Page 69 of Catching My Dreams

“Never.” It was a vow. One Ella knew he meant.

The pain in Ella’s shoulder exploded as the shadows jerked her back with sudden force, and she clutched her arm with a gasp as she sat up in bed.

“Ella? What’s wrong?”

She flinched away, the darkness of her bedroom too heavy to make out the person sitting up beside her.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he soothed, and a second later, the lamp next to him lit up the familiar angles of his face. “It was just a dream.”

The breath that had been caught in Ella’s lungs released in a rush. “It was just a dream,” she repeated, tasing the truth of each word as they rolled clumsily and heavily off her tongue.

It had been a nightmare, to be precise. There had been none of the extreme detail that emphasized the reality of her dreamwalking experiences. No clues for her to find and repeat to the police the following day. No random everyday interactions for her to witness. No embarrassing scenes for her to see.

It had been a dream, but the cold sweat and racing pulse Ella had woken up to were very real.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Noah asked her. His voice was gentle, but concern underscored his words.

“No,” she replied, moving closer to him and lying back down. “It was just a silly nightmare.”

He joined her, his head lowering to the pillow. “Do you get them a lot?”

Ella could have lied. Maybe she would have if she were more awake or if half her mind weren’t still stuck in her dream. She turned her body to face him, placing her hand between her cheek and the pillow.

“Almost every night since we found Asher.”

Noah swallowed. “And the dreamwalking?”

“It still happens.” She forced a smile. “But those aren’t all bad.”

He shifted closer and wrapped an arm around her waist. His eyes were heavy, the sleep she’d woken him from trying to drag him back down.

“Tell me one of the good ones,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

His thumb started drawing lazy circles on her skin. “Tell me about something good you’ve seen when you spiritwalked or dreamwalked.”

Ella focused on slowing her breaths before forming a response. She turned to face him.

“Well, when I used to spiritwalk, I could go anywhere I wanted in the blink of an eye. Paris is probably my favorite out of all the places I went to.” She smiled. “I wish you could have seen it. You would love the Louvre.”

Noah’s eyes widened. “You went to the Louvre?” he asked. “I’m so jealous.”

“It’s actually why I went there,” she admitted. “Not to make you jealous,” she added with a chuckle. “But because I overheard you talking about wanting to go to the Louvre one day. You also mentioned going to Amsterdam to see the Van Gogh museum, but I didn’t get the chance before…” Before Brett did what he did.

After that, she’d never used her power again until July, despite how much she missed exploring the world.

“I miss it, you know,” she whispered. “I miss going to new places and seeing the things most people only get to see in movies.”

“One day, we’ll make it to Amsterdam,” Noah said softly, and the fact that he was so casually talking about traveling with her in the future had her stomach fluttering. “What about dreamwalking? There must be some good memories from that, too.”

Ella thought about the elderly couple she’d appeared in front of a few days earlier or the mom and daughter who’d stayed up drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows and watching romantic comedies. She thought of the dad who’d been teaching his young daughter how to ride a bicycle and who’d carried her home when she’d fallen off and grazed her knees.

She thought of all those moments she’d witnessed that had been far from terrible, but there was one moment she settled on. A moment that she wasn’t even sure was real.

“It was two or three years ago,” she started, her voice lowering to a whisper. “I appeared in your mom’s house.”

Noah groaned. “Please don’t tell me you saw me doing something embarrassing?”

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