Lies in Blood (Dark Secrets #4)(83)
Author: A.M. Hudson

“But you shouldn’t be. You shouldn’t brush this off like it doesn’t matter, Ara. He is ten times bigger than you, and he—”

“I’ve got bigger things to worry about right now, Jase.” She rolled away, pulling the blanket up over her shoulder. “Just let it go.”

My hands hovered over her body for a second, tight, almost grabbing. I wanted to shake her—just dive into her head and insert all my own experiences and lessons so she’d wake up and smell the damn roses. But I pressed my fingers firmly to the side of her head, sweeping her hair back instead. “I love you, Ara. I won’t let this go.” I kissed her face, backing off. “But we’ll talk about it in the morning.” There was no point trying to make her see reason tonight. She was as stubborn as an ox when she thought she was right, and while this was an endearing trait most of the time, it was also downright dangerous. It would take time to make her see that her so-called best friend was in the wrong.

“Jase?”

“Shh.” I tucked the blanket around her firmly, hoping it’d keep her there, wrapped up safe so I wouldn’t be tempted to lecture her. “Just sleep.”

But she rolled over and shoved the blanket back. “Let it go. Mike didn’t mean to do that. He’s…I mean, look what I put him through. This was just the final straw, okay. He clearly can’t take any more of, well, me.”

Dear God. Her ability to see the good in everything had finally become a hazard. I lowered my head into my hands. “I understand that, Ara, probably better than you might think, but he’s not just your friend anymore. He’s the head of security. No matter what you do or have done, he should have more self-control than to have slapped you.” Surely she could at least see that much reason.

“It was a little tap.”

I looked up from behind my hands. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Jase. Go to bed. You look tired.”

A pattern of thought started in her head then. I couldn’t grasp it enough to see what she was thinking, but I knew she was right about my appearance. I hadn’t slept well since the Masquerade. I’d slept even less since I tortured her, and while I was fine with that, since it felt like some kind of penance, the tiredness was affecting my self-control, decision making, even self-respect, making it hard to maintain grasp on this ever-weaving web of lies and corruption going on around us while simultaneously practicing honourable intentions toward Ara.

“I am tired,” I said simply.

“Did you sleep at all last night?”

And there it was: the thought she’d started but hadn’t finished. It came to life in her mind like a memory; me, the screaming, the night she came down the corridor to see Arthur leaving my room after administering some hefty drug to stop the night terrors. She’d imagined me in there—imagined herself beside me, holding me. She wanted to be there. But if I let her in, if I let her know I was suffering for what I did to her, she wouldn’t let this go. She wouldn’t let me suffer for that.

“What would make you think I hadn’t slept?” I asked, planting the idea in her mind to just drop this.

“You know already, Jase, you can read my mind.” She touched my arm, yanking me back from the invasion on her brain. “How long have you been having those night terrors?”

I studied her carefully, wanting to let her in, knowing she could help, but at the same time knowing I didn’t deserve it. Then again, she wouldn’t drop this. She’d lay awake all night, worrying, and probably end up coming to my room in the small hours, getting caught by Falcon then having David breathe down her neck because he doesn’t trust her. She wouldn’t let this go unless I either talked to her about it or did something to her brain, which I didn’t want to do. “You…so you did see that dream?”

She nodded.

I sunk back, exhaling, as if I didn’t know.

“Are they always that bad, the dreams?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

I sat up, feeling my heart come away from my chest in a hot spill of blood. “Ara, please don’t—just…don’t say you’re sorry. I’m sorry. I’m the one who—”

“No.” She grabbed my hand and pressed it to her chest, right over the silver locket my brother gave her as a representation of his love. I wanted to pull away, but she’d never held me like that before. “All of that’s in the past,” she said. “I know what you did for me. I know it was to protect me, Jase, I forgave you a very, very long time ago.”

And she had. I’d seen that in her eyes, her thoughts. It was one of the first things I noticed when we met in the field the day I returned from the dead. “I know.”

“No, you don’t. It hurts me for you to feel such deep regret. You’re punishing yourself for something you had no control over.”

She was right. But it wasn’t just the torture at Elysium that bothered me—it was the pain I’d caused when I did have control. I drew my hand away. “I just…”

“Jase. It’s. In. The. Past,” she said, slowly and deliberately. “Stop dreaming about it.”

“To do that, I’d have to stop sleeping.”

She rolled her eyes. “How ‘bout you come visit me in our sleep again instead. We’ll make some nice dreams for you.”

Instant reaction? Lay her down and enter her head right now. Common sense reaction? “I’m not sure it’s really appropriate for us to be alone like that, Ara.”

“I know. But I can’t have you reliving that torture every night. I won’t.”

All very well, but what was she going to do about it?

“Not to mention,” she continued. “If I’m slipping into your dreams somehow, I don’t really want to be seeing that every time I close my eyes, either.”

I laughed. It wasn’t really funny, but she was right. She and I, we had a connection like no others in this manor. What I suffered, so too did she. I guess, in that sense alone, I owed it to her to be all right again. “Okay. No more nightmares then.”

“Good,” she said in a businesslike tone, and I just wanted to kiss her. She always had a way of making me feel better. “Now,” she added. “I have question for you.”

Oh no. “Shoot.”

“The mind-links?”

“Mm?”

“Did…” She tried not to smile. “Did you visit me in our dreams while you were supposedly dead?”