Seven

Chapter 45

"You were yelling in your sleep man, I was about to wake you up." He says before going back to his own bed.

"What time is it?" I groan and wipe the beads of moisture off my forehead.

"Almost five in the morning." Curby answers with a yawn. I pull the soaked sheets off to the side and get up to get a bottle of water from the small mini fridge in our little hotel room.

"Did you have another nightmare?" Curby asks.

"No." I lie. Obviously I did, he knows that. He's just trying to ask what's been torturing my sleep these last few nights.

"Go back to sleep." I instruct him and he grunts before turning his head on the pillows to face the wall. A minute or so later he begins to snore.

I scull the entire bottle of water and then go for a piss. I look like absolute shit in the mirror. Dark circles permanently hollow under my eyes from sleeplessness but I won't be going back to sleep again. I don't want to see the awful things that wait for me in slumber. I've been having fucked up nightmares the last three nights; all of them have been different but with the similar ending. They all start off so nice, Lilianna and I on the beach, going for a drive in her car, coming home to her living in my house ... but they all end with her lifeless body in my arms and me screaming myself awake.

I grab my phone from the nightstand and look over her pictures, trying to replace the images of her bloodied body with real life pictures of her. After an hour of staring at her photos on the bed it's almost a reasonable time to call her. I know six in the morning isn't her usual wake up time but she's answered me even earlier the other two mornings.

"Seven?" Lily answers on the third ring, her voice croaked from sleep and I close the slider door behind me so as not to wake up Curby while I talk to her on the small balcony.

"Hey." I breathe out calmly at the sound of her voice. She's okay, she's safe, and immediately my body relaxes.

"Did you..." She begins to ask but stops herself.

"I'm okay, it was just a dream." She says instead, already knowing why I'm calling so early again. When my first nightmare happened I called her as soon as I woke up. She was surprised I guess since we had hardly spoken for four days. I hadn't intended on telling her about the dream, I just wanted to make sure she was okay but she managed to get it out of me. She has a knack for getting me to tell her anything she wants to know.

"You're still coming back today, right?" She asks me and I hear a door close in the background. Is someone there with her?

"Are you alone?" I ignore her question.

"No, I'm still at Mesha's. I just left her room so I can talk without waking her." She explains and I'm relieved.

"Yeah, I'm coming back today. We leave here in an hour." I answer her and grab the outdoor throw blanket off the back of one of the deck chairs and sling it over my shoulders. The sun is only just beginning to rise so it's a little brisk outside without a top.

"Did you want me to meet you at your place? I could cook us dinner?" She offers and the images from my most recent nightmare; coming home to a pot boiling on the stove plays to haunt me.

"No." I say a little too quickly, blinking away the image of Lilianna's bloodied body.

"No, I'll uh, I'll just come pick you up from Mesha's as soon as I get back to the city." I tell her. I want to spend as much time with her as I can get, there's no other way I'd spend my days off after doing a job than being with her.

"Okay. I have work at the club tonight though." She tells me.

"Take the night off." I don't want her there, especially if I don't have to be there.