for Walker; I only had to grow into my potential . . . I had to find myself. And he would be there to walk the winding paths with me while I grew.
“Wilde?” Walker asked, head cocked to the side with a patient gaze.
“Huh?”
“Why did you bring me here?”
“Oh.” My throat ran dry as my eyes scanned the bedroom I’d grown up in. “I wanted you to see this,” I said simply.
“Really?” He laughed, running his hand over the stubble on his cheek.
I raised my eyebrows and nodded. Was it so hard to believe?
“Then why won’t you let me see any of it?” he asked.
“You mean my journal? You can’t read that.”
Walker turned back to the collage of photos and my heart thumped in my chest. He un-pinned a picture of Noah and me at one of our mothers’ get-togethers. We were wearing aprons and serving hors d’oeuvres; we couldn’t have been older than eight.
“No, no, no,” I said, plucking the photo from his hand.
He didn’t say I told you so, but he might as well have by the way he was looking at me. I plopped down on my bed with a heavy sigh.
“Look, I just wanted to try it. I wanted to try to see my old bedroom. I thought it might ease some of the homesick feeling I get in my chest. And once it worked, I didn’t really want to be alone. I didn’t want to see my parents, because I thought it would be heartbreaking to know that it was only my imagination.”
“Did it work?”
“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”
Walker smiled and sat down next to me. “No, I meant, do you feel less homesick?”
“It didn’t work as well as I thought it would. It’s nice to be here, and it’s comforting in its own right. But there was something missing.”
“The home part?”
I nodded, feeling the burn in the back of my throat. “I can look out my window and see the row of houses . . . But I know nobody is home. It’s as if, everywhere I go, I’m alone. Isolated. The cabin is filled with my friends, yet I’m the only one dreaming.” I threw myself back onto the bed and stared up at my ceiling. Walker lay down next to me on his side, his elbow propping him up.
“I’m glad you brought me here. I don’t want you to feel alone. You know, Wilde, we might be in different spaces, but we’re connected here. I think our souls found each other for a reason.”
My stomach dipped. I loved the way he was looking down at me. “And why is that?” I prompted him.
“I haven’t figured that out yet. But if we’re talking about home, you’re the closest thing that I have felt to home in a very long time. I can’t thank you enough.”
I wanted him to lean down and kiss me so badly. I pled through my eyes. We were soul mates. He’d just said it. Yet he still didn’t want to kiss me. I saw the sadness that I had grown accustomed to pass through his eyes. It was the same sadness I had seen when I’d frozen time and he was gazing up at the luminous moon. He was a hurting soul, and he didn’t need kisses. He needed a friend.
He fell back on the bed, and for a moment we both lay on our backs staring at the ceiling through the dim light of my twinkling branch. But then Walker pushed his arm under my shoulders and pulled me to his chest. I looked up to see his glassy eyes before my head landed on his shoulder. I wasn’t sure if he needed a hug or if he didn’t want me to see him cry, but I wrapped my arm around his chest and melted into him. I wasn’t the only one missing home.
I breathed in his beachy, coastal cologne and closed my eyes. It brought me back to the night we’d met. I was just a scared, drowned girl he’d plucked from the lake. I had sat in the canoe in my underwear, my hair dripping down my back and chest as I checked for claw marks on my thigh. But in the time it took to see the sky had illuminated with stars, I’d inhaled his smell, and his warm presence had me forever snared in his trap.
We drifted off, each drowning in our own despair, and clinging to one another like life rafts in a turbulent ocean. We held each other, trying to stave off the homesickness. Our heartache was a shared well of pain. We were two lost souls seeking refuge in each other, and I never wanted to let go again. I fought sleep, but it was inevitable. Walker’s chin fell heavily on the top of my head as my mind quieted and we fell asleep.
In what seemed like no time, the combination of heat and light coming through the window lifted me from slumber. But it was the heavy arm around my waist and the heat against my back that fully awakened me. My eyes flung open as I stared out the window at the magnificent view of Baylor Lake. Just like a pumpkin carriage created for a magical night, my bedroom back home had disintegrated with the stroke of dawn. But it wasn’t the pumpkin that had made the night magical. It was the prince. And my prince, Walker, was holding onto me tighter than ever. He’d never left, and he never let go.
His breath was hot against the nape of my neck. His hand rested at my navel, and his thumb was tucked into the waist of my jeans. My eyes widened, and I sucked in an alarmed breath, causing Walker to stir behind me. It was the last thing I wanted. I wished I could stay like this forever. I would have pretended to sleep for the rest of eternity if he’d keep holding me. But as my luck would have it, I ruined it the second I realized it was even happening. Walker stretched behind me, pushing into me as he did. His thumb caressed the skin just below my belly button as he slowly withdrew his hand from my waist.
I dared to be brave. I turned around to face him, but he was just getting up. He leaned over and kissed the top of my head, causing my stomach to churn with excitement. But then he did something unexpected. He ran his hand back and forth over my head, messing up my hair. He leapt out of bed, stretching once more and taking in the view from the window.
I lay in bed utterly confused. The kiss on the top of my head was something lovers did. But the ruffling of my hair was something that big brothers did to their annoying siblings. It said a lot of things, but it didn’t say I think I’m falling in love with you. Why did he have to be so confusing? It was almost if he was fighting a battle within himself, and I wished he would just surrender already.
The way he’d held me while we’d slept would say something different entirely. I wasn’t sure if it was a reflection of his true feelings unmasked as he’d slept, or if he was simply dreaming of somebody else. Somebody I had been avoiding. Somebody who had his heart but didn’t want it. Part of me felt like Walker had been lying to himself. That he’d loved me all along but just wouldn’t let himself admit it. But there was an even bigger part of me, a part driven by fear, that wondered if Walker really did have the curse of broken love. That he would always love somebody who didn’t love him back, and furthermore, would be incapable of reciprocating the true love that I gave him.
When I found myself checking my morning breath in a stealthily cupped palm of my hand, I assumed I had been complicating things far too much—the guy just didn’t like me. I rubbed my eyes and ran my hands through my hair, fixing the mess my dreams had left me with.
“So, Wilde, when did you master teleportation?” Walker asked, turning from the window to look at me. His mussed hair and wrinkled shirt were a good look on him. I liked the way he looked right after waking up, and I knew my nights would never be the same if he weren’t in them.
“I guess, last night?”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I said with a shrug. He wasn’t buying it. He knew I was omitting the truth, but he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t know I was afraid he’d ask me to use my magic to find Layla, and that if I did, he might finally move on, and I would be left to this web of dreams all alone.
“Okay.” He didn’t argue. I wished he would have. I wished I could scream you don’t want me at the top of my lungs and burst into tears. But he was more the type to watch and wait. I would go on allowing the guilt to cannibalize me as he quietly collected evidence of my dishonesty. It would come out eventually, we both knew it. I sat in awkward silence as he waited calmly for me to change my mind. But my lips were sealed.
“I think we need to up your training.” I didn’t enjoy lying to him, but I simply couldn’t tell him the truth. There was too much on the line for me to lose. He was the one thing that kept me sane, and I surely couldn’t live without him. Or perhaps I would go crazy like Layla had. And I had already been banished from my real life back home.
“What did you have in mind?” I wasn’t sure there was much else he could teach me now that I’d unlocked what had been holding me back.
“It’s a good question. I guess I need to evaluate you first.”
I swallowed, trying to moisten my dry throat. If I wasn’t willing to tell him, he was going to make me show him.
Walker disappeared downstairs to brew a pot of coffee, and I ran to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I splashed cold water on my face and slapped some pinkness into my cheeks. I ran back out and jumped into the bed, pretending I’d never left, and waited for his return.
Emma screamed a long, drawn-out cry across the hall. It ended in a muffled gurgle. I knew that cry. I knew she’d fallen asleep at home and rudely awakened here. I also knew that she was screaming into her pillow, because that’s exactly what I had done the first month I’d been trapped in Baylor. I worried she would come in and curse my very existence, but she didn’t.
By the time Walker came back with two steaming mugs of coffee, I had a plan. I was going to hold my magic back. Dampen the manifestations. I wasn’t going to show him what I was truly capable of. That, I would explore my own. And he would be none the wiser.
He handed me a cup of coffee, and I thanked him, taking a sip before resting it in my lap. He sat opposite me on the bed. “I want you to go back,” he said in a serious tone.
“Go back where?”
“If you are truly lucid dreaming, you should be able to travel wherever you want. I want you to go back to your home, your body, to the life you used to have before you came here, no matter how hard it is.”
“What are you even talking about? Why would I do that?” I asked in a flustered tone.
“Why?”
“I mean, how? How do you expect me to just go back? And what would I even do there?” I asked.
“Take me with you. We can try to figure it out together. Maybe you could just lie down on top of your body and your soul would reconnect?”
It hurt knowing he was trying to send me home. And it only confirmed my biggest fear, that he could never love me back. If that was the case, maybe I shouldn’t stay. My heart ached at the thought of leaving.
“But then, I would never see you again.” I scoured his golden eyes for answers. Was that what he wanted?
“No, perhaps you wouldn’t. But Wilde, this isn’t where you belong.” Walker’s face contorted the same way it had when he’d told me I had died. I was beginning to know it as his uncomfortable truth face.
“Honestly, I don’t think I belong there either.”
“What? Why would you ever say that? Of course you belong there. That’s your body, your family, your home.” It made sense to Walker, and I could see why, but he hadn’t seen the looks the doctors had given me in the operating room.
“Maybe . . .” I lied.
“Let’s go back. Together. Just to look around.”
I couldn’t let him down, not without at least trying. I nodded and closed my eyes. Walker reached forward and took my open hand in his. He waited for the magic to pull us through a wormhole, sending us to my battered body in the hospital bed. But me, I let the minutes tick by as I enjoyed holding his hand instead. I didn’t let myself think of the hospital or the home I’d left behind. I stayed fully immersed in that moment, concentrating all my focus on his skin touching mine.
After quite some time, he squeezed my hand. “It’s okay. We can try again another time.” He’d been so patient and so supportive that it only made me feel worse for deceiving him.
“Sorry . . .”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. You’re just not ready,” he said. He was taking half the blame for my failure, but he’d done nothing wrong. An uneasy knot formed in my stomach, and I was hating myself more and more with every chance I had to tell him the truth but didn’t.
“Well, let’s get this straight. You can’t fly.”
I broke into laughter. “Nope.”
“You can’t make yourself teleport.”
I shrugged apologetically.
“But you can shoot down a clay pigeon telepathically,” he said with pride.
“And apparently, beehives too,” I added.
Walker laughed. “Yep. You have a real machine gun on that hand of yours.”
His laughter died down to a small upturn of his lips as he gazed into his mug. His voice softened. “But you can’t find Layla. And you can’t find your way back home.”
It felt like a punch to the gut. I averted my eyes, also looking into my coffee mug. I could find Layla. She’d been coming up to me, and it was I who had been avoiding her. Of course, he didn’t know that because I’d been lying about it.
I could find my way home, too, although it wasn’t a place I liked to be. The hospital scared me, and the doctors intimidated me. The bloated and bloodied patient I saw was not a girl I knew, or wanted to. My mom’s tears made me feel sick to my stomach, and the bright lights hurt my eyes. I felt incredibly exposed and more invisible than ever all at once.
I never wanted to go back again. In fact, I would gladly stay here with the werewolves and wormholes, the haunted waters and the nightmares. I would stay here chasing after Walker for eternity if he’d let me.