Bound by Secrets

by Angela M Hudson

  “I don’t care.” I sat down on the back of the couch. “Tell him.”

  “Why?” He looked right at me with stern, wise eyes. “So he can teach you a lesson? That’s not what you need.”

  “Then what do I need?” I rolled my hands out in sarcastic question. “You seem to know everything, so go ahead, inform me, oh wise master.”

  “First of all, you need a fucking punch in the face,” he said firmly. “And second, you need to understand that what happened out there is a result of the curse.”

  My cheeks loosened, and I felt suddenly enlightened. “What?”

  He nodded, rubbing his jaw. “It happens—when the love’s not reciprocated. Remember Ryder?”

  I thought back to the day one of our most trusted guards was killed for trying to take the queen’s life. One of our guards who, it turned out, was under her curse for a very long time before that.

  “It turns the heart rotten as much as it draws it in,” Mike explained. “I’ve been there—ended up slapping her in the face.”

  He was right. I’d forgotten about that until now. We blamed blood hunger, but no hunger had ever made him hurt her before.

  “She’s suffered a lot at the hands of this curse, man. You have to be careful—”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I said, standing up to get some movement under my feet. “Every time I see her, I just want to choke the life out of her!”

  “Well, for your sake, and for hers, you’re going to have to figure out how to move past that.”

  “I don’t know how!” I tapped my chest. “I’ve never felt like this before.”

  Mike groaned, moving across the room to the bookshelf in the corner. “You remind yourself why you love her.” He bent down and then stood again with my wedding album in hand, shoving it into my chest. “Because if you don’t, you’ll end up hurting her again. And it may be worse next time.”

  “And what if I no longer care if I hurt her?”

  “You will.” He held my gaze firmly, injecting a wealth of previous experience into my soul with that one hard look. “And when this surge ends, what you did to her this morning is gonna hurt, man. Deeply,” he added, voice breaking on the end. Then he left, shutting the door firmly into place behind him, and I sat down in the shadows of the room, looking at the cover of my wedding album for a very long time.

  37

  Ara

  Harry blew me another kiss goodnight. I caught it, sticking it to my cheek as I closed his door, and as it shut into place and I was finally free to let my thoughts wander, I cried. The gash on my head needed a new bandage now, and it had been hurting all night, but not as deeply as my heart.

  Until now, I’d hoped, maybe even believed, that when David moved past the grief of losing his wife, we could be friends. After he broke his promise to me that day when he left for five months, I never wanted anything more than to be friends, but then it changed. Finding out we have a son and learning more about David—the man, the lawyer, the ex-vampire, the loving father—things had started changing for me. Even after I found out he was the impure soul, something about him always brought me back. All those times my common-sense mind saw the bad, my heart seemed to look past it, right into the good, right into the green eyes and the boyish smile. I was smitten with him, in truth, no matter how much I tried to fight it.

  Until now.

  It was the final straw, doing what he did to me today, and now that Harry was in bed, I could finally just breathe and decide what to do from here. I knew I’d have to leave, but I didn’t want to leave Harry, and if I stayed, David would eventually make me love him again. I was in the abuse cycle here, and it was as plain as the nose on my face. There were only two ways out: the door, now, before things got worse and he started thinking he owned me; or in a body bag later.

  And being Lilithian didn’t change a thing. There were ways to kill my kind—a removed head, for example—and at this point, I wouldn’t put it past David to go crazy and decapitate me. What’s worse is, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do anything, even if he was human, because when he hurt me, all my instincts to survive shut down. I panicked. And I didn’t know how to stop him.

  “I know that look,” Mike said, leaning on the doorframe to his bedroom.

  I snapped out of my own head and shook it all off, forcing a smile as I headed for the stairs. “What look?”

  “Ara.” He grabbed my arm softly to stop me. “Don’t, okay.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t leave.”

  I felt my brows pull in confusion. “How could you know…”

  “I’ve known you forever,” he said simply, walking backwards as he pulled me toward his bedroom, closing the door once we were inside.

  “What are we doing?” I said, flicking on the light.

  “You need to listen to me.” He took both of my arms and moved me to the bed, sitting me down.

  “Won’t Em be upset if we’re in here—”

  “No. She told me to talk to you.”

  I thrust my shoulders back and lifted my chin. Whatever they wanted to say, it wouldn’t change things. I knew they’d all side with David, but I was smarter than that. “Mike, you have to understand—”

  “And I do.” He sat down on the ground, his back beside my legs against the bed. “Believe me. The first thing I want you to do is walk out that door and take Harry with you. This is not the life I want for you.”

  “Then why are you talking me into staying?”

  He turned his head a fraction and looked up at me, familiar caramel eyes bringing me home. “Because this isn’t going to be your life. David, for what little you actually know about him, isn’t an abusive man—”

  “My head says otherwise—”

  “Yes, but twenty years tells me another story.”

  “People change.”

  “No, they don’t. Not at their core.”

  “Then you explain that to me,” I said, pointing off to nothing as though it was the courtyard, “because that was a profound and very sudden change—”

  “I can’t explain it.” He rubbed his face, pushing his hair back before looking at me again. “I wish I could. But all I can say is that there is a reason he reacted to you that way, and it isn’t normal for him. It wasn’t him—”

  “I’ve heard enough.” I stood up, insulted.

  “Ara, just wait.” He grabbed my arm again. “I know you’re upset. But you just need to stop and think for a moment, because if you actually do, you’ll see that you don’t want to run.”

  “Funny, because—”

  “You don’t. You just don’t want to get hurt again, and I know you want to understand what drove him to that so, please”—he begged with his eyes—“this is not for his sake. It’s for yours—for the girl that might one day remember everything. If you knew what caused that. If…”

  “Why won’t you just tell me?” I said, holding his eye. “If there’s a reason—”

  “If you look at him, look right into his face, Ara, you’ll see the reason.”

  What reason could anyone have for doing that?

  Then again, if I really thought about it, David wasn’t typically violent. I had spent enough time with him now to know that wasn’t his nature. Or maybe not his nature since he became human. So what had driven him to do that to me—to someone he was trying to win back?

  I knew I should be running. I should be out that door, and I could hear myself screaming at me to do so. But Mike was right. There was something in David’s eyes when he hurt me today, and if I was honest, that wasn’t what scared me. That wasn’t why I was running.

  In truth, I was running because I couldn’t understand why I’d let him do that to me. I could have fought him. Yes, what he did was abusive, but I wasn’t a victim here. It was messed up. All of it. But I was ten times stronger than him and, though I was scared and shocked and it took me a moment to understand what was going on today, I could have ended it. I could’ve stopped him.

&nbs
p; “Okay,” I conceded, nodding solemnly to myself. “I’ll… I’ll give it a week. I’ll calm down and take a step back, for Harry’s sake, and only because David has never laid a hand on him, but if something doesn’t change, I’m out.”

  “Thank you,” he said with a nod.

  I nodded in return, all my plans derailing right there in front of me.

  “For what it’s worth,” he added, opening his door for me, “in about half an hour, he’s gonna be feeling guilty as shit.” He laughed then. “And I’m talking sobbing-his-heart-out-razorblade-to-the-wrist kind of guilty.”

  “Why half an hour?” I checked my watch.

  “Just”—he winked at me—“trust me.”

  38

  David

  Laughter rose over my anguish, bringing me up from the darkness of this room for a moment as I listened to my family enjoying a great-smelling dinner without me. I’d sat here for hours, turned page after page of this album, but still I couldn’t love her. Couldn’t even like her. Couldn’t even want to unless she could promise to bring my Ara back.

  Nothing that Vicki or Mike had said really mattered to me now. For it to matter, I would have to care about this girl to begin with. And I just didn’t. Not while she was holding my Ara hostage.

  I sat back with my head against the books behind me and looked at the dark courtyard, only then remembering the smears of blood I’d washed from my hands after I hurt her. It was all a blur to me, everything that happened after, and my only real concern right now was whether the beating I gave her had, in fact, brought my Ara out from hiding. But if it had, she would be in here with me.

  I could hear the bath running upstairs, hear Ara laughing with Harry. I was glad she’d gotten over it enough to play mommy tonight, because I was clearly not in a fit state to be a dad. Mike was right. I needed to get this under control, but not so much for her sake, or mine. But for Harry’s. And Elora’s. My biggest shame was hearing the disappointment in my daughter’s voice on the phone tonight, knowing that if Emily hadn’t stopped me when she did, I would have actually done worse to Ara. And she would have let me. It still eluded me, the reason she did that. What did she hope to gain by letting me hurt her? Attention? Maybe. But that didn’t seem like her at all.

  The door opened a crack then and the hallway light came on, casting a ribbon of yellow across the room. I squinted against it, turning my face away.

  “Hi.”

  The voice surprised me. I didn’t think she’d ever talk to me again. “Hi.”

  “What you lookin’ at?” she asked.

  “Um…” I smoothed my hand across the cover. “Photo album.”

  “Can I see?” she asked, closing the door behind her. It went dark again and, in this light, I felt safer to look at her.

  I put the album on the ground and slid it over so she wouldn’t sit directly beside me. But she did anyway—she just picked it up and positioned herself right by my knee, her legs crossed like a child on a story mat.

  I inched my leg away, my skin crawling. If this feeling was a result of that curse, it was a nasty, horrible curse. I had to wonder if I’d feel this way otherwise, and when I looked at her as she opened the book and smiled at the first picture, I realized I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t hate her this much. Ever. How could I?

  But with that realization came a flood of guilt that made my chest heavy, because I also would never have hurt her like that. Now, it had been done, and there was nothing in this world that could undo it.

  “I’ve never seen any pictures of the wedding,” she said quietly.

  I leaned in to look too, noting that she didn’t say ‘our wedding’ or ‘your wedding’. “Can you see them alright in the dark?”

  She just laughed, making a point of the obvious. I missed my vampire eyesight then. I’d been looking at silhouettes all night mostly, but I knew them all so well that I didn’t need to see to know what was on each page.

  “Who’s this?” She pointed to the man on her arm as she walked across her backyard in her wedding dress.

  “The man who raised you.” I cleared my throat. “He was Vicki’s husband.”

  “Wow.” She looked right at me and then back at the photo. “I didn’t know she had a husband. I kind of didn’t really want to know anything about my life beforehand, you know, so I didn’t ask her much.”

  “She wouldn’t have spoken of him anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “She can’t bring herself to look back on that time.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s too painful. This man”—I pointed to Greg—“he loved you like his own, and you trusted that he always would. So did Vicki. But though you knew him all your life as Greg Thompson, in truth, with all that comes with it, his name is Vampirie.”

  Her eyes shot up from the picture to mine. I knew she understood what a horrible person he truly was. I knew she’d heard the stories of how he and his son tried to wipe out all Lilithians and Vampires a few years ago. “The… the Vampirie?”

  I nodded, pointing to a picture of Sam. “And this was Sam.”

  “Vicki’s son,” she said softly, smiling at his picture. “So her son was immortal?”

  “No. He was part vampire but didn’t have immortality.”

  “Oooh, and is that why he died?”

  “No.” I sat back, my hands falling loosely in my lap. She didn’t get it. She hadn’t put the pieces together. “Sam was Vampirie’s son too, Ara. If he was Vicki’s son and they were married—”

  “Oh my God!” She looked at me. “But Elora killed Vampirie’s son.”

  I nodded.

  “So… our daughter killed her own uncle?”

  I nodded, running my finger along the jagged scar at my throat. “On the night he did this to me.”

  Ara leaned in to examine it, and I tensed, hoping she moved back before I reflexively shoved her away. But she didn’t. Instead, she shut the wedding album and moved closer, pressing her finger to it. “Why did he try to kill you?”

  I smacked her hand away. “It doesn’t matter. Any of it—”

  “But it does. I mean”—she leaned back on her knees—“our daughter killed Vicki’s son. How can she have ever forgiven her for that?”

  “Sam turned to the dark side long before Elora took his life, and it was foretold long before that.”

  “Foretold?”

  “Vampirie predicted that Elora would kill Sam. So it wasn’t a shock.”

  “Oh.” Ara nodded. “Poor Vicki.”

  “Poor Elora,” I added. “Sam was her uncle, remember? She loved him.”

  “And that’s why Vicki couldn’t return to Loslilian,” she noted. “Way too much pain there for her.”

  “Yes.” I took the wedding album and slid it back into place on the shelf, but as I pressed it in, a picture fell out.

  “What’s that?” Ara asked, leaning over my shoulder.

  “The lake house. We spent the summer there before… before my wife died.”

  She took the picture and brought it up to her nose, her eyes gathering in every angle, every tree. “I’ve seen this before. In a dream.”

  I snatched it back and slipped it between two books on the shelf. Those memories didn’t belong to her and I felt like she had no right to look at them.

  She sat still for a moment, eyes in her lap, and with the house so quiet around us, she spoke in a voice that was barely a whisper. “Why do you hate me?”

  I looked right at her, trying to put my feelings into words, but as time had passed while we sat here, that hatred had died down. Without it, I felt only a growing and very potent feeling of guilt. “Why didn’t you stop me from hurting you?” I countered.

  Ara drew a long, slow breath, her shoulders lifting. “I don’t know.”

  That piled the curiosity on in a giant heaping. I got up onto my knees and shuffled a bit closer. “Why don’t you know?”

  She just shrugged, not meeting my eyes.

  “Ara, is there a reason and
you just don’t want to tell me?”

  “I…” When she looked at me, even in the dark, I could see tears in her eyes. “I think I wanted you to do it. I wanted you to break my head so that maybe she would come back out.”

  That hit me like a bullet in the heart. It felt like my body sunk through the floor. “Why? I thought you liked being you?”

  “Not when it hurts you so much,” she mumbled almost incomprehensibly, wiping her cheeks. “I didn’t come here to be hated, David, and I’m sorry I don’t remember who I was. I’ve been trying so hard but—”

  “Shhh.” I reached across and placed my hand on her wrist. It was all I could do. I didn’t want to touch her. I didn’t want to comfort her. I didn’t want to tell her it was okay and that she didn’t have to remember. I wanted her to be sorry. I was glad she was sorry. I felt bad that she was sorry.

  “We can’t go on like this,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I can’t keep hating myself for not being the girl you need me to be.”

  “I know.”

  “And I won’t do it again, David,” she warned. “I will never let you treat me like that again—”

  “I know.”

  “No. You don’t.” She pushed my hand away. “Because you hurt me today. You made me feel powerless, shocked my entire system into some sick, twisted submission and, worst of all, you made me want to die.”

  My lip stiffened to hide my emotions.

  “If you ever lay a hand on me again, I won’t exercise restraint because you’re human.” She slowly stood up. “I care for you, David, but I will never again let myself be treated that way. The next time you lay a hand on me, I will hurt you. And then I’ll leave. And I’ll be taking my son with me.”