And it was just a dream. The real Caleb wouldn’t feel a thing.
I drew in a breath, steeling myself, but only ended up delivering a wimpy soft kick in the shoulder.
Nothing.
I kicked him again, putting a little more force behind it.
Caleb grunted, but nothing more than that. Well, I’d try it one more time.
Just as I swing my foot back to deliver another, slightly harder kick, his hand snaked out and yanked my other foot out from under me. My breath whooshed out of my lungs as I crashed onto the flat of my back. But my bruised ribs didn’t seize up in agony. Dreams had their perks.
“Ow,” I said.
“Right back at you,” Caleb said, turning toward me with a mock scowl on his face. But he couldn’t hold it for long before he broke out into a grin that filled me with equal parts relief and comfort. I was home.
My brother was pale, grey-eyed, and dark-haired and, in my dream at least, free of the tubes and machines that beeped and blared alarms when absolutely nothing was wrong. But even so, Caleb’s bruise remained, painting his cheekbone with splotches of green and yellow—healing much faster than the dark purple ones covering my face.
“Only you would try waking someone up by kicking them,” he said, nudging me as he sat up.
“Only you could find a way to sleep in a dream,” I said, grinning like an idiot.
He chuckled, opening his arms in invitation. I dove into them, tightening my arms around his waist like a vice.
“I’ve missed you,” he said into my hair.
“I’ve missed you, too.”
After a moment, Caleb made a gagging sound and tried to push me away.
“Kella, you need to let go, I—”
“Seriously?” I said, tightening my arms even more. “This is the first time I’ve seen you since, well…that, and you want me to let go?” I huffed out a breath. “At least give me a minute.”
“I would, but…” Caleb gagged again. “I’m gonna… Your hair smells like…”
I pulled away from him. “Like barf?”
“Yeah.” The relief in his voice as I backed away and took my smelly hair with me would have been funny under different circumstances.
“Figures my hair smells like throw up even in dream world,” I muttered. No doubt I smelled it even as I slept so of course my subconscious would implement it here.
“Huh,” Caleb said, scratching his neck as he studied me.
“Huh, what?”
“Well, normally people in my dreams aren’t conscious that they’re in, well, my ‘dream world.’”
“In your dream? You mean in mine.”
A smile ghosted over Calebs lips. “Always so contrary.”
“But it is my dream. Not yours. And I can…” I stumbled here because I couldn’t prove it. And why was I even arguing with him right now? True, arguing was pretty typical for us—kind of like our own twisted love language—but dream Caleb still looked kind of, well, weak. His thin frame was even skinnier than I remembered—frail, even. Between that and the bruises, enough guilt rose to the surface that I let the argument die.
It wasn’t fair. I wanted dream Caleb to be healthy. To be happy. I needed that escape from reality. Instead, I was staring at this wispy version of Caleb in front of me and almost regretted waking dream Caleb up.
But then he beamed at me again like the sun through a break in the storm clouds.
“Wow. You never let an argument die. I must look pretty bad, huh?” He spread his arms out and made a show of examining himself.
He was trying to make me laugh, but his outstretched arms only made him look skinnier. Unhealthier..
“You’ve lost weight.”
“Yeah, looks like it.” Caleb sounded unconcerned, but I knew how much he hated being thin. “I guess being comatose will do that to you.”
“You know you’re in a coma?” I asked, forgetting that I was talking to a figment of my subconscious.
“Of course.” He smiled at me, but the corners of his eyes tightened. “I hear the nurses and doctors when they come in to check on me. There’s this really nice one. Kate, I think. She reads to me on her lunch breaks. They’re mostly romance novels, but hey, I’ll take The Marquess’ Conquest over silence any day.”
I winced. “Sorry. I should be there.”
“I know you’d be here if you could. And speaking of which, where are you?”
“Um.” I looked away from Caleb. “I’m in foster care.”
Caleb swore, and I looked up in surprise. Swearing was usually my domain. Not that I did it that often—only when circumstances dictated it—but Caleb was practically a boy scout. Make that Eagle Scout.
“Are you okay?” he asked, reaching out to grab my arms, examining me closely.
I pulled away, embarrassed. “I’m fine, Caleb. I just got here, but so far they don’t seem awful.”
“Well, if that changes…”
“You’ll be the first one to know so that your comatose body can wake itself up and rescue me,” I said with a wink.
He scowled at me. I grinned.
He growled. “I don’t like feeling useless. I’m no good to you like this.”
Well, you wouldn’t be useless if you’d just stayed out of the way and didn’t get yourself hurt.
The stray thought made me grateful that Caleb had no idea what I was thinking. He did what he thought he needed to do to protect me. It was my stupid decision that got our drunk dad mad enough to beat me. If I hadn’t taken the car—well, if Dad hadn’t stolen my savings—none of this would have happened.
I shook my head. There were a half dozen things that could have happened differently so we wouldn’t have ended up like this.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Because in the end, I’d pushed Dad too far, thinking that I’d get away with it like I did in the past. I’d been an idiot.
“You couldn’t know that he’d kept drinking after you left.”
“I
