Page 29 of Dollhouse

“You mean it,” she states, and there’s the shadow of a question in her eyes.

Here goes nothing. “I love you, Em.”

She chokes on a surprised laugh, a tear falling from her eye and rolling down her face as she leans up to kiss me. “I love you.”

I lose myself in it, in her. In the weight of what we know now. She thinks I’m just declaring my feelings, but I’m declaring that I would throw myself in the fire if it means sparing her.

So I kiss her like we only have tonight.

SIXTEEN

I can’tbreathe.

The weight on my chest quickly grows heavier, crushing my lungs. Each tiny gasp of air I manage only makes my panic skyrocket because it’s not enough. Not evenclose.

My hands clutch my throat. Breath ragged, heart on fire. They’re dead, all of them and I’m next. Because I can’t fucking breathe and…god, maybe that’s for the best.

Just as I’m about to fade completely, I surge forward, and the heavy grip on my lungs moves, crawling to my shoulders. Someone’s grabbing them, shaking me. Black spots blot my vision until I choke in enough air for them to fade slightly. The room is awash in the blue filter of the moon.

“Emma.” My name comes through like we’re underwater but I try to turn toward the hands gripping my face.

“Emma,” Noah says, voice raised and anxious eyes swimming into my line of sight as I blink, sucking in air. Quaking hands move to brush the sweat-dampened bangs from my eyes.

“S-sorry,” I say, teeth chattering. “I’m sorry.”

He hushes me, pulling my hair back, and tugging me into his chest. The clock reads three in the morning, and Molly purrs from the foot of the bed, totally undisturbed. She’s so used to my night terrors by now that she phases them out completely.

Noah’s hand splays over my heart for proof I’m calming down.

It’s so hard, but I try. The new nightmare is petrifying. Every time I watch, frozen, out the window as my boys are chased down right outside. I watch as their bleeding bodies line the porch, all while I’m unable to move or scream. Noah, dead. Jesse, dead. My Bo,dead.

Hot tears sluice down my face to the pillow. Molly finally stirs and patters her way up to my chest to curl up. The soothing, deep rumbles of her purring pick back up immediately.

“I guess the cat bed was a waste of money, huh?” he says, reaching over me to pet her.

I quietly laugh, wiping the tears that are now like glue for the cat hair sticking to my face. “Sorry, we’re trauma bonded. She’s stuck to me for life.”

He kisses the top of my head, resting his chin there and curling me in tighter to him. These days, it feels like he can’t get me close enough, and I love it. “Was it the same nightmare?”

I nod, huddling backward into him. This is my favorite place to be. I’ve never felt so safe before. “Yeah. This time it wasn’t just you though. Bo and Jesse, too.”

“So, Jesse has officially wormed his way into your heart then?”

“Less like a worm and more like a bullet. He’s kind of hard not to love, I think. Once you get past being scared of him.”

He laughs softly against the back of my ear. “True.”

There’s a moment of silence while both of our thoughts trail in different directions. “I wish I could keep the bad dreams away.”

“Do you mind just talking to me for a few minutes? We can go back to sleep after and I should be okay.”

“What kind of things, hmm?”

“You know, just whatever. Tell me something I don’t know. Somehow I feel like I know you better than anyone else, and also nothing at all.”

He ponders this, turning to lie on his back, so that we’re both staring up at the ceiling, but his hands remains in mine, thumb rubbing absentmindedly along the the sensitive ridge of my fingertips. Moonlight filters through the window in squares across the crumpled blanket.

Noah folds a bicep back to prop his hands under his head and I stare like a lovesick teenager at his messy black hair as he turns to look at me. “I used to have this dog, Shiloh. She was a black lab. When I was five, I think, my parents bought her as a gift for me because I had trouble making friends and they thought she might bring me out of my shell. So we kind of grew up together.”