She nods, the movement soft against my skin. “Yes, she is.”
I swallow hard, my throat like sandpaper. “She’s not coming back.”
She shakes her head against my neck.
“She was right here with me. Emma was here.” I struggle to keep my voice steady. “What’s even real?”
A voice in my head says, “You will lose what she has lost.” Who said that? Who told me that?
“I’m real,” Octavia says.
She is. She’s here. Not a ghost, not a memory, but flesh and delicate bone, a soft voice and that smile that warms me up like the sun.
“Now you’ll make me blush,” she whispers.
Did I say all that out loud? “I feel drunk,” I inform her.
“You’re sick. You’ll get better.” She lifts her head. “Let me take care of you.”
I turn my face away. I don’t want her to see how fucking shattered I am after the dream, after the realization that came at its heels. I’m laid open, my control gone, my defenses crushed.
Don’t want her to see how I want to believe her, how much I fucking need her, now more than ever.
How I want her to take care of me, to stay with me.
She’s trying to save me, but I don’t think she can.
I wake up what feels like ages later. My eyes are gritty, and my whole body aches. It’s dark outside the window, and inside the room only my bedside lamp is on, casting soft yellow light.
The bed creaks and moves, and a shadow unfolds and approaches me. Fragile, slender, and I know who it is. I don’t think it’s Emma, not even for a second, which is weird, and I frown.
Octavia leans over me. “Hey, you. How do you feel?”
Maybe it’s her scent, so unique and sweet. Maybe it’s the shape of her body, of her hair, of her face as she comes into focus.
Or maybe she’s the one I expect to see.
And the fact I expect to see her tells you just how fucked I am. Not only because it means I don’t expect Emma anymore, that I’ve given up on that illusion—but because Octavia won’t be here always.
Or even for much longer. A girl like her, she’ll find a boyfriend her age, get married and have kids—or go to college. She only works for me, and yeah, we fucked twice, but that doesn’t mean anything.
Can’t mean anything, not to a pretty girl like her. So young. I know for some people twelve years aren’t that big of an age difference, but on days like this… yeah, tonight those twelve years that separate us feel like a century.
I guess tonight I just feel way too old for my twenty-nine years. Hey, I’ll be thirty soon.
Practically an old man.
“Matt?” She’s still leaning over me, and damn, I completely spaced out.
“Yeah,” I grind out. “M’good.”
She puts her hand on my forehead, and it’s cool and smooth, and my eyes close from the gentleness of the gesture. It hits me straight in the chest.
Yeah, she’s gonna break me right through.
Something’s nagging at me, though. I frown and open my eyes to look at her. “You didn’t go home tonight.”
“I’m staying.”
And fuck me for the hope that lights up inside me, reading her words in the way I want to read them.
So I do what I always do: I break the moment. Get a hit in before life kicks the shit out of me.
“Go home,” I mutter, and then drive the nail deeper. “I don’t need a fucking nanny. It’s my kids I’m paying you for.”
She flinches, and a sick pain travels through my head, my chest.
Because this is Octavia, and it’s just wrong. “Tay…”
“Don’t worry,” she whispers and turns away. She walks to the window, looking out. “This night’s on me. Call it a gift. If you know the meaning of the word.”
Fuck. You piece of shit, Matt. “Hey, listen…”
She doesn’t turn around. “I read the message you found on the door.”
Holy fuck, I forgot about it. “You will lose what she has lost,” I whisper.
“I called the police, told them about it.”
Good thinking, girl.
“They were asking if you know what it means.”
“I don’t.”
Is it about Emma? She lost… her life.
We lost her.
No, this makes no sense.
“Tay, come here.”
She hesitates.
I don’t fucking blame her. And I’m still turning over in my mind the fact I expected to see Octavia when I woke up.
Octavia, not Emma.
And I was glad that I was right, that she was the one I saw when I opened my eyes.
What the fuck does that mean?
My hands fist in the covers, and my stomach is churning, and I’m back in a cemetery, standing over an open grave, a red rose in my hand and a gaping hole in my chest.
I’m looking down at her coffin, at her face.
And then I’m looking down at myself, lying in that fucking coffin, fucking dead and gone and done with.
Hell.
“Matt.” Octavia walks back to my side. “Matt, look at me.”
I do, and her sweet face brings me back to the room, the bed, the goddamn scent of her that fills me up like hope.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” I tell her, my voice so hoarse I barely recognize it. I reach for her, tug her to my side until she half-falls on the bed. “I want you here. Christ, you don’t know how much.”
She curls up on the bed beside me as my mind spins in circles, the image of myself in that coffin flashing through my thoughts like it means something.
What, though?
I tried to end myself, bury myself. Bury the pain.
But the pain is inside me, an open vein spilling poison, bleeding out. Was that why I tried to cut myself open? To let the poison out?
Well, it didn’t work. I guess I’ll have to learn to live with it.
And my dream with Emma… Fuck, no. I don’t believe in this shit. Messages from the Great Beyond. This is all my own mind, making up excuses for myself.
And yet… Emma always told me she wanted me to be happy. Not to stop living. I just couldn’t bear to think about the possibility of life going on without her.
Until now.
My fever breaks at some point, and when I open my eyes in the gray darkness, I feel much better.
I’m not sure what woke me up until I realize I’m on my back with Octavia half-sprawled over me and my dick rock hard and aching.
“Tay…” I breathe against her loose hair, and she moans—a soft, feathery sound that shoots straight to my balls, tightening them.
Fuck…
She’s dressed in one of my T-shirts, I realize, huge on her, and the fabric is riding high on her hips, allowing a glimpse of her panties.
God, that glimpse is driving me crazy. She’s so hot, and she doesn’t even know it. All I want is to tear the soft cotton down her legs and bury myself inside her.
She shifts, another breathless moan escaping her, and I wonder if she’s dreaming. If she feels me underneath her, hard and so damn turned out I have to hold very still not to rub against her.