Page 33 of Targeted By Love

“Maynard! Maynard, where are you?” He was close—I could feel him, but I couldn’t see or hear him. Only he wasn’t as close as he was even a second earlier. Maynard was moving away from me.

“No!” I started running, needing to catch up to him. He couldn’t leave, not without me. Was he looking for me? Was that what I sensed? If so, he needed to come back. “I’m right here!”

Running.

Running.

Running.

Nothing was going to stop me from getting to him. Except everything was. Instead of moving forward, it felt like I was on a treadmill, running in place, getting nowhere no matter how fast I went.

“No!” I cried out. “No! I need you! Come back! Come back, please! Where are you?” Tears trickled down my cheeks, and my head began to ache and that ache grew.

Now it was full-on pounding, throbbing so intensely that I pressed my hand to it, half expecting to feel the pain physically from the outside. It hurt so badly I stopped running and crouched down, holding my temples and squeezing my eyes shut. This wasn’t normal. Headaches were one thing, this was an entirely different one.

Was this what an aneurysm felt like—like my head was going to explode from the inside out, like there were tiny creatures inside, hitting me with a hammer, like I was being slammed into a brick wall over and over again?

And how did I get here? That would have the answers, right? Only thinking clearly wasn’t on my side. The pain was too great.

One moment, I’d been in the kitchen, daydreaming about my mate. Now, I was in the middle of nowhere with a headache so intense it felt like someone was hitting me with a wrench into my skull repeatedly.

I tried to call out again, but this time, my voice didn’t come, not even a whisper. I forced myself to look up, only to discover the field was gone.

Blackness surrounded me, and I was tumbling. Tumbling, tumbling, tumbling.

Then came the cold.

So very, very cold.

It was as if someone had dropped me onto an iceberg in summer clothes. My body shook uncontrollably as I waited for thenumbness to come—the kind of numbness that only happened when your body could no longer pretend to keep up with the cold.

I heard a fumbling. Like when I was a kid, and we had a deadbolt my mom struggled with when she came home. But it was so far away, maybe at the end of a tunnel. Wait. That didn’t make sense. But then again, none of this did.

Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe the television was on and I was somehow incorporating the show into my subconscious—a nap gone wrong.

Static filled my ears, only solidifying this theory. Yes. TV. That’s what it was. I was safe and none of this was happening.

Had I fallen asleep? Had Maynard’s brother turned on a movie to kill time? That was the only thing that made any sense. But if so, I needed to wake up fully because whatever this dream was, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was put-a-fork-in-me done.

I closed my eyes and tried to move my body, but it felt heavy. So, so heavy. I hadn’t even managed to curl a finger.

And the cold—it was seeping into me as the static grew louder and louder until it was all I could hear.

Finally, I managed to crack my eyes open—just barely. It was dim, my brain told me that, but my eyes felt like it was too bright, and I slammed them shut again.

Where was I?

The floor beneath me was concrete and the source of the cold I was feeling. That much was for sure. No wonder I’d been dreaming of icebergs.

I opened my eyes again, blinking a few times, trying to focus. But it was too dark to see much beyond myself.

And just like in my dream, my head throbbed.

In front of me, on the floor, sat a glass of water.

No way I was touching that, despite the deep thirst I felt.

I tried to replay the last things I remembered in my head.