Page 71 of The Truth About Love

No.

I can’t breathe.

It’s like someone’s got their hands around my neck, slowly choking the life out of me.

Because the man on the other side of the door looks exactly like the boy I’ve loved for so long, only aged by five years. He still has the same woody shade of hair that flops too long over eyes blue as sapphires. Same dimples on his cheeks. Same muscular arms that used to hold me while I slept, only bigger now and more toned.

It’s not him. Itcan’tbe him.

I’ve had hallucinations before, but never like this. Never this viscerally. Like I’m trapped inside a lucid dream, the delusion refusing to disappear no matter how many times I tell myself he’s not really here.

This isn’t real.

I can’t tell if I’m shouting or whispering, or even talking aloud at all. I just know that if the image of Auden Wells and his gut-wrenchingly beautiful face doesn’t disappear soon, I’ll probably start to scream.

I scrub at my eyes with the back of my hands and look to the open door again.

The fake Auden is still there. Still leaning against the door frame, but with concern in its eyes now rather than the cocky glint that shone there when it first appeared.

“Are you alright?” it asks, and even its voice has the same caramel-smooth lilt to it that I remember so well. “Summer-Raine?”

Why won’t it stop talking?

I slam my hands over my ears and squeeze my eyes shut, repeating the same three sentences over and over and over until my voice turns hoarse.

Go away.

Leave me alone.

You’re not real.

When I feel the warm touch of hands on my skin, I scream. I scream until there’s no air left in my lungs and my body is drained of energy, weak and limp as my legs give out beneath me.

My eyes are still closed. I don’t dare open them. In all my life, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced pain or fear quite like this. Even during my episodes of disassociation, when I’ve wandered off in the middle of the night as if I’m sleepwalking, have I ever felt such a loss of control over my mind.

I guess nothing can turn me inside out quite like the image of Auden Wells and the reminder of what I gave up so many years ago.

I don’t regret what I did, I never have. Letting him go was the best thing I could have ever done for him, but that hasn’t stopped my heart from beating his name every second of every day for the last five years.

Over time, the absence of him from my life got easier to manage, so long as I didn’t see him unexpectedly on social media or bump into him around town.

Once, when I was grocery shopping, I saw him in the vegetable aisle loading yams into his basket. It was coming up to Thanksgiving, maybe a year or so ago, and the sight of him standing there analysing root vegetables had me running back out the way I came. He hadn’t seen me, but even so, it took several minutes of heavy breathing in the alley beside the store to calm the panic attack that was swelling inside me like a tidal wave.

But that was nothing compared to this.

“Summer-Raine, I need you to breathe.”

I can’t.

“You can. Copy me, okay? In for four seconds out for eight, can you do that for me?”

But the voice of the hallucination is beginning to ebb away. Even behind my eyelids, coloured spots dance dizzyingly in my vision. My head feels light and heavy all at once, like I’m made of both helium and steel. I must bite my tongue, because it’s iron I taste as I lose consciousness, the soothing notes of fake-Auden’s voice lulling me into oblivion.

***

It’s Winter’s face I see when I wake up.

I’m lying on the couch, my legs and feet propped up on a pile of throw cushions, with a wet flannel drooped across my forehead.

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