“What do you think?” He held up his book.
“Wow, Sam, that’s amazing.” Not just because the gray sketch of the girl looked exactly like me, but because she was smiling—something I’d not done since coming home.
He rested the book in his lap and kept his eyes on it. “Ara?”
“Yeah, Sam?”
“Does it still keep you up at night?”
I put my headphones in my ears, making a point that I didn’t want to talk about this. “Yes. It does.”
His finger moved over the lines on his sketch to shadow them. “Me too.”
“Just try not to think about it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish it’d never happened to you.”
“Me too.” I rolled over and covered my head with my blankets.
No one told Sam the finer details of the attack, but gossip had a way of oozing from the mouth of one person and creeping into the ears of another. He came home late from school the other day, kept back on detention after punching a kid, who told him that my attacker really had violated me—that he’d heard it from Mr. Thompson, my dad. Which was a huge lie!
But I’d take the truth to my grave, however far away that may be. And I didn’t plan to stay in New England, either. There’d be no escaping the stares if I went back to school, no escaping the news reporters that had camped outside our house for three days once I came home. I’d already planned to jump on a plane and go back home as soon as I was better. Whether that was as Mike’s fiancé or not, I didn’t care. I just needed to get away from here. Away from it all.
David once said that it was kinder for a vampire to kill a human than to leave them alive, suffering in agony until they finally passed. Turns out, he was right.
Death would have been kinder.
Maybe that’s why Jason left me alive: so I’d walk the Earth for the rest of my days, not only ashamed and broken, reliving his cruelty in every nightmare, but also that I’d suffer it alone—without David. He must have known David would leave me if I weren’t compatible for the change. He must have known I wouldn’t turn, wouldn’t die. His plan was executed so perfectly to punish David, yet I was the one made to suffer.
A wild winter gale rattled my windowpane, and the darkness of the night touched every corner of my room then. I couldn’t remember Sam leaving, and though I heard Dad and Vicki go to bed, I couldn’t remember if they came in to say goodnight, like they always did.
The music bleating through my earphones helped filter out some of the clatter from the wind, but I should’ve been more careful about the playlist I chose because, tonight, in the darkness, these songs reminded me too much of David.
I made myself small against the wall and hugged my pillow to my chest. The skin along my cheeks hurt from the constant wiping of tears, but as the cold turned them icy against my lips, I forced myself to blot them away.
The memory of David’s scent blew in under my window then, and an apparition of him resolved itself before my heavy eyes. I could hardly breathe as I took in his face, the softness of his smile, and the dimples both above and beside his lip that I’d almost forgotten existed.
“You’re not really here, are you?” I whispered.
His liquid-green eyes were intense with sorrow, as they lowered reluctantly away from mine. “If I were, my love, I shouldn’t be.”
Then, as swiftly as he appeared, he was gone again, the tone of his smooth voice ringing in my ears as if he’d really spoken. And though I could still smell him, I knew he hadn’t actually been standing there. Even the cold I felt on my legs from when the window opened and then closed again, it wasn’t real. It didn’t happen. The over-tiredness, the lack of food, and the emotional damage was finally sending me mad.
But I didn’t want to be crazy. I almost died, and spending my life locked up in an institution wouldn’t be any different than being held prisoner in that darkness. I needed to move past this. I needed to get out of bed and start living again.
I tore my earphones out and ditched my iPod across the room, tossing my pillows and blanket on top so I wouldn’t have to think about it.
David and every song on the iPod needed to be deleted tomorrow. Getting over the attack was one thing, and it was possible that I might never be free of it. But if I didn’t forget David—delete all traces of him—it would be a guarantee.
I rolled over, shivering in the nakedness of my bed, wishing I’d at least kept my blanket. But regret only lasted another few sobs as the exhaustion swept me under the grasp of sleep.
* * *
As the new day peeked through my window and I opened my eyes again, almost as quickly as I’d closed them, I listened to the sound of birds singing praise to the calm sky. The unruly wind from last night had receded with the moon, and there was enough chill in the air to make snuggling warmly into my blanket immensely pleasant.
I sat bolt upright though when I slid my hand under my pillow and touched something there; something thin and metal. My eyes moved from the iPod that had been buried under my blanket across the room last night to where it now sat in its dock, and my blood ran cold. I reached under my pillow again to draw out the cool silver chain, my skin going tight with little bumps as I looked down at a heart shaped locket.
He left this.
He was here.
As if he might still be, I looked at the window, but I could no longer smell him or feel him. I grabbed my blanket in a fist and tucked it to my chin, wondering why he came. Why he would leave this here when I gave it back to him so I could move on.
But I promised him my forever.
And he promised me eternity.
I had to move on. He made me move on, and yet he would never let me go.
It occurred to me then that I was kidding myself to think I could delete him from my mind any more than I could my heart. I needed to stop trying—needed to wear this locket, keep David alive in my thoughts, because he was a part of me. I felt nothing if I didn’t love him.
I could never move on, not really. I could live for the rest of my life with Mike, and I could be his wife, but as the fine inscription on the back of the locket read: I belong to him—to David. I always would.
“Forever,” I told myself as I linked the chain around my neck, and let it fall against my collarbones, back where it belonged.
* * *
As day turned into night again, I listened to the familiar sound of conversations going on in the dining room without me. Mike’s booming laughter flowed up the stairs and poked me in the heart. I wished I could laugh. I wished I could laugh with Mike. But he seemed to be avoiding me. I think. Or maybe he was just trying to give me some space, I wasn’t sure, but he hovered by my door a lot—hardly ever knocked or came in… just hovered. Before the attack, there were never closed doors between us, but now it seemed like even the windows were shut, and I was all alone on the other side.
A screech of disapproval rose above the loud chatter downstairs. “Greg, you can’t say that,” Vicki said. “It’s politically incorrect.”
Dad didn’t respond, but I pictured him laughing into a fist, his face red.
“But it’s true, Vicki,” Mike insisted, “It’s rude, yes, but…”
I stopped listening. I didn’t want to hear what they were saying. I didn’t want to be a part of their conversation, nor did I want to sit here wishing I were.
I clutched my secret locket and waited for the arrival of another tear-provoked sleep.
When the conversations downstairs ended, the plates were all cleared and the lights and doors were positioned in their nightly rest stop, I snuggled down in my bed, closed my eyes, and imagined David beside me.
In these moments, we were together again as if nothing had ever happened; as if I’d decided long ago to become a vampire and be with him for eternity. These were the only moments I lived for and, sadly, they weren’t even real.
My door swung open then, and I quickly tucked my locket away, pretending to be asleep but keeping one eye o
pen to watch in the darkness. Mike stood in the doorway, waiting to see if I’d stir, then, as usual, wandered over to lock the window I’d already double-checked, drawing my curtains closed again after.
“Oh, Mike. I didn’t realize you were in here,” my dad whispered.
“Yeah, I like to check on her before I go to bed,” he said in a deep, husky whisper.
“Is she sleeping?”
“Yeah.” His solemn, almost broken tone obviously set my dad’s mind wandering as it did mine.
“You okay, son?” Dad said, and the light filtering in from the hall disappeared.
“I’m worried about her, Greg.”
Dad leaned against my dresser. “Me too,” he said. “I don’t think she’s okay, you know. She plays it tough.” Dad looked right at me; I closed my eye for a second. “But I never see her cry. Not once, in fact. Surely this kind of thing has got to leave a girl feeling something?”
“She cries,” Mike stated. “I know you don’t see it, but that’s because she wants everyone to think she’s okay.”
“You’ve seen her cry?”
Mike shook his head. “But I hear her. At night, when she thinks everyone’s asleep.”
Dad rubbed his chin, shaking his head.
“I’ve hovered by her door a few times, trying to decide if I should come in, but she smiles and plays it cool when I catch her.” Mike paused. “She won’t talk to me, Greg, but she needs to talk to someone before she buries this grief too deep and we lose her for good.”
“Maybe she’ll talk to Emily?” Dad suggested.
No, I won’t.
“I doubt it,” Mike said, then sighed heavily. “I don’t know. I guess we just need to give her more time.”
“I think we’re past that point, Mike. Vicki’s worried.” Dad combed the front of his hair with arched fingers. “She thinks we might need to get her some professional help.”
“Don’t do that,” Mike warned. “She’ll shut down if you do that. I’ll try talking to her tomorrow.”
I rolled onto my back and groaned, deliberately, to get them and their gossip out of my room so I could go back to my fantasies of David.
“Okay.” Dad clapped Mike on the shoulder.
“But, don’t worry,” Mike said, looking at me again. “She is still capable of feeling.”
“I hope so,” Dad said. “Otherwise, what was the point?”
“I know,” Mike said. “But she’s alive, Greg.”
“I’m starting to wonder if that’s all that counts.”
It’s not, Dad, I thought. I wished I had died. There was a point in the darkness when I wanted to come back, but not to this. Not to the recurring nightmares I had for the way Jason hurt me, the emptiness I felt for the way David left me, and the shame that hit me when I’d stand naked in the shower—feeling the air on my skin—knowing I was safe, but feeling so exposed and so bare. No one warned me that being awake again would be worse. No one told me I’d have dreams where I fell, over and over again, from that tree, waking up just before I hit the ground.
Life wasn’t all that mattered, and I learned that, unfortunately, a little too late.
The light from their world intruded on my David fantasy for a while longer. Dad had left the door open when he walked away, but I could feel Mike lingering at my bedside. He leaned over and stroked my hair, his hand absently moving down my cheek and onto my neck—the one place he wasn’t supposed to touch me anymore.
I curled my fingers into a tight fist, on the brink of shoving his hand away, when everything around us seemed to stop, as if I could feel the air change.
“Where did this come from?” he whispered to himself, lifting the silver chain from under my shirt. He sighed my name out then, his warm, heavy breath brushing across my nose and lips. But he placed the locket gently back down on my chest after, and kissed my head, closing the bedroom door behind him as he left.
* * *
The sunlight outside reflected off the icy roads and shone through the window with its early morning glow. It felt like months since I’d seen the sun, and years since I’d looked up at the blue sky. I wondered now if I’d even love the summer anymore when it came around again.
“Hi, gorgeous.” Mike glided into my room with breakfast. “You hungry?”
I shook my head.
“Okay.” He lowered the plate of toast, his smile dropping with it. “I’ll take it back down.”
“Thanks, Mike. But…” I sat up a little. “Don’t tell Vicki. She’s worried I’m not getting enough nutrients.”
“Right.” He paused, chewing the inside of his lip as he studied my probably very blotchy nose and cheeks. “Ara?”
“Mm?”
“No more, baby.” He squatted beside me, placing the plate on the ground. “You gotta talk to me.”
“I do talk to you.”
“No, you don’t. You haven’t even been able to look at me. You flinch when”—he dropped his hand away from my face as I recoiled—“when I touch you.”
“Well, what do you expect, Mike?”
“I get it. I do. But I don’t understand why you’re pushing me away. I’d never hurt you, Ara.”
“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” I said with a hint of detest.
“Well…” He dropped back on his heels a little. “What is it then?”
I stared at him through a film of tears, and as the words rose to the surface at the same time the tears spilled onto my cheeks, I spat them out, “I’m just so humiliated. I never wanted you to find me that way.”
“What way? Ara, how do you think I found you?
“He—he,” I stammered. “He said he was going to leave me naked… exposed…I—”
Mike’s eyes widened and his hands shot out so fast that I squealed, ducking my head as he sat on my bed and pulled me to his chest, stroking my hair. “You never told me that. Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“I didn’t want anyone to know.”
“Did you at least tell the cops?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t told anyone. I only told them the basics.”
“Then you remember more than you say?” His tone was soft, not angry, like I expected.
“Mm-hm.”
“Oh, baby. Why? Why would you do that? How can they catch this guy if they don’t know the full story?”
“They’ll never catch him.” That much I was sure of.
Mike ignored that comment and took a deep breath. “Do you want to know what I saw when I found you? Can you cope with this yet?”
“I need to know, Mike. It’s been eating me up.”
“Ara.” He exhaled my name. “You should’ve talked to me about this before now. I could’ve helped you.”
“I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.”
Mike laid me back down on the pillow, and his hand fell gently into the curve of my neck as he studied me, swiping his thumb over my cheekbone.
“Mike!” I pushed his hand down. “Please don’t touch my neck.”
“Right, sorry, I forgot.” But his eyes stayed there for a moment, not on the jagged, silvery bite shape, but on the place the attacker’s grip left a mental scar. “You were covered when I found you.”
I looked up quickly into his soulful, caramel gaze. “I was?”
He nodded. “Your hair was laying over your… over your chest, like it’d been positioned that way. No one saw anything, and I had you covered with my jacket before anyone else came.”
Tears of relief overflowed and swerved down my cheeks. Mike started to wipe them away, but gave up in vain when they kept flowing.
“So… all this time? You thought I’d found you… exposed?”
“Yeah.” I wiped my nose. “I thought… I mean, I didn’t know what he did to me after I—when it all went black. I didn’t know if maybe he’d done worse, or—”
“Oh, baby. I really wish you’d said something.”
I felt pretty silly then. “So do I.”
Mike laughed softly, but th
e smile in his eyes faded away to something darker.
“What, Mike? What is it?”
He pinched his lips, rocking his jaw. “You don’t know what I went through looking for you. And when I found you…” He let a breath out through his nose, battling with the words inside his mouth. “I expected, given what I was sure he’d done to you… I was surprised when I found you still wearing your underwear.”
I cringed, my mind shooting back to that night.
“But your legs…” A grave, haunted look widened his eyes. “You were just so so covered in blood. I thought the deranged prick had actually dressed you again after he…” Mike couldn’t say it.
I touched his arm, wishing I could have been there to comfort him through that.
“I cried when they told me,” he said, cupping his hand over mine. “When the doctors said he hadn’t raped you, I just cried. Baby, it was so dark in that field. Without a torch, I might not’ve seen you at all. And when I found you, I noticed only one small flicker of pale skin, and I ran, faster than I’ve ever run before.”
In my mind, I could see it all as it happened. And I let myself imagine it, because seeing it from another side helped me to blot out some of the fear—the emptiness of being alone, scared, feeling like no one would ever come for me.
“All we’d come across so far was”—he paused and lowered his voice—“was your bra. And I can’t tell you what went through my mind when I found it.”
I felt my cheeks flush.
“The things I imagined he was doing to you while I wasn’t there to protect you. I felt so helpless. I couldn’t walk properly; every step I took was like my legs were carrying the weight of a train. But I kept going. I had to find you—to hold you and make you safe again.”
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 66
