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Because if I did, she’d be gone.

I’d had this dream before—well, at least different versions of it. Sometimes she’d be standing across a road I couldn’t cross. Sometimes she’d call my name from somewhere I couldn’t reach. Sometimes she’d be cheering for me in the stands, waving a team scarf with my child in her arms. Sometimes she was just…there. Within arm’s reach. Close enough to touch, but every time I tried, she disappeared into thin air.

So I kept my eyes shut and leaned into the warmth pressed against my chest, sinking into the way her hands gripped me like I might’ve slipped away.

“Please,” she was pleading, her voice breaking apart. “You have to help me. I can’t get you down on my own.”

I almost laughed. Almost. Even in my head, she was worried about me. I forced my eyes open anyway, just a crack. She was exactly how I remembered…and yet, not at all. My vision swam, but I caught pieces of her. Her face. Her eyes. Her mouth moving too fast, words tumbling over each other.

“You’re so…beautiful,” I heard myself say, because that part was easy. That part had never changed.

“I missed you…so much,” I whispered, because if this was my mind playing tricks, I was taking everything it gave me. Her fingers clutched tighter. Too tight. Real hands gripped like that. I shut my eyes again, hard this time, like I could force the mirage to stay.

“What are you doing?”

My brow furrowed.

That…doesn’t belong here.

“I can’t just leave him,” she choked out. “I can’t—I can’t watch him die!”

“What are you talking about?” the other voice said.

My head shifted like it was filled with wet sand. Why was there someone else in this?

“Evie…”

It barely made it out, but she heard it loud and clear.

She pulled back so fast, it made my head spin. Her hands were on my face, my neck, gripping me gently, like she was afraid I’d break. “Jackson?” she breathed as her eyes locked onto mine, and something in my chest stuttered. Because I knew those eyes. Those big, beautiful, green eyes.

“Evie?” I mumbled, and this time it didn’t feel like part of the dream. It felt like something was tearing its way out of me, ripping me in half on the way out.

Her lip trembled. “Yes.”

Her hand slid up, thumb brushing under my eye. And…I felt it. Not like a memory. Not like a ghost. I fucking felt the warmth, I felt the calluses, and suddenly the dream started to rot around the edges. Because I saw it properly now. Her once-vibrant hair was now a long, dull, matted mess, and shadows carved deep under her eyes, with marks on her skin that shouldn’t exist. This wasn’t how I remembered her…this was what happened to someone who’d been…here.

“Evie…” My voice cracked. “Are you…”

Real?

Alive?

I couldn’t even finish what I was saying, because I was starting to understand. Starting to see past the version of her I held onto for seven years and into what was actually in front of me. No. No. Don’t tell me Evie’s been here this whole time. I didn’t—I refused to believe that. There was no way. There was no fucking way.

Only…the truth was standing right in front of me.

“Evie,” I moaned, closing my eyes again as my head throbbed from trying to understand what the fuck was happening, because I'd rather be dreaming than face the reality that Evie had been right next to Peter's house this whole time.

“Please just listen to me,” she rushed out, her hands shaking as they gripped my shoulders. Feeling her touch on my skin made my eyes water, tears threatening to spill over. “He’s going to be back soon. If you don’t leave now, he’ll kill you,” she cried before she reached for my arm and tried to lift it. Pain exploded through me so violently, it ripped a scream out of my throat. My shoulder pulled as white-hot pain shot through my limb like she was tearing it off my body.

“I’m sorry!” she cried, but she didn’t stop—she couldn’t, panic driving her as she tried again. I screamed louder this time, my body jerking uselessly against the chains.

“Stop,” I gasped.

She pulled back like I’d struck her before she stumbled back on the chair, hands flying to her face as she broke apart in front of me. “Oh God…oh God…”

“Evie,” I said, more steady this time. I needed her to look at me. She did, and I saw it. The fear. The urgency. The way she kept glancing toward the ceiling like something might come crashing through it at any second. But I couldn’t look away, because…I mean…it was Evie. I spent the last seven years thinking I'd never see her again, and now that I was looking at her again, I couldn’t fucking look away. How the fuck was she still alive?