The Search for Lily Myers ✓

38 | The Eye of the Hurricane

Once Amelia finally tumbled into her bed that night, she slept fitfully. She dreamed that she was walking down a dark, empty hallway and could hear Lily crying for help through the walls, but there was no way to get to her. She clawed and clawed at the paint until it started chipping off under her fingernails, then watched in agony as the wall seemed to heal itself like a scab forming over a wound, as if the whole house was alive. When she awoke, or so she thought, she didn't realize yet that she wasn't in her own bed. She curled onto her side and whispered something to Henry, but when the person next to her turned towards her, it wasn't Henry at all but Colton. She tried to scream, but he covered her mouth with his hand and suddenly her eyes flew open again—

Amelia bolted upright in her bed, gasping for air, and looked down to see the blankets tangled about her legs like she'd been flailing around in her sleep. She lifted her hands to cover her face and slowly exhaled. It was just a nightmare.

The pale rays of morning sun that snuck through the chinks in the blinds were faint; it must have been early still. The shirt that she had fallen asleep in, one of Henry's tees, was now sticky with sweat, so she pulled it over her head and discarded it onto the floor. She felt like she'd barely slept at all and yet wasn't sure how she was supposed to fall back asleep after that, so she rolled over to grab her phone from the nightstand.

To her surprise, Natasha had texted her just a couple of minutes ago.

Are you alive and if so do you happen to be awake?

Barely. To both questions.

Yikes. You good?

Yeah, just didn't sleep well.

Well if you need something to cheer you up I was gonna ask if you wanted to go Christmas tree shopping with me and Asher today. We're gonna grab one for his place

Sure but I don't think my apartment allows us to have the real trees :( I can see if Henry wants anything though?

Yes!!! We can live our best hallmark channel double date life

Lol I'll ask him

Amelia switched over to her messages with Henry, unsure if he'd already be awake or not. On one hand, he was a little more of an early bird than she was, but on the other, it really wasn't far out of the realm of possibility that he'd been kept up with even worse dreams than hers. The last she'd heard, he was still working on remedies to fight off his chronic nightmares.

She felt like she needed at least an hour-long cuddle to recover from the night she'd just had—she didn't know how he put up with it all the time.

Not that he had much of a choice.

Any plans for today?

While she waited for him to respond, she crawled out of bed to retrieve a scrunchie so that she could toss her hair up into a sloppy bun. By the time she returned to the comfort of her sheets, Henry had replied.

Nothing more important than you. Did you want to do something?

Nat wants to know if we wanna go Christmas tree shopping with her. I can't have a real tree at my place but I thought you might

Only if you'll help me decorate it

Deal

Her mood already significantly improved from where it'd been a minute ago, Amelia let Natasha know that Henry was on board with their Christmas tree excursion. Nat apparently hadn't even picked a Christmas tree farm for them to go to, however, so she was going to have to get on that while Amelia got dressed. Since they clearly weren't in any sort of major rush, Henry offered to come pick her up and once she'd pulled on a sweater and jeans, she saw that she had another text from him.