The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 35 🔻 Daydreamer

It took my blinded eyes a few blinks to adjust to the sudden brightness. Dominic leaned back from the top step of the step-stool he balanced precariously on; arms spread wide in victory. "See that!" he said as we both beheld the ceiling lamp he had just finished installing. "We don't need to get the super involved. We just fixed a light ourselves!"

"Heck yeah! Home improvement!" I cheered as we both high-fived in the now illuminated kitchen.

I blinked again. I found myself standing in the living room, my arms full of paperwork.

"What're you running around with all that stuff for?" Dominic asked me from the sofa. He didn't tear his eyes away from the T.V. screen.

"I start my internship tomorrow!" I told him. "I need to be ready!"

The corner of his mouth twitched as he continued to stare at the television. There had been no more congratulations from him lately. Just grunts and shrugs.

I blinked again. Now, in the present moment, our apartment was bathed in soft, blue light. I held a hand to my throbbing forehead as I stood in the hallway, alone now, but no more memories came forward. "Dominic?" I called out into the apartment. Only silence answered me. So I tiptoed across the floorboards, hand running along the walls for support. My home looked so strange and not as I'd remembered it.

Ethereal.

Ghostly.

I paused at the threshold of the bedroom, eyes heavy at the sight of our bed. More memories fluttered around in my brain like moths—soft memories of the two of us lying together, intertwined, kissing, caressing. Exposed. Vulnerable.

My heart faltered inside my ribs. Clutching at my chest, I turned away from the bedroom. Every other room in the apartment was much the same. Around every corner were more buried memories, all of them insignificant and inconsequential. Yet all of them so intrinsically intimate and sacred to me. The more I explored, the more this place felt more like home instead of an unfamiliar world.

Yes. The more I looked, the less alien it appeared to me. My home was exactly as I had left it. Why did I even leave it in the first place? I stepped from the cavernous hallway into the living room, and that's where I found him.

My Dominic.

"Skye," he breathed. "You're back."

And I blinked again because I got the feeling that I had been somewhere far away, but I just couldn't for the life of me remember where. I smiled. "I'm home now."

He smiled in return at that. Then he extended out his arms to me. It was all I could do to not run to him and throw myself into his waiting embrace. I took a single step forward. Something crunched beneath my bare feet. Uttering a gasp, I looked down and saw that the floor was covered in scattered glass shards that sparkled like little ice crystals.

A single pale beam of sunlight streamed in from the window, striking Dominic in the face. He winced and backed away from it into the shifting shadows of the living room.

"Dom," I said. "What's with all the glass?"

At my question, that vein bulged in his forehead again. Just like it always did when he was mad. "Don't worry about it," was his curt answer. "It's fine."

I followed the line of glass shards toward the balcony door. Instead of a window or a tarp covering it, I saw clouds that rolled by a little too fast to be normal, while the sun set in double time. I saw the distant lights of Tacoma flicker on, framed by broken glass door. "Dom...The door..."

"I said it's fine."

The house shook. I had to lean against the arm of the couch to steady myself. A picture fell from a wall, exposing the hole in the sheetrock I had intentionally placed it to hide. My eyes narrowed at it. That's right. Dominic had smashed his fist through the wall. No need for the super, he'd said. He'd fix it himself.