Page 19 of Catching My Dreams

“Maybe you are.” He looked at the bed. For so long, he’d wanted Ella, even while hating himself for it. And after finally getting the one thing he wanted, it had all come crumbling down around him. It wasn’t at all how he’d wanted it to go. “This was a mistake.”

He remembered the stricken expression Ella had worn when he’d left her bedroom. He’d done that to her. He’d questioned her loyalty to Asher and, in doing so, probably forced her hand. She’d spiritwalked after he’d left, and if Brett hadn’t been out of his house when she had, she might not have ever made it back to her body. Anything that would have happened to her would have been his fault.

He’d been so fixated on thinking of her as the girl who’d dropped him and his friendship like he was nothing that he’d been blind to the truth. He’d been thinking of her as the bad guy for so long that he didn’t realize it was him. He was the villain. He was the one in the wrong.

Laughter jarred him from his thoughts, and Noah looked up to see a group of people walking toward him. He crossed the street, thankful that he would have the sidewalk to himself.

“What the fuck have I done?” he whispered, the words floating unheard into the night, the only witness to his turmoil the streetlight above his head and the eerie shadows beneath his feet.

6

“Miss Montgomery.”

Ella could still hear the screams. She didn’t think she would ever forget them.

“Miss Montgomery.”

She could still see the girl’s eyes, wide with fear and pain but dark with a hopelessness that Ella prayed she would never have to feel again. Ella had tried to help. She always did when her dreamwalking led her to scenes like the one she’d witnessed the night before.

She could never do it, though—help. The most she could do was call the cops the next day and leave an anonymous tip, which is what she’d done that morning before driving to Georgetown.

But it never felt like enough. Placing that call wouldn’t go back in time and stop that man from going into his stepdaughter’s room. It wouldn’t prevent what had already happened. It wouldn’t save that girl from what he’d done.

“Miss Montgomery!”

Ella’s eyes flew up from her desk, landing on the male professor in the front of the lecture hall.

“Ah, thank you for finally joining us,” he said, the words laced with sarcasm.

“Sorry,” Ella managed to say, but the word lacked sincerity. She couldn’t even bring herself to be embarrassed that the entire class was staring at her, snickers making their way through the room.

The screams were still echoing in her mind, the cries for help attacking her skull as mercilessly as her migraine.

“I know you’re an adult and can make your own decisions.” The graying man’s tone implied the opposite, reminding Ella of the way a fed-up parent spoke to a misbehaving child. “But perhaps you should consider less alcohol and more study time in your future.”

It took several seconds for his meaning to sink in, and when it did, her fingers dug into her thigh. “I’m not hungover, Professor.”

His lips pressed into an unimpressed line. “You’re wearing sunglasses to class, dear. I’m not stupid.”

Dear. Ella hated that patronizing word. “I’m not your dear, and I’m not hungover,” she bit out. “I have a migraine, which makes me sensitive to light.”

“And I’m Ronald Reagan.”

Ella knew she wasn’t entirely in the right. She hadn’t been paying attention during class, and it wasn’t a leap to assume a college student wearing sunglasses indoors was hungover. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t pissed off.

“Since Miss Montgomery clearly isn’t in shape to answer the question, does anyone else want to weigh in on the limitations of applying a Freudian psychoanalytical approach to literature?”

“I’m not in fighting shape with the migraine and all,” Ella said before any of the other students could answer. “But why don’t I give it a shot anyway?”

Thankfully, she’d done the assigned reading that would allow her to answer the question even if she hadn’t paid attention to the lecture.

The professor smirked and gestured for her to proceed. “Please. Enlighten us.”

“Well, for starters, what about the fact that a psychoanalytical approach emphasizes the author’s unconscious over their very conscious and intentional efforts?” she asked. “While a literary work might begin as a spark formed in the author’s unconscious, can we really say that something like a poem is a product of an author’s unconscious mind when a poet intentionally has to use rhetorical devices like rhyme and metaphors, not to mention that every piece of literature is carefully edited?”

Someone in the row behind Ella let out a cough that sounded remarkably like the words “Oh shit.”

“Does that answer the question?” she asked, her sickly sweet smile slipping as a muscle in her jaw twinged. She needed to book a physio appointment. Like yesterday.

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