Black Dawn

wasn’t going to let it go, let him go. Not this time. There was nobody here, nobody to worry about overhearing whatever he had to tell her. Just the two of them. “You haven’t been the same since —”

“Since you got me back,” Shane said. “I know.” He looked around at the room. “Somebody redecorated, didn’t they?”

“Shane!”

“You should get some sleep, Claire.”

“No! I will not get some sleep, because you are going to tell me what’s going on with you, right now!”

He sat down on the edge of the cot where his old camp bed had been. “That’s not how it works,” he said. “Trust me. It’s just not. Because I don’t know how to explain it. It’s all …” He lifted a hand, and let it fall. “Mist.”

She tried to guess, out of wild desperation. “Was it—Michael said they made you dream. Bad dreams? Was it—was it about your sister?” Because he’d been haunted by Alyssa’s death for a long time now, and about his failure to save her in the fire. Never mind that he couldn’t have done anything. “Your mom?”

He let out a frayed sound she only recognized a second later as a laugh. “I wish they’d stuck to that,” he said. “I can deal with nightmares, I really can. But not dreams. Not …” All of a sudden his eyes just filled up with tears, and spilled over, and he ducked his chin and grabbed the frame of the cot as if it were moving around him. “Not seeing what I can’t have.”

“What can’t you have?” She sank down on her knees, looking up into his face, watching the tears roll silently down his cheeks. He wasn’t sobbing. It was as if he didn’t even know it was happening. “Shane, please. Help me understand. You’re not making any sense. What happened?”

“The dreams. They gave me what I wanted,” he said. “Everything right. Everything … perfect.” He sucked in a sudden, damp breath and blinked. “I can’t explain it. It doesn’t matter. I’ll be okay.”

“Stop saying that! You’re not okay, Shane, there’s something—just tell me. You know you can tell me, right?”

“No,” he said. “I can’t.” He lunged forward and kissed her, hard and fast, clumsy, desperate, and she made a surprised sound deep in her throat but didn’t try to pull away. Instead, she moved closer, wrapping her arms around him as if she never intended to let him go—never. The warmth of his tears soaked the collar of her shirt, made damp spots against her neck. He spread his knees to let her in closer, and then he collapsed back on the mattress, taking her with him.

Then he just … shut down.

She felt his muscles go tense and still, as if he was fighting against himself, and his breathing sped up to a frantic pace, as if he was running a sprint.

“Shane, please. Let me help.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Tell me you’re here.”

“God, Shane—” She bent forward and pressed her lips to his, and tasted tears. “I’m here, I swear I am. What do I have to do to prove it?”

“Tell me her name,” he said. “Please tell me her name.”

“Whose name?”

He was breathing so fast she was afraid he would hyperventilate now. “She was so real, Claire, she was so real and I held her in my arms and she was so tiny, she had blue eyes and I don’t know her name, I don’t know ….” His eyes flew open, blind and almost crazy as his gaze locked on hers. “It was so perfect. Do you understand? Perfect. And I had to let it go. But what if I was wrong? What if this is … what if I never …”

“What if you never left that place?” she guessed, and cupped his face in her hands. “You did leave. We got you out.” All of a sudden, what he’d been saying made sense to her. Crazy, wicked, awful sense. “A baby. You—you dreamed about a baby. Our baby?”

His nod was more of a shudder. “I don’t know her name.”

She collapsed on top of him, trying to hold every bit of him close. “I’m so sorry. It wasn’t real. You know that, don’t you? You know it couldn’t be real?”

“I need to know. I just—I just do, Claire. I’ll go crazy if I don’t know.” His warm breath stirred her hair, and his arms went around her, pressing her as close as his own skin. “Tell me what you’d name her. Just … please.”

It was crazy. Crazy. But if he needed to hear it—it wasn’t that she hadn’t secretly dreamed about all of that, about what it would be like to marry him, to have babies with him. That fantasy life she’d gone through about a million times already, all the details vivid and bright in her imagination.

But somehow, saying it felt like giving something up. Something precious and fragile and private.

“Carrie,” she whispered. “Carrie Alyssa Collins. That’s what I’d name her.”

Shane shuddered hard, as if she’d punched him someplace vulnerable. “But it won’t happen,” he said. His voice sounded so raw now. “That’s what hurts. I don’t get the things I want. I never have. That’s why they showed it to me, because it’s not true.”

“You have to trust me. You have to believe in yourself. In me. In us.” She raised her head and looked at him, kissing-close, but their lips didn’t touch. Seeing him like this, broken open … it didn’t happen often, and it scared her. Shane was the strong one, the one with the quips and the ferocious delight in the fight. She’d thought she understood what had happened to him, that he’d been through nightmares, but this … this was terrifying.

The draug had taken away his reality, twisted it, made him afraid to believe in anything.

They’d taken away his hopes and dreams and made them something punishing.

And she hated them for that.

“You said it was perfect,” she said. He nodded. “I was perfect, too?” Another nod. “But I’m not. We’re not. Remember the first time we—remember how scared we were? How it all felt crazy and awkward and honest and real? That’s us. You. Me. Together.”

He was watching her now, and actually seeing her. The Shane she knew was in there, struggling. Fighting to get to her.

“Real life isn’t perfect,” she said. “Perfect is boring.” They’d taken away perfect, made it death and dreams and the draug. He had to understand that. He had to reject that.

“Watch my lips,” she said. “I love you. And you’re not perfect.”

He laughed. It still sounded raw, and painful, but more him, somehow. Then he kissed her, but this time it wasn’t a fast and furious kind of thing …. If anything, he seemed tentative in the way he touched her, as if she might vanish if he pushed too fast, too hard. She stretched out next to him and let the kisses carry them away into that thoughtless, warm, golden place where nothing else mattered, nothing beyond the need to touch and be touched.

He didn’t say it back to her, not yet, but she felt it with every kiss, every slow and gentle caress. He was holding himself back, and it was some sort of test, a goal he’d set himself. Mostly, she thought he just needed to … feel. To get real sensations in his head again.

To know the difference.

“You know what?” she said after a long, sweet few moments. “You seriously stink, Shane.”

This time, she got a real laugh from him, and the look in his eyes was utterly surprised, and totally in the moment with her. “You really know how to turn a guy on, Claire.”

“Not perfect, is it?”

His smile faded, and what was left in his face, his eyes, the tension in his body—it was very different. She knew that look. That hunger. “Not perfect at all,” he said. “Then help me out here. No showers. What am I supposed to do about this problem?”

“Lie still,” she said. She went across the room, locked the door, and picked up a bottle of water, a basin, and a cloth. “No fair tickling me, because I will spill this all over you.” She straddled him and helped him pull the shirt off over his head. He collapsed back to the mattress and watched as she wet the cloth, then pressed it to his chest.

He twitched and yelped. “Cold!”