Dark Surrendering

by Chelsea M. Cameron

  But all that would have to wait until Ryder got back.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  The sadness finally set in that Ryder was gone. I still had the declaration of love to keep me uplifted, but the reality of not seeing him for a month soon hit me. And it wasn’t just seeing him. It was having the potential to see him. To have the chance to run down the hall, or have him knock on my door, or break into my apartment with a stolen set of keys.

  “You miss him, don’t you?” Inari said the afternoon we were touring Kendra’s studio to see the set pieces she’d made for the show.

  “Hmm?” I said. I’d been thinking about Ryder and when I was going to get the first letter from him. It had only been three days. Maybe the postal service in Colorado was slow.

  “You’re thinking about him,” she said.

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  Kendra came out of her office, and we hugged. She led me to the warehouse in the back and explained what she’d gotten done. One of the main things were these wacky columns covered in greenery. They looked even better than I’d imagined.

  “This is spectacular, really,” I said. It was perfect. Now that we had those done, we could work on the video and music to match.

  “And once you get me the music, we can do a test run with the lighting and see exactly what you like.” I’d done several fashion shows before, but none had ever run this smoothly. It was like I was getting a break since my love life was so dramatic.

  The show was happening two weeks into Ryder’s stay in Colorado. I wasn’t naïve enough to think that he could somehow magically show up and I’d run to him and throw myself on him, and flashbulbs would go off and we’d kiss and everything would be wonderful. That shit only happened in the movies. Well, and to my friend Marisol. Her boyfriend Fin had done that routine more than a few times. You’d think she wouldn’t be surprised anymore, but she was. Every time.

  I checked my mailbox with shaking hands that night, and there was an envelope with a return address in Colorado, sent from R. Blythe to S. Harris. Actually, there were three of them. One for each day.

  I clutched them to my chest and ran upstairs to read them. I tore through the envelopes and almost ripped the letters in my frenzy to get to the words written inside. The first letter was the shortest.

  S. Harris,

  Well, here I am. In the mountains. It’s cold, but you probably knew that. It’s snowing as I write this, and it makes me think of how the snowflakes looked on your dark hair. Have I ever told you how much I love your hair? Because I do. I’m obsessed with it. Do you know how many times I’ve had to stop myself from running my hands through it? Or twisting it in my hand and seeing if you like having it pulled? I bet you do.

  I’m really sorry about that night after the ball. That wasn’t how I pictured our first time being naked together. I pictured it a million different ways, but not like that. I hope that maybe I’ll get to make up for it sometime, and that you’ll let me. I’ll make it worth your while.

  I smiled to myself. I could hear Ryder’s voice in my head as I read the letter. I could see him and imagine his facial expressions.

  They won’t let me have a phone here, but they do take pictures, so when I get back I’ll be able to tell you some of the things I did. There are ten other people here with me, all addicts or people with depression and other issues. Some of them didn’t exactly want to come and were forced by their families. We have these groups where we have to talk about things. I kind of hate that part, but I always feel better when I’m done. I think it’s going to make me better at talking about things when I get back. Especially about my parents.

  I think that I didn’t grieve properly when they died. Like I got stuck, or shut it away because it was just too much to take. Too much pain.

  I don’t know. I’m rambling because we have to go on a hike and I want to make writing this last as long as possible.

  I hope you’re not mad at me for telling you that I loved you like that. I hope everything is going well with the fashion show and the models aren’t giving you a hard time. I wish I could be there to see it, but I know you’ll have plenty of video and I’ll get to see that when I get back. Right now I think I need to be here.

  Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that I saw a deer today. I know that’s not a big deal, but it was kind of eerie. I was out in the morning alone and there it was. It saw me, I saw it, and we had this staring match. I thought it was going to charge me. Deer can be pretty aggressive, you know. So there I was with this deer, neither of us making a move. This is sounding not as interesting now that I’m writing it. Sorry for that. Anyway, I sneezed and the deer didn’t move. I thought maybe it was frozen in fear or something. And then it took a step closer to me. And another. It was within five feet of me, and then it bolted. I have no idea why. The whole thing gave me goose bumps. I don’t really believe in supernatural crap, but that was just fucking weird. I told myself I wasn’t going to curse in these letters, and there I go. But I don’t think you mind, do you?

  Shit, I have group now. I have to go, but I’ll write you tomorrow. I can’t promise it will be as exciting as this letter with the deer and everything, but I’ll do my best for you, Sloane.

  Love,

  Ryder

  I finished the letter and wiped away a few tears. Ryder wrote like he talked. I was glad he hadn’t tried to be formal or stiff. Reading the letter was like having him here with me. Almost.

  The second and third letters were shorter, but he talked about different things. There were no more deer, but he told me more about where he was staying. They had cabins that fit four people, so he had roommates. Thankfully, they were all male. Not that I was jealous, but still. I couldn’t help feeling a little weird that there were also women in the program, but they lived in their own cabins.

  He told me about how they cooked their own food and bathed with only cold water, and wore three pairs of socks. They weren’t allowed razors, so his beard was no doubt impressive. He said he couldn’t wait to show it to me. There were little details about the others in the program. Like “Dave,” who had lost five members of his family in one year and used alcohol to cope. Or Carter, who had been raised in an extremely religious home and had to leave when he told them he was gay. I loved reading Ryder’s letters, but I had so many things I wanted to say to him about them. I had an idea, and even though I couldn’t send them to him, I started writing letters back for each letter he sent me. I bundled them together, and I’d give them to him when he got home.

  That night at dinner, Lucah asked me if I’d gotten the letters from Ryder.

  “Yeah, they finally got here. One for each day,” I said.

  “He told me he was going to do that,” Lucah said.

  Rory sighed. “That’s so romantic. It’s like something from a movie,” she said.

  “It kind of is. Like Ryan Gosling in The Notebook. He wrote her 365 letters and her bitch of a mother kept them from her?” I said.

  “Oh yeah! I love that movie, but it always makes me cry,” she said.

  “Are we talking about that notebook movie?” Lucah asked. We both nodded.

  “Okay, question. Did you cry when you watched it?” I asked him. He looked at Rory, and she grinned at him.

  “Yeah, he did. I made him watch it,” she said.

  “That was not a very nice thing to do, Miss Clarke,” he said.

  “True. But now I know you’re not soulless.”

  I shook my head. “He still doesn’t have a soul. Gingers are soulless. Didn’t you know that?”

  Lucah pretended to be mad at me, but I knew he liked it. Besides, I couldn’t really throw stones now that I was in love with his brother.

  “Souls are overrated,” Lucah said.

  “I’m pretty sure vampires don’t have souls, and they’re pretty sexy, in my opinion,” Rory said.

  “So what about a ginger vampire? Are they double soulless?” I asked.

  God, I missed Ryder. I would have loved
to get his take on soulless vampires.

  “He’s going to get his first phone call in a few days,” Lucah said. “Anything you want me to tell him? I can’t let you talk to him because they monitor the calls and they’ll cut him off if anyone but me talks to him. That place is really strict.”

  Guess they had to be.

  I thought for a second. I could have Lucah tell Ryder that I loved him back, but I didn’t want someone else telling him. I wanted to do it myself.

  “Just ask him to give me his opinion on ginger vampires in his next letter.”

  Lucah raised an eyebrow and looked so much like Ryder it was crazy.

  “Really? That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” I said. “For now.”

  Every day when I got home from the studio, I knew I had something to look forward to. My letter from Ryder. Some were long, some were short, but I loved them all and wrote responses for each one. It gave me something to do when I was home alone late at night. Sometimes, when my insomnia would kick in, I’d pull them out and read them again, adding little things to the letters I wrote back. Drawings and doodles. Things to make him laugh.

  All systems were go for the fashion show, so I told him about that. And I signed each letter, “Love, Sloane.” I figured by the time he read them I would have already told him I loved him. Again.

  “I’ve saved all the little notes Lucah ever wrote me,” Rory said as we hung out in her apartment, waiting for Ryder to call Lucah. Even if I couldn’t talk to him, I wanted to be in the room. Maybe even hear his voice, if Lucah could put him on speaker.

  “Even the dirty ones?” Lucah asked, looking up from his phone. He seemed almost as anxious as I was to hear from Ryder. I’d shared a few little things from the letters with him, just enough so he knew things were going well. He didn’t ask to see the rest of them, and I really respected that. Lucah was a good guy. Ryder was lucky to have him as a brother.

  “Especially the dirty ones,” Rory said, and the phone rang. Lucah fumbled and nearly dropped it before he answered it.

  “Hello?” He waited for a few seconds. “Hey, Ryder. How are you?” My heart started pounding, knowing that Lucah was getting to talk to him. Rory reached out and held my hand. Lucah was quiet for a while, but he was smiling.

  “Okay, I’ll tell her. Right now? Fine.”

  He took the phone away from his ear.

  “Ryder wants you to know that he loves you and he saw another deer.”

  I smiled. “Tell him I love his letters,” I said.

  “She says that she loves your letters,” he told Ryder.

  He listened some more, and then said things like “Yeah . . . okay . . . uh-huh . . . good.” All conversational things.

  Rory grabbed my arm.

  “Maybe we should give him some privacy,” she said and we went into her bedroom.

  “God, I miss that redhead so much,” I said, sitting down on her bed.

  “I bet. I can’t imagine being away from Lucah for that long. Marisol did it with Fin, but it nearly killed her.” I didn’t know a lot of the details of Marisol’s long-distance relationship with Fin. There were definitely a lot of things about Fin she didn’t tell me about, but that was her prerogative. As long as she was happy, that was what mattered.

  “It’s only a month. Actually, it’s only twenty-two days now. Not that I’m counting or anything.”

  “As long as you don’t give me an update of how many hours, minutes, and seconds are left until he gets home, we’re good.” I could actually do the math on that, if I wanted to.

  “Speaking of him coming home, is he going to be here with you guys?”

  Rory nodded. “Yeah, at least for a little while. There’s an aftercare program that he can go to that will help him find housing if he needs it, but I’m hoping this job at the art gallery will open some doors for him. He shouldn’t end up in another shitty apartment in a bad part of the city.”

  Definitely not. He needed to get as far away from that as possible.

  “Anyway, I was thinking we could do another girls’ night on Friday if you wanted to. I’m afraid we’re going to lose touch with Chloe and Marisol. We still haven’t managed to get our girls’ weekend together up at the cabin.” We’d been trying for months to find time when none of us had something going on, and it hadn’t happened yet.

  “I am not going to Maine in the winter,” I said. Rory’s parents had a cabin up in Maine on a lake and we’d been planning to go this summer, but it hadn’t worked out.

  “Why not? It isn’t that different from being here.”

  It was different. I couldn’t say why, but it was.

  “You are such a city girl,” she said, shaking her head. “You get twitchy anytime you even get near the bridge.”

  That wasn’t true. I went out of the city plenty of times. I couldn’t think of any off the top of my head, but I definitely had.

  “Whatever. I just don’t want to freeze my ass off in Maine with you, Chlo, and Mari. That is not my idea of a good time.” That was a recipe for friendship disaster right there.

  “Fine. We’ll think of something else.”

  “Why can’t we go on a cruise or something?” I asked. I couldn’t count how many times I’d made this suggestion, but it always got shot down.

  “I don’t know,” Rory said. “I’ll think about it. The benefit of the cabin is that it’s free.”

  I was about to argue with her about going on a cruise when Lucah opened the door. He was smiling, which was a good sign.

  “He wanted me to tell you also that he loves you.” I liked hearing it again.

  “Thanks, Lucah. That means a lot.”

  He smiled.

  “How is he?” Rory asked.

  “Really good. I’m not actually sure he hasn’t been abducted by aliens and replaced with someone else. He’s upbeat and seems . . . good. Really good.”

  Rory gave Lucah a hug.

  “Thank you so much, Sloane. For pushing him to do this. I think, this time, it’s going to work. He’s going to get his life together.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said. “It was all him. I just encouraged him. That’s it.” I didn’t want to take credit for helping Ryder.

  “No, really. I haven’t been so nice to you, and I’m sorry. I guess I thought you were going to be interested and then bail on him, but you never did. You stood by him and you didn’t have to.” He reached for my hand then pulled me into a hug.

  “My brother is lucky to have you,” he said. I hugged Lucah back.

  “Stop it, you two. You’re making me get all emotional,” Rory said, grabbing for some tissues.

  Lucah and I had always had sort a brotherly-sisterly relationship. I’d never been attracted to him, and not just because he was with Rory.

  I wasn’t sure I believed in fate, but I did know that if Rory hadn’t met him, I wouldn’t have met Ryder, and life would be very different right now.

  “He’s going to do it,” I said as Lucah released me and Rory blew her nose loudly.

  “I know,” he said with a smile.

  Ryder’s letters continued to make me laugh and kept me going through the last few days before my show. I brought them with me to the studio, since I spent more than a few nights there getting everything ready. A model broke her ankle at the last minute, so I had to fit the lingerie set to a backup model who was bigger than the original model. There were plenty of other little disasters that had to be dealt with.

  Inari kept me sane with coffee, and solved some problems before I even knew they were problems.

  On the day of the show I woke up from my couch in the studio and looked at the clock. It was only six in the morning, but I was wide awake. There were a lot of people coming to this show. Potential buyers and press, and some of my competition no doubt. I hadn’t had time to work in the tear-away lingerie, but when I did my pitches I was going to mention it.

  Even though it was insanely early, I went out into the main part of the studi
o. We had all the outfits in garment bags and ready to go, each marked with the model’s name who would wear it and the order it was appearing in the show. It might not seem like a big deal to some, but the order of pieces was critical to give the right overall feel.

  The day before we’d spent hours making sure everything was in the right bags and in the right order. I’d double checked them and so had Inari, but I wanted to check them one more time. I hit the lights and pulled the bags out one at a time, making sure everything was set.

  Then I checked again and made myself stop. It was nearly eight now, so I headed out of the studio and up the street to the little coffee place I’d been with Ryder and got a latte with a triple shot. It might be a bad idea to consume so much caffeine when I was this stressed, but I did it anyway.

  Inari arrived shortly after I finished my coffee and the Danish I’d gotten with it. The rest of my team would be in by nine and we’d all go over to the converted church to get everything set up.

  “How you doing?” she asked.

  “Fine. I’ve had three shots of espresso,” I said, and I knew I was talking a little too fast.

  “Okay then, how about we lay off the coffee for a little while?” she said, speaking slowly to me. “How about I get you some water?”

  I nodded and she went to do that.

  “Did you get the van?” I asked when she came back and handed me a glass of water.

  “It’s parked downstairs. Do you want to start loading it?” she asked.

  I had too much energy to just stand still, so Inari and I started carrying things down to the rented van. Everything else was already over there and had been set up last night, so we only had to bring the clothes. Like everything else with this show, things had gone nearly perfectly, and I couldn’t wait to see the whole thing.