Chapter 69: Safe Until Morning
- DEX -
Raya asks me about the different places I’ve traveled, and I tell her the stories I’ve gathered over the years being away from home. After a good half hour of chatting with each other, I notice her eyelids start to grow heavy. When I stop talking, they lift again... like it’s the sound of my voice that is lulling her to sleep. Maybe I don’t need to know how to purr after all.
My voice slows and deepens, picking a more soothing sound that I think will help her. While I’m talking, her eyes finally close completely but she smiles when I mention a funny incident that happened with a little boy in Italy.
After gradually spacing my words further and further apart and growing closer and closer to a whisper, Raya’s hand relaxes at her side and her breathing becomes slow and even. I can’t believe I actually put her to sleep. I’m smiling like a complete idiot at that realization, and I lay just watching how peaceful she looks before turning off the light to try falling asleep myself.
But when I’m alone with my thoughts, it’s not easy. I can’t believe Raya’s mother left them when she was so young. She had to have been... what? Two? Three? How does a mother do that—just walk out of her children’s lives and never return? And the two little girls didn’t even have their father to comfort them after it happened?
My thoughts flip away from that particular heartbreak and back to the incident tonight at the guest house and what I’d like to do to Lawson if it was him... and those are dangerous thoughts to have. Grace must have told him that someone was staying in the guest house. That’s the only thing that would explain it, because as far as I know, he never comes over here. Unless he’s bringing women here to show off—a possibility I definitely shouldn’t discount. He might be using the pool, now that I think about it.
How am I going to address this with him without revealing that Raya is the one who is staying here? Then when I imagine what could have happened if he had run into her in the guest kitchen or in the living room or if he had climbed those steps and found her in the loft, a flame burns furiously to life in my chest. Tonight might have been a coincidence—an innocent misunderstanding—but I told him to leave her alone, and he better fucking listen.
My thoughts continue to scatter, lighting up the dark and keeping me from sleep. My motorcycle is supposed to be arriving tomorrow. At work, we have to finish the shoot. Hopefully Jay’s dinner went well with Grace and he can keep her entertained again so I don’t have to deal with her pouting, clingy presence like I had to this morning.
After hours of this kind of mental checklist and random wandering, I finally start to feel the heavy pull of sleep. Its thick blanket covers the thoughts that were plaguing me, submerging them into dreams that don’t immediately feature Raya this time.
This time, I’m at a fairgrounds—a place I haven’t been since childhood. There are so many people that I can hardly make my way through. It’s loud, and the bright lights of attractions and rides cast dark shadows across the faces moving past. I see Lawson and my father in the crowd chatting with the board of directors. There are clients passing, employees, people I met in different countries, and people from school who I haven’t seen in years.
The crowd is thick, but it’s important for me to get past everyone because there’s a woman crying in the distance that no one else seems to hear. It sounds like my mother at first, and my heart speeds up thinking I’m going to see her again. I haven’t seen her in life or in dreams in so long.
When I finally make it through everyone and the claustrophobia of all of that pointless noise falls away, there is only the darkness and a path leading into the woods where the crying seems to be coming from.
"Mom?" I call out in the voice of a child, jogging into the woods, under the canopy of trees where patches of moonlight light the way.
The crying gets closer, and I imagine seeing my mother’s beautiful face. She’s supposed to be at peace. Why would she be crying? Just when I think I’m finally going to find her, somehow I get turned around, and the woods seem like a maze more difficult to navigate than the crowd at the fairgrounds.
The sound of crying grows distant, and I stop running, feeling defeated and confused. What was the point of being led in here if I wasn’t going to be able to help her?
Someone with long, flowing hair the color of moonlight races past me, and its so sudden that I fall back against a tree before landing on my ass on the damp ground. The comforting smell of wet, mossy earth is all around me. A terrifying shadow appears on the path, moving in an unnatural way but quickly... chasing after the girl with moonlight in her hair.
"No!" I yell, now with the deep voice of my current self.
And then my voice is taken over by Raya’s. She’s yelling the same word, fearful and desperate and terrified, and I am pulled from the dream to find her in bed with me, lost in her own dream and crying. God, how long has she been crying?
"Raya." My voice is muffled with sleep, and she doesn’t hear me.
The cat was between us before, but now she’s gone so I scoot over and pull Raya close, curling one arm around her side with her back against my chest. She’s still asleep like there’s something that’s trapped her there, and she can’t break free from it. The desperation and breathlessness of her cries is heartbreaking, and it’s creating a rising panic of my own.
"It’s okay," I say into her hair, adjusting my arm under the pillow so that she is fully in my arms. "It’s just a dream. Breathe, Raya. I’m here."
—————
- RAYA -
I’m back at the crosswalk. It’s the first time I’ve been back since the day of the accident, and I’m staring at that notebook. There are notes there, I know there are, but I can’t see them and I’m trying so hard to make them appear when all that remains is a blurry, white page.
That same sweet old lady says hi to me, and when I look up it’s Nana.
"This had to happen," she says with that kind, delicate smile. And then she reaches up and touches the locket around my neck. "Don’t blame yourself, child. There are reasons you can’t see."
It’s awful, because I know what she’s talking about and I know what’s about to happen, but even though I’m aware of it this time, I still can’t stop it. It’s like I’m stuck in a time warp where I try to reach for her, but the air is thick and it slows my movements. She walks straight into traffic right before my eyes, and this time I see the impact. I see her get hit, and it shatters me. It shatters me all over again, and I fall to my knees.
"Raya." Dex’s deep voice sweeps in over my shoulder and draws me out, pulling me back from the abyss of pain that opens in the street, threatening to swallow me. "It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream. Breathe."
The nightmare blinks out of view, but the heavy dread and despair remain clinging, their talons sunken so deeply into my chest that it feels like I’m bleeding out. Then I feel Dex’s arm curled around me, holding me close and the steady, sure warmth of him at my back. I’ve awoken in his arms, and I’m immediately confused. This is so backwards from what usually happens.
"You’re safe," he insists, his voice another layer of that very safety he is speaking of. It’s deep and sure, and for some reason I can feel it so deep... resonating in my belly, in my chest—healing those imaginary wounds and bringing a sense of calm.
I shift against him, and his arm raises to allow me to turn completely so that I’m facing him instead of the memory of the nightmare that wants to flicker back to life and drag me under. He immediately kisses my forehead and my face before I have a chance to be embarrassed, and his lips must be magic, because something bright and beautiful blooms in the darkness.
"You’re okay," he assures me again, and I curl more tightly into him—into the space that defies all logic, because I fit perfectly here. It’s like I’m meant to be here—my body tucked against his chest, my head tucked under his chin, my heart protected and resting next to his.
He kisses the top of my head and then sighs deeply. It sounds relieved, and without realizing I’m doing it, I mimic him—sighing in return as I open my hand to lay flat against his chest. And that’s where I stay—in the safety of his arms until morning.
