Chapter 4
581 Words
He slept on the gallery couch.
It was narrow, unforgiving. His body ached, his neck stiff. But none of it mattered, because it wasn’t the couch that woke him in the dark.
It was the dream.
Ava’s laugh. Soft and unguarded — the version of her that only ever existed in the moments between midnight and morning. She’d been in his bed, curled on her side, tangled in white sheets, bare shoulders catching sunlight through the blinds. She’d looked at him like he was something gentle. Like he hadn’t ruined her.
She’d touched his chest, fingers tracing over the place she once called home. And then she said it:
“Stay this time.”
He had — in the dream, he had. He kissed her like promises were still safe to make. She whispered his name like it meant something.
And then it broke.
Her face changed.
The sheets turned cold.
Her voice — distant, hollow — echoed through the room like a warning.
“You always leave, Jason.”
He woke with a start, heart pounding like fists against a locked door.
The gallery was silent.
Ava’s paintings stood in the moonlight like witnesses.
He sat up, ran a hand through his hair, trying to shake it. But the dream clung to him. It always did, when it was her. No matter how many nights passed, she haunted him in the quiet. Not like a ghost. More like an echo.
He got up, pacing the floor, half-alive with nerves he didn’t understand.
And then he saw her.
Ava.
At the far end of the gallery, standing in front of the painting again — the one he could never look at too long. Her arms were crossed, hair messy, wearing one of those oversized shirts that fell off her shoulder like it meant to tempt him.
“You couldn’t sleep either,” she said.
He shook his head.
She didn’t move. Didn’t turn around.
“I used to dream about you,” she said quietly. “After you left. At first they were soft. Like memories. Then they got darker.”
He stepped closer. Slow. Careful.
“What kind of dreams?” he asked.
“The kind where I beg you to stay,” she said. “And you always walk out the door.”
His throat tightened.
“I had the same dream tonight,” he admitted. “Except this time I stayed. Until you asked why I ever thought I deserved to.”
She finally turned then. Eyes shadowed. Voice raw.
“And what did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything. I woke up.”
Silence wrapped around them like fog. Ava’s hands curled at her sides. She looked like she might break open — not from sadness, but from all the restraint.
Jason moved toward her, one step, two — stopping just short of touching.
“I don’t know how to be what you need,” he said.
“I don’t need you to be anything,” she whispered. “I just...”
She looked at him, eyes wide, wet. “I just don’t want to dream alone anymore.”
And that — that — was what undid him.
He reached out, slow, fingers brushing hers.
She didn’t pull away.
But she didn’t move closer either.
The tension held them there — not touching, not kissing, not fixing anything. Just breathing the same broken air.
And it was enough to set the whole world on fire.
- Writer
