Falling Under by Gwen Hayes

the sun warm on my face. As I eased onto my elbows, I was startled to find Haden, my dream Haden anyway, lying beside me on a bed of soft green grass. He held another black long-stem rose, and he traced a lazy pattern with it on my arm.
    “I thought you would never wake up.” He grinned and his eyes lit with mischief. He was dressed in his Regency-era finery again, though I noticed that today his fingernails were painted black.
    My very own goth Mr. Darcy. Jane Austen would be so proud.
    I bent my legs so that I was hugging my knees, uneasy about the afternoon with Varnie.
    Haden smiled and presented me with the onyx rose.
    It was hard to imagine this as dangerous when Haden smiled at me like that. Feigning shyness, I glanced away in an effort to hold against the strong tide of longing.
    My dreamscape was very different in the sunshine. We were on the bank of an unfamiliar river with no labyrinth in sight. Instead, it looked as if someone had painted nature with Easter egg dye. Each blade of grass was a different shade of green—from hunter to turquoise. Oddly shaped flowers sprouted in small patches and mushrooms the size of footstools grew in primary colors with patterns like polka dots and zigzags on them.
    The water in the swiftly flowing river was the color of a blue raspberry Slurpee from 7-Eleven. I wanted to dip my feet in, but like everything in the land of my dreams, it made me wary despite its enchantment.
    “We’re alone,” I announced aloud as the thought crossed my mind. Not a ghoul in sight.
    “I felt the need to be selfish of your time,” he answered.
    I ignored the remark. I’d had enough empty flattery designed to tease me into his games. “I like it here. It’s beautiful.” I pushed myself up and strolled to the river’s edge.
    Haden joined me on the bank, standing near yet not touching. Never touching. Feeling self-conscious of my nightgown, even more so in the light of day, I hugged myself tightly. Without looking directly at him, I gathered my courage.
    Before the words would form, Haden offered, “I know you have questions, little lamb. What if we traded answer for answer?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “That’s your first. I mean, I’ll answer a question for every question you answer me. My turn now. When did you begin playing music?”
    I regarded him with a sideways glance. “I don’t remember ever not playing the violin. I found my mother’s in a chest when I was three.”
    My mother hadn’t been a virtuoso by any means, but I’d been told she enjoyed playing occasionally. She’d listened to violinists on CD, especially while she was pregnant with me. My father didn’t talk about her much, but he used that story to coerce me into extra practice now and then.
    It was my turn for a question. So many things were unknown to me, where to start? “Are you real?”
    “Yes,” he answered. His voice, rough like gravel, surprised me. I peered at him closely.
    I wanted to look at him forever, I decided. It was foolish, I knew that. Appearances meant nothing, and they seemed to mean less lately, in this place. Things that should be beautiful were raw with the kind of horror normally reserved for Halloween.
    But Haden was different. He could have been a model, but there was a quality to him that film could never capture. It wasn’t his dark eyes or sable waves of hair that drew me to him. He was mystifying with his wicked charm and roguish charisma, of course, but it was his loneliness that pulled me the hardest, I think.
    Perhaps I was the only one who saw it. Maybe I made it up. But Haden Black was the loneliest person I’d ever met.
    I wasn’t sure he understood what I was asking. “I meant are you real here? Is this place real?”
    He waggled his finger at me. “I know what you meant, but it’s not your turn now.”
    “Well, then ask me something.”
    He shook his head. “I don’t know what to ask first. I want to know it all. Everything.” His lips quirked into a shy smile