Page 55 of What We Bury

Only the cold penetrates.

I’m on the beach. Under the jetty. Not in the dress this time—naked, or half-naked, or maybe the fabric is made of fog. I’m alone, but everything has an uncanny feel to it, as if a million eyes are watching.

Shadows swing above me. Body after body, dangling from their ropes, stomachs sliced open.

I try to move. Try to run. My feet are stuck—sand or acid, I can’t tell—and every heaving step lands in slow motion.

At first it doesn’t hurt, then I feel the sting start in my shins. It crawls up, blistering the skin off my bones.

Every nerve is awake, raw.

I scream again. Desperate to break free.

“You’re okay. Hey—you’re okay. You’re safe.”

The voice pulls me up from the dark wet, from somewhere that smells like salt and copper and the inside of my own screaming throat. I’m thrashing before I’m conscious, fists swinging at shadows, and then there are hands on my shoulders—warm, firm, holding me still without holding me down—and a face swims into focus above me.

“It’s just a dream, baby girl. Just a dream. You’re okay.”

The panic drains out of me like water from a cracked glass, and I sag back against the pillows, chest heaving, sweat cooling on my skin.

“There you go,” he murmurs. “That’s it. Just breathe. I’ve got you.”

His voice is so soothing my body goes loose.

I’m safe.

“Good job. You’re doing great.”

I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth. The room sharpens around the edges as the nightmare slides away. I’m in my bedroom. My apartment. Streetlight slants in through the blinds, painting everything in stripes of orange and black.

There’s a man standing next to my bed.

The guy who helped me calm down under the jetty a couple of nights ago. The one who held my hair when I was sick.

Micah.

Wait.

He’s standing next to my bed?

“What the fuck?”

I scramble upright, grabbing for the lamp on the nightstand. Light floods the room, harsh and sudden, and I blink against it, heart slamming back into overdrive.

He’s already stepped back, hands raised, palms out. The universal gesture ofI’m not a threat. He’s wearing gray sweatpants and a hoodie, his dark-auburn hair is damp likehe showered not long ago, and his face—now that I can see it properly—is soft with concern.

But still, he’s a man in my bedroom at—I glance at the clock—3:47 a.m.

“What thefuck?” I say again, because apparently that’s the only phrase my brain can produce right now.

“I heard you from the street.” His voice is low, calm, like he’s talking to a spooked animal. “You were screaming. I thought someone was?—”

“So you broke into my apartment?”

“I knocked first. You didn’t answer.”

“Because I wasasleep.”