“But you were talking to him,” Liam countered.

“How do you know?” Could he reach into my head like Talley?

Liam looked so uncomfortable I really thought he might be about to admit to keeping the fact he was a Soul Seer from me. “You said his name,” he told his knee. “And then… ummm… you smiled. And then frowned. And then… I don’t know. I could just tell you were having a conversation. You had conversation face.”

“Conversation face? That’s a thing?”

Without an ounce of humor Liam said, “It is when it’s you.”

I wasn’t one hundred percent certain what he meant, but I felt confident it wasn’t a compliment.

I considered what I was willing to share. My meetings on the beach with Alex were private. I didn’t want to share them with anyone, let alone someone who would have no problem telling me just how stupid I was for letting myself believe they were really Alex reaching out from beyond the grave. But my conversation with Jase was still swirling around in my brain. All of this came back to trust, and last night Liam had trusted me with his past. I knew without having to ask, it wasn’t one he easily shared.

It was time for trust to become a two way street.

“Sometimes I have these really vivid dreams about Alex. They’re like the ones before--”

“The ones before?”

“Before the accident.” That word still felt so wrong in my mouth, even though I now knew it to be the truth. “I had these crazy vivid dreams where I was standing on one side of the lake, and Alex the other. And when I say ‘crazy vivid’, I mean ‘could feel the wind and taste the rain’ kind of vivid.”

Liam nodded like he understood.

“In the dreams, that part of the lake was completely foreign to me, but it was where Alex took me the night he died.” It had been a date, our one and only. “I told him about how I had seen it in a dream, and he seemed upset about it, but he couldn’t exactly tell me why.” Because he was in wolf form at the time. We managed to communicate surprisingly well for one of us to be without the ability to speak, but not well enough to discuss the finer points of dreams.

“Now, when I dream about that same place, he’s there. It’s the same as before. Everything is so real it’s hard to remember it’s a dream.” In the beginning, those dreams had been my escape. In them, Alex held me in his strong arms and kissed me with his warm mouth. I was able to feel every brush of lips, taste the salt of every tear. “It’s not like the accident never happened, but it’s as if he’s come back to me. It seems like he’s trying to help the only way he can now, giving comfort and guidance through dreams.” I couldn’t look at Liam. “I think…” A deep breath. “I think they may be real.”

He didn’t answer immediately, which made me think he was ignoring me. I should have realized, though, that Liam does that when conversations start getting intense. And while it may make the person having a conversation with him go a little bonkers from time to time, it was probably a good practice. I could use a bit more time to think before I speak quite often.

“My great-grandmother was a Dream Walker,” he finally said. “She died before I was born, but my mom talked about her a lot. Sometimes, when she would have a particularly confusing vision, she would worry about it for days until the answer would come to her in a dream. She said it was her grandmother who helped her figure it out, that she came to her in her dreams. When I was a kid, I believed it absolutely. Of course her grandmother was able to talk to her in her dreams. It made sense, especially since I watched my dad Change into a wolf once a month and knew my mom could predict snow days.”

I was disturbed at the idea of a child watching the painful and, let’s face it, grotesque, act of Changing, but instead I said, “You were in Canada. It couldn’t have been that hard. Don’t you guys have snow on any day of the week ending in ‘y’?”

“As I grew older, I started having my doubts,” Liam continued on as if I hadn’t spoken. “I thought it was just her way of working through stuff, but now…” He blew out a breath and rubbed the back of his head. “What does he talk to you about?”

“I don’t know… everything?” I tasted blood and realized I had just bit through the inside of my lip. “In the beginning, he was there every time I went to sleep, so we literally just talked about anything we could think of.” In those first weeks, they were the only normal conversations I would have. “Once I Changed, he came less often, and the conversations got more focused. We theorized on how I became a Shifter. He listened to what was going on and offered advice.” Not that it was easy to understand advice, but he did try. “He got grounded after The Great Escape and wasn’t able to visit me for a month, and the visits have been really sparse since then, but it’s still basically the same thing. I tell him stuff, he responds with less-than-helpful answers, and then I beg him to elaborate. He swears they won’t let him.” I tried for a smile, but fell short. “Today we talked about how I now know about the rebellion and my role in it.”

Liam’s scowl wasn’t unexpected. “Who are ‘they’?”

“Angels? Gods? The Fates?” Not that I necessarily believed in all of those. “I don’t know. He’s pretty cagey when it comes to that stuff. He said if he reveals too much his visitation rights will be revoked.”

The traffic had picked up as the Indianapolis skyline became visible. Liam took a keen interest in the vehicles passing by the window over my shoulder. I couldn’t read his face. The ever-present scowl was gone and replaced by something less self-assured. Sadness? Confusion? Heartache? Disbelief? We weren’t close enough for me to know for sure, but they were all valid emotions. I had a healthy mix of each going on.

“I’m glad he has you,” he told minivan full of middle school aged soccer players. “It’s good he’s not alone.” There was a tremor in his voice I would have attributed to unshed tears on anyone other than Liam.

“I don’t think he’s ever alone,” I told him with complete honesty. “I get the feeling he’s usually with others and our time at the beach is supposed to be private, but Nicole always follows him there.”

When Liam’s eyes met mine they were definitely wet. “Nicole?”