Slowly, I roll over to face him, studying him in the darkness. I don’t know what he’s dreaming about, but I know it’s not just a nightmare. It’s worse. It’s the kind of dream you have when you’re reliving a loss, something terrible and painful.
It makes me feel for him, despite everything, a pang of pity that almost overwhelms me.
Suddenly, Aiden’s eyes fly open. He jerks awake.
It’s too late for me to fling myself down and pretend I’m asleep. I am frozen as Aiden’s eyes turn to me, his chest still heaving from the dream. For just a second, I can see despair in his eyes. It’s the kind of gut-wrenching pain that makes you want to cry.
Aiden stares at me, eyes narrowed. There’s a new kind of anger on his face.
I feel like I’m the intruder somehow, despite the fact that he brought me here. He wanted me in his room. He had me sleep beside him, even knowing this might happen.
But still, I feel like I wasn’t supposed to see this.
There’s a thick cloud between us, acidic and tense. I stare at him, and he stares back at me for a long moment before he finally speaks, his voice rough and deep.
“Go back to sleep.”
I don’t know how I can, with my heart racing and my stomach churning like this. But I take the excuse to break eye contact, rolling over again and wrapping my arms around myself, trying to forget the tortured sounds he made in his sleep.
We lie in silence for several long moments, until finally, my eyelids start to grow heavy again. I don’t know which one of us falls asleep first, or whether Aiden sleeps at all, but at some point, consciousness slips away from me.
CHAPTER8
Aiden
The nightmares don’t return, but still, I sleep like shit. I wake up again before dawn, restless and irritable.
Rose is still asleep. Her breath comes softly, almost unnoticeable in the silence of the room. Her pose is less controlled in sleep. She’s not curled far away like she tried to at first. Her legs and arms are sprawled a bit more across the mattress, as if she moved closer in her sleep.
I look away, refusing to indulge my craving for her by staring at her. Instead, I push my hands through my hair and think about last night. I’m still angry at myself for dreaming of my father’s death.
The dream isn’t new. I had nightmares about his murder for weeks after it happened.
None of us were with my father when he died. His body was found in the alley behind a bar Antonio owns. Antonio was the last person to see him.
It doesn’t take a fucking detective to figure out the truth.
I remember how burned the body was. I was there for the identification. We all were, even if it was unnecessary. We had to see. We were all in a state of anger, disbelief, and shock. I felt like I was in a parallel universe. Our father wasn’t supposed to die.
He was too powerful.
Staring down at the body, all I could think was that it looked like someone tried to destroy the evidence and didn’t succeed. It was a shit job.
Antonio couldn’t even fucking murder someone properly.
I’ve had nightmares of watching my father die. Nightmares where I’m there, seeing it all, unable to help. I just stand there and watch. I watch him choke on his own blood and watch him burn. My feet are fucking cemented to the ground, my arms held back by some invisible force so I can’t even reach out to him.
No matter how much I fight, no matter how much I struggle, I can never save him. I’m never strong enough to move past that moment where I’m stuck to the ground.
I can feel the flames on my face. I can feel the fire that burns my father mock me. It licks at my body, taunting me, as if it’s saying it could take me too.
I haven’t had one of those nightmares in a while. Not since my father’s death was fresh, my mother in the hospital, my entire life circling the drain.
But I know why I dreamt of it last night.
The woman beside me is beautiful, perfect, and delicate. She’s also the reason I dream of fire, and I hate her for it.
Antonio got greedy, trying to build up his legacy, to give his family more than they deserve. She doesn’t know the kind of pain that I do. Her father is still alive. Her father is the reason mine is gone.
