I was suddenly desperate to escape the confines of the restroom and those unwavering blue eyes of hers and questions about who I was and where I was from. I turned and bolted for the door, suffocated by my own panic. It was bad enough we’d been sitting in a diner full of people who’d seen our faces. Now I’d stumbled across someone who thought she recognized me.
But I hit the door too hard and grossly miscalculated how easily it would swing open, so when I shoved against it, I fell through, tumbling out the other side.
Thankfully, Tyler was there to stop me from falling face-first . . . and causing more of a scene than I already had (you know, with the sunglasses and all).
“Hey there! I got you,” he gasped as I slammed into him, sending the both of us crashing into the opposite wall. My cheek smashed against the hard muscles of his chest and his arms closed around me.
For several seconds I stayed there, inside that space. I remembered a time, not so long ago, when that was the absolute safest place in the world. When Tyler’s touch could fix everything.
But things were different now.
I drew away, grimacing as I gave him a sheepish look. My sunglasses had slipped down my nose. “Sorry,” I offered, my cheeks practically sizzling.
And then, when Tyler’s arms didn’t move, when his grip actually tightened, my cheeks got even warmer. “Don’t be.” His voice was lower when he said it, gravelly in a way that made my heart stutter. “Kyra, I’ve been meaning to . . . I’ve wanted to ask you . . .” Now he was the one who was stuttering. He frowned, an adorable kind of frown that almost couldn’t be called a frown. I wanted to tell him not to say anything, to just stand there and keep looking at me like that.
Except now I was curious too.
His grip loosened, and for a moment my stomach clenched because I didn’t want him to let me go. He drew me farther away from the clatter of dishes and voices that came from the diner, and into a dark hallway where there was an exit, where we couldn’t be overheard by anyone headed to the restrooms. “I . . . ,” he started again. “I have so many questions, and I think you might be the only one who can answer them.” His hands moved back to my hips as he pulled me close to him. It was so familiar I thought my heart would explode because maybe-finally-at last he might remember how he felt about me.
“Yes.” The word came out like a whisper. A breath.
His forehead puckered as he tried to piece his thoughts together. “I had a dream. And I think you were in it.”
I waited, my mouth going unexpectedly dry. “A dream?”
“Yeah,” he answered, and then his hands slipped up and down, like he was wiping them on my hips. Like he was nervous. “More than one I think. And in them I have this strong sense that you’re with me, even when I can’t see you.”
This is it, I thought. This is what I’ve been waiting for. I leaned closer, all my attention focused on him. On his lips, on the sound of each breath he took. On waiting for him to say the words out loud.
At last he tried to see through my sunglasses when he said, “But we always have to be somewhere, and I know how to get us there because I have these maps—”
I jolted, stopping him midsentence. For a moment, I’d let myself believe we were on the verge of something—a breakthrough. That Tyler might be remembering how we’d been . . . before. Now I realized I’d misread the situation. His dreams weren’t lost memories, they were just that . . . dreams.
I wanted to hug my dad for insisting on the sunglasses because at least Tyler couldn’t see the tears crowding my eyes. “Maps?” I managed. “What kind of maps?”
Unaware I was on the brink of a total meltdown, Tyler gave one of his signature shrugs. “Maps. I don’t know. Thing is, they don’t even make sense, really. They’re just these”—he made a face—“weird squiggly lines and symbols. But to me, at least in the dream, they make perfect sense.”
Even as he tried to laugh it off as a nothing kind of thing, my skin began to tingle, and suddenly I wasn’t thinking of the old us. His laugh wasn’t convincing because he definitely thought there was something to it . . . and so did I.
His hands had been running anxiously back and forth along my sides, and I reached for them, gripping them. My stomach felt heavy and tight, and my nerves were zinging with electricity. “Tyler, it wasn’t a dream,” I insisted. It was time to tell him about the night in the desert. Maybe more.
Maybe all of it.
I’d seen what he was talking about, those squiggles, the symbols—the ones he’d been drawing.
His map.
I looked up and whispered, “Ochmeel abayal dai.”
I might have said it wrong. The words felt strange on my tongue, but it didn’t seem to matter. The moment they crossed my lips, Tyler’s eyes went huge as he stared back at me.
He knew.