by W Winters
I used to dream of things I’d bet all girls dream about.
I would dance so beautifully, my hair swinging in the air as I landed a perfect pirouette. In my dreams, I could be and do anything. I’d dance in a ballet center stage, and amidst a crowd of thousands, I’d perform beautifully.
I’d climb the mountains and find a magical field of flowers where they came to life like the story of Alice in Wonderland. I could talk to the animals and drink tiny cups of tea that would make me small enough to follow the rabbits down the rabbit holes.
I could be anyone I wanted to in my dreams. But those visions were from long ago. It’s funny how they come back tonight.
Each of the scenes flashes through my head as if on fast forward. I see myself as a young girl performing the arts I wanted to before I realized my insecurities would keep me from even trying. I watch as I remember a dream I had of kissing a boy in my class. I imagined my leg would kick up behind me as he deepened it.
But even as the memory of my dreams from long ago comes to life before me, I’m aware that they’re only dreams. I never kissed Paulie. I never had the courage to and if I had, I know it wouldn’t have happened the way I pictured it.
For a moment, I question if I’m dreaming or awake. Everything is so vivid. So real.
But the scenes keep going. They don’t stop for me.
The hairs at the back of my neck prick as I know what’s coming. They’re all in order, like a timeline of my hopes as I watch the scenes play out. I know I’m getting older. I know what’s to come, and I want it to stop.
My head shakes. Make it stop.
But they don’t.
I watch as I dream about my mother and me in the park. She’s there with her friend like she always is. And I’m there drawing instead of playing with the other girls. I dreamed of drawing something that day, but when I look down at the paper it’s blank. I can’t remember what it was. But it doesn’t matter. All I can focus on is her face. This is the dream that turned into a nightmare. The first dream of so many I had over and over again.
Make them stop. My throat closes, and I want to scream. It’s too real, too vivid. And I can’t stop it.
I can feel my nails digging into the sheets. I’m awake, but I can’t open my eyes. I can barely move, and I can’t stop the images.
My heart races as I see myself in the closet.
Please stop, I whisper in my dreams, but my throat doesn’t feel the words. Not like my chest feels the pounding of my blood.
There she is standing with her back to me, facing the door. My mother’s standing there and I’m terrified. Why did she tell me not to leave? Not to scream. Not to move except to hide.
Terror races through my veins.
I wish I could move and go to her. To help her.
Please make it stop. I don’t want to see it again.
I don’t want to see him push the door open and force her down on the ground. She barely fought him and now I know why.
I can feel the tears leaking down my cheeks and I try to scream, but my words are voiceless.
Stephan looks so young. So much younger than he did when I stabbed him. When I murdered him and put an end to the sick smile on his face.
I can’t watch, but I can’t close my eyes. I can’t turn it off. There’s nowhere to run in your dreams.
Please, I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to remember.
The pain grows in my chest and it paralyzes me. The shaking overwhelms me as he pulls out the knife. It’s only a small knife, one like Daddy has for fishing.
Run! I try to scream to myself. Save her! I will my limbs to move, but I’m victim to my dreams.
She’s still on the ground with her back to him. She’s crying so hard but trying not to. She’s pinned beneath him as I cover my screams with my hands over my mouth in the closet.
Please, Mom, run, I want to say, but my plea is only a whimper. I know she won’t. I have no control here and I’ve seen this nightmare so many times. The memory haunts me in my waking hours just as much as it does in my sleep.
I didn’t know what he was doing to her. Not when he held her down and pushed himself inside of her and not when he pulled out the knife. I didn’t know it was over until he sliced her neck open. I knew what death meant and when I saw the bright red blood leaking from her and the way she covered it with her hands as she tried to keep it from flowing, I knew what was happening.
But what he did to her before, I didn’t know. It wasn’t until a month later when I told my cousin Brett that he explained it to me with a pained expression I’ll never forget. I told him everything, but he didn’t want to hear. He said Talverys don’t cry, we get revenge. He was wrong about both of those things.
Nikolai would listen to me though. He let me cry and didn’t make me feel ashamed of that fact.
Even the thoughts of Nikolai don’t stop the visions before me. Of my mother with her hair pulled back by Stephan as he slit her throat, of her looking toward the closet where I hid when the life left her.
Her lips are moving.
I can’t hear what she’s saying.
She’s saying something. A chill flows down my arms. This isn’t what happens. This isn’t what I’ve dreamed before.
Is this real?
The hairs on my body stand on end. My breath is caught in my throat. I don’t watch Stephan like I have before. I know the look of triumph on his face as he wipes off the knife on her bare back. I know what he does next. But my mother is still alive as her face falls to the floor. The blood pools around her cheek like it always does. But this time she blinks slowly and looks at me.
“Mom,” I whisper, wanting to move but not able to. Move, I will myself hopelessly.
My mom blinks again and she speaks. I know she does. “I can’t hear you, Mom. Please. Please don’t die,” I beg her.
Is this real?
Am I breathing? I can’t tell anymore.
I watch her lips, the right side of them covered in her own blood.
But the movement from the man standing behind her steals the attention from her.
Stephan stole what used to be and I can never have it back. Him dying doesn’t mean anything.
No, I whisper and shake my head as my small fingers of the child I was, reach out and grab the closet door. I can feel it. I can feel exactly what the edge of the closet door felt like.
My shoulders shake violently; this isn’t what happens in my dream. The chill leaves and I feel hot, too hot. “Wake up!” I hear Carter’s voice and it begs me to open my eyes, but before they obey, I hear my mother’s voice say, “You can’t forget me.”
I suck in air as my eyes shoot open and I stare at the ceiling of Carter’s bedroom through a haze of tears. The lights are bright, so bright it hurts, and I close them just as quickly.
With both of my hands covering my eyes, I feel the wetness and try to rub it all away.
My chaotic breaths are matched with Carter’s as I slowly come back to reality. Back to Carter’s bed. Back to the safety of this moment and not the nightmare of the past.
It was so real. Again, those goosebumps flood every inch of me as I reach Carter’s gaze. His eyes are dark as he stares back at me.
His lips part, but he doesn’t say anything for a long moment.
“I was screaming?” I ask him, although I know it’s true. My throat feels raw and my words are hoarse.
“For almost half an hour,” he tells me with nothing but concern and then visibly swallows as my blood chills. “You wouldn’t wake up.”
It’s been years since I’ve slept through the entire nightmare. Or even since each second played out as if it were an eternity.
Years have passed, but I know the terror was never like that before.
“I don’t know what you need,” Carter intimates to me, sealing me from my thoughts like he’s confessing a sin. I watch his throat as he swallows again. Pulling his arms around my chest I try to lie back down as if this is normal. As if this is
okay.
“Hold me,” I tell him although I stare at the ceiling, seeing the vision of my mother looking at me in the haunted memory. Her still alive on the floor even though I know she was dead.
“Please, just hold me,” I plead with him and turn my head, so I can look at him.
Confusion mars his face, but he doesn’t say anything. He only climbs closer to me on the bed and pulls me tighter to him.
I need him to hold me more than I’ve ever needed anything. Other than my mother to come back to me.
Chapter 35
Carter
Today is the first day I see Aria as stronger when she’s with me. And I can’t shake that thought as I enter the den.
I’ve only left her for a few minutes here and there. Staying quiet behind her and watching her every move. But she knows I’m there and each time she’s started to break down, she comes to me.
Of her own free will, she comes to me, asking me to hold her as if my touch could take her pain away.
My poor songbird hasn’t realized my touch only brings pain, and I hope she never does.
The drawing pad shows a clean page. Not a mark lays against the stark white.
With a pen in her hand, she lies on her belly on the rug in front of the fire and stares at the blank sheet as if it’ll speak to her.
I would stay there longer, standing behind the sofa, listening to the crackling of the burning wood, and waiting for her fingers to move across the page, but with a shift in my stance, the floor creaks beneath me and breaks her focus.
With lack of sleep, she’s slow to move, but she does. Sitting up on her knees she faces me, waiting for whatever it is that I have to say.
It’s funny to me how she says when she’s with me she forgets, and life is easier.
When I’m with her it’s the same until she asks questions, and then I remember everything.
“It’s time for the question game again,” I tell her, and she drops the pen, letting it roll off her thigh and onto the floor. The frown that’s marred her tired expression all day stays in place.
“It feels like forever since we’ve played this game,” she says absently. Her tone, her body language, everything about it is off today. It feels dampened, depressed even. More so than I’ve seen her before.
Clearing the tension in my throat and letting my hands clench and unclench I remind her, “It hasn’t been that long since you’ve been out of your cell.”
A smirk tips her beautiful lips up and she stares at me as if defying the fact. “I said it feels like it’s been forever… there’s a difference.”
Her soft gaze trails across the sofa and then back to me. “Am I staying here?”
“You can move wherever you’d like.”
“You haven’t come near me today like you usually do,” she comments and my gaze narrows at her. I recount the day and each and every time she’s come to me. The thrill of her choosing to approach me is dulled by the fact that she realizes things have changed between us.
I search her expression for what she’s thinking. For a hint as to how this will modify her behavior. But I can’t predict her. Not when it comes to what’s between us. And thus, it’s time for me to question her, to try to gauge what she’s thinking based on her own questions.
“That’s not a question,” is my only reply to her.
She shrugs as if it doesn’t matter, and tension spreads through my jaw. “It wasn’t my turn to ask,” she says simply with a calmness in her voice that only increases the strain.
Be gentle with her. I remind myself again.
Jase offers me a lot of advice though, and my typical response is for him to fuck off. Aria watches me as I walk to the sofa and take a seat on the right side. She decides not to move from her place, but she adjusts to sit cross-legged.
There’s a sudden crackle from the fire and she barely acknowledges it. Just like the tension between us.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask her and tell myself it’s because I want to get into her head, not because the last twenty-four hours have changed everything.
“Tired,” she tells me and the small bit of strength she’s shown since I’ve walked in wanes. She picks at the fuzz on the rug beneath her and answers with a catch in her throat, “I don’t know how to feel right now. There’s so much…” her voice trails off and I ask her, “So much what?”
The smirk on her face is nothing but fragile as she asks back, “Isn’t it my turn?” The walls around her are toppling down. I can see it. I can feel it. She’s too weak to hold them up any longer, but the girl beneath them isn’t what I imagined. She’s a girl who’s been left alone far too long. A girl who should never have been left alone at all.
And the realization tugs at me like nothing else ever has.
I force my lips into a straight line and give her a small nod.
“Why did you do it?” she asks me in a whisper. Still picking at the imaginary fuzz and only glancing at me occasionally. As if she’s afraid to catch my gaze and see something there that could ruin her.
“Do what?” I ask her, although I already know what she’s referring to.
Why did I bring her to the dinner? Give her a knife. And let her kill the man who’s hurt her so cruelly.
“Why did you… give me the knife?” she finally asks, and her words are twisted and tortured. As tortured as she’s been all of today and last night.
“Why did I let you kill him?” I clarify for her, making her come to terms with the truth. She sucks in a heavy breath and pushes the hair from her face as I speak. “Why did I give you a knife so you could kill Alexander Stephan?”
The sofa groans and the fire hisses as I sit back and release what sounds like an easy breath. “Because I wanted you to do it,” I tell her and almost elaborate, but the sarcastic huff that spills from her lips as she looks away from me and toward the door stops me from giving her more.
“What did you dream of last night?” I ask her, and I can’t help that my body leans forward, eager for her reply. She hasn’t been forthcoming, but she always answers me when I give her the opportunity to ask whatever she’d like.
She licks her lower lip, still shaking her head from my non-answer.
“Dreams,” she answers with a hint of indignation in her retort. The words I wanted to speak moments before nearly come to life, but then she adds, “I dreamed lots of dreams,” shaking her head with the smallest of movements. Her voice is small, and she speaks as if she’s not even talking to me.
Like she’s validating what she saw with herself.
“It was like my life sped forward in the form of the dreams I had growing up.”
My brow furrows as I listen to her. I expected it to be only nightmares with the way she screamed. The memory of her shrill screams and the terror of her cries sends a bite of cold down my back that slowly rolls through every limb.
I couldn’t do anything but listen to her and I’ve never regretted a damn thing in my life as much as I regretted giving her that knife like I did last night while she screamed.
Licking her lips, she continues and then that crease in her forehead returns as she looks at me. “And then I dreamed of the night he killed her.”
My head nods on its own. I knew to expect it, that seeing him would elicit those fears for her, but I expected her to be different after she killed him. For the realization that he’s dead, to free her in a way she could never be while he was allowed to live.
Give it time, the voice hisses again and the irritation I have for it shows on my face, silencing Aria.
“You can keep going,” I tell her, fixing myself and then adding, “if you’d like.”
But the moment has passed and instead she takes her turn.
“Are things still the same?” she asks me.
No. The answer is instant and obvious in my head. Strong enough that I feel the word echo through my veins. “Do they feel different?”
“That’s not how this game is played,” Aria answers with the trac
e of a smirk on her face although the tiredness has never been so evident in her eyes as it is now. “I asked you first,” she tells me and waits for a reply.
“Kneel,” I command her, wanting to prove that the power I held over her before is ever present. Even if the fear she held for me has vanished.
The realization that is what’s different sends a spike of regret through me, but it’s fleeting. I harden my voice as I tell her again, “Kneel and then ask me if things have changed.”
The heat ignites in me as Aria narrows her gaze, the hazel reflecting the flickers of the flames that linger behind her in the fire.
Her lips part and she squirms in her place, but as her eyes close, she only smiles at me while shaking her head.
“I don’t want to,” she dares to defy me.
My dick hardens instantly, but my knuckles turn white as I grip the arm of the sofa.
Everything inside of me is at war. It seems fitting, since my little songbird seems to be in the same predicament. Her body begging to bend to my command, yet her strong will preventing her from giving in.
“I don’t want to punish you today. Not when you need comfort. Don’t mistake my gift to you for anything other than what it was.” I push the words through clenched teeth, not wanting this tension between us to end. I love her fight. I love it, even more, when I can take it from her.
“And what was it?” she asks me, her eyes sparking with the desire for the truth.
The grin on my face grows as I realize she’s set me up, seeking the answer I wouldn’t give her when she asked her first question. Why did I do it? The tension in my body eases slightly, although the thrill of punishing her is still ringing through me.
“Taking away the fear you had, so I could end it and be the only thing you have left to fear.”
“I think you’re lying,” she bites back although her voice is teasing, sensual even. Not believing me for a moment. Her gaze doesn’t waver as she challenges me. I love that she knows better, but if she knew the power she had over me, I could lose everything. She’s still loyal to the enemy. There’s no denying that.