“Sam, I am sorry.”
Without looking at him, I answered. “And I’m sorry that once again you don’t trust me enough to tell the truth. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have fun conducting your business.”
With those final bitter words, I pressed the elevator button. Thankfully, the doors opened right away, and I left.
I managed to get myself out of Pembroke by focusing on the route back to the highway and the rules of the road. But once I’d reached the tranquility of the highway, my mind replayed the nightmare over and over. That was when the explosion happened.
Unable to hold it in anymore, I burst into tears from the pain crushing my heart. I couldn’t stop crying, as if my suffering absolutely had to spill forth in torrents over my wet cheeks. It became more and more difficult to see the road through my tears, and I thanked heaven that I was alone on the highway at that hour.
I thought about how so many people were ringing in the new year. Predictably enough, the clock in my Buick was telling me it was midnight. Happy New Year! For sure, I would remember this one for a while. And to think I’d turned down invitations from Matthew, Angela, and François! All that for what? To celebrate this special moment with my boss, who in the end preferred to snuggle up in the arms of a tantalizing brunette in a thong!
The memory triggered more sobs, and I cursed that evening, Phoenix, the brunette, and the whole world. Most of all, I cursed myself for being so naive. How could I have thought he had set aside his sexual appetite since we’d met, just because I’d never seen him with a woman? Actually, he was satisfying his desires, just without telling me . . . Given my reaction, that was understandable . . .
For that matter, why was I reacting this way? After all, Phoenix didn’t belong to me. He could see whomever he wanted. So why would I feel such hatred toward that woman? Hatred. That wasn’t it . . . This fire burning in me . . . you’d almost think . . . jealousy?
Furiously wiping tears from my eyes, I tried to understand the emotions overwhelming me, and slowly, that strange feeling of an oncoming revelation crept in.
Phoenix . . . it all came back to him. He was at the center of everything, at the heart of my life. My daily life, so empty and dull just a year ago, had changed entirely, and I’d never before felt so happy and appreciated since the day he entered it. He’d revealed myself to me, he was my anchor, my guide . . . but that wasn’t all of it.
The last levees of my unconscious mind abruptly broke open, and I had to face a flood of feelings, my true feelings, as they washed over me like a tsunami. Images flashed before my eyes one after another, obscuring the rest.
It began with the first time I ever saw Phoenix, and I remembered the fear I’d felt then. I saw us gradually get to know each other, me slowly learning to like him. Then I saw more intimate moments: our dance in the nightclub, the blood exchange, the good-byes in the kitchen . . . I remembered our conversation in the woods where he finally admitted that I was important to him . . . and then our kiss that haunted me once more.
That kiss . . . it had completely turned me upside down with its spontaneity and perfection. I’d never before felt as good as during that brief moment, feeling like I was flying to paradise. I’d also never been so embarrassed . . .
Technically, I had been more perturbed by the pig Huan, but that wasn’t really what I’d been expecting. I didn’t really know what I’d expected, actually, but the idea I’d had about my first kiss was that it would be a simple moment of shared tenderness. I hadn’t been prepared to be transported like that.
That could only mean one thing . . . that something from the very beginning, from the first second I’d ever laid eyes on Phoenix, had been there, in me, and that I’d misinterpreted . . . something that had increased with time to the point of taking possession of my whole being . . . something I’d naively thought of as friendship . . .
When the revelation finally burst before my very eyes and I understood its implications, my wretched heart twitched in my chest. I took out my irritation on the steering wheel and cried out.
“Oh my God!”
A second later, my next shout had nothing more to do with the discovery of my true feelings.
“Oh my God!”
Racing at top speed and lost in my thoughts, I didn’t see until it was too late the deer who had stopped on the road and was watching me come straight for her . . . My reflexes kicked in just in time, but sometimes in an emergency our reactions aren’t always the best. I veered violently to the right to avoid the deer and thus charged right toward the guardrail . . .
How did I manage it? No idea. Maybe the guardrail yielded to the violence of shock or speed, but I flew right over it. The fact remains that I’d lost all control of my Buick, bouncing over bumps and holes; I remained paralyzed and powerless as the trees gave way. I saw, in the shaking glow of my headlights, the gigantic tree that I was about to crash into . . .
I didn’t even have time to close my eyes. Death had finally caught up to me . . .
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my friends, and guinea pigs, who believed in Samantha’s potential.
COMING SOON
Samantha Watkins: Chronicles of an Extraordinary Ordinary Book 2: Origins
When I woke up, it was around noon. As I endured a battery of tests, Angela and Matthew called Danny to give him the news. He wouldn’t fail to inform all of Scarborough, starting with Ginger, who worried herself sick and harassed him constantly for more information on my condition.
My friends then spent the entire afternoon at my side, chatting with me even though I was incapable of saying a single word. They told me that I’d been in a deep coma for four days and they had despaired of ever seeing me come out of it. The accident had been so brutal . . .
At dawn, another driver had seen the wreckage of the guardrail and had stopped to investigate. He’d followed the path made by my Buick before finding us: the Buick smashed against the gigantic tree trunk and me smashed up as well but still alive and unconscious a few yards away. I wasn’t far from death to tell the truth, and in the ambulance, my heart stopped twice. I had a broken leg and several broken ribs, plus bruises all over. It had really been a close call . . . but I hung on. I was still alive.
In fact, I was a complete miracle as far as the fire and rescue workers were concerned; they didn’t understand what I’d done to not end up crushed and broken against that tree. The doctors too had been rather pessimistic about my survival. Of course, they couldn’t have known that Phoenix’s mark in my body had strange and timely effects, notably that of making me stronger. However, I remembered perfectly that feeling of floating in another world, and a voice telling me my time hadn’t yet come . . . Was that really just a dream? Better to not think about it.
I was there, and that was the most important thing. The firefighters had searched my bag and tried to call Phoenix’s number. Unfortunately, Peter Stratford/Livingstone’s phone was in pieces on the floor of a hotel room and didn’t work anymore. But they couldn’t have known that either. They made do with a photo of Angela, whose name I’d written on the back, and they’d been able to inform her instead.
Angela told me the rest when Matthew excused himself to go to the restroom. She’d waited impatiently for the sun to set, then called François. He and Phoenix had been about to go looking for me when she told them what had happened. Phoenix heard her perfectly, even though he hadn’t been holding the phone, and François told Angela that she’d barely finished her sentence when Phoenix shot off toward the hospital in full flight. François had added that it would be preferable for Matthew and my boss not to find themselves in the same room to avoid unnecessary questions, and since then, Angela always arranged things so that they wouldn’t cross paths during their visits. That Phoenix could only visit at night made this easier.
“He hasn’t left you for a moment . . . except to hide from the sun,” Angela confided, all smiles, ignoring the fact that this information did me more harm than good.
He must simply be feeling guilty . . .
We didn’t get much farther on that subject because Matthew returned. Even if I couldn’t talk, my friends stayed at my side for several more hours, which helped me not fret over the confrontation that wouldn’t wait much longer. The sun was already setting . . .
Angela made several attempts to get Matthew to accompany her to the exit, but he lingered, clasping my hand in his own. His reassurance warmed my heart, and it would have been rude to pull away from him. However, I didn’t anticipate that my boss would find us like that.
When I lifted my eyes to the doorway and my attention, until then occupied by Matthew’s jokes, promptly identified the person standing there, my heart malfunctioned completely, and its disordered beats triggered all the alarms of my monitors. I must have blanched out of fear of meeting Phoenix’s gaze and blushed with shame at setting off all that racket; actually, I must have looked ridiculous.
A heavy silence fell in the room when the alarms quieted and the doctors left after checking that I hadn’t had a heart attack. No one dared speak. Matthew was staring at the newcomer suspiciously, not realizing that Phoenix was staring at Matthew’s hand holding mine with a murderous gleam in his blue eyes.
“Who are you?” my devoted knight asked curtly, knowing instinctually that my visitor was his rival.
François judged it prudent to take the initiative to avoid a massacre and jumped in before Phoenix could answer. “That’s Aydan. I called him.”
Last year, François and Karl had posed as my cousins when my human friends and I had gone to the movies, and that German pig (who later proved to be a murderer) tried to put me in an awkward position by making Matthew believe that I was in love with a man called Phoenix. To sort it out, I’d lied by saying Phoenix’s real name was Aydan and our recent breakup had traumatized me. Matthew must not have expected to find himself face-to-face with my “ex,” and he frowned, seemingly measuring up his adversary to determine what I could have seen in him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Matthew said aggressively. “You’re not a part of her life anymore.”
That time, François wasn’t able to stop my boss.
“Who are you to say who should be at her bedside and who shouldn’t? You’re nobody, so run along.”
Phoenix’s glacial and contemptuous tone made me fear the worst, especially when Matthew stood up suddenly to face him. Forgetting all sense of prudence, I swiftly sat up to grab his arm and stop him from making one more step toward Phoenix; in so doing, my battered body sent its regards, wresting from me a moan of pain deep from my chest and forcing me to lie back down just as quickly.
Immediately, angry nurses rushed in and threatened to send us all out if my visitors didn’t take better care. Angela took this as a sign to put her foot down and threaten Matthew with leaving without him since she’d driven them both there. He surrendered. However, instead of squeezing my hand good-bye as Angela did, he leaned over me and gave me a long, soft kiss on the forehead. He smiled at me and walked to the door; I don’t know what he did to Phoenix in passing, but François grabbed Phoenix’s arm to stop him from disemboweling my human friend. I was wondering what had gotten into him and felt my temper flaring. He had to go and defend his pride rather than check in on my health. The nerve, honestly.
However, my irritation was swept aside by the bluish flash of his eyes as he looked at me again. I didn’t know how to react.
“I’ll leave you alone. If you need me, I won’t be far away,” François said as he left the room too, closing the door behind him.
We were alone now, and I couldn’t hide. What was he going to say to me?
“You must hate me.”
I frowned as he stared down at me, awaiting my verdict. How could I answer him? I couldn’t possibly hate you, because my heart, my mind, my whole being is filled with you and . . . and I love you . . . I love you more than anything else in the world. No. For the sake of our relationship, I had to—and I knew I should—suppress my feelings, even if that meant daily torture because it was inconceivable for me to leave him. Phoenix would never love me, and I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable with this, so I had to keep quiet.
I lowered my eyes in resignation to gain some time, but my determination was at risk the moment Phoenix sat on the bed, leaned over me, and brushed aside a lock of hair that had fallen over my face. Defeated, I let him do it, and then he lifted my chin to make me face him.
“Sam, I . . .”
He didn’t finish. Instead, he took my hand in his and caressed it before lifting it to his mouth. I held my breath to not lose control as he kissed it softly; at the touch of his lips, I experienced a powerful electric charge, the usual result of our close proximity. It took all my self-control not to throw myself into his arms despite all the pain I would feel. My internal conflict was so intense that I couldn’t stop tears from flowing down my cheeks, nor could I stop Phoenix from seeing them. I thought I caught sight of chagrin in his eyes, but trying to figure out his emotions was always an impossible mission.
“I only seem to hurt you . . . I am not worthy of your friendship.”
Indeed, the memory of the hotel room in Pembroke still stung painfully. Even if I knew that my boss didn’t love me, and therefore didn’t belong to me, I couldn’t help feeling intense jealousy toward the young woman he’d been about to embrace in his perfect nakedness, as well as anger toward the man who chose to lie rather than admit that I wasn’t sufficiently to his tastes to satisfy his carnal appetite. Besides, thinking about that kind of relationship with Phoenix quickly made my cheeks redden. If things had gone differently between us, would I have taken that step with him? A vampire? Knowing that it was possible and trying it were two different things. However, I was assessing my feelings for him, and the answer to that question was clear. With that thought, I felt fire taking over my cheeks for real, extending over my whole face; out of shame, and also to hide my discomfort, I hid my face in my hands.
“I should not have come . . . I should leave so you can rest . . .”
That statement, coming from his velvet voice, hurt and, with him already heading for the door, horrified me so much that I tried to scream at him not to abandon me. But no sound was able to break the barrier of my lips, and Phoenix passed through the door without seeing that from my bed I was trying in vain to keep him with me.
Suddenly, a force coming from the depths of my being came over me and permitted me to come out of my powerlessness. Like a fury, I tore the electrodes from my chest, and I pulled the IV from my arm. I only had a few moments before the doctors would come running to see if I’d died yet, so I jumped from my bed as fast as I could.
The pain in my chest seized me and struck me down to the floor, reinforced by the pain in my broken leg, which, despite the protection of the cast, hadn’t appreciated the fall. My vision blurred, but something within me summoned enough strength for me to keep going. With a superhuman effort, I managed to stand up and open the door, ignoring the shocked faces of the nurses who froze at the sight of me. Panicking at the absence of my boss in my field of vision, there was only one solution left.
“Phoenix!” I yelled, holding on to the doorframe to not fall.
I was so afraid that he wouldn’t hear me that I’d put all the strength I had left in that desperate cry; the result was a shrill shriek that transfixed everyone nearby. I was starting to wobble, looking crazily in every direction, when suddenly he appeared, after almost tearing the stairwell door off its hinges. I didn’t wait for the audience to recover from this grotesque show; forgetting my wounds, I launched myself as well as I could toward the man already running to meet me . . .
A nurse cried out when my legs betrayed me and gave way, but Phoenix stopped me from crashing to the ground by catching me in his strong arms. Relief, and a flood of other feelings, washed over me as he carried me back to my room. It was only with a saintly amount of patience and comfort from Phoenix that I was finally able to let go of my madwoma
n grip on his shirt and give the doctors a chance to check my injuries.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2015
Aurélie Venem counts a diverse list of writers among her influences: from epic poets Homer and Virgil to bestselling contemporary young adult novelist Stephenie Meyer. Aurélie is a voracious reader and currently works as a teacher of history. Samantha Watkins is her first novel.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
S. E. Battis is a teacher and translator. She holds several degrees in French studies, which she earned through blood, sweat, tears, and an avid love for French culture and literature. Like Samantha Watkins, the only reason she would ever want to meet a vampire would be to talk about history.
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