My Dream Lover

Chapter3

ALEX

The dream always started the exact same way.

I’d be standing in a massive, open garden full of deep red roses, and she’d be sitting on a low stone wall, waiting for me.

And sometimes, I will be the one waiting, standing close to the fountain.

It was always the two of us. No other person. No passerby.

For four solid years, this was my life every other night. The same girl. The same dream.

In the beginning, I thought I was just losing my mind. But after a few months, her face became too detailed to ignore.

There’s a small scar just below her left eye that I notice every single time. And she had green eyes that captivates me each time I look at her. So, I started searching.

I combed through almost every public park, rooftop garden, and hidden greenhouse in New York and out of New York.

Central Parks, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, random hidden courtyard gardens in Greenwich Village, I visited all of them, hoping to step into that exact landscape. All to no avail.

I’ve hired the best team I could get: top private investigators, experts who specialize in finding missing persons, and retired police officers.

I gave them sketches I had drawn from memory. They ran her face through databases, cross-checked social media, and looked through travel records. Not a single match.

I’ve had three separate investigators tell me, that a woman who doesn’t exist in any public record can’t be found.

At this point, my friends thought I was crazy. My family gently suggested therapy. Half the time, I agreed with them. Was she even real? Or was my subconscious just playing a trick on me?

Still, the thought of her made chills run down my spine. She was beautiful. God, she was so beautiful.

But there was one thing about her that got me worried every single time we met in that quiet, beautiful garden.

She was always tired.

Not just "I slept badly last night" tired, but a deep, heavy exhaustion. Dark circles around her eyes, and her shoulders always looked heavy.

I asked her about it every chance I got.

"Elise," I’d say, sitting next to her beside the fountain.

"Why are you always so exhausted? What’s going on?"

She’d just smile, a weak, sad little smile, and shake her head. "It’s nothing to worry yourself about," she’d whisper.

She had an accent. Some of the words had sharp sounds that I couldn’t quite recognize. I’m not good at reading accents.

"Where are you?" I’d ask her, leaning closer. "Tell me where to look for you. Give me a city, a street, anything at all."

She would just stare at me, her eyes filled with confusion. She didn't know who I was either. She didn't know my name, my story, or where I was coming from. To her, I was just a stranger in her sleep.

And every single time I asked where to find her, the world around us would start to blur, her voice would vanish, and I’d awake to the sound of my alarm clock, staring at my bedroom ceiling.

I prayed I’d find her one day. That’s if she was even real.

If she was out there somewhere in the real world, I had to find her. Even if it was the last thing I did.

***

It was a rainy Monday afternoon when my lead investigator, Marcus, walked into my office without knocking.

He tossed a thick brown envelope onto the glass desk in front of me.

"I told you to drop this months ago, Alex, but you’re very stubborn" Marcus said, pulling out a chair.

"You might be in luck this time because my guy running facial recognition software on international transit hubs finally flagged something."

My heart skipped violently. I sat up. "What did you find?"

"A hit," Marcus said. "A flight manifest and security camera snapshot from Heathrow Airport in London, dated three days ago."

My hands were shaking as I pulled the paper out of the envelope.

It was a grainy, black-and-white printout from a terminal security feed. In the center of the crowd was a woman. Same dark hair and green eyes.

She looked pale, bruised around the eyes, and completely exhausted.

Underneath the picture was a scanned copy of a passport scan.

Name: Elise Varga.

Nationality: France.

Destination: JFK International Airport, New York.

She was real. She wasn't a ghost, and I wasn't losing my mind.

"She landed in New York three days ago," Marcus explained. "She checked into a small, old hotel near Gramercy Park under her real name."

"Is she still there?" I asked, already grabbing my coat.

"Room 402," Marcus replied, handing me a small scrap of paper with the address. "Alex, take it easy. You don't know this woman."

I didn't care. I barely remembered driving across town through the heavy rain. Everything felt like a blur until I was standing in the dim hallway of the hotel, staring at the numbers on the door: 402.

My hands were already sweating. My heart was pounding so hard I could barely breathe.

Four years of searching, all coming down to this exact door.

I took a deep breath, raised my hand, and knocked three times. No answer. I knocked again, harder this time. Still no answer.

I checked the paper in my hands to see if I have the right room number.

It’s exactly room 402. Or had Marcus given me a wrong room number? I picked my phone, I was about to dial Marcus when I heard noise.

From inside the room, I heard slow footsteps heading toward the door. The bolt clicked and the door opened.

My breath caught in my throat.