Page 38 of Unearthed Dreams (Sable Point #3)

Chapter Thirty-Two

CHARLIE

The Pepto-pink walls of my childhood bedroom were giving me a headache. Or maybe that was the brain injury. Or both.

Two weeks since I’d woken up in the hospital, and nothing felt right.

Not this room with its too-bright walls and stuffed animals I didn’t remember arranging on the window seat.

Not the quiet house, everyone tiptoeing around me like I might break.

Not even my own skin felt right—healing cuts and bruises mapping places I didn’t remember hurting.

Five months of my life, just... gone.

I shifted against the pillows, wincing as my ribs protested. My laptop sat closed on the bedside table, mocking me. I’d tried working on my manuscript earlier, but the words felt wrong. Like someone else had been in my head, rearranging everything I thought I knew about my characters.

Because someone had.

The notes in the margins were proof—detailed critiques in an unfamiliar handwriting, suggesting plot changes I’d apparently already made. Entire chapters rewritten. New scenes added.

Good changes. Better than what I’d originally written.

But I couldn’t remember making them.

Just like I couldn’t remember getting the job at Books and Crannies, or Chase buying a motorcycle, or why Kai from Callaghan’s had looked at me in the hospital like I’d ripped his heart out.

“This isn’t home anymore,” I whispered to the pink walls.

But if not here, then where? The life I remembered—finals week, my apartment with Shelby, Trevor helping me pick up dropped books—that wasn’t home anymore either.

My phone lit up with another text from Shelby, probably checking on me for the hundredth time today. I couldn’t bring myself to read it. How could I explain that the Charlie she was worried about, the one who’d been her roommate just last week as far as my brain was concerned, didn’t exist anymore?

I closed my eyes, trying to remember. Anything. Everything. The doctors said not to force it, but...

You’re asking the wrong questions.

The thought came out of nowhere, in a voice that felt familiar but wasn’t quite mine. Like something someone had said to me, something important.

But like everything else, it slipped away before I could catch it, leaving only the ache of the pink walls and the certainty that wherever “home” was supposed to be, it wasn’t here.

I reached for my manuscript again, drawn to those mysterious notes in the margins. Whoever had read this hadn’t just edited—they’d understood . They got what I was trying to say about immortality and loneliness, about the way love could bridge impossible gaps.

“Your wyrm commander wouldn’t say ‘indeed’ here.”

The memory hit like a gut punch, completely out of nowhere. A deep voice, amused but certain. The smell of whiskey and old books. Warm hands gesturing as they explained...

My head throbbed, but I chased the fragment. It felt important. Real.

I flipped through the pages until I found the scene. There it was—the word “indeed” crossed out in red ink, replaced with something simpler. More honest.

Like the commander himself , the voice whispered in my memory.

“Kai,” I breathed.

The room spun as images crashed through my mind. Kai’s apartment above the bar, walls lined with books. His silver hair falling loose from its bun as he bent over my manuscript. The way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. His hands...

“Oh god.”

I scrambled for the trash can, barely making it before my stomach rebelled. Not from nausea this time, but from the force of remembering.

Kai’s hands on my skin. His voice in my ear, teaching me how to touch myself. The cold storage room wall against my back as he kissed me. His body curved protectively around mine in his bed.

I love you , I’d told him. On my birthday.

“Charlie?” Mom’s voice came through the door. “Are you alright? I heard?— ”

“I remember,” I choked out. “Mom, I remember him .”

The door opened, and her arms were around me before I could say more. She’d known. Of course she’d known.

“How long?” I managed between sobs.

“A few months.” Her hand stroked my hair. “He’s been at the hospital every day, sweetheart. Even when you were sleeping.”

Until I’d woken up and looked at him like a stranger.

“I have to see him.” I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn’t cooperate. “Mom, please. I have to?—”

“Charlie, you need to rest. Your body’s been through?—”

“No.” I gripped the bedside table, pulling myself up despite the protest of healing bones. “I’m not staying in this pink prison for one more second. Not now that I remember.”

“At least let me drive you.”

I paused in my wobbly attempt to find clean clothes. “You’d do that?”

Mom’s eyes were suspiciously bright. “Sweetheart, I watched that man sit by your bed for five weeks straight, talking to you about dragons and magic and everything else under the sun. He loves you. And if you remember that now...” She grabbed my keys from the dresser.

“Well, I’m certainly not going to let a concussion keep you from him. ”

“I look terrible,” I realized, catching sight of myself in the mirror. Bruises still healing, hair a mess, wearing my oldest pajamas.

“He won’t care.” Mom handed me a sundress—the same one I’d worn the first time he’d kissed me. “But if it’ll make you feel better...”

Ten minutes later, we pulled up outside Callaghan’s. The CLOSED sign hung in the window, but light spilled from beneath the door.

“Go get him, baby.” Mom squeezed my hand. “I’ll wait here until I’m sure you’re okay.”

My legs were steadier now, adrenaline and determination replacing weakness. I had a key— my key, the one Kai had given me for our late-night manuscript sessions—but my hands shook too much to use it.

Instead, I knocked.

Please be here.

I knocked again.

Please remember me like I remember you.

No answer.

Please love me like I love you.

I forced my hands to steady and turned the key in the lock, pushing open the door to Callaghan’s—to home.