I?
“Where?” I groaned, then, “Ow,” because everything still hurt even after sleep. My hand found something. Or something found my hand. And it was warm. And I was freezing. I sighed. The warmth found my cheek and I pushed into it, wanting more.
“So cold,” I told the warmth.
And then the warmth answered, low and soft, “ I don’t know what to do.”
I clutched the warmth that held my face and asked, “More.”
Then the warmth left, even though I tried to hold on. Air blew past me, and I was shaking, shaking, shaking. I cried and the tears felt like rivers of ice.
“Cold,” I said. I swallowed, but that felt worse instead of better. I hated this. I wanted it to be over. Please. Please.
Please.
“Please.”
“I’m here, love. Hold on.”
The world fell over, bent sideways, broken. And it cradled me, taking me with it, but instead of dying, I fell into warmth, solid and strong. I clutched at it, wanting to be inside it, to make the shaking stop, to make everything stop.
It was the sun, and it held me in its arms, called me by name, touched me from forehead to toes. I fell asleep cradled in the sky in the arms of a star.
When I woke next, my head was clear enough to know that I was sick. I had to breathe through my nose because my throat was too swollen, too tender to stand the passage of air. My muscles ached and my stomach felt hollow. I was still cold, but not frozen solid. Thawed. Sleep called me again. I was still so tired.
But I knew, knew what that meant.
I had gotten mono after all.
Which meant I had to tell Garrick. But that could wait until my head wasn’t bursting and my lungs felt full and my throat was not on fire. Once the fever broke, I would call him.
I shifted, wishing that my knees and my elbows and shoulders would just cease to exist because right now they were nothing, but pain. And then, I knew I was dreaming, that the fever had re-arranged my brain because Garrick was there beneath me, his bare chest my pillow. It was cruel, this fever. But I knew it was only because I had thought of him. I was probably still dreaming.
His eyes were open, staring at me, not speaking, just staring. Couldn’t be real.
“Wish it was real,” I whimpered, before giving in again.
Sleeping.
Sleeping.
When I woke again, the chills had stopped, and I was alone. Even though I knew it was a dream, I pressed my face into my pillow, wishing it hadn’t been.
I hadn’t noticed until now, or maybe just hadn’t admitted it, but even now I was falling for Garrick. Maybe I had never stopped falling. Every memory and fantasy pulled me deeper into wanting him. Though still exhausted, this time I had to work to fall back in to sleep.
“Bliss, wake up.”
No time had passed at all. It must be a dream.
“You need to drink something. Wake up.”
I tried to turn away, to crawl deeper into sleep, but something tugged against me, and I was sitting up against my will. Something pushed at my back, refusing to let me lay down, so instead I leaned sideways.
My head met something solid. It wasn’t laying down, but it was close enough. I closed my eyes.
“Oh, no you don’t. Drink first. Then you can sleep.”
I was sleeping. At least, I thought I was. I must have been because out of nowhere a cup appeared in my hands. It was warm, almost as warm as the other hands wrapped around mine.
It smelled wonderful, and I let the cup be pulled to my lips.
Soup.
Chicken noodle, maybe. It tasted salty and warm, but swallowing was too hard. I pushed the cup away.
“Please, love. I’m worried about you. I don’t like worrying about you.”
I knew those words, and it was cruel for my subconscious to parrot them back at me now, when he was no longer worried at all. I looked up, and there he was, perhaps even more perfect in my dream state than in real life. He was the sun. He’d always been the sun—shining and brilliant.
This was too much. I was hurting inside and out.
“I miss you,” I told my sun. “I was so stupid. And now I’ve lost the light.”
He didn’t say he missed me back. He didn’t say any of the things I would want from him. He told me, “Drink, Bliss. We’ll talk when you are well.”
I did as he asked because I was too tired to fight, too tired to make myself face the unreality. Slowly, I sipped, tipping my head back and letting the liquid slide down my throat so I didn’t have to work so hard to swallow. Halfway through the cup, I could take no more. I pushed it away and he let me.
“Now you can sleep. Sleep, love.”
I fell back against the pillows, but I was seized by something else, by fear. I feared losing this… this dream space between worlds where I hadn’t ruined anything. Maybe Cade would arrive next, and Kelsey. And for a little while, my life could be simple again.
Dream Garrick brushed a hand across my forehead. “I think your fever is almost gone. That’s good. You should feel much better in the morning.”
I frowned. “That means I’ll have to call you soon.”
“Call me?”
“To tell you that you might get sick, too.”
His head tilted sideways. Why didn’t he understand?
“You don’t think I already know?”
“Not you. You’re not real.”
“I’m not?”
“Real Garrick wouldn’t be here.” I curled into my pillow, wishing this dream would stop.
It wasn’t nice anymore. It wasn’t real. We weren’t anything to each other… not anymore.
But Dream Garrick, stayed there, his hand on my hair, and I let myself believe it, for a little while longer.
Chapter Twenty-Four
At around four in the morning, I woke in a pool of sweat, my body stuck to the sheets and my face glued to the bed.
I guess the fever was definitely broken.
I placed my hands on the bed to push myself up, but my equilibrium must have been off. My bed felt uneven. I reached back, fumbling for the lamp and flicked the light on. Then because I thought maybe I was seeing things, I flipped it off and on again. I pinched myself. I pinched
Garrick was definitely asleep in my bed.
Shit.
How much of my fever-induced dream was real? I felt safe assuming that my time as a bee was fiction, as well as a few mythological animals that I swear I’d seen. Then I’d lived on the sun with aliens.
