“Ahh.” I jump up, narrowly avoiding a facial collision with Michael. “What is wrong with you people?”
“Just making sure you’re alive,” Lennox says.
“If I wasn’t, Michael’s awful breath would have woken me from the dead.”
He grins and pats my chest. “I forgot how grumpy you are in the morning. Or is it the trauma from being taken?”
“Why are you here?” I sit up and push the covers off.
“Dude, it’s ten o’clock, Mom sent us in to wake you,” Michael says.
Ten? I was more exhausted than I thought.
Lennox yawns. “I’d kill to sleep through the night.”
I try to stand up, but Michael pushes against me.
“That’s not why we are here, though,” Lennox says.
“Well, I’d be concerned if you thought you needed two people to wake me up. Unless you weren’t expecting to find me alive.”
Michael chuckles, and Lennox hits him in the chest.
“We are here because Karli isn’t,” Lennox says.
My brain is slow to process this new information. She promised she would be here. But now that I think about it, she never said those words. She was upset about something before she left. In my dream. What was it?
I scrub a hand over my face.
“So what are you going to do?” Lennox asks.
I wish I knew. I can’t drive over to her apartment even if I wanted to. I don’t know where it is. I could call her but… somehow we never exchanged numbers over the course of the last two days. Juliet would have it, but a text or call just isn’t enough.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Do you love her?” Lennox asks.
My heart pounds into my ribcage. I rip off my shirt instead of answering.
“More important question,” Michael interrupts. “Have you seen her sleepwalk? Super freaky.”
I frown. “How do you know about that?”
Lennox shoves Michael away with a ‘not helping’ look.
“We already know you love her. We could see it the second you came in with her.” Lennox follows me into the bathroom. She better leave soon if she doesn’t want to be traumatized.
“I care for her, yes. But maybe she doesn’t feel the same.” It hurts saying that out loud, even though I know it’s not true. She feels what I’m feeling, but she’s denying it. She’s afraid of becoming her mom. She told me that herself. But there’s more than that.
“Oh, she definitely feels the same,” Lennox says.
I turn on the hot water in the shower.
“So, what are you going to do?” Lennox asks, again. Doesn’t she have somewhere else to be? Last time I checked, babies need attention.
“Shower.” I push Lennox out of the bathroom. “Thanks for waking me. I still didn’t need both of you up here.”
“But we need to come up with a plan,” she hollers.
