Lux (The Nocte Trilogy, #3)(51)

His eyes close like a curtain and I know that I’m right.

His breath is shaky and his hands tremble as he touches me, as he refuses to pull away even now.

“You have one question left, Calla,” he reminds me, his voice somber. “Ask it.”

So with fear in my heart and ice in my veins…I do.

“What is real?” I finally ask, choosing my words carefully. “I don’t know anymore. My memory has holes, and the memories I do have seem impossible.”

“They aren’t impossible,” Dare tells me. “Trust me.”

“Can you explain?” I ask him. “Please, please. I can’t take much more of this. I just need the truth.”

“Where do you want me to start?” Dare is resigned, and he’s sad.

“Start with the night my mom died,” I suggest.

Something wavers in Dare’s gaze, but he gathers himself.

“Do you remember it? Do you remember how bloody I was?”

I’m already shaking my head from side to side, slowly, in shock. Not because I don’t remember, but because I don’t want to.

“There was a lot of blood,” I recall, thinking about the way it’d streaked down Dare’s temple and dripped onto his shirt. It’d stained the t-shirt crimson, spreading in a terrifying pool across his chest. “I didn’t know if it was yours or… hers.”

“It was neither,” he says now, his face as grave as death. “It was Finn’s.”

But that’s impossible, because I’d only imagined that Finn died. It was my mother.

“You held me up,” my lips tremble. “When I was falling down. You held me while I waited for… Finn.”

I’d waited for Finn to call.

I’d waited and waited and waited.

The sirens wailed in the night, and I’d paced the floor.

Dare nods. “I’ve always held you up, Cal.”

“When my father came in, and said… when he told me about the accident, everything else faded away,” I recall, staring out at the ocean. God, why does the ocean make me feel so small? “Nothing else mattered. Nothing but him. You faded away, Dare.”

The truth is stark.

The truth is hurtful.

I lay it out there, like flesh flayed open, like pink muscle, like blood.

Dare closes his eyes, his gleaming black eyes.

“I know,” he says softly. “You didn’t remember me. For months.”

We know that. We both know that. It’s why we’re here, standing on the edge of the ocean, trying to retrieve my mind. It’s been out to sea for too long, absent from me, floundering.

I snatch at it now with frantic fingers, trying to draw all of my memories back. They’re stubborn though, my memories. They won’t all come.

But one does.

My eyes burn as I fix my gaze on Dare.

“You confessed something to me. It scared me.”

Dare’s lids are heavy and hooded, probably from the weight of guilt.

He nods. One curt, short movement.

“Do you remember what I told you?”

He’s silent, his gaze tied to mine, burning me.

I flip through my memories, fast, fast, faster… but I come up empty-handed. I only emerge with a feeling.

Fear.

Dare sees it in my eyes and looks away.

“I tried to tell you, Cal,” he says, almost pleading. “You just didn’t understand.”

His voice trails off and my heart seems to stop beating.

“I didn’t understand what?” I ask stiltedly. Just tell me.

He lifts his head now.

“It isn’t hard to understand,” he says simply. “If you remember all that I told you. Can you try?”

I stare at him numbly. “I’ve tried already. I… it’s not there, Dare.”

Dare’s head drops the tiniest bit, almost imperceptibly, but I see it. He’s discouraged, disappointed.

He shakes his head. “It is there. Trust yourself, Calla. Your memories are real. Finn was dead, and then he wasn’t.”

“My mom died instead. I thought I was crazy,” I murmur. “Because if it was real, then I somehow exchanged my mother for Finn.”

Dare sighs, a ragged and broken sound. He tries to touch my hand, but I yank it away. He doesn’t get to touch me. Not anymore.

“You don’t understand,” he says quietly. “But you’re not crazy.”

I stare at him. “No, I don’t understand.” And you have no idea what this feels like.

“You will,” he replies tiredly. “I swear to God you will.”

A lump lodges itself in my throat as the sea breeze rustles my hair. I take a deep gulp of it, filling my lungs with the clean scent.

“Did you ever love me at all?” I ask, the words choking me, because no matter what, it’s the most important thing to me right now.

Pain flashes across Dare’s face, real pain, and I brace myself.

Don’t.

Don’t.

Don’t.

Don’t hurt me.

“Of course I did,” he says quickly and firmly. “And I do still. Right now.”

He stares at me imploringly and I so want to believe him. I want to hear his words and clutch them to my heart and keep them there in a gilded cage.