Fierce Dawn

by Scott, Amber

  “I think I’d better ask Cynthia to change shifts.”

  “Don’t you dare! And it wasn’t that bad.”

  “Uh, yeah, it was. I clobbered him with a cart, smack in front of his goddess of a girlfriend.” Sadie’d only seen the dark-skinned beauty with Elijah once or twice, but if her sexy outfits weren’t memorable, the woman’s sculpted face was.

  “Possible girlfriend.” Ben grinned. “I mean, she could be his wife, after all.”

  “Please, God, tell me they’re just friends.”

  “Friends with benefits?”

  Sadie socked him in the shoulder.

  “Well, if they are just friends, that woman wants more.”

  Ben was right. She couldn’t count the hours already spent worrying over the woman. The possessive way she watched Elijah, the control in her movements, as though minute by minute, she resisted reaching out to touch his face. “She laughed at me.”

  “Screw her and the corset she rode in on.”

  “Oh well,” Sadie said. “Better to never see him again.”

  “Yeah. And how long do you think that will last?”

  She was lying. She knew she’d try to make a better impression and probably fail. No matter how many times she told herself in the last three hours to forget about ever landing eyes on him—at least a thousand by now—she wouldn’t. Pathetic.

  At least she hadn’t let him—or her—see how thoroughly his reaction had crushed her. Her feelings were still a secret. Mostly.

  “Hey. Even runway models fall down. Anyone can live down a little clumsiness, right?” Ben patted her leg.

  It helped. She still felt less like outright bawling. Besides, she might never see him again. That’d be plenty of time to get over it.

  She needed a distraction. “Let’s watch a movie or something.”

  Ben commandeered control of the remote. The thought of painting popped into her head. She ignored it. Nope. No painting for Sadie. Not for days if she could help it. Painting would fuel her fantasies and feed the hurt.

  She’d rather watch marathon reality dating shows with Ben. He maintained enough catty chatter to further distract her, if she focused. Alone she might drown. And that was not an option. Depression meant everything she’d worked for would be lost and no guy was worth that. No matter how alive and vibrant being near him made her feel.

  Unfortunately, Ben left by midnight.

  Sadie showered. The hot water pounded her skin. She focused on the heat and rhythm of the water, coursing down her shoulders, over her face, clearing her head. She shampooed twice, let the conditioner sit, hoping by taking her time, Jen would get home. Whenever Elijah’s face reappeared in her mind, she hummed, repeated the checklist: ways to keep busy.

  One: more TV. Two: journal. Three: the Internet. She could look up meanings of dreams. Articles on living med-free. She thought of Heather and her chest panged.

  Heather would learn to trust Sadie one day, to know she was going to be alright. The longer she lived functionally, the more their lives could go back to how they were before. Not the same, of course. Nothing would ever be the same. But at least, she hoped, she and her little sister could be sisters again. Friends.

  They’d been so close before.

  But that was a whole other heartache. Not what she needed tonight.

  She shut the water off and toweled herself dry, listening for signs of Jen’s arrival home. Maybe she would try to read. Her mind usually wandered too fast, though. Pajamas on, she took her quilt to the sofa and resumed watching television.

  She hadn’t told Ben about the dreams and that left Jen. Could she trust her cousin to keep it to herself? Settling on sitcom reruns, Sadie watched another two hours.

  No Jen.

  Jen could be on a vacation in the Bahamas for all she knew. Sadie hadn’t been the most attentive of roommates the last few days so she had no idea what her cousin had been up to except work. If she were Jen, she’d be somewhere besides here. Jen had such a wonderfully normal life. She was in her late twenties, held a good job she liked. She was single and she was pretty. Why wouldn’t she be out instead of home, coddling poor, rejected Sadie?

  Tired, Sadie gave up and went to bed. Her shoulder blades ached.

  Sadie didn’t want to be jealous. Jen had done so much for her. She’d used her job on campus to find Sadie the library gig, she’d taken her in, given her private space and left her to herself. She didn’t treat Sadie like an invalid or a child.

  She hated being jealous. But she was.

  Jen lived what Sadie craved. Normalcy. Boring and predictable. Sublime and perfect.

  Sick of feeling sorry for herself, Sadie climbed under her covers and counted backwards from a hundred, telling herself tomorrow was a new day. Within four-hundred-and-seven breaths, she fell asleep and the dream began.

  A soft tickle of breath fluttered against her fingertips. Hot breath. Sadie reached out for more of the delicious warmth. An ache formed in her chest. The breath complied, then became a kiss.

  Sadie gasped.

  One soft-lipped kiss to each finger, his nose nuzzling her palm. Hope stabbed her chest. She inhaled sharply. Part of her worried this would end badly, but she couldn’t resist the expectancy beckoning her, more. More. Knowing what might come.

  More.

  Soft chimes of noise—like wind chimes but deeper, longer—filled her senses. The music reverberated through her limbs and ribs. The kiss on her palm traveled up her arm, resting, licking at her inner elbow, nudging for her to open her eyes.

  Shivers tickled up her arm, down her belly as the mouth suckled and caressed her skin. Hot and wet.

  Elijah.

  His erotic tongue flicked circles against her palm again, then changed course. Over instead of up. Pleasure and anticipation coiled in the depths of her stomach, waiting to feel his mouth there.

  “Sadie. Open your eyes.” Elijah. Whispering to her soul. “Sadie. Love. I need you to see me.”

  No. Seeing would hurt. No more hurt. She wanted only to feel his kisses to trail up her belly, over her throat. To claim her mouth and make her his. All and only his. He paused. His breaths hit her belly skin. He waited, she knew, for her to open her eyes. NO.

  Instead she reached for his face and pulled him to her. He obeyed, dragging sweet sensation up her stomach, over her sternum licking the hollow at her neck. Tickling the spot behind her ear. Her breaths came in stuttered pants.

  “Don’t stop,” she mumbled, pressing the length of her body to his. Such perfection, the way his hard thighs met hers, the way he rolled her to her side and drew her leg up to his hip.

  “Sadie, please. I am lost without you.”

  Oh, the sweet ache his words gave her.

  Another tantalizing, wet caress along her collarbone, hot breath pushing gusts of need through her. Her thighs tingled. Her belly flashed. Need sprang to life, deep down. She couldn’t look but, oh, how she could feel him. His body moved away to hover just above hers, his heat radiating to her skin. She whimpered. So close. If only she could make her arms move again, to reach for him.

  Perhaps then she could trust opening her eyes. But her arms, her legs, wouldn’t cooperate beyond a limp shift. She tried to tell him, “Stay. Come close again. Please.” But her mouth wouldn’t form more words.

  Her body craved more. Her hips begged to press to his. His mouth teased desire to life. He kissed her throat, suckling, breathing raggedly. Shivers. Up her neck, against her hairline, to her temple. His lips were hot heaven. Her body tightened, she breathed in his scent. He smelled like the wind after rain.

  Elijah. She couldn’t say his name. Somewhere inside, she worried. His lips made fire, sending hungry flames through her. She couldn’t move, torn, craving more, but fearing it as well.

  “I need you to see me. Know me. Know us, Sadie, my sweetest sin.”

  A new shudder coursed through her. His mouth grazed her jaw, stoking the heat through her body. Her lips parted. Oh, please, just one kiss. She could
drown in one kiss and a keen frustration began to build in her as he lingered so close to her lips, but never reaching them. He seemed to hold what she desired most out of reach, like a reward, if she would succumb and open her eyes. Open her eyes and see him.

  The worrisome fear expounded. A thought, a memory she couldn’t define, held her back. His mouth caressed down her belly. Drawing closer, so close to the apex of her hunger. Her heart slammed inside her chest, making it ache. Or was it her breathing? His tongue, so wet, so soft, down lower, on her thigh, upward. So close to giving her what she wanted.

  Her hands found his head again, her fingers wound into his hair. Then she remembered what she didn’t want to see. A wave of shame washed over her, extinguishing some of the fire. Sorrow built within her, aching in her chest alongside her heart and panting.

  If she opened her eyes…? His heat shifted. His kisses fell away. Her body clamored for more, but her limbs wouldn’t obey.

  Her pulse pounded. She fought to recall what exactly she feared. His heat evaporated and her heart plummeted. “Don’t go,” she managed to whisper. Her hands twitched, now empty. Her chest burned.

  She opened her eyes. Her vision oriented to the darkness around her. She realized she was in her own room, in bed, and utterly alone. Another dream. Sweat dripped down her forehead and neck. She sat up. Swallowing hurt. Her body felt leaden, as though she’d run a marathon. “Just a dream,” she said into the dark.

  He was only a dream. Still, she found herself scanning her room, listening past the drumming in her veins, for signs of him, signs it had been real.

  Regret swelled up her throat. Even in a dream, couldn’t she bring herself to interact with him? To stand up for herself? Anger pushed her regret aside. She tore back the covers and strode to the kitchen. She got a glass of water, looked at the clock. Four? “Crap.” How would she get to sleep now?

  Her body was keyed up. Her mind, too.

  Was Jen home yet?

  Probably not. She didn’t see her purse or phone sitting in the usual spot by the fridge.

  She set the empty glass in the sink and decided to journal. Maybe if she wrote the dream out, she could decipher some sort of meaning from it. Every time she dreamt of him, she awoke feeling like she’d missed some very important clue, like he was counting on her for something.

  Sitting in her room, the bedside lamp spotlighting the blank page, she scribbled down every last sensation. She couldn’t open her eyes. Or wouldn’t? Yet, she’d seen him, in a way. She’d envisioned him, hovering over her, afloat in the air over her lying form. She’d envisioned his supple mouth as he kissed her. She’d imagined his wings.

  Why wings? Had her mind chosen him as some sort of savior? She didn’t need a doctorate to know growing up fatherless had a certain impact on her. And if so, then why did it feel like he was asking her to save him and not the reverse? Unless that was the meaning and her mind was still fighting to work out her mother’s suicide. Was she trying to save her mother?

  She wrote the question on the page: Why wings? What am I trying to save/be saved from? Dr. Meyers’ final request today resurfaced. What could she possibly bring? Weren’t all of her previous pieces painted over with Elijah scenes? Him, bare and arched like an angel of destruction, against a clouded moon. Hunched like a gargoyle upon the lip of a skyscraper, a bony mountain’s cliff. Waiting, contemplating.

  Paint something else for the doctor?

  Again, she looked at her writing, remembering her mother's feverish scribbling in her many books. Nancy Graves would spend hours rushing the words onto paper, sheaves littering the floor, her hand unable to keep up with her racing thoughts. As a child, Sadie had a sense of awe over her mother's rapture. Adolescence brought forth skepticism and soon, Sadie doubted the magic she'd once been certain the nonsensical God talk held.

  As her mom worsened, the writing had grown more broken. Word salad, they called it. Pain punctured Sadie's heart at the memory. Did her own writing make any sense? Would her words be a tapestry of unraveling meaning?

  Her head thudded against the headboard. Fatigue ached in her muscles. She resisted a stretch and a yawn, fearing sleep, and dreams. The pit of her stomach lay knotted despite the hour she'd written through.

  Partly, she was angry with herself.

  Here she was, dreaming of this magnificent, seraphic specimen of man. More than dreaming, feeling him, as Elijah utterly seduced her senses, begged her for the simplest of favors. She should have opened her eyes. More. She should have opened her eyes, let him take her into his arms and died into the bliss he offered. The place where the impossible lived, alive, thriving...possible.

  It was like she knew his kiss. She'd tasted his mouth, felt his arms cocooning her, sweeping her up into the heavens and stars. Other nights, not tonight. Had today’s disaster unnerved her so badly? Was she so fragile that one incident could destroy a perfectly good fantasy?

  Her pulse quickened. She itched to paint the dream.

  What the hell had she been so scared of and why couldn’t she shake it now?

  If there were ever a real chance to have Elijah, to actually feel his lips on hers, how could she become brave enough to take it? Remorse battled with disgust and in the end, she decided it was best to give up and try to sleep. And if he came again, damn it, she would respond. But she would not give in and paint him. Not tonight, not again, so help her. Because for the first time in her life, the mania she’d witnessed so often in her mother, murmured in her own veins.

  ~ ~ ~

  Chapter Five

  The card aisle at the grocery store offered Sadie zero help. Get well soons, sympathies, puppies in grotesque costumes. None of them worked. She needed a gift of some sort. A thanks-for-having-me-for-dinner, but-please-stop-treating-me-like-an invalid gesture for Heather and Remy. Wine? No. Heather didn't drink and Remy did, but really, for the sake of mankind and stand-up comedians the world over, shouldn't.

  Cookies? Cake? Flowers. She pictured Heather gushing, smelling a bunch of wildflowers. It made her gag a little. She couldn't show up for dinner empty-handed, though. If she had less time, not to mention a healthier sibling relationship, this wouldn't be so flipping difficult. But she had over an hour to kill before she was expected. Sadie wandered through each aisle, ignoring the nagging sense she was being followed. She wasn't, in truth, being followed. She knew that. Still, she couldn't stop looking past her shoulder every so often.

  “Still no one there, Sadie,” she said to herself.

  Paranoia. Not good. Paranoia came with crazy. Not that there wasn’t plenty to blame her sensitivity on. Last week’s crash into Elijah, worry over her appointment next week, scaling her own dosage down. A mental shift was completely understandable. Add in the last dream and voila. Feelings of being followed.

  She left the aisle, glancing over her shoulder. A mother and her toddler wheeled past.

  Jen wanted her to go dancing tonight. Sadie had claimed she couldn't go out with Jen after dinner at Heather’s. But when her cousin had asked why not, she hadn’t found a decent answer. Fatigue? As it was, she'd slept a handful of hours each night this week. Heavy sleep. No dreams. Dinner would be tiring. True or not, blaming being exhausted sounded lame.

  Really lame.

  Sadie found herself staring at rows upon rows of ice cream. What flavor would her sister like? What brand? The expensive celebrity stuff or plain ol' generic vanilla? Sadie groaned. “This shouldn’t be difficult, Sadie. You should know this. She’s your sister.” Used to be more like friends. Too much for Heather to handle back then, though. Mom's suicide. Then Sadie’s freak-out, the hospital. Shaking her head, she shoved her focus on the flavors, ignoring the prickle of awareness creeping up her neck.

  Maybe she'd break down and take an Ambien later. But if she took a pill, she was certain not to remember her dreams. After a week without dreaming of him and his not showing at the library today, she wanted to. Badly. Not good. Her craving for dreamland went beyond her crush on Elijah, too
. The real likelihood that she’d never see him again didn’t help matters, but her longing went beyond that annoying fact. She felt an unreasonable anticipation growing within her. Like something important, something life-altering, was about to happen.

  “Sadie,” a voice whispered behind her. She spun around, a shiver racing over her skin.

  An older gentleman eyed her warily, a shaky smile on his face. He certainly hadn’t said her name. That wary look said as much.

  The look sent ‘Sadie’s straightjacket’ list into mind. Paranoia, check. Trouble sleeping, headaches, check. Imagined voices, check. Delusions of grandeur a la secret messages in your dreams? Check. Sadie was one melting face hallucination away from graduating that list.

  The shiver was becoming a familiar sensation, too. She sighed, exasperated with herself and with her indecision. It was ice cream. Not life and death.

  Why did she keep hoping Elijah was here? Him following her, whispering her name? But the whisper wasn’t his deep, melodic tone. Which she would recognize? Sheesh. Talk about obsessed. If Elijah was following her, she should be scared, not excited! She should not want to ever see him again. He’d given her the rudest look she’d ever seen, let alone received. Her old self would never have allowed such a look. Not without verbally smacking the giver’s ego flat on its ass.

  She yanked open a freezer door and grabbed Chunky Husband or something to that effect. She navigated to the self-checkout cash register and did not look behind her, though she swore she had heard it again. “Sadie.” This time in his voice.

  If her brain collapsed after all, how long did she have? Another hospital stay, a new arsenal of medications, tweaked to establish that perfect combination that buried who she was completely. Starting all over. She didn't want to start over. Worse, what if it meant her sister and the doctors were right? What if this wasn’t her brain adjusting to being free of chemicals? White walls and squeaking nurses, a void of numb days and nights for the rest of her mindless existence. Nice, tidy hell.

  Just like her mother's.