“I have to go now. I can’t be here anymore.” She pulls her hand from mine and walks away, back into the bluish mist surrounding us.
“Em, don’t go. Not yet. Stay and talk to me, please.” I blink at her diminishing form. “Don’t leave me.”
She doesn’t turn around when she says, “I can’t talk to you. I don’t even know you.”
I move to follow her, but my feet are locked in place.
She disappears like a ghost, taking most of my hope with her.
“No!”
The sound of my voice jars me awake. I’m already sitting up, clutching the comforter tight. Sweat covers my body, thin rivulets running down the middle of my bare chest. Damp strands of hair stick to my forehead, neck, and shoulders like seaweed.
“Shit,” I mutter.
A quick, hot shower washes the sticky sweat away but does nothing to banish the disquiet muddling through my brain.
Does Ember remember me, wherever she is now? Does she hear my voice when I whisper in the dark? Do I still live on in her heart like she does in mine?
I pull on jeans and a T-shirt and head for the front door, foregoing my morning coffee even though I need a cup or ten wicked bad. I drive my Porsche across town to Kenzi and Tor’s house in silence. Even music can’t pull me out of the lingering daze from the dream I had last night.
“Daddy, are you okay?” Kenzi’s eyes are wide when she opens her front door, wearing leggings and a wrinkled, oversized T-shirt that I know belongs to Tor. “It’s not even eight a.m. yet.”
“I know, I’m sorry.” I kiss her cheek as I step inside the living room. Their huge white dog immediately rises from his bed in the corner and comes over to nuzzle his nose into my palm. “Hey, buddy,” I whisper, stroking his head as I sit in the middle of the couch. “I wanted to talk to you. Did I wake you?”
“No, I got up a few minutes ago. Tor’s getting ready to go to work. He’s in the shower.” She eyes me, eyebrow quirked. “You look a little tweaked, Dad. Have you slept at all?”
“Not much...”
She lets out a sigh. “I’m going to make us some coffee.”
I pet the dog while she goes into the adjoining kitchen and fiddles around with the fancy espresso maker I gave them last Christmas. A shiny household appliance isn’t something I ever thought I’d be giving Tor and Kenzi, but I guess nothing should really surprise me anymore.
My life is a series of plot twists. At least that’s what my mother, a popular romance author, tells me all the time.
Tor enters the living room from the hallway, naked, rubbing a white towel over his wet hair and stops in his tracks when he spots me on his couch. “Shit! I’ll be right back.”
I press my fingers into my forehead as he bolts back down the hall to their bedroom.
That’s a visual I could’ve done without today.
Kenzi, totally oblivious, hands me a stoneware mug with a perfect, frothy-topped latte. “Do you have a headache?” she asks. “I can get you—”
I shake my head and take a sip of the coffee. “No, I’m fine, hon.”
“Hey, man, sorry about that,” Tor says, re-entering the room. “I didn’t know you were here.”
I put my hand up. “Forget it. I’m going to block it from my memory.”
“What happened?” Kenzi asks, frowning at us.
“Nothing,” we say at the same time.
She hands Tor a matching mug and sits on the couch next to me while Tor sits on the L part of the sectional.
“You sleepwalking or something?” he asks.
“I had a really wacked-out dream about Ember. I just wanted to talk about it.”
Kenzi’s forehead creases. “Different from the ones you usually have?”
Tor and Kenzi are the only ones I’ve ever told about the dreams I’ve had about Ember. Thankfully, they’ve never looked at me like I’m a few ants short of a picnic when I’ve given them details.
I don’t think they’re dreams. I think Ember’s been giving me messages—usually about family and friends when they need advice. Somehow, she can communicate with me while I’m sleeping from wherever her mind and soul are. I have no idea why she seems to be some sort of relationship whisperer because before the accident, she never got involved in other people’s issues. But in the dreams, she knows personal details about everyone. She seems to want me to help them.
During one dream, she told me that my brother, Storm, would be having car trouble when his wife, Evie, went into labor. Ember told me to go to their house and be there for Evie. Sure enough, her water broke while I was there, and I had to drive her to the hospital.
In other dreams, she told me to talk to my brothers and cousins, and sometimes their girlfriends, when they were going through a rough time. “Make sure they talk. Make sure love sees them through. You’re special. They’ll listen to you.” The dreams felt so real and powerful, I couldn’t ignore them. So I hunted people down, offering up cryptic advice like a walking fortune cookie.