A bitter taste sticks to the back of my dry throat.
I cough but choke, the sound leaving my lungs in long, torturous heaves.
Darkness materializes around me with depressing finality and I completely lose any sense of my physical body.
I don’t know where I am.
My surroundings dive into pitch-blackness.
My head follows suit as tendrils of shadowy hands grab hold of me.
A strangled sound gets trapped in my belly and the tight noose of a panic attack wraps around my throat.
No…
No…
No.
I blink my eyes open, and slowly, almost like a slow-motion true crime documentary, the grainy colors of reality engulf me.
The light condensation against the oxygen mask strapped to my face comes first, followed by bright-white walls.
Darkness recedes in my peripheral vision with a snake-like motion, and with it, my awareness trickles back in.
A beeping machine.
The smell of hospitals and mint essential oil.
The gradual return of my physical body to reality.
My name is Ava Nash. Twenty-one years old. I love classical music and reading scandalous bodice ripper novels. I watch cheesy rom-coms or true crime documentaries—nothing in between. I’m kind of obsessed with the color pink, can eat candy floss for days, can’t get enough of salted caramel popcorn, and can survive on smoothies as long as they have strawberries in them.
Like every time I get my episodes, I repeat the usual mantra I taught myself. It’s my attempt to prove my existence to the shadowy version of myself.
The version that seems to forget the entire world and succumbs to frightening numbness for extended periods of time.
I breathe steadily as the remnants of the fog clear and I wiggle my toes. It’s a habit I picked up to ensure I’m here. In the present.
My other self doesn’t have the capacity to wiggle my toes. I watched some security footage from our house once. I look robotic when I’m in that state, too stiff, too emotionless.
Too lost.
The feel of my body returns in small increments and that’s when I sense that my right hand is warm.
Too warm.
I try to crane my head to the side, and the rustling of the pillow fills the quiet space.
“Ava?”
Deep, rough notes penetrate my foggy brain, and I find it hard to remember to breathe properly.
Eli’s cradling my hand between both of his as he stares at me from the chair at my bedside.
I thought I already woke up.
Is this another episode—or, worse, a nightmare?
I swallow, but the ball constricts my throat. So I wiggle my toes again and, yup, still moving. This is real.
How…
I stare at Eli’s brutally handsome face as if it’ll explode with answers for his bizarre existence in my vicinity.
For some reason, he looks older than when I saw him earlier. Slight stubble covers his harsh jawline, and his hair is longer, disheveled, and finger-raked. He appears to be a bit tired as well, his lips absent of some of their color, as if he’s suffering from a cold.
Wait.
Can hair grow in the span of a few hours?
A day?
Two?
I narrow my eyes, trying to remember the last thing that happened. I was going to an after-party with Ollie, Raj, and the others, but then…I…
A car without headlights.
Calling 999.
Blinding lights.
A lorry.
A crash.
Stormy, harsh, soulless eyes.
The same eyes that are fixating on me right now.
“Ava? Can you hear me?”
The rough timbre of his voice nearly sends me into a second, more prominent panic attack. My heartbeat spikes and the machines go crazy. Crazier than the fake note of concern in his voice.
He curses under his breath and pushes something above my head as he strokes my face.
“Breathe, Ava. Fuck, come on, beautiful. Breathe.”
I actually stop panicking for a second because what…? What’s going on?
He called me ‘beautiful’ and he’s touching me. Matter of fact, he’s been touching me since I woke up.
Eli never touches me.
The longer I stare at his eyes, the more my breathing slows. They’re different. But how…? Why…?
“That’s it. Good girl.”
My heart trips over itself and my breathing stutters. The machines beep louder and my world tilts on its axes.
Did Eli just call me a good girl?
The Eli King?
Oh.
This must be a dream, after all. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into a nightmare where he jams a spear into my chest and laughs like a maniac as my blood splatters on his precious shoes.
I close my eyes and will myself to go back to reality. This is just so cruel, even by my strange dreams’ standards.
“Ava…open those eyes. Look at me.”
I peek at him and immediately regret it. His somber gray eyes are as angry as a hurricane and as tempting as the damn devil.
“You feeling all right?”
His words don’t match his expression. He sounds concerned, but he looks bored. Cold. Indifferent.
Like the Eli I’m used to and the Tin Man we all know and hate.
This imposter needs to piss off, or at least put more effort into sounding sardonic and unbearably sarcastic like the actual Eli. Two out of five on Trustpilot. Could use more imitation skills.
I pull the mask from my face with an ease I didn’t expect. Honestly, after that accident, with a truck, no less, I expected to die or at least end up with lifelong paralysis. In the best-case scenario, I’d get away with a few broken bones. I stare down at myself, at my hands, and move my toes again.
Nothing.
There’s no way in hell I would’ve come out of that one unscathed.
Hold on. Was the accident a dream?
Though, if I were speculating, I’d bet money the current situation is the actual dream, not the other one.
Maybe I’m dead and this is a benevolent angel’s effort to give me a dreamlike experience of what I couldn’t have when alive.
Brilliant. Dead at twenty-one. What a loss of potential.
But maybe it’s a good outcome, considering all the fuckery that’s been happening in my life lately. Or the burden I’ve posed on the people closest to me.
I start to sit up, then pause. Eli helps me and sets a pillow behind me so I’m comfy.
Maybe I’m disfigured and he’s sympathizing? Though he doesn’t do that.
If sympathy were to meet Eli in an alley, it’d stab itself in the eye and he’d just step on it and be on his merry way.
I touch my face and feel the normal texture. No bandage. Hmm. I’m at a loss, to be honest.
“What are you doing here, Eli?” My voice sounds low, husky, a bit odd, as if I’ve been screaming for days.
Eli rises to his full height, looking majestic in a black shirt and gray trousers. His godlike presence and the tinge of intimidation that rushes through me whenever I’m around him pale in comparison to a different phenomenon.
His eyes.
They grow in size for the first time in my life. They’re a lighter shade of gray, so close to a cloudy summer’s day.
“Say that again.” He speaks slowly.
“What are you doing here, Eli?” Annoyance breaks through my voice and I have to swallow past the discomfort.
Before he can answer, I catch the shadow of Papa and Mama walking through the door. They’re both holding coffee cups and speaking in a hushed tone.
I think I hear ‘again’ and ‘it’s not doable anymore.’ My posture straightens to eavesdrop, but they both come to a halt when they lift their heads and see me.
A rush of comfort mixed with a tinge of unease floods me. Yikes. I avoided them for as long as I could after the competition, but a strange car without headlights brought us to this less-than-glamorous scene.
“Hi, Mama, Papa…” I say with a guilty voice and trail off when they look at me positively shocked, as if I’m a ghost.
Something’s off.
They both seem worn out, like they’ve aged five years since the last time I saw them. My father, Cole Nash, is the most collected man and the most loving father, and yet, right now, he looks to be on the edge of something. His beautiful green eyes, which have always reminded me of spring and sparkling exotic water, look half dead.
He’s lost weight, too.
Mama is worse. Her usually shiny blonde hair that she passed down to me is now dull and uncharacteristically gathered in a ponytail. Her skin is pasty white and her face looks haggard.
Silver Queens Nash is a celebrity in this world. And it’s not because Grandpapa is an ex-prime minister, my nan is an ex-politician, or my father is a business tycoon. It’s because she chairs different charities and works extremely hard to make our world a better place.
She’s how I learned empathy, sympathy, and to be abundantly aware of my privilege and how to use it to help others.
My parents are the reason behind my high standards for love, family, and communication.
They taught me and Ari our worth way before we were old enough to understand the term.
So it kills me to feel like I’m the reason behind their soulless eyes.
“Ava, honey…” Mum wraps her arms around me and squeezes me in a hug that nearly crushes me.
“She…” I can see Papa’s calculative gaze straying to Eli. A look of mutual understanding passes between them before my father nods, and a fractured sigh falls from his lips.
What the hell is going on?
Papa never liked Eli. And I mean never.
He’s called him a little psycho since he was twelve and has often gotten into massive rows with Uncle Aiden—Eli’s dad—over that.
He hated him even more when I had a stupid crush on him and warned me to avoid the nuisance, as if he was a spark of fire and I was a house pumped full of petrol.
It’s safe to say that he’s the only person who joins in enthusiastically whenever I talk shit about Eli. So the fact that he’s nodding in agreement with the same person he calls ‘a prison runaway’ and ‘a privileged criminal’ is bizarre, to say the least.
This is a dream, after all.
Mama pulls away, but her touch doesn’t feel surreal. I can feel her warmth and smell her favorite cherry perfume. It’s her. My mother.
“Are you feeling okay, honey?” she asks, stroking my hair away from my face.
Papa sits beside her and I stare at them, then at Eli, who’s standing behind them like a wall, both hands in his pockets and a calculative look in his eyes.
“Yeah,” I answer. “Papa. What’s going on? Where’s Ari?”
“Ari went to get you a change of clothes.” Papa strokes my hand. “Do you need anything else?”
“No…” I get distracted by Eli again, pause, swallow, then groan. “Seriously, why is he here? Wait. You can see him, too, right? Mama? Papa?”
Mama steals a glimpse behind her, and when she looks back at me with a furrow in her brow, my heart races so fast, I nearly throw up.
Is it my imagination again?
No.
Please no.
“Where else would Eli be?” Mama asks with a note of confusion.
“He better have stayed the entire night by your side.” That note of loathing Papa has for Eli rushes to the surface, and I let out a breath.
Okay. It’s a bit more normal now. Except where Papa wants Eli to spend the night by my side.
Or that he’s here in the first place.
“Do you remember what happened, hon?” Mum asks.
All of a sudden, a shroud of tension covers the room. Three pairs of eyes dig into my skull in silent expectation.
Way to pressure a girl.
“Um, yeah. I called 999 before the accident because someone was following me.” I trail off when I hear a subtle tsk coming from Eli, then narrow my eyes at him.
“Someone was following you inside the house?” Papa asks with a note of weird carefulness.
“Was someone else there when you fell down the stairs?” Mama says.
“Stairs…there were no stairs. It was a…”
My lips seal together when Eli shakes his head. I narrow my eyes.
“It’s fine if you’re confused,” Papa says. “You’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, so let’s leave it for now. We’re just glad you’re okay.”
I nod, but the confusion mounts to an unprecedented level. I am so going to have a field day talking to Cecy about this.
“Where’s my phone?” I ask Mama. “I want to call Cecy.”
“She’s on her way from the States.”
I frown. “But she wasn’t leaving until next week.”
“She hasn’t been here for about a month, Ava,” Mama tells me, her voice soft but her face slightly paler.
What? There’s no way. We were together a few hours ago.
My protests remain unsaid when a few doctors and nurses walk inside, looking like a prim-and-proper private crew that someone like Eli—or Papa—would insist on hiring.
“How are you feeling, Mrs. King?” the doctor asks, and I search my surroundings for Aunt Elsa—Eli’s mum. Or maybe Aunt Astrid—Eli’s aunt. Or Eli’s grandmother. Those are the only Mrs. Kings I know.
I find none of them and redirect my gaze at the white-haired doctor, who’s watching me with that fake sympathy.
“Mrs. King?” he repeats.
“Who is he talking to?” I whisper to no one in particular. “Is Aunt Elsa around?”
“He’s talking to you, Ava,” Eli says with a cruel tilt to his lips. “We got married two years ago, remember?”
