Insight (Web of Hearts and Souls #1)(35)

“I wish I knew you were real before yesterday.”

“You doubted that I was?” He asked as he turned me in his arms. Concern was masking his playful image.

“Deep down I believed you were, I really did. There was always a lingering doubt that I had fabricated you to get me through each day. It was so exhausting to feel so much, to see what I saw for no reason, and not understand it. Closing my eyes at night and seeing you made it worth it.” I made a face. “I’ve always been a bit of an introvert. Not really living, going through the paces, just waiting.”

I ran my hands across his arms.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m independent. I’m not one of those girls that needs a boy to define her. I’ve just always felt like I was missing something, like I was late for some big deal in my life. Only I didn’t know what it was. Out of place basically.” I paused. “Then this happens. I had a bad dream. That one dream turned my life upside down. It scared the hell out of me when my parents came out and told me I was basically in hiding. But through that I kept telling myself that it must mean you were real, if Drake was real you were real. I told myself if something as crazy as being from another dimension was true, then I could have really found you in my dreams. That no matter what I would find you. But all of that happened, like, this week. Before, before I was trying to get out of going away to school. I was watching movies with my friends, and every once in a while they would convince me to go to the lake or something.”

Throughout my confession his emotions varied, under it all he was mad.

“I cannot believe they let you struggle like that.”

“I hid it well.”

“They never talked to you about your insights?”

“No, but I never asked either. They were worried enough about my sleeping patterns.”

That didn’t help his mood at all. My hand reached for his chest. “You’ve always been my best friend. Even though we never said a word, I felt like you got me. And it was so easy to feel only your emotion, you always had such a calm. I mean, I love my friends back home, but only couple of them ever knew the real me.”

His hands squeezed my waist. “I may have felt peaceful, but I swear to you that was only when I laid eyes on you. I struggled, too. I’ve always been treated differently. They look at me like they know something I don’t, but at the same time like they think I know some cosmic secret. I can’t tell you how many times I ran away, searching for a way to find you, searching for answers to questions I feel in my soul but cannot understand enough to clearly ask them. I’ve been out of place, too. Only I was watching the clock, I was searching for a beacon. I never doubted you were mine, that I was yours. But I fought the course of time. I fought every rule they put before me.”

I don’t know what would have been worse, not knowing without a doubt we were more than just dreams, or knowing and not being able to do anything about it.

“How worried do I need to be about us right now? What secrets are they hiding? Do you really think they kept me hidden because of that dark dimension? I mean, are they expecting something out of us?”

His jaw clenched, he glanced away. “Chara can be just a superstitious as any dimension. I’m more worried about how our dimension is connected to Esterious, what Drake wants with you.”

“Is it really wicked there?”

“It’s a place that has always haunted me. Wicked doesn’t begin to describe it.”

A shiver ran down my spine.

He wrapped his arms around me. “I’m not going to let him hurt you, or our home. I swear that to you. We’ll figure out what our souls are trying to tell us, one way or another. But right now, I want to enjoy these precious first moments. I want to hear your voice.” His hand moved in small circles on my back. “I want to feel the heat of your skin.” He tilted his head. “I want to gaze at that wonder in your eyes. I want to awaken you to all that power in your soul.” He blushed ever so slightly. “I want to make up for all these years when you thought I was a dream.”

“You are. Right now you are,” I thought as I glanced longing at the massive waterfall before I turned in his arms. “Okay, I’m remembering how we came here, what the passage felt like,” I said as I closed my eyes.

“Focus on that for a second or two.” He swayed his hands against my arms. “Now open your eyes,” he thought.

When I did, the wave was there again.

“I can see it!”

“Okay, you lead the way,” he thought as he laughed aloud.

I walked slowly through the wave. The roar of the waterfall was gone, and the air was perfectly still again. Only the haze remained behind us.

“How come it wasn’t there at first?” I asked, looking back at the haze daring to reach out and feel the color of the air.

“It was there—you just were never taught to see it. The strings are all over every dimension. You’ve walked by more than you could ever know. Our eyes can see them. You just have to learn to call on what you were born with.”

I looked around the string, and to my right I could see an array of colors that seemed to stretch out for miles in every direction. They looked like they were blocking our path.

“I can see more colors, is this a wall?”

“This is where the string divides. Focus on the hazes, and you’ll see that the more dominant hazes are framing different paths.”