The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  Anso’s daughter was still whispering to me. I honed in on the sound of her voice, realizing for the first time how much it sounded like my own.

  Give him…

  I flew from Roman’s grip. Blood burned my eyes. I tried to scrape it from my face but I couldn’t move my arms. My fingers barely twitched, everything burning.

  I finally looked down. I was split in two, blood spilling from my chest. There was no blade. No bullet. Only pain. Across the clearing, Anso’s hands were drenched in blood too, something small and red pulsing in his fist.

  Roman fell in front of me. Screaming.

  “Did you know he only dreamed of one thing?” Anso marveled at the tiny machine, my heart jumping in his palm. “Beating. Beating.” He held it out to Roman. “Can you hear her heart beating?”

  It was all I could hear and all I could see were stars. The moon fell, replaced by the Milky Way. Roman clung to me, pulling me into his lap. His voice vibrated against my skin, the sound trapped beneath the waves lapping against my feet.

  He peered out at me from behind a wall of sunflowers, his cheek giving way beneath my thumb.

  He pulled a feather from my hair, promising to wait.

  He tossed me down into a pile of leaves.

  He remembered.

  He remembered.

  He kissed me beneath a poplar tree. In a hospital bed. On the bank of the river Seine.

  He remembered.

  “Bryn, don’t. He’s coming. He’s coming.”

  Over Roman’s shoulder I saw someone running. Rodrigo’s face was already drenched with tears. They sparked against the grass, waking the earth.

  He stumbled, Valentina helping him onto his feet again. She was crying too.

  “He’s coming. Hold on, Bryn.”

  I stared up at the second story window, knowing that my body was breathing behind the glass. That Rodrigo had woken that part of me, the ending of his own life necessary to do the rest. But as long as I was alive the world would still be broken. Anso was right. The world crumbled because we were both awake. Because he dreamed its demise and I dreamed him. I dreamed him. And now I had to kill us both.

  Give him your life…

  They’d been Yolotli’s last words. Beneath the screams, beneath the blood, I couldn’t tell if it was his voice I heard or the voice of Anso’s daughter. As I looked up at the moon, the face almost black, I decided that it was mine.

  I forced my eyes to hold on Roman’s face. He looked back, speaking things I could barely make out.

  “Do you…forgive me?”

  He leaned in close, shaking. Not because he hadn’t heard me. But because he was afraid he had. “Bryn…?”

  “Do you forgive me?”

  He hadn’t answered me when I’d asked him on the beach, when I’d needed to know that he could still love me after everything I’d done. That I still deserved it.

  I kissed him on the cheek. “Forgive me.”

  Rodrigo flew off his feet, my thoughts hurling him in Anso’s direction. They collided, Rodrigo’s dreams disappearing beneath Anso’s skin. It withered, remembering its old fragility. His scars remembered theirs too, screaming red as old wounds woke from their slumber. But it wasn’t the pain that finally drove Anso to his knees. It was the blood, Zaire’s dreams still lingering in Anso’s veins.

  He choked up the poison, spreading it to his lips, his hands. It burned through him like a match set to gasoline. The ground quaked and the Rogues fell back. Hands grasped at the grass, bodies climbing out of the Dreamers’ grave. Rafiq and Malin and Alma. Zaire and Yolotli and Mara. They reached Anso just as death did and then they dragged him down into darkness, taking him home.

  Roman pressed his mouth to my ear, the sound lost. I pictured my body, imagining that first breath back inside it. My last. “Forgive me,” I whispered and then I woke up.

  90

  Roman

  She wilted in my arms. And I remembered everything.

  Her green eyes glinting between the thick stalks of sunflowers.

  The blanket she’d draped over my shoulders.

  The smell of coffee beans.

  The scratch of her mother’s old records.

  The crooning of Otis Redding as she marveled at my two left feet.

  The salt-water seam where her memories converged. The place where she’d told me not to be afraid. The moment I’d fallen in love.

  I could still feel the crunch of leaves beneath my feet and the hard spatter of rain against my clothes. My fingers pulling a feather from one of her curls. Her hand against my heart as I prayed that I was real.

  I hadn’t been until she’d woken me up. Until her lips wrenched me from that slab of stone, my body re-learning how to breathe and move and fight. Not because it wanted to be alive but because it wanted to feel her again.

  I felt her slipping, her eyes fluttering closed as she reached for her body.

  Death was the only one reaching for me.

  “Roman…”

  When I opened my eyes, my arms were empty.

  Adham knelt over me. Blood-stained but breathing. Breathing.

  “Am I dead?” I whispered.

  “Dreaming,” Adham said.

  “Where’s Bryn?” I tried to sit up. My body refused to move. “I want to wake up.”

  He pressed a hand to my heart. “You will.”

  Epilogue

  Bryn

  Roman gripped the steering wheel with one hand, the other reaching across to the passenger seat and twirling a piece of my hair. “Purple. You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.” I rolled my eyes, Roman barely catching it in the dark sheen of the windshield. “In all of my seventeen years of life—”

  “Eighteen in a few months.”

  “Right, and in all of my almost-eighteen years of life I have never had below a B average, never had a piercing in an unreasonable place, never gotten a tattoo, never had a fake i.d., never broken a law, and never died my hair. So excuse me for wanting to start there.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Start what, exactly?”

  I exhaled, sinking into the seat. “My life.”

  Roman was quiet. “You sound uncertain.”

  “I was going for excited.”

  He smirked. “You don’t know how to be excited. You are either content or slightly suspicious.” He poked the dimple on my left cheek. “There’s no in between.”

  I laughed, dodging his hand. “I guess I don’t like being in between.”

  I reached for the radio, turning up the volume. We’d been listening to Mismatched Machine’s new album on repeat since we left their show in Memphis. Next stop was Charleston where Roman was planning on enduring Big Billy’s Belt-buster Challenge, which consisted of consuming a double-patty grilled cheese cheeseburger, fries, nachos, and a vanilla milkshake. Since I refused to consume nachos anywhere east of the Texas border, I would be on documentation duty, snapping pictures to send to Roman’s parents.

  “And what are you feeling now?” he asked.

  I kissed him on the cheek before falling back against the seat. “Content.”

  “Because you’re with me.”

  “Because we’ve spent three whole days in the car together and haven’t strangled each other. And we did just eat some pretty suspect Frito pie-esque concoction that has not yet forced its way back up, or poisoned us, so that’s a win.”

  “Hey, don’t forget about those cool key chains we got with our meals.”

  “You mean the taxidermy key chains shaped like no animal I’ve ever seen living or dead.”

  “I doubt you’ve seen enough dead animals in their varying states of decay to know whether or not our key chains are real or some fuzzy-tailed versions of Frankenstein’s monster.”

  “I’ve seen plenty of dead things.”

  He frowned.

  “Okay, so mostly fish but those key chains are blasphemous no matter how you look at it. And I’m keeping mine until the day I die.”

  “Hey, maybe we
’ll have won the lottery by then and I can stuff you.”

  I crossed my arms. “You’re sick.”

  He smiled. “And that’s why you love me.”

  “Hence, my contentedness since we left Austin almost eighty hours ago.” I put my feet up on the dash. “I’m also content because my mom finally agreed to let me live on campus with Dani. Oh, and my grandmother actually spoke to me on the phone for five whole minutes without complaining about how much she hates it just being the two of them.”

  “Three, next weekend once your uncle finally moves his stuff in.”

  “Which is why that is also the weekend I’ll be moving out. Your dad’s still renting a moving truck, right?”

  “I’ll double check when I call him tonight.”

  The headlights careened off of something white. Roman slammed his foot on the brake. The seatbelt dragged across my chest. He threw his arm in front of me, the air bag slamming me back. My head hit the seat. I tasted blood. Roman’s voice fell apart and so did I.

  Chapter 1

  Bryn

  His voice was cut by the beep of machines. My wrist was spliced by an IV. He was bound too, wrist wrapped, gauze pressed to the side of his face. He smiled, igniting a wince. It was dark.

  “Roman?”

  The last thing I remembered was Roman’s mouth pressed to my ear. My blood on his hands. Anso being swallowed whole.

  “You’re awake,” he whispered.

  My hand reached up, tingling and numb as it touched his face. I traced the gauze, his left eyebrow before finally resting my thumb against his cheek. “You’re alive.”

  He kissed me. “I’m so sorry, Bryn.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “I had to end it. I was supposed to—”

  “Bryn…” Roman’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean you had to end it?” He led a strand of hair away from my forehead, his hand grazing something rough.

  I reached up, suddenly feeling the bandage, the throbbing wound underneath.

  “We were in a car accident.” Roman’s eyes softened, careful. “A deer ran out into the road.” His lips tightened into a thin line. “I swerved. We hit a tree. Do you remember any of it?”

  I strained, lifting my head off the pillow. Needing to see the memory that had him shaking.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “In a hospital in Charleston.”

  My throat burned, time slipping away from me again. How many days had I been asleep?

  My heart raced. “Did I have another episode?”

  Roman leaned closer, examining me the same way I was examining him. “An episode…? Bryn, what are—?”

  I tried to sit up, anchoring his arm to my chest when he tried to lead me back down.

  “Bryn, be careful. You should—”

  “Who am I?” I shook, hanging onto him.

  He held me. “You’re Bryn Reyes.”

  “And…?”

  He smiled, sad. “And I love you.”

  I inhaled, slow. “What else?”

  He hesitated and then, “You just graduated from high school. You live with your mom and your grandmother and you are the only reason they haven’t killed each other yet.”

  My mouth quavered. “What else?”

  He eased me back against the pillow. “You’re a sculptor. Your uncle brings you the scraps and you make them into something beautiful. He and your mom are getting married in the spring. You’ll be the maid of honor and your cousin Dani has forcibly assumed the role of wedding planner.”

  “What else?”

  “She and Felix are your best friends. Our best friends. He and I will be roommates in the dorm across from you and Dani’s. The day we got our room numbers we strung red solo cups across our window sills because you said—”

  “Cell phones cause cancer.” The memory fell in place, nudged between class schedules and an ice cream sundae—one scoop of cookies and cream, one scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough, and one scoop of strawberry.

  When Roman saw the tears, he kept going, reminding me of lunch dates at Nachos Tacos and flat tires and dorm room shopping and day trips to the beach.

  I stopped him, needing to know, “How did we meet?”

  His cheeks flushed, eyes wet too. “At a concert. This big bald guy shoved you right into my arms. I yanked you out of the way before you got a serious elbow to the face.”

  I closed my eyes, letting the memory rise to the surface. The spotlight racing across the crowd. The echo of the drums between my ribs. The brush of Roman’s skin in the dark.

  It was the life I’d constructed in the worn pages of my diary, in every meeting with Dr. Sabine or one of her recommended psychiatrists, in every late-night conversation with Dani when we were devising a plan to avoid our mother’s mistakes, over morning coffee with my grandmother. In every dream I’d ever had outside of an episode. When my body wasn’t sick, when my mind wasn’t fighting to hold onto its own sanity, I was dreaming of this life.

  The Dreamers. The Rogues. Anso. They were real. Not because Roman remembered but because I did. And because even though it had all been constructed from my fears, I hadn’t really been in control of anything.

  Until now.

  This was not my life. Not the way it had been. Not the way it was supposed to be.

  Roman reached a lull, my silence making him pause. He leaned over me, pressing his lips to mine. No sparks. No flames. No fear. Because in the life I’d constructed for myself, there was no such thing.

  I leaned into him, relishing in the magic of being mortal, normal, of being with Roman.

  This is not my life, I thought. This. This is the dream.

  The End

  Also by Laekan Zea Kemp

  The Things They Didn’t Bury

  Orphans of Paradise

  Breathing Ghosts

  The Girl In Between

  The Boy In Her Dreams

  The Children of the Moon

  The Daughter of the Night

  Download the Series Soundtrack

  For more information about the author or The Girl In Between series visit Laekan’s website or Goodreads page. You can also follow her on Twitter. Sign up for her newsletter to get all the latest info on new releases, promotions, and giveaways.