Chapter 315

Olivia

Nathan’s face was red, as though being asked about his dreams was something that had never happened before.

“Me? Dreams? Nah,” he said, shaking his head and causing a lock of blond hair to fall into his eyes. “Don’t have any.”

I narrowed my eyes, not believing him for a moment. “C’mon, Nathan. Don’t lie to me.”

Nathan fell silent for a few moments before he finally spoke, his face somehow turning an even deeper shade of red. “I… Well, it’s stupid, really. Not even really a dream—”

“Nathan! Spit it out!” I urged as I nudged him with my elbow.

He grinned sheepishly. “Alright, alright. When I was younger, I wanted to write books. More specifically, I wanted to write children’s books. And I wanted to… illustrate them, too.”

At Nathan’s confession, I felt my eyes widen slightly. “Really?” I blurted out. “Nathan, you’ve never told me this.”

He shrugged indifferently and took my hand, guiding me away from the painting we were standing in front of and onto a different one. We passed into another room, which contained more contemporary pieces of art.

“I never mentioned it because it wasn’t a big deal,” he said casually. “More of a silly fad than anything. I don’t think I’d ever be able to do it.”

“It’s not silly,” I said, grabbing his arm and making him stop to look at me. “I think it’s really sweet.”

Nathan paused for a few moments and ran a hand through his hair. A soft smile came across his face as he thought back on his past dreams. “I guess I just thought it would be fun to create little worlds for kids to escape to,” he finally said after some time. “When I was little, books were my escape from my parents. Whenever they would fight, or whenever my dad would be in one of his awful moods, which was most of the time, I would pick up a book and lose myself in it.”

“Did you have any favorite books?” I asked.

He was silent for a moment, thinking, before his face lit up. “The Little Prince,” he finally said. “I’m not sure if you read that when you were a kid.”

I shook my head. The name rang a bell, but I had never read it. Nathan continued. “It was about a boy who flew from planet to planet in a tiny spaceship. God, I must have read it dozens of times. I wanted nothing more than to be like the little prince, free as a bird.”

As Nathan spoke, I felt my heart soften. Here was yet another secret part of him, another side to my childhood best friend that I had never heard before. But even as he spoke, recognition flashed through my mind. I slowly began to remember times when we were kids, sitting around the campfire and sharing our stories. Nathan was always the best out of the three of us when it came to spinning tales…

When we were kids, camping trips were like little slices of freedom. A pause button on reality, as we’d often say. One time, Nathan, Alvin, and I went camping in the woods not too far from my house.

We were thirteen, and just old enough for our parents to trust us to camp out behind the house, tucked away in the forest. Looking back, I remembered that we could still see the house from where we pitched our tents.

But at that age, it felt like we were miles away, living in the rugged wilderness.

I remembered that evening so clearly. The fire was crackling, its flickering light casting strange, dancing forms on the faces of the trees surrounding us.

Alvin, ever the joker, was making failed attempts at shadow puppets, but it was Nathan who commanded our attention.

“Okay, are you guys ready for a real ghost story?” he said, grinning at the prospect of scaring the wits out of us. “Once upon a time…”

With that wicked smile of his, Nathan launched into a tale so creepy that it had us both quaking. It was a story about evil spirits that haunted the very woods we were camping in.

He described the ghosts in vivid detail—their hollow eyes, their twisted forms—and even mimicked the haunting sounds they supposedly made. By the end of it, Alvin and I were gripping our sleeping bags, our eyes darting nervously to the tree line beyond the campfire.

When it was time to turn in, I was petrified.

Every noise, every rustle of the leaves, made me think the ghosts from Nathan’s story were circling our tents, waiting for the right moment. I laid in my sleeping bag, eyes wide open, staring at the tent’s fabric as if it could protect me from imagined horrors outside.

Suddenly, I was jolted awake by the sound of a zipper. My tent was unzipping from the outside.

My heart pounded in my chest as I reached for the flashlight next to me. Just as the tent flap pulled open, I let out a blood-curdling scream and shined the flashlight toward the entrance.

It was Nathan, his eyes wide with concern. “Whoa, Liv, what’s wrong? I heard you making noises and wanted to check on you.”

I was a bundle of raw nerves as I stammered, “I thought I saw—well, heard—ghosts. Your story really got to me.”

He chuckled, but there was a gentle understanding in his eyes. “Mind if I join you? It’s a little less scary when you’re not alone.”

I nodded gratefully and he crawled into my tent. We lay there on our sleeping bags, side by side. He reached over and held my hand, giving it a squeeze.

“You’re safe, Liv. There are no ghosts here, okay? Just you, me, and Alvin snoring in the next tent,” he said softly.

The tension in my body slowly eased, and with Nathan beside me, holding my hand, the imagined terrors lost their grip on my mind.

…

When I snapped back to reality from my distant memory, Nathan’s eyes were studying my face. A slow smile spread across my lips, and I found myself reaching out to cup his face, my fingers tracing his jawline. A hint of a smile twitched at his mouth, and I felt his cheek lean into my hand.

“I think you should follow your dreams,” I murmured gently, my voice low so as not to disturb the other museum patrons.

Nathan shook his head, a shadow of doubt crossing his features. “Nah. It’s silly. Besides, I need to be an Alpha now.”

“And what did you just tell me?” I asked. “That being a Luna shouldn’t get in the way of my dreams. The same goes for you, you know.”

Nathan’s eyes lit up ever so slightly. He stared down at his feet, almost in an embarrassed fashion. “Maybe you’re right,” he murmured. “But… I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you test a story out on the twins sometime?” I asked. “They can be your guinea pigs. And even if you never publish anything, you can at least enrich their childhood with stories written by their own dad.”

At my words, Nathan’s whole face seemed to spark with recognition. His lips broke into a smile and he nodded enthusiastically. “You know what, Liv?” he said, gripping my hand. “I think that would be perfect.”

I couldn’t help but smile. Without pausing to give my brain a chance to develop any apprehension about our distance lately, I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. When I pulled away, his eyes were filled only with love.

“Thank you, Liv,” he murmured. “What do you think? Follow our dreams together?”

I nodded, taking his hand in mine. “Together.”