A Phantom Enchantment (19 page)

“I'm . . . starting to remember something . . . but, I definitely saw you with a grasshopper pin. And Owen gave it to you, didn't he? Emma, you know what I'm talking about. Don't pretend you don't.”

So Gray'd had the dreams, too. I stood with my mouth open, trying to think what to say.

“You make me sick,” he said suddenly, leaping off the bed, grabbing his clothes, and locking himself in the bathroom.

I heard him hastily get dressed, then he came out and grabbed his bag, heading toward the door. “Gray, where are you going?” I asked.

“Out.”

“You just got here. Let's talk about this.”

“I'm afraid of what I'll do to you if I stay,” he said, flashing me a look that horrified me. Then he left and slammed the door behind him, so hard that the new mirror Crespeau had installed came crashing to the floor.

C
HAPTER
19

W
hen Gray came back three hours later, he was remorseful. He knelt down in front of me where I sat on the bed and gripped my legs, laying his head in my lap and begging forgiveness.

“Where did you go?” I asked.

“I went running.”

“For three hours?”

“Well, I stopped now and then and walked around the sights. I was trying to calm myself down. I hate when I get like that.”

“Does it happen often?” I said.

“More lately,” he said. “I don't know why. I'm starting to remember what happened on that life raft. I must have blocked it out. But being here with you is triggering something in me. It scares me.”

“What does it feel like?”

“Like something's raging inside me, and I have to run to get rid of the bad energy. And then after a few hours I'm fine again.”

He dropped his head into my lap, and I ran my fingers through his hair, hoping it would soothe him.

“It wasn't just the grasshopper pin that set me off,” he said.

“No?”

“Since I've been back, I can't seem to . . . I can't . . . well, you know.”

“No, I don't. What is it?”

“Don't make me say it, Emma,” he said.

And then I understood. “Oh.” He looked up at me, shame in his eyes. “Gray, it's understandable. What you've been through was so traumatic. Give yourself a break.”

I pulled him up so he was sitting next to me on the bed and propped myself on my knees to face him. “It's going to take some time, but you will be able to . . . feel again.” And suddenly, it became a challenge to me. I wanted to be the one to make him feel again. “Besides, we can have fun trying.”

I crawled onto his lap and ran my fingers across his scalp, leaning in to kiss his neck, feeling him squirm beneath my touch. “Emma, don't,” he said.

“Why?”

“It just makes me feel damaged, because I know I won't feel anything.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“Okay then,” I said, moving off him and getting off the bed.

“This was what I was afraid of.”

“Then let's get out of here and not think about it,” I said. “Let's do something.” The truth was, I was starting to feel claustrophobic again.

“I'm too tired.”

“I guess you would be after running for three hours,” I said. “You mind if I go out for just a little bit? I need some air.”

“When will you be back?” he said.

“I don't know. I won't be long.”

I felt such a welcome sense of relief when I emerged from the stifling hot dorm into the cold winter air outside. What I really wanted was to find Owen, but I knew that wasn't the best idea.

So I walked to Pont des Arts, the bridge where I had secured the padlock. I had a strange desire to see if it had changed or fallen off, to find some outward sign of what I was feeling inside: scared, confused, guilty. But the padlock looked exactly the same.

When I got back to my room, Gray was asleep. But his sleep looked restless and haunted. He jerked awake when a floorboard creaked, sitting upright. For a moment, he was stuck in some liminal space between slumber and wakefulness, screaming at something from his nightmare and scratching the air as if batting demons away.

“Gray, it's okay. Wake up,” I said, trying to still his arms.

He finally woke, staring at me as if he had no idea where he was. After two months on a life raft, I imagined that happened a lot.

“What's wrong?” he said.

“You were having a nightmare.”

“Yeah, I get those now.” He was breathless and sweaty.

“How often?”

“A few times a night.”

“A few times a night?” I said. “Isn't there anything you can take? Sleeping pills or something?”

“I don't think they would work,” he said.

“Why don't you ask your doctor?”

“I can't tell my doctor.”

“Why?”

“Because the Coast Guard won't let me back if they find out I've lost it.”

“Gray, you haven't lost it. I'm sure they'd understand a few nightmares considering what you've been through.”

“Emma, you don't know what the Coast Guard is like. You can't show any signs of weakness.”

“Well, you can in front of me,” I said.

But he just turned over in the bed, exhausted, and fell back to sleep in a matter of minutes. I crept around my room, trying not to make any noise. But it was difficult getting anything done without disturbing him.

Gray slept a lot during those first weeks. And he often woke in the middle of the night, sometimes crying out as if in pain. But when I'd ask about the nightmares, he'd shut me out and tell me everything was fine.

I didn't try to seduce him again, so our nights were spent next to each other physically but as far away emotionally as possible. And yet, every time I came home from classes or rehearsals, Gray grilled me on my whereabouts, acting more possessive than he'd ever been before. But he refused to come out with me and my friends, telling me he wasn't ready to see anyone. Elise and Owen and Flynn kept asking for him, and I had to keep making excuses for his absence.

And then one day, he showed up at the chapel during one of our rehearsals. Elise was practicing the song Christine first sings after visiting the Phantom's lair. I didn't even know Gray was there until I saw Owen's jaw drop and then harden into stone.

I turned around, and Gray was standing at the back of the chapel with his arms folded across his chest, like we were supposed to carry on as usual even though this was the first time he'd shown his face outside my dorm room. Elise stopped singing, then stepped offstage and ran toward him. I was shocked when, without a word, she threw her arms around him. Gray seemed taken aback as well, even more so by the fact that Elise was crying. But they had dated for six months during our sophomore year. It was totally normal for her to be relieved that he was safe and standing in front of us now, apparently healthy and intact.

“Gray, it's so good to see you,” she said.

“Thanks. It's good to be here,” he choked out. I knew it was a lie, a politeness that no longer came naturally to Gray.

Owen and Flynn were a little more wary around him. Flynn shook his hand and made a few offhand remarks about him being “a tough son of a bitch.” Owen shook his hand out of obligation, but it was clear there was no love lost between them.

“I'm so glad you decided to come watch our rehearsal,” I said.

“Oh, is he staying?” Owen asked.

“Um, I don't know. Gray, are you staying?” I asked. He shrugged. “You're welcome to. Right, guys?”

“Of course,” Elise said.

Flynn and Owen muttered some lukewarm affirmations, and it occurred to me that I was treating Gray with kid gloves. Everyone else was following my lead.

Gray took a seat in one of the pews, and I attempted to resume my directorial duties even though the atmosphere in the room had become thick with tension, like someone had swung an incense censer around.

Elise picked up where she'd left off, singing the lines:

Gray had never heard these lines before, but he must have recognized us in the song, must have noticed how I'd incorporated our tortured meetings in the dreamscape into the lyrics. It took all my resolve not to turn around to see his response.

“Okay,” I said when she'd finished. “That was great. Now let's try the duet between Christine and Raoul.”

Owen ascended the altar, and Flynn cued up the sound track. This was the song Owen and I had written together, and it occurred to me now how much we'd based Raoul and Christine's relationship on our own conflicted friendship.

Owen began singing:

And then Elise responded:

The more lines they sang, the more uncomfortable I became, fearing what Gray would think if he recognized the parallels.

Everyone seemed on edge that day, and none of us was at the top of our game. Elise left with Owen and Flynn to grab some lunch, but Gray said he wasn't hungry so we ended up walking back to the dorm ourselves.

Finally, I decided to confront the silence head-on. “So what did you think?”

“About what?” he said.

“About the rehearsal? The songs.”

“They were . . . good. Your friends can sing.”

He wasn't making this easy. “So what do you want to do now?” I said. “You're not hungry. And you seem in no mood to talk.”

“Sorry, I'm just a little tired.”

“It's okay,” I said. “We can go back to the room if you want.”

“No.” He stopped walking.

“Okay . . . well, what then?”

“I don't know, but I don't want to go back there. I feel like you want to hide me away so I don't embarrass you.”

“Gray, what are you talking about? It's you who hasn't wanted to come out. I've been begging you to come say hi to everyone. But you weren't ready, and I didn't want to pressure you.”

“The only reason I didn't want to see anyone was because I knew how you felt.”

“Gray, you're acting paranoid.”

“Great,” he said. “Now you're psychoanalyzing me?”

“No, I'm not psychoanalyzing you. I'm saying you're paranoid if you think I didn't want you to come out with my friends. Because that's not how I feel at all.”

“I just want things to go back to the way they were. When everything was easy. Just you and me against the world.”

He stared off into the distance like he was trying to conjure some wisp of a dream of how things used to be. So much had happened to him over the past few months that I wondered if he was remembering clearly or if he was romanticizing our past.

“Gray, I want that, too. But you're here now, and we can create new memories. I don't want to go backward. I want to go forward.”

“And that's just the trouble, isn't it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm your past. And everyone here is your present.”

“And you're here now, too, so you're a part of my present. So what's the problem?”

“I don't know. I feel stuck. Like I can't get out from under this . . . suffocating tangle. And the more I try to free myself, the more tangled up I get.”

“You're still working through everything that happened to you,” I said, trying to take his hand. He flinched. “You have to give it time.”

“Time,” he said. “I don't have time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I go back to the States in four weeks, and if I pass the physical, they ship me back to Miami, and I go far away from you, and I lose you all over again.”

“Gray, that's ridiculous. Think of the summer, how often we Skyped. We don't need to be together to stay connected, remember? We've got this.”

I made a fist and pounded my heart, then pounded his, recalling a line from
Jane Eyre,
in which Rochester tells Jane:
It feels as though I had a string tied here under my left rib where my heart is, tightly knotted to you in a similar fashion. And when you go . . . with all that distance between us, I am afraid that this cord will be snapped, and I shall bleed inwardly.

And yet Jane had returned to her Rochester and promised to love him even when she found him blind and enfeebled. Rochester could hardly believe she had returned to him or that she would devote her life to someone so damaged.

In many ways, my life was coming full circle now. I had lost myself in
Jane Eyre
two years ago when I first fell for Gray, who, like Rochester, had been a cocky young man haunted by his past. And now just like Rochester, Gray was broken and doubted my devotion. In a place very dark and hidden inside me, I doubted it, too.

“Let's go away,” he said suddenly, a faint gleam returning to his eyes.

“Away?”

“Just you and me. I think that's the problem. Since I've come, you're always with other people. You and I are best when it's just the two of us. Let's go somewhere and try to find ourselves again.”

“I do have the winter holiday coming up.”

“When? Because I want to go now.”

“February fifteenth.”

“All right, we'll go then. You think you can take off the day before? I'd like to be away for Valentine's Day.”