Reaching Answers (Artemis University #8) - Erin R Flynn Page 0,34

to be treated like this?

7

I woke when soft lips kissed along my shoulder and hands I knew well moved up my body… Except they weren’t Lucca’s.

Sitting up with a gasp, I pulled the bedding with me and blinked into amused emerald green eyes. Craftsman. He was in my bed and Lucca was gone.

What the fuck?

The rest of my room was blurry though and I started to calm down. “This is a dream.”

“Very good, love,” he chuckled, reaching for me. “Did you have fun with your bear apologizing? It was killing me not to be able to even hear it through your barrier, and when you came downstairs walking tenderly… I remembered doing that to you.”

“Don’t,” I rasped, not able to talk about that with him, even in a dream.

“Making love with you that first time changed something in me, my sweet fairy.”

“Stop,” I begged.

“Okay,” he murmured when I tried to get off the bed. He pulled me back and hugged me to him. “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, my mate.”

“I don’t know if I can be mates with you, Julian,” I confessed, saying what I’d been feeling. “I can’t let you back in.” I shook my head when he tried to argue. “Why are you even in my dream?”

“Because maybe you’re ready to hear me without all the pain,” he whispered as he rolled us so I was under him. He clasped his hand with mine above our heads, hugging me with his other arm. “I love you so much, Tamsin.”

“Why didn’t you love me enough to stay?” I choked out, burying my face against his neck. “I gave you everything, Julian, all of me. Why wasn’t I enough?”

“You were,” he rasped. “You are my everything. I lost myself and my way. It wasn’t you. I’m so, so sorry. It wasn’t you and I was always coming back to you.”

I shook my head, crying as he tried to tell me again what he had before, but I couldn’t hear it still. I did finally see how my pain and hurt blocked the logic and any of it making sense to me. I could at least recognize that now.

I simply didn’t know how that might ever help us.

“I miss you all the time,” I sobbed when he was done. “It hurts all the time still. Why? Why can it hurt so much still? We’ve been apart so much longer than we were even together and still I feel like I’m dying inside too often. What did you do to me? Why did you break me?”

“You’re not broken, love,” he promised, his tears falling on my face. “You’re perfect. I broke your trust and heart, and I’ll fix both if it takes me forever.”

“I can’t feel like this forever,” I argued. “This isn’t normal. I should have moved on by now.”

“We aren’t normal. Our love was more than average, and forever. We’re meant to be.”

“I don’t believe in fate or people telling me who—”

“I don’t either,” he cut in, smiling when I couldn’t hide my shock. “I don’t. I won’t be pushed either or—”

I sighed. “Of course you agree with me now.” He was in my dream. Duh.

“I would, no matter when. You know me well enough for that.” He kissed my nose when I tried to argue. “After the way my family has tried to push me into everything they wanted for me, I would never just listen to fate. Witches and warlocks aren’t like shifters. Melding magic is a possibility, not a promise set in stone. I knew we were a perfect match long before I could piggyback your magic.”

“I thought that once too,” I admitted before the dam broke and all I could do was cry out my grief and pain. I missed him so, so much still and longed for him in a way I didn’t think possible, much less so many months later.

All he did was hold me and promise we would be together again and he would love me like I deserved.

Like an idiot, I wanted to believe him, this dream version of him. For a moment, I actually wondered if it was a dream, thinking he was too much exactly like Craftsman to have come from my subconscious. Plus, even if I couldn’t see my full room, the dream was way too vivid and detailed.

So I kissed him. I kissed him while still crying, wanting to and not caring since it was a dream. If this was some sort of magic, he wouldn’t let it