FOR THE FIRST TIME in her life, Valerie Greenwood doesn't dream. She doesn't dream of her father, her sisters, her past. From the moment she closes her eyes to the moment she opens them the next morning, there is nothing but darkness and warmth and safety.

She wakes up before Travis, and she smiles as she rises from the bed, stretching with each step she takes towards the window.

The sun is shining brightly over the city, making Central Park practically glow in the mid-morning light.

She reaches for the sleek silver phone on the bedside table, hitting a few buttons as she dials down to the front desk.

"Greenwood Hotel front desk, how can I help you?"

Valerie clears her throat. "Hi, this is Valerie Greenwood in Room 5633. I'd like to order some room service."

The voice on the other end of the call perks up. "Oh, Miss Greenwood! Of course. I'm so glad you're staying with us. What can I get for you?"

"Just two of the Presidential Breakfasts, please." She says, and she glances over to where Travis sleeps soundly on his stomach, his arms wrapped around the pillow. His bare back is freckled, spots in the shape of constellations dotted across the muscular plane of skin.

The front desk clerk taps a few keys on her keyboard, humming as she types. "Alright, Miss Greenwood. We have two Presidential Breakfasts coming in about twenty minutes. Is there anything else I can get for you this morning?"

Valerie smiles as she watches him sleep. "Could you add on an oat milk vanilla latte, please? Actually, make that two."

"Of course, Miss Greenwood. We'll have that up for you shortly."

Valerie hangs up the phone and tiptoes back to the bed, crawling back under the covers and pulling at his arm until it's free from under the pillow. She folds herself under it, burying her face in the crease between his shoulder and his neck.

"The Sandman likes to snuggle, huh?" Travis mumbles sleepily, his voice raspy. His arm tightens around her.

She laughs against his skin. "If you tell anyone, I'll kill you."

He lifts his head from the pillow and smiles, tousled dark hair falling over his forehead. "How'd you sleep?" He asks, keeping one arm around her waist and using the other to prop himself up.

"Are you asking because you didn't see me in your dream?"

Travis rolls his eyes. "No, Valerie. I'm asking because I want to know how you slept." He tells her earnestly, absentmindedly stroking his fingertips along the tattoo on her hip. "But yeah, it was weird not to see you in my dream. Where'd you go?"

Where'd you go? A simple question for anyone other than Valerie Greenwood and the multitudes of realities inside of her head. "I didn't dream. I don't know why. It was...it was creepy."

She finds it strange to be open and honest, even with him. Honesty has never come easy for her, a trait she inhereted from her father. Lying was always easier, always less painful than telling the truth. Lying to Travis, however, feels like a sharp knife carving through her skin.

There's a knock at the door that has Travis lunging for a weapon, but she stills him with a hand around his wrist. "It's room service. It's fine." She whispers, a sweet, placating smile on her face.

"Oh," he says, settling back into the pillows. "It's weird. I've had this feeling all week that something was going to happen." He pauses, and he gives her a grin that makes her shiver. "Maybe it's just the fact that you've been in a good mood this week. Where's my Sandman when I need her? Got me all paranoid."

He pulls her into him, chasing her lips with his own, and he pouts when she pushes him down onto the bed. "Shut up. Your breakfast is getting cold."

She slips a robe on over her, tying it securely around the waist as she walks towards the door to the hotel room. She peers out the peephole before opening the door to make sure no one is waiting to have a conversation with her, and when the coast is clear, she brings the silver tray of food into the room.

"Shit, Val. That smells so good." Travis says, his eyes wide as she carries the food in.

She sets it on the bed and opens the lid on each plate—bacon, an omlette with spinach and peppers, and garlic confit spread onto a thick slice of toasted bread.

He's practically salivating. "Valerie Greenwood, you are too good to me."

|

They don't leave the bed for two hours after breakfast, and even when she manages to convince him to leave the room, he insists that she holds his hand. It's New York. I could be in danger if you don't.

She allows this, this joining of their hands, as she shows him around Manhattan.

"I could show you all the tourist spots," she starts, glancing up at him with her molten eyes a little wild around the edges. "Or I can show you where I grew up."

He smiles at her, blue eyes crinkling at the corners. "One of these days, I'll show you around Boston. I'll take you to a Bruins game, introduce you to my mom, show you around the city."

She hides her grin by forcing her face into a neutral expression. "You want me to meet your mom? That's cute."

Travis shakes his head, rolling his eyes. "You're lucky I love you."

"You love me?"

As much as he's hinted at it, he's never said the words. It takes her by surprise, so much so that she stops in the middle of the sidewalk. If it weren't for his hand holding hers, she would have lost him in the crowd.

His smile nearly stops her heart. "Isn't it obvious?"

Her free hand finds the collar of his shirt, pulling him into an empty alleyway. "Since when?" She phrases it more as a demand than a question, and she feels her pulse in her throat, beating so hard she wonders if he can hear it.

"Since I was old enough to know you." He says in return, still smiling that same smile.

The three words she has never had the courage to say play on repeat in her head as she yanks him towards her, her lips clashing against his in a kiss that is more teeth than it is tongue.

"Travis," she whispers against his mouth. She intends to finish her sentence, intends to tell him what resides in her heart, but she can't. "Travis."

His hand wraps around the back of her neck. "I know. I know, Val. You don't have to say it."

Vulnerability swallows her whole, and she pulls away from him, her amber eyes barely hiding what she's thinking. "Do you want to see where I got arrested?"

"You got arrested?" He asks, almost gleefully. "Show me. Show me right now."

Those eyes of hers turn from molten in the shadows to almost gilded in the sunlight. They are no longer melted bronze—when she looks at him, the warm metallic color swirls with gold.

She squeezes his hands and leads him out of the alley, the sun shining down on her bronze-brown hair, and they walk away from the busy main streets, into a quieter area of the neighborhood.

"That's where I went to high school, when I wasn't at camp." She says as they pass a tall building with red brick walls and not enough windows.

The gated arch in front of the school is inscribed with letters that take him a few moments to decipher: Bishop Prepatory School—Educating Girls Since 1811.

His eyebrows raise involuntarily. "You went to an all-girls school?" He asks, not quite surprised.

Valerie snorts and pulls him along. "Didn't have my first interaction with a boy until Eddie Maisel put gum in my hair at sleep-away camp when I was seven. I wasn't invited back to camp after what I did to him." There's a cruel glint that sparkles in her eyes, a if remembering in vivid detail what had happened. "I'm suprised I didn't get the same treatment when I got to Camp Half Blood. I was a shit-starter."

"Was?"

Her mouth twists in a sad attempt to fight a smile. "Shut up. I'm a reformed shit-starter now."

Travis pulls her into his embrace and presses his lips to the top of her head. "Are you gonna show me where you got arrested or what, Sandman?"

It turns out that the spot of her arrest was only a block away, an upscale bar that has a line out the door despite the early hour and a shiny, bright sign out front. Every time the door opens, music spills out, mingling with laughter and conversation from those within.

The half-smile she's been sporting all morning dims, and her mouth flattens into a thin line. She hasn't walked past this place, or her old school, since she was seventeen. She'd made a near-permanent move to camp after the incident here, after spending half her time in the city and half her time by the ocean for most of her adolesence.

"Was it underage drinking?" Travis asks, sensing something in her shift through the thread connecting them. "The reason you got arrested, I mean?"

She shakes her head, and she feels the brand on her shoulder throb once. "No. Destruction of property. I was clean and sober when they put the handcuffs on."

An invisible hand settles on the back of her neck, caressing the hair that tickles her skin. "Will you tell me about it? Please?" His voice is so soft that the story comes tumbling out:

"I was out with some people I went to school with who had fake ID's. I didn't need one because I always bribed the bouncer, but it was late, and they were all drinking. It was a year before the Battle of Manhattan. It was the first time I saw Morpheus." She turns on her heel, facing away from the bar, and the darkness has returned to her eyes again. "He appeared to me for the first time that night. I thought he was just some dude coming up to me at a bar until I saw his eyes. We had—have—the same eyes. I knew who he was almost immediately."

Realization dawns on his face. "That was the first time he asked you to put the city to sleep, wasn't it?"

She doesn't even have to open her mouth to answer, because something like pain flashes across her eyes. "He made it sound like something that would help camp. Like he'd be putting the enemy to sleep so we had a chance. I didn't know that he was lying." Her voice is flat, monotone and icy.

"Val—"

"I never cared about what people thought about me. I know everyone thinks I'm a cold, heartless monster. And I didn't care. When he asked me to put people to sleep, I said yes right away. I wanted to help. He made me swear to Styx. I did it without thinking. And then he told me the truth. That he was working with Kronos." She inhales sharply, even more darkness clouding in her eyes. "The combination of me breaking my oath and getting mad made every bottle on the shelves explode. The owner called the cops, and when they let me make my one phone call, I called Josslyn."

Understanding crosses his face. "That's why she's so impatient with you."

A half-assed grin paints itself onto her mouth. "Her wedding was the next day. She hasn't forgiven me for dragging her into the police station at three in the morning to bail me out of jail for destroying a bar."

Travis, who knows her better than anyone else has ever dared to know her, kisses her quickly on the lips. "I won't pretend to understand your family dynamics, but your sisters would walk through fire for you. All of them, even Josslyn. They love you, Val."

The feeling of Valerie's ribcage cracking in two from his kindness has been replaced with one of the bones in her chest knitting back together. It's as if she has been dying her whole life, all twenty years of it, and only after watching him love her did she finally find the cure.

In a rare show of affection, she reaches up and traces her thumb across his cheekbone. "Are you ever going to stop bending over backwards to make me happy?"

She asks, not because she grows tired of it, but because she worries he will. She worries that loving her will wear on him, because it's rotten work to love Valerie Greenwood. She is mean and cruel and harsh, sarcastic and insecure and tired and angry.

He looks at her like she is all of those things, but not negatively. He sees her flaws as a part of her, just as much as he sees her eyes when he looks at him, as much as he feels her phantom hand on his heart when he is stressed, as much as he sees her.

He kisses the fingertips that graze his face. "No, Valerie. I'm not going to stop trying to make you happy."