Page 190 of Diego

The memory grips me in the chest, and I tighten my fingers around the railing.

I had known fear before that day. I think of the time Dante was shot and hospitalized. But even then, there had been someone to blame, and something to do. I had simply never understood how it could make a man feel utterly helpless.

I close my eyes and immediately regret it.

Blair’s lifeless face appears again.

My eyes open.

“Fuck.”

The wind takes the word and scatters it.

I straighten and drag both hands over my face. This is absurd. Blair is upstairs asleep. In a few hours she will wake up, complain that she is starving, and probably argue with me about something or other. She will roll her eyes when I remind her to sit down. She will insist she is perfectly capable of doing whatever she has decided to do, and I will have to decide whether the argument is worth having.

A faint sound comes from behind me.

I turn quickly.

Blair stands in the open doorway.

She is barefoot, wearing the oversized shirt she went to sleep in, with one hand wrapped around the frame of the door. Her hair is mussed from sleep, and her eyes are narrowed against the cold air coming into the house. She looks tired and confused, but very much alive.

For a second, I cannot say anything.

Seeing her there after the nightmare hits me hard.

“What are you doing out here?” she asks softly.

I release the breath caught in my chest. “Couldn’t sleep.”

She studies me.

Blair has become irritatingly good at knowing when I am giving her only part of an answer. That's another thing I don't know what to do with: how much a part of my life she's becoming. And whether she wants it to stay that way, as inconvenient as that might be.

She steps onto the terrace in her bare feet.

I make a move toward her. “It's cold. You should go back up to bed.”

“It is cold, and you're not wearing a shirt,” she says simply and continues walking toward me.

I wait until she reaches me, then take her hand automatically and pull her closer, partly because her fingers are cold and partly because I need contact with her.

She looks up at me. “Nightmare?”

I nearly lie and tell her everything is fine, that she shouldn’t worry. But I just can't.

“Yes.”

Her expression softens. “About the hospital?”

I nod.

I do not give her the details. I cannot say the words out loud while she is standing here in front of me. Telling her that I dreamed she died feels too close to inviting the image back into the world.

Blair steps closer until her forehead rests against my chest.

I wrap both arms around her.