I had no right to claim her possessions, those things that had meant everything to her in life. I hadn’t been there when she would have needed me most. No, I’d been looking after myself, having a good time with Lucian and not showing any concern for Daisy. I didn’t deserve anything from her.
It felt like an invasion of Daisy’s life, when one day I stepped into her room, for the first time since she’d died. This was all mine now or it would be soon, but it didn’t feel like it, and I sure as hell didn’t believe I was entitled to it all. I didn’t want it; I wanted Daisy alive and well again. It was wrong for me to own everything of hers. It was wrong that she was gone.
Going through her things, bagging her clothing and personal belongings for charity, made me feel like an intruder but I wasn’t. This really was all mine, plus a sizeable amount of money in the bank. There was enough there for me to be financially secure for about a year or so if I wasn’t irresponsible with the money. Although it was nice to not have to worry about a roof over my head or money to live, it still felt wrong.
When the news came through that Daisy died from an aneurysm and that even if I’d been there, I’d have had no chance of saving her, I still felt guilty that she’d died alone. I hated to think that she’d probably had a moment of blinding fear, and some pain before it had all been over. Then to add to the tragedy of it all, her body had been here undiscovered in her home, while I was busy getting fucked over and over by Lucian.
My father was right, I was nothing more than a dirty sinner, a whore, and now a sweet old lady had died alone, when I should have been with her at least. It had been my job to look after her and even if the doctor said I’d have been unable to help her, I was never going to get a chance to find out if I could have done something.
The more rational part of my brain tried to make me see that the only reason I’d been gone as long as I had was because of my father kidnapping me, and the only reason Daisy had been mind controlled was because Lucian, Fabian and Sirene had come looking for me. I knew in my heart of hearts that nothing could have been done differently that would have made a difference but guilt is a powerful thing and I felt guilty, incredibly guilty.
I didn’t have anything or anyone anymore. I didn’t even have Milo as he’d changed without his owner around, and I’d found a home for him with one of the neighbours who had children to spoil him and love him. I sat alone in the house that should never have become mine and allowed my guilt to consume me until I no longer cared about anything. I wouldn’t let myself think about Lucian because it hurt too much. The pain was my own doing anyway. I’d pushed him away and continuously refused his attempts to speak to me.
It was late one evening when I heard men’s voices outside and the giggling of women, that curiosity got the better of me, and I peered through the curtains to get a look out the front of the house. I could see two women and two men piling out of one of the many cars they had across the road and they headed inside. When the verandah lights came on and I could see it was Damien and Lucian with the women, my heart felt like it would break in two. The pain was so severe, I cried out, clutching at my chest. I watched Lucian pause and his head turned towards where I stood, hidden inside. I knew he couldn’t see me but was it possible he had heard me?
After a moment he turned away again and I looked on helplessly, as they all disappeared inside. Once they were out of sight, the tears began to flow and I staggered back; every step agonising with the pain that crippled my body. Blinded by my tears, I hit the wall, sliding down it until I lay in a crumpled heap of overwhelming despair, sobbing uncontrollably.
The anguish, the torment and the pain that ripped through me, was almost too much to bear. I had to face facts though, Lucian had moved on. He didn’t care about me anymore and I also had to accept that I was the one who had pushed him away. I had done this, I deserved this; I had no one to blame but myself.
I settled into a routine of crawling out of bed and spending my days locked away in my own little bubble of pain. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I needed to go out and buy food but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t leave the house, because if I left the house then I would see Fabian’s home, and then I would think of Lucian, and my mind would fill with the images of the last time I’d seen him, of him walking inside with Damien and those two women. I wasn’t a fool, I knew why those women were there and it wasn’t for a game of Scrabble.
I barely ate anymore. Food didn’t agree with me, and my stomach rolled nauseously anytime I tried to force anything past my lips. I was losing weight rapidly I could tell, since my clothes hung off me, but I couldn’t even bring myself to care.
I wasn’t sure how much longer I could handle all this. Each day just rolled into the next. Each filled with pain from the moment my eyes opened, until I closed them again. I was stuck in an endless cycle of agony, wanting Daisy to be alive and well again, and wanting Lucian back, for things to be normal between us.
I couldn’t even go and see him and beg for his forgiveness because I’d done this to myself. I didn’t deserve him. He’d done nothing to me and I’d treated him so badly. Well I was paying for that now, he’d moved on and didn’t care anymore.
I thought my life was pretty well as bad as it could get until I made another call to find out how Debbie was, and learned that she’d passed away. My friend, the only person who’d ever cared about me when I was growing up, and who had cared enough to put her life on the line to get me away from my father, was gone. She’d done all that for me and she’d paid the ultimate price now, she’d died because of me.
All I could do was have flowers sent for her funeral. I couldn’t even go to it because I felt too unbelievably guilty to do so. I couldn’t be around her family in case they asked me about my father, or where I was living. I couldn’t tell them where I was now, I couldn’t tell them about my father, what he’d been like and what Debbie had gone through to help me. Debbie was dead because of me and there was no way I could ever face her family.
Sometimes I wondered about my father. I had no idea if he was still over the road or not or whether he’d been killed, but it had been weeks now, so surely they’d have disposed of him? I was curious about what they’d done with him but I couldn’t bring myself to go over the road and ask.
No one had made any attempt to come and see me for several weeks now, so they obviously didn’t care. Still the way I’d spoken to them, the way I treated them, could I even be surprised? No, I deserved exactly what I was getting now. They too had done so much for me and I had repaid them by abusing them and blaming them before ordering them from Daisy’s home. No, I deserved everything I was getting now. I just wasn’t sure how much longer I could put up with this sort of pain. I wanted it gone, I wanted to be free, I had nothing to look forward to, and nothing left to live for.
Lucian
“Oh for crying out loud brother dear, how much longer are we going to have to suffer through this miserable face of yours?” Francesca sighed dramatically when she entered the living room one evening and found Lucian there already, sprawled out on a lounge deep in his tortured thoughts.
“Fuck off Fran. No one asked you for an opinion and what I do is none of your business anyway.”
“It’s our business Lucian when it affects all of us. For fuck sakes go to her and see her. She might be just as miserable as you are, and if you make up, then none of us have to suffer through your moods one more damn day.”
“I can’t go to her. She made it perfectly clear she wants nothing more to do with me, none of us for that matter. She hates us and blames us for what happened to the old woman. I can’t go to her, I just can’t.”
“I presume this discussion is over Arissa son?” Fabian said as he walked into the room, his arm around Sirene’s shoulders. “At some stage someone is going to have to go and see her. We can’t keep her father in the dungeon forever and as tempting as it is to simply dispose of the old bastard since I’m tired of his endless ranting and ravin
g, I promised your lady I would let her decide his fate.”
“She’s not mine sire. She doesn’t want me anymore, remember?” He said his voice harsh with pain. God, would it never get any easier? He wanted her back so badly. He wanted to see her but she must leave the home during those few minutes he actually slept these days, because he hadn’t seen her getting around at all. The house always looked the same, the curtains and blinds always drawn.
Suddenly Damien walked in, dressed in jeans, t-shirt and jacket. He was obviously ready to go hunting and Lucian silently groaned. He’d better not be expecting him to go with him. He was tired of being dragged out to nightclubs and bringing home women he had no intention of doing anything with. The most he did was feed from them but he couldn’t fuck them. He had no desire to fuck anyone but Arissa. Hell, he couldn’t even get it up anymore. Not that he was going to tell Damien that. His brother would give him nothing but shit for eternity over it, if he knew.
He’d reluctantly gone out with Damien more times than he’d wanted to. He’d nearly been kicking and screaming with his level of reluctance. They’d brought home a never ending selection of semi drunken women more than happy to provide a nice warm cunt for the evening, but Lucian wasn’t interested. There was only one woman for him but she didn’t want him and if she never did again then the future sure looked bleak and endless.
“My son you have to snap out of this, move past the loss of Arissa. You’re barely feeding; you’d never leave this house if it wasn’t for Damien. I will not sit by and watch you go the same way as Dominick did when he lost Allegra during a troubled time in their relationship. He nearly died. You either make an effort to pull yourself together or go and see her, otherwise I will go and see her myself. I want that motherfucker out of the dungeon but your girl seems to have forgotten about him, or assumed that we have done something with him, but he’s her father, she must choose his fate.”
Lucian silently groaned. The thought of going over the road to see Arissa hurt him. He felt like someone was slashing at him with a knife and every thought of her was like an open wound, bleeding, raw, and exposed. He didn’t want to go there; he didn’t want to see her. With everything in him the thought of seeing her again filled him with dread; and with everything in him, the thought of seeing her again filled him with such intense longing, he ached with the need.
He couldn’t go to see her though, he just couldn’t. If she rejected him, he’d have to concede all hope of them ever being together again. He couldn’t face that thought at all. In his tortured mind, if he stayed away, he could hold onto that small thread of hope that all was not lost for them. If his sire forced him to go there then he would know, he’d have his answer and just thinking about it and what her answer might be terrified him, it filled him with dread. He didn’t want to think about what he would do if she rejected him again.
“I can’t go to her sire, not yet and I can’t let go of her. She’s here.” He put a hand over his heart. “I still love her, I still want her.” He said, tears suddenly burning at the back of his eyes.
“Oh grow some balls little brother.” Damien slapped him on the back but Lucian shrugged off his hand and climbed to his feet before storming out of the room. He couldn’t deal with them and Damien was a jerk at times. He’d never loved or lost so he had no idea what it felt like, and it was worse knowing that the woman he’d lost, was only across the road. Why she was still there and hadn’t moved on yet, he had no idea. Maybe if she moved he wouldn’t have the added torture of knowing she was so physically close to him but miles away emotionally.
He’d just made it to his room and was about to close his door when Sirene turned up, her face filled with sympathy and concern for him.
“Please Sirene, I’m fine, you don’t need to worry about me and if Fabian’s sent you, you can tell him I’m ok.”
“Oh Lucian, you’re not ok, not even close dear boy. I can see it; I feel your pain and your eyes just scream of your pain. I wish I could help you. I wish I could do a spell to make everything good again for you, but I know how you feel about all this. If she can’t love you of her own free will then you don’t want her do you?”
“No, god no; I want her to love me and want me because she really feels that way for me. I know something has to be done about her father but then she knows he’s here and she’s made no attempt to come.”
“I’m so sorry Lucian, that the woman who managed to steal your heart after all these years, has turned her back on you, but you must understand, she’s been through a lot, and sometimes she may not always make the most rational of decisions. You have to believe she will come around, that she will come back to you.” She reached out as if aware of his fragile emotions, pulling him into her arms, holding him, while he struggled not to let the tears fall.
He was a vampire for fuck sakes; he was supposed to be tough, impenetrable, and immune to the normal weaknesses of the human form. Yet here he was, becoming less than a man and far less than a vampire because of his feelings for her. He should be tougher than this but when it came to that fragile little woman over the road, she robbed him of his strength and left him exposed, raw, consumed by a world of pain which seemed to have no ending. Arissa had effectively turned his world on its head and he wasn’t sure it could ever be righted again.
So for now he let Sirene comfort him, her arms around him and just for a moment he let himself pretend, to imagine it was Arissa’s arms that held him.
Chapter Twenty Four
Arissa
I stared into the mirror over my en-suite vanity basin and almost recoiled from my own image. I looked like hell, no, I looked like death. I had lost so much weight I was thin, actually I was beyond thin, I was gaunt. My eyes had sunken into my head, my hair looked lank and lifeless, my complexion sallow. It had been three months, four days, eight hours and forty-nine minutes since I had ordered Lucian, Fabian and Sirene from Daisy’s home after we’d found her dead.
I knew I had to do something, I had to get out, do something, eat maybe, do something, but I just didn’t want to. Why eat? Food only preserved this agony of pain that I now lived in, and even if I walked outside, where would I go?
I’d lost everyone who had meant anything to me and that list was only a very short one due to my father. I’d had a man who cared about me, who had persisted with me, with such incredible patience when patience wasn’t exactly something that vampires were famous for. He’d supported me, loved me, wanted to take care of me, and his family had welcomed me into their lives and what had I done? I’d turned my back on all of them, I’d turned my back on the only man who had ever made me feel anything, the only man who had taught me that I could feel, love, laugh, that I could live. I couldn’t even fix it because it was too late. My eyes had seen him with Damien and those two women that night. He was back to his old ways as if I no longer existed to him.
I stumbled through the house and into Daisy’s room. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Did I move into it now the house was mine? It was a nice room but it was hard for me to move past the thought that it was her room; it would always be her room. I’d cleaned a lot of it out, removed her clothes and given them to charity, but I still had her bathroom to go through, and I was dreading it because it held all those little personal touches. Her hairbrush which still had some of her hair in it; her lipstick she liked to wear in that pale shade of pink. She’d always said she felt naked until she had her lippy on. Her toothbrush still sat in the holder and when I opened up drawers I came across bottles and bottles of various medications she took.
I pulled them all out, studying the labels and started sweeping them into the bin since there was no point having them sitting around. Daisy wasn’t going to need them and when I thought of her being gone again, the tears began to flow, rolling down my cheeks and dripping off onto the white top of the vanity unit as I leaned on it, suddenly feeling weak and drained.
I stared at the various bottles and how many of them there were; all designed to k
eep Daisy alive, to improve her health, to give her quality of life. Ironically, in the end, a time bomb ticking away in her brain, that none of us knew about was the thing that took her so quickly, not even rapid medical intervention could have saved her.
I found a bottle of sleeping pills amongst the vast array of bottles and clutched them to me. I was having a hard time sleeping lately as was evident by the dark circles under my eyes. Maybe Daisy’s pills would help me. I wanted to sleep, I wanted to sleep the sleep of the dead, because then I wouldn’t have this excruciating pain to deal with every moment I was awake.
I put the pills in my room and went back to clean up the mess of bottles from Daisy’s bathroom. While I worked around the house, trying to keep my mind occupied, I noticed the sun had set and I suddenly felt incredibly exhausted.
Just as I was considering what to do next, I heard a noise of doors banging and then voices over the road. Like a moth to the flame I snuck closer to the window to look outside and saw Damien, Francesca and Lucian all heading for one of the cars.
I didn’t know what was being said but Damien was slapping Lucian over the shoulder and laughing loudly in that manner he had. I wasn’t sure what Lucian was saying in response, but he didn’t seem happy and pushed his brother away. Francesca stepped in and leaned into him, rising up to whisper something in his ear, and whatever it was, he smiled down at her and lowered his head to kiss her on the lips. I watched her hand rise and fingers curl around the back of his head, pulling him closer to her. I stood there from my position by the curtain and I watched them kiss, the kiss seeming to go on and on, and with every second that passed, my heart fractured that little bit more until it felt like it was little more in my chest than shards of broken glass.
Passion Follows Pain (Passion Series Book 3) Page 29