“No, not today anyway.”
“Then how did you know he was out?”
“I saw it—the memory of what happened tonight.”
I looked down at my knee. The grazes hadn’t come with me into this world, and the only thought that really played in my mind was David kissing that girl. “No. He’s not back yet. I’m not sure he will come back.”
Jason landed beside me. “He will.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
When he took my hand, I pulled it away abruptly. “Don’t do that. I can’t be with you like that, Jason, I still haven’t—”
“Okay. Let’s not have this talk.” He raised a palm between us. “Not now, okay. Can we just…” He looked up at the night and pushed his hands apart, making the daylight enter as if melting through a crack in a wall. “Let’s just enjoy today.”
My mouth fell open. “That was cool. How did you do that?”
“Magic?” he offered, and under the newness of daylight in our world, autumn rain fell from the trees all across the land; orange, yellow and brown leaves tumbling from the sky like colored snow, and among it all, flurries of bright-winged butterflies danced on the breeze, dashing in and out of the leaves.
Awe was too weak a word for my amazement. “What else can you do?”
He stood suddenly, offering his hand. “Many things.”
“Can you fly?” I asked, taking it.
“For you?” He bowed to kiss my knuckles. “I can do anything.”
We both looked up then, hearing a voice.
“Ara?” it said again.
Darkness surrounded me. I moved my fingertips across cool cotton, suddenly lying down.
“Ara, you awake?” David said softly into my hair.
“I am now,” I said, trying to rub the night away from my eyes and make the daylight return. But it was gone, leaving me groggy and tense from the sudden absence of my dream. “You’re back?”
“Was it ever a question I would be?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to be here?”
I sat up. “What kind of question is that?”
He leaned back against the bed, staring ahead. “I hurt you tonight.”
“No. You woke me up.”
“I’m sorry. I should let you sleep.” He went to stand.
I grabbed his arm. “I didn’t mean now. I meant… I meant that when I saw you tonight—killing that girl—you woke me up, David.”
He sat back down. “Why don’t I like the sound of this?”
My eyes fell into my lap. “Look, I always knew you were a vampire—a killer. But I’d… I might’ve seen death, David, but never at your hands. It’s real. That girl is dead because you killed her. And for what—for blood?”
He nodded, his soul falling away inside; I could feel it.
“But I love you,” I concluded with a shrug. “I know that’s bad and I know I should burn in Hell for this, but I love you, David, and I can’t stop loving you just because you kill.”
“And you come to this conclusion now?” he said with a mixed sarcastic rejoicing tone.
“Maybe you should have killed someone in front of me years ago.”
He laughed. “Yes, but this”—he seemed stuck, tossing his head in a jerked movement—“this life I live, it’s more than I can ever expect you to bear. Any human to bear. And I know you say you accept it. You said that to me once before as well. But you—”
“But now I mean it,” I insisted. “I meant it then, but I only knew you killed. Now, I understand it.” I understood why he’d said to me once, so long ago by the lake, that I had to accept all of him, not just the part I could digest.
He sighed heavily, his posture sagging as if he were utterly exhausted. “I can’t live without the bite, sweetheart. It hurts. My teeth crave it, my body craves it. I need you to know that. I just—”
“You don’t want me to hate you.” I took his hand, and he let me.
“I couldn’t live if you hated me, and I physically cannot die, so I need you to love me, Ara, for all my faults and horrors. I just need you to love me.” His gaze met mine with a depth inside the questioning that made me want to cry for him.
I inched forward, my eyes wide as I reached for his face. “I love you. Don’t ever question that. I love you for everything you are, David. And I won’t give up on us—not while I can still touch you.” I dropped his hand then, staring across the room at my mirror. “But I can’t ignore—”
David winced, taking a sharp breath. “I know. Ara. I know I kissed that girl. I—” He rubbed his chin. “I have nothing but an apology, my love. I can’t even begin to make it right.”
“You don’t need to, I guess. It’s not like we’re together.”
“Except, in my heart”—he touched his chest—“we are. And that gives me no excuse for what I did.”
“Look, I know what the blood lust does. It must’ve been hard to resist going further,” I said, “after not having a kill for so long.”
He stared at me, confusion surrounding him. “Who explained that to you, was it Eric?”
I nodded. David looked away.
“Didn’t you want me to know that?”
“I guess…” His voice trailed away with his thoughts, coming back in with disappointment. “I guess I just wanted to be the one to explain it to you.”
“You weren’t in the right frame of mind.”
“I am now though.” He leaned closer, shutting us into our own world of secrets. “I will answer any questions you have.”
“Discretionally?”
“Honestly.”
“Did you have sex with her?” I said sharply.
“Ara?” He held onto his words for a moment, seeming to consider them carefully. “You know what I am. You know what I do. You’ve seen it now—you shouldn’t ask those questions.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” The thought of him with another girl felt like poison in my blood.
“Do you not know?” He shook his head, grabbing my face. “Do I need to spell it out for you?”
I nodded.
“I would never ever do that to you, Ara. You should know me better than that by now. I love you—only you.” He squeezed my hand, his voice getting louder. “I will never have another as long as I live.”
“Really?” I said, trying not to smile.
“Yes. Really.” He looked away, shaking his head. “Sometimes, girl, I really don’t know how you come up with these things.”
My mouth hung open. “But… the lust. I mean, I saw the way you kissed her—”
“I got carried away. But it would never be enough to make me go that far.”
Now, that I understood, especially after that Mike-and-the-lake incident. “I guess you’re only human.”
He took a sideways glance to smile at me. “In part.”
“No, David.” I touched his chest. “In heart.”
He cupped my hand. “And you think I’m corny.”
I rolled back onto my pillow. “You love my corny.”
“Yes, I do.” He laid down beside me, still in his clothes—the ones he wore while killing that girl. “Do you mind if I lay?”
“I don’t think friends should share a bed.”
“Come on, Ara?” he groaned. “Stop this friend thing, please? It’s killing me.”
“Stay, and I’ll stop it.” I smiled smugly, aware he could see it even in the darkness.
“My love, what happened tonight has only cemented what I already knew: our worlds don’t mix. I’ll be leaving in a few days, and you’re wasting all this time on some silly belief that I’ll change my mind.”
“I have to hope you will, David. What else have I got?”
“Right now, for a little longer, you’ve got me.”
“Don’t you understand, though? I can’t let myself get lost in you—feel happy with you. I won’t be able to breathe again once you’re gone.”
“I do understand that.”
He sat quiet for so long I almost thought he was asleep, until he startled me with “When I leave, will you be with him?”
“Him?”
“Mike.”
“He’s with Emily, David.”
“Believe me, that means nothing when it comes to you.”
“Honor means everything to Mike. He won’t betray that.”
“Do you want him to?”
My shoulders moved with the long breath I took. “No.”
David smiled to himself—his secret smile. “He loves you, you know.”
“It’s an old love,” I assured him. “A dying love.”
“I know, I just…”
“You don’t trust me.”
“It’s not that. And if I’m gone, who am I to say who you can be with?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“I just… Look, I have to ask you something, and I need you to answer me truthfully.”
Uh-oh. “Okay,” I squeaked.
“I’ve been here for a while now, Ara, and in that time—” He readjusted his position. “In that time, you’ve not… well… are you pregnant?”
“What?” I pressed up off the bed with my palms. “Why would you think that? I’m a virgin. You know that.”
“So you say, but I know your cycles, and in the entire time I’ve been here, Ara, you’ve not had even one… er… well, you haven’t had a…”
“A period?” My lip curled. I slumped back on the pillow, covering my face with my hands.
“Yes, one of those.”
Oh, my God! “Okay. First of all, I’m not even going to ask how you know that, and second?” I came out from behind my hands. “Why on earth would your first conclusion for my lack of menstruation be that I’d had sex with some other guy and was now carrying his child?”
“It’s not,” he said. “I mean, it wasn’t—it just—it’s my fear, Ara. Okay. I was afraid you might have let your human weakness’ get in the way of how you feel for me.”
I slammed my hands down beside me. “David!”
“I’m sorry. So”—he leaned around and looked at my probably very red face—“you’re not pregnant?”
“God! No!”
“Then why…”
“Because I’m stressed, okay?” I rolled away from him. “I don’t get that when I’m stressed.”
“Stressed?”
“Yes. You know that—you know I’ve been stressed.”
“No, sweetheart, I didn’t.” He ran his fingers gently over my back. “I don’t hear your thoughts, remember? And you act so happy around me. I really didn’t notice.”
I rolled my shoulder, twisting at the waist to look at him. “I can’t believe you thought I’d—”
“I’m sorry. It was silly. I do know you better than that. I just… I’d normally read your thoughts instead of asking you. But I can’t, and I feel incredibly uncomfortable—unstable, sort of—like I can’t protect you. And, Ara?” He rolled me onto my back. “You are extraordinarily young and naïve. You see the good in everything. It would be so easy for someone to take advantage of that.”
“So you weren’t scared I’d cheated on you, only that someone had taken advantage of me?”
“I was scared of both.” He laughed. “But more afraid that if you had found yourself in the arms of another man, you’d never tell me because you’d be too afraid I’d hate you.”
“You would hate me.”
“I’d try my hardest not to.”
“I’d hate you—if you did it.”
“Then, I promise”—he held up three fingers in a Scout’s Honor—“I will, for the rest of eternity, never lay a hand on another girl.”
“Don’t be silly, David. I’ll be dead one day, what then?”
“I won’t stop loving you just because you’re dead, Ara.” He frowned down at me. “And I will never touch another girl—not now that I’ve touched you. Nothing could compare.”
“But we haven’t even had sex.”
“Exactly. It took one caress of your flawlessly soft skin, one taste of your perfect lips and I was hooked. For the rest of forever, no other girl will be enough for me.”
“What about me then, David? I can’t promise you the same.”
David swallowed. “That, my love, is something I came to accept a long time ago.”
“So, you think I’m a slut, too?”
“What? Ara? I never said that.”
“You implied it.” I folded my arms.
David took a breath to speak, but paused as thought flooded his eyes. “Hang on, you said too. Who said you’re a slut?”
A memory of Jason and me at the lake flashed for a second, being locked away before David could see it. “No one. I just… I feel like one because of what I did with Mike.”
“Aw, Ara.” He rested his forehead against mine. “Sweetheart, you’re not a slut—you’re just a very confused girl. And you should be confused; you’ve been through hell. I would never think you’re a slut, my love, not even if you had slept with Mike.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“But would you be mad if I had?”
He drew a long, deep breath. “You and I aren’t even together, Ara. I have no official claim to you.”
“But, would you be mad?”
His fingers tightened around my cheeks. “Seething.”
I smiled. “Good.”
* * *
David’s bluesy voice and the rigid pattern of his strum led my curious ears to the music room. I loved this song. Loved it more now the meaning applied to David and me so well: a pair of star-crossed lovers fighting for the right to be together against all odds, choosing to stick the proverbial middle finger up at Fate.
He strummed twice and then slapped the strings, giving the song a soulful, artsy feel, while the gentle turn of his head and the sudden indent of his dimple showed that he knew I was watching. I moved over and sat within his glow, watching his shoulder moving with the strum, and I was suddenly so much more in love with him than I was a minute ago.
When his voice hit a high note he stopped strumming and carried the song a cappella, bringing fire and rain to my heart with the tone of his voice. I touched my chest, singing the ending in my head.
“You okay, Ara?” David set the guitar on the coffee table.
“I think you just ate my soul then spat it out into an airless vat.”
He pinned a mocking hand to my shoulder. “Just breathe.”
“I totally get how groupies feel.” I fanned myself.
David laughed, crossing the room to hook the guitar in the clamp on the wall, then just stood there taking in the shiny blue instrument, as if he were at an art museum.
“Something on your mind, vampire-boy?” I stood behind him.
He half turned, keeping his arms folded. “Eric tells me the hunters discovered the true identity of the girl they were following—the one that was supposed to be you.”
I nodded. I expected that. Time passed so quickly I barely even noticed the weeks. But Jason did say it would happen soon. I’d hoped for three months, but a month was better than the one night that David originally promised me. “So, when are you leaving?”
He offered his hand. I took it. “Not yet.”
“When?”
His fingers tightened on mine. I knew the answer was when you let me go. But I also knew I wasn’t ready to do that yet. Those vampires would be beating down my door before I was willing to say goodbye, and even then…
“Just… not yet,” he said.
17
They say that time passes—that it keeps moving on without us. But they’re wrong. Time can stand still. I’d seen it in the sunset, or the moment before someone you love dies. And for me, with David back in my life, time had been absent. I hadn’t had a student, seen my family or said more than good morning to Emily and Mike as I passed them on my way back to my room. I’d finally mastered the ability to shut the world out and pretend it would go away.
But
the days did pass, one by one, drawing me ever closer to when my world would stop indefinitely. Time would have no meaning then either, except for the past. Memories. That would be all that was left of him; all that was left of me.
“Everything looks so different in the winter.” I closed my eyes against the glare of the sun on snow, warming my hands in the pockets of my red coat. With the bare trees reaching for the sky, their golden ribbons of foliage blown away until next year, there was a kind of openness to the forest, like the privacy had been stolen away, leaving us standing in a spotlight for all to see.
David stood behind me and wrapped his arms along my waist. “It’s more beautiful, I think. But maybe that’s just because you’re here with me.”
“Aw. How sweet,” I said, half mocking, half swooning, linking my fingers through the backs of his as we swayed to imaginary music.
Our lake had nearly frozen since we were last here, and as the afternoon sun settled on the clouded gray sky, the freshly fallen snow glowed a dense purple-blue around the banks. But despite the nakedness of this once flourishing forest, the bare trees didn’t resemble lifelessness to me anymore, only the end of a chapter; the silence before a new beginning—whatever that may be.
“Come. Walk with me, my love.”
“Where to?”
He took my hand and led me to the water’s edge.
“David!” I stopped dead. “It’s not completely frozen, we could fall in.”
“This part’s fine.” He stepped out onto the lake and tapped his foot where the once shallow sandbar to the island had frozen into a narrow channel of ice. “Do you trust me?”
“In theory.” I laughed and took his hand, stepping onto the slippery bridge.
“You see? Solid.”
“This is pretty amazing.” I looked up from my feet. “It’s a pity it can’t be frozen like this when the trees are in full bloom.”
“Maybe I’ll have to bring you back here one day then, and use the elements to freeze the water.”
“You can do that?”
He wrapped me up in his arms, scaring me for a second as my feet slipped apart, but he held me so close that slipping wasn’t an option. “Of course I can.”
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