Chloe jerked awake suddenly, and suddenly found herself no longer surrounded by the pink that hurt her eyes. She was back in the study, sitting on Lachlan’s chair, hands over his typewriter. The curtains were still closed, and the only light was the pink from the typewriter…which didn’t fade.

There was a soft heat to her face. She reached up to touch it, and found the skin strangely warm around the cheeks. The lengths he had gone to for her, how he justified it to himself at every single hurdle along the way…

That was when she realised she was blushing, and that the tips of her ears were burning, too. Chloe reached for the mirror on the desk, but her hand passed through it, the object shimmering like smoke in water. She couldn’t touch it, and now that she thought about it, she couldn’t feel the chair or the ground under her either.

She got up slowly, noting that the typewriter was still glowing intensely, letting off the gas that…oh. The gas was creating the image of the study around her. She hadn’t gone anywhere, just simply imagined a better setting for herself.

But if she could guide Lachlan, and she could make herself comfortable, then things might just be looking up. Two hours? Days? Weeks? Two whatevers ago in this timeless void, she couldn’t even blush, and now she felt like a schoolgirl from one of the romance novels Lachlan didn’t like.

She sat down on the imaginary chair, and rested her dainty white sneakers on the imaginary floorboards. No, they were real. They were real to her. She put her hands over the keys again. Now that she knew thing could change, Chloe was going to take it one step at a time, no matter how long it took.

Come on, imagine him surviving!