New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author, M. Leighton, is a native of Ohio. She relocated to the warmer climates of the South, where she can be near the water all summer and miss the snow all winter. Possessed of an overactive imagination from early in her childhood, Michelle finally found an acceptable outlet for her fantastical visions: literary fiction. Having written over a dozen novels, these days Michelle enjoys letting her mind wander to more romantic settings with sexy Southern guys, much like the one she married and the ones you'll find in her latest books. When her thoughts aren't roaming in that direction, she'll be riding wild horses, skiing the slopes of Aspen or scuba diving with a hot rock star, all without leaving the cozy comfort of her office.
About Michelle: I love coffee and chocolate, even more so when they are combined. I'm convinced that one day they could be the basis for world peace. I also love the color red and am seriously considering dying my hair.
DOOR NUMBER TWO
THIRTY
Cole
I WAKE WITH a start. My heart is pounding and my head hurts so badly my vision is blurry for a few seconds. I close my eyes and cradle the throbbing left side of my skull until the worst of it passes.
I recall the dream, so perfectly clear. So perfectly real.
Only it’s not. It’s only a dream. A sweet dream and a horrific nightmare. I’ve had it dozens, no hundreds of times before. Maybe more. It always leaves me feeling wrecked. Panicked. Lost. But even so, I never want to wake from it.
Yet I always do.
It takes me a minute to realize who I am. I’m Cole. The guy in the dream. I look like him–somewhat–and I sound like him. I feel like him. Only I’m not sure I’m him. I don’t know what my name is.
In the dream, I see and hear and think and feel like Eden, as though I know her every thought and emotion. But I’m still Cole. It’s like I’m in the director’s chair, directing an intricate drama, enacted only on the stage of my mind. I know all, see all, feel all. Only it’s not real. None of it.
Minutes pass. Maybe more. Maybe an hour. I don’t know. Time means different things these days. But some time later, I crack one lid. When knives don’t pierce my brain, I lift the other and glance around. I’m on my back, staring at the sky. I recognize the trees above me. It’s a familiar canopy, especially one tree in particular with its gnarled branches that look like an enormous hand reaching for me. I’ve always found comfort in it, as though something might be coming to save me, to drag me out of the blank hell that I find myself in.
I sit up, each grate of the park bench digging into my back as I move. They’re familiar to me, too. I wake here often. More often than not, actually. I think the cops stopped patrolling this park at night, so as long as I’m gone by an hour or so after daylight, they don’t give me trouble. But I always come back. After the sun goes down, I come back and I watch. I watch the family across the street, in the brownstone that is as foreign to me as my name or my childhood. It’s never in my dreams, only in my reality. Or, rather, someone else’s reality.
My memory extends five hundred and eight days. I woke on a riverbank with blood streaming into my eyes. I was freezing and had a broken arm, a dislocated shoulder and four cracked ribs. I remember every day since then–the hospitalization, the psychiatry, the search for a missing man or a wrecked car. But there was nothing. For months, there was nothing. And I couldn’t take it any more, so I ran. I took to the streets because I couldn’t stand the constant feeling that I’d lost something so dear to me that I didn’t want to live without it.
Only I have no idea what–or who–that might’ve been. It’s enough to drive a man crazy, though, so I left. I abandoned polite society to hide. Here. Where I can see that brownstone.
Today, the sun is streaming through the single tree that dots the landscape out in front of it. It dapples the front door and the walk with moving drops of black and white, a kaleidoscope in constant motion. The wind carries the scent of fresh cut grass from yesterday, along with something else.
It’s baby powder and the soft perfume of the woman from my dreams. The woman across the street. Or at least how I imagine she might smell.
I dream of them almost every night–the woman and her daughter. I know now that they can’t mean anything to me, or I to them. Eden and Emmy aren’t even their names. I heard the man who lives there, the husband most likely, call them Jovie and Serah. I wish they were mine, but they’re not. I wish they had answers, but they don’t. I know that now. But still I come. Because the dreams of them, the near-memories of them give me comfort in a comfortless world.
As the sun creeps higher in the sky, it begins to shine on the side of my face, a welcome heat to what skin isn’t covered with hair and scar tissue. I know I have to leave. Before they make me leave and I can never come back. I don’t know much, but I know that I have to come here. I have to come back here to watch them. And dream about them. If not, I’ll go crazy. I don’t know how I know that; I only know that I do.
I watch the man leave, another face familiar to me only through my dreams. He leans back in and kisses the woman, drawing her into his arms. I can see his passion for her. What I don’t see is her passion for him. Or is it only that I wish there was no passion for him? I can’t be sure, but it hits me in the chest like a metal slug when he leans away and she smiles at him. That smile is meant for me. I can feel it.
And yet it’s not. It’s very obviously not.
She closes the door as he jogs lightly down the steps. He’s all but whistling, he’s so happy. Actually, the closer he gets, the more clearly I can see his face. His lips are pursed. He actually is whistling. I just can’t hear the sound. I don’t hear all that well anymore, truth be told.
When he’s out of sight, I drag my eyes back to the house, hoping for one more glimpse of the woman before I retreat into the shadows of a nearby bridge. That’s when I hear an explosion. It shakes the ground under my feet.
Then I see the smoke. And I hear the scream. And the brownstone bursts into flame.
TO BE CONTINUED
Note from the author
Have you ever awakened from a dream and been able to trace many of the various elements to something you heard or read or saw in real life? I have. Many times. And so has Cole. Everything in his dream points to something based in reality. He’s not as far from Eden as it seems. He just has to find his way back to her.