He pointed at himself, his fingers trailing over his heart, the words making me hitch a breath. Because this had happened before but in reverse, with Erik. I hadn’t believed him then, and that had been a mistake. One I was still paying for. One I couldn’t afford to make again.

“Lucas,” I whispered as I started toward him. Because I knew how these dreams went. They could lie and they could pretend, all while seeming so real. Worst of all, they could end at a moment’s notice. I couldn’t let this one end without at least touching him first.

Lucas opened his arms to me, seemingly as stunned as I was that he was here. I ran to him, and as I flung my arms around his middle, wrapping him tight, I told myself that for at least as long as I got to hold him, it didn’t matter if this was real or not.

“I want it to really be you,” I said through a choked sob, half of gladness, half of despair, reveling in his warmth and that familiar scent. “Tell me you’re not a lie.”

“It is me,” he assured me, squeezing back. “But . . . I don’t know how much time I have here with you. If you wake up, or if the circle gets broken—”

“Circle?” I pulled back enough to peer up at him, pressing my hands into his chest like that could keep us both here, and connected, no matter what.

“There’s no time to—” He stopped himself, a scowl erasing his anxiousness as he took my hands in his. He turned them palm-up, examining the bandages Erik had wrapped them with. Had the bandages been there when the dream began? Or had they appeared only after I remembered everything?

“The blood,” Lucas said. “This is why there was blood in Charlie’s room.”

“Charlie?” Terror flashed through me. “What’s wrong with Charlie—is she hurt?”

Suddenly desperate to know with more certainty if he was or wasn’t a dream, I gripped his hands, ignoring the pain it brought to my own. Like Lucas’s presence, the pain was welcome, though, because it vouched for the realness of this moment with him. But then maybe I shouldn’t want him to be real as badly as I did if he’d come to tell me something terrible had happened to Charlie.

“No. She’s okay. She’s . . .” He stopped himself and then began again. “Stephanie, the police are looking for you. They found blood in the house after you went missing. After he took you.”

I shook my head, not comprehending. “It’s . . . not mine.”

“It was,” he insisted, presenting my own hands to me as proof. “He did this to you. He must have. Or . . . did he make you forget?”

My hands curled into fists, the palms burning. Even if I tried to explain to Lucas what happened, he wouldn’t understand.

“He didn’t do this,” I said. “It . . . was . . . sort of an accident. Lucas, where’s Charlie? Where’s my dad?”