Chapter 165

Chapter 165
Bryson's POV


The dream came for me again that night, pulling me under before I even realized I was asleep.

In it, Linnet and I stood on opposite banks of a river so wide I could barely make out her face across the distance, the water between us dark and deep enough that I could feel its pull even from the shore, that gravitational weight of something vast and hungry waiting to swallow anything foolish enough to enter.

She was saying something—her lips were moving, her expression urgent in that way that made my chest tighten even in sleep—but the wind tore her words apart before they could reach me, leaving only fragments that might have been my name, might have been "don't" or "dangerous" or any number of warnings I was too desperate to heed.

I couldn't stand it, that distance, that barrier of dark water and howling wind keeping me from understanding what she needed to tell me. So I did what any idiot in love would do—I jumped in.

The cold hit me like a physical blow, water closing over my head in an icy fist that squeezed the air from my lungs, but I didn't care because all that mattered was getting to her, reaching the other side where she waited. I started swimming with everything I had, arms cutting through the current in mechanical strokes that should have been carrying me forward, except they weren't—somehow, impossibly, the opposite shore was getting farther away with every desperate pull, Linnet's figure shrinking to a distant point while I exhausted myself going nowhere.

Panic set in then, that animal terror of effort without progress, and I kicked harder, faster, trying to force my body to close the gap that kept widening despite my best attempts. That's when I felt it—something wrapping around my ankle underwater, grip tightening with deliberate intent rather than the random tangle of river weeds.

I kicked at it violently, trying to shake loose whatever had caught me, but the thing only cinched tighter and began to drag me down with inexorable force, pulling me under no matter how hard I fought against it.

I took a final desperate breath and dove, needing to see what had me in its grasp, and that's when the nightmare showed me its true face.

It was my father.

Cole Doyle in his signature dark suit, hair immaculately groomed like he was about to step into a board meeting or a press conference, but his face was twisted into something inhuman, eyes blazing with a madness I'd glimpsed in fleeting moments but never seen in such raw, undiluted form.

His hands were locked around my ankle with bruising strength, fingernails digging into my skin like he intended to leave permanent marks of ownership, and he was smiling—that sick, silent smile that spoke of satisfaction and possession and absolute certainty that I belonged to him, that I would always belong to him no matter how far I tried to swim.

His lips moved underwater, forming words I couldn't hear but could somehow understand with perfect, terrible clarity: "You're not going anywhere, Bryson. You're mine."

I thrashed against his grip with everything I had left, terror lending strength to muscles already exhausted from fighting the current, but he was impossibly strong in the way things are strong in dreams—unmovable, inevitable, the fixed point around which my struggling meant nothing. Water began forcing its way into my throat, my nose, my lungs, that drowning sensation so visceral and real that some part of my sleeping brain screamed this couldn't be just a dream, this had to be actually happening.

My vision started to blur at the edges, consciousness flickering like a candle in wind, and the last thing I saw before everything went dark was Linnet on the opposite shore, screaming my name with her hand stretched out toward me, fingers grasping at empty air because she was too far away, she would always be too far away, and I was sinking, sinking, dragged down into the depths by my father's unbreakable hold—

I jerked awake with a violence that nearly threw me off the bed, body convulsing as I tried to expel water that wasn't actually there, coughing so hard my ribs ached with each spasm. The sensation of drowning clung to me even in wakefulness, throat burning like I'd actually inhaled half the river, and I bent forward with one hand braced against the mattress edge and the other pressed to my chest, trying to convince my lungs they could actually breathe while the coughing fit slowly, agonizingly subsided into ragged gasps.

Cold sweat had soaked through my t-shirt, the fabric clinging to my back in a way that made my skin crawl, and I was shaking—full-body tremors I couldn't control even after the immediate panic began to fade.

I reached blindly for my phone on the nightstand, fingers clumsy and uncoordinated, and the sudden brightness of the screen made me squint against the glare until my eyes adjusted enough to read the time. 4:17 AM. I'd been asleep for maybe three hours, and already my subconscious had dragged me back to the one place I couldn't escape even when I was supposedly safe in my own bed.

I opened my messages with hands that still weren't quite steady, and there it was—Linnet's reply from last night, the three sentences I'd read probably a dozen times already but needed to see again like a lifeline: [I'm okay. I think I know everything now. I'll tell you tomorrow. Good night. I love you.]

The words acted like an anchor, pulling me back from the lingering edges of the nightmare and grounding me in something real and solid and true. I stared at those last three words—I love you—and ran my thumb across the screen as if the gesture could somehow let me touch her through the glass and pixels, could close the distance that had felt so insurmountable in my dream. It was just a dream, I told myself firmly, forcing my breathing to slow into something approaching normal.

Just a dream. Not real. She was safe in her apartment, probably asleep in her mother's room based on what she'd told me about needing comfort after everything that had happened, and I was here in my bedroom in the oppressive silence of the Doyle mansion, and we were both okay even if we were apart.

But I knew it wasn't just a dream, not really—it was my brain processing the fears I'd been carrying around like stones in my pockets, weighing me down with their accumulated mass.

I closed my eyes and pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead, trying to physically push back the thoughts that wanted to spiral into full-blown panic.

The phone was still clutched in my other hand, Linnet's message still glowing on the screen, and I focused on that—on the fact that she'd said she loved me, that she'd promised to tell me everything today, that she hadn't run or given up despite having every reason to do exactly that after witnessing my father's cruelty firsthand.

Outside my window, rain had started to fall in heavy sheets that drummed against the glass with hypnotic rhythm, and I found myself watching the water streak down in rivulets that caught the faint pre-dawn light and split it into fractured patterns.

The sound was almost soothing in its monotony, a white noise that helped quiet the residual panic still humming through my nervous system, and I let myself get lost in it for a while—just watching the rain, breathing in and out, reminding myself that I was awake now, that the nightmare was over even if the fears that had spawned it were still very much real.