He threw the covers back and jumped up. “I still think you should tell him how you feel. Maybe tell him you don’t want to let anyone know you’re together until you’re sure things are going to work out.”
“I don’t know why I’d do that when I can just not commit to him until I’m sure. Why hurt him more, Cal?”
“I think not telling him how you feel is worse.”
He had a point. And it made me feel heavy. “Maybe, but then there’s the… I mean, you’re going to be a vampire in a few days”—after a few days of suffering—“and if I… if David and I are together, as more than friends, he’ll never let me see you—”
“So tell him that’s not how things will be.”
“Have you ever spoken to David?” I asked rhetorically. “He has this way of, like, controlling me without me realizing he’s doing it.”
Cal laughed. “Then you need to get stronger.”
“Yes, I do,” I said decisively, “and until I am, I think a relationship with him could be a bit toxic. And besides, Elora’s wedding is in less than a week. If David and I get back together, that’s all anyone will talk about. I just want her day to be special, and then I’ll tell him.”
“Sounds like a bunch of excuses, if you ask me, but… it’s your life,” Cal said, walking past me with a huge boner making a tent of his shorts. I hid my eyes, moaning in disgust.
“What?” he said. “It’s your fault for putting your legs over me that way. I’m only human,” he added with a playful shrug.
“For another few hours at least,” I said. “Are you scared?”
“Not really.” His voice echoed as he walked into the bathroom and lifted the toilet seat, standing in front of it but not actually peeing. “I figure I can handle a little pain to have the rest of forever as an eighteen-year-old.”
“Have you thought any more about your family—how you’ll feel when they’re eventually gone?”
“I…” He started peeing then, but it was a broken stream, stopping and starting. “Yeah. And it’s sad, but I’m not going to think about that, you know? If I was staying human, it’s not something I’d reflect on for another thirty or so years.”
“Fair enough.” I nodded, hugging my knees. I frowned then, angling my ear toward him. “Why can’t you pee? Are you sick?”
“Boner,” he said simply. “Makes it hard to pee.”
“Why?”
He just laughed. “Ever turned on a dodgy bubbler?”
“Bubbler?”
“Water fountain—drinking fountain, not sure what you call them.”
“Oh, yeah. I have.” I thought about the broken one I used in the park once—how the water blasted up and hit me in the nose. And then I laughed, hard. “So you pee on the roof if you have a boner?”
“Not quite. But it makes it hard to get the pee out. And it can hurt. And it usually goes off in four directions, so you have to be careful.”
I rolled onto the floor, my stomach muscles so tight with the hilarity that I couldn’t breathe. By the time I composed myself, Cal was standing above me, his boner gone.
“You’re such a child,” he said sweetly, helping me up.
“Hey, I bet you laughed like that when you first found out you could pee in four directions.”
His white teeth showed with a short, breathy laugh. Which got me thinking about fangs. I wondered if David’s were sharp and pointy because he was once a vampire, or if he was just born like that. Which made me excited to meet Jason in just a few days and compare the differences between them—the evil soul and the pure one. I understood it now that David wasn’t evil because his soul was impure, and Jason wasn’t a saint because his was pure. But I wondered how they’d be different anyway, and I wondered how I’d feel around Queen Lilith, being that we were twin souls. Would I like her? Would she like me?
“What are you thinking about?” Cal asked, his hand on my shoulder.
“The wedding—meeting everyone. My dad will be there too.”
“The Vampire King?” he said, bending to get a shirt off the pile on the floor.
“Yeah,” I said, watching him sniff it and, with a shrug, decide that it was clean enough to wear. “I’ve only met him once.”
“Are you worried he won’t like you?”
“No. I guess…” Well, if I was honest… “Okay, maybe a little.”
“Why? He’s your dad, right? As long as he’s not a douche like my dad, he should love you no matter what.”
“Yeah, but I kind of wonder sometimes why he let Brett care for me if that’s the case. I mean…”
“You think it means he doesn’t care?”
I shrugged. “Brett said he just found it too painful to see me in ‘that state’ but I’m not sure what he meant by that—”
“Weren’t you still recovering from the burnt flesh for a while?”
“Yeah. When I reconstructed myself, it was in reverse of what happened to me in death and before it, they told me. So I did suffer a lot at first, but I don’t remember any of it.”
Cal cringed.
“Brett said I screamed a lot, and it was too much even for him.”
“But he stayed?”
“Yeah.”
“And your own father couldn’t?”
I pressed my lips together and turned them down, bringing one shoulder up. I did remember something about Morgana being his daughter too. Maybe he couldn’t come to terms with what she’d done to her own sister. Maybe he didn’t want to see me heal in reverse because knowing exactly what she did would make him want to hate her.
“Aw, don’t be sad, kiddo.” Cal put his arm around me. “Not everyone has the stomach for that.”
“So I guess that just makes Brett an amazing person—”
“No, he just loves you,” Cal stated. “It’d be different if he didn’t.”
“So are you saying my dad doesn’t love me?”
“No. I’m saying Brett loves you in a very different way to a father.”
I frowned, watching him as he sat at his easel and picked up his rag and brush. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” He glanced back at me, studied my face, and then shook his head. “Never mind. You better go, Ar. That costume will take a while to get on.”
I looked over at the costume. David once told me he was born in the late 1800s, so I thought Halloween was the perfect opportunity to honor that time period in a dress that was actually made then. It wasn’t so much a costume as it was an antique. But it was beautiful, and blue. I knew he loved me in blue. So much damage had been done to David in his past, and I needed to repair things delicately—one step at a time—starting by making him look at me like he used to. Like he loved me.
44
David
That wife-stealing little prick came dressed as a vampire—amusing to all but me—and of the other forty-odd adults, his was without doubt the best costume here.
The kids, however, were an entirely different matter. It seemed that, while the neighbors weren’t willing to embrace our tradition, those invited to Mike’s annual Halloween party had bested each other in the costume department year after year. It made Harry’s day to see so many ghouls and zombies staggering through his home under webs and laughing skulls, but nothing excited him more than all the candy and festive treats Mike and Em had made. Until he charged up and pushed in between Cal and Eric to grab my elbow. “Mom’s coming down now!”
“Is she?” I said, distracted by the noise and the person at my right asking where the bathroom was. I directed them up the stairs and to the second last door on the left, and as they pushed past someone on the steps, my breath hitched in my throat.
The fabric of that dress was soft and seemed to walk itself down each step, the skirt long and full until it hugged the tiny waist of my beautiful Ara, making her look more delicate, if that was even possible. And as she stopped at the base and looked around the room, my heart softened toward her even more. Her dress, I realized, was a design from my
era. It wasn’t a witch costume or a sexy clown, or worse, a vampire. She dressed from my time period and I had to wonder if it was to impress me. If it was, it worked.
Most of the dresses from those days had large puffy sleeves and way too much fabric, but this was a simpler design—a French design—with the sleeve sitting lower on the arm, the collar low and rounded out to reveal the collarbones and the tops of the shoulders. She’d even tied her hair into a pretty bonnet with a few ringlets coming down. She looked simply sweet and very elegant.
My legs felt like jelly as I approached her, but she spun around, looking a little disappointed to see me.
“What’s wrong?” I said, about to ask if she wanted Cal to see her first.
“I wanted to see your face before you saw me.” She pouted, and my heart leapt up in my chest.
“Really?”
“Yeah.” She clutched the fabric in her dainty hands, looking down.
I gently tilted her face upward as I tried to find the right words. But she was beyond them. There were not enough perfect words in any language to describe what she did to me in that dress—or how much it warmed my heart that she had wanted to impress me. She wasn’t my Ara right now, and might never feel safe to be her, but this Ara was clearly falling for me.
“If you had’ve seen his face, you’d have laughed at him,” Cal said, breaking the moment. He looked ridiculous with that fake blood around his mouth like some slob that couldn’t drink without wearing it. “He pretty much fainted,” he added. “Look at the trail of drool he left behind.”
Ara actually looked, shaking her head when she realized he was joking. And for once, I didn’t want to kill him.
“So you like it?” she asked, her face hopeful.
I touched my chest, trying hard not to get sentimental and overbearing, but that was impossible right now. Even my hands were shaking. She couldn’t know what this meant to me.
Then again, maybe she did. Clearly, she planned out every tiny element of her costume to have just this reaction from me.
Cal walked away then, giving us space, while I tried to think of something to say. There could be only one reason she would go to this kind of effort, but I was afraid to ask in case I was wrong. So I just nodded to say I liked it, but I don’t think it was the answer she was looking for.
“I never thought you’d look at me that way again,” she said timidly, brushing her hands down her dress.
“What way?”
“The way you are now.”
I closed my eyes for a second as if to rest them. I hated that she could see my heart laid bare on my face. “And is that… something you’ve been wanting?” I asked cautiously, preparing my heart for an answer that would hurt. “After everything I did to you?”
“It’s hard for me to explain it.” She pressed the front of her skirt down nervously. “I should hate you, David, but I don’t. I feel like there’s this other side to you that I understand on a totally different level. And I feel like… maybe it wasn’t you that day, when you hurt me,” she suggested, her tone rising in question. “Maybe there was more to the story,” she finished, leaving my hopes alive inside me.
“But you didn’t answer the question.” I took both of her hands and led her away from prying eyes to the dining room. The table was piled high with candy and popcorn and bat-themed cupcakes, and the fat guy inside me wanted to snatch one up and let the sugar ease my concerns. “You say you never thought I’d look at you like I love you again. Is that something you would want, or not?”
After all the hurt I caused her, I expected her to tell me yes, but that she would never want anything more than a look. She offered me no words, though, no elaboration. She simply nodded. I had no idea what to take from that. I wanted to rush into this, leap off the edge of the proverbial cliff with her and let things be like they used to.
I slowed down though before reaching that edge, and took a deep breath. Things would need to be taken a day at a time. We needed to build our friendship again first before we could commit to anything.
“A lot has been broken between us, Ara.”
She nodded, not meeting my eyes.
“But no matter what happens from here, I need you to know that I love you for you.” I clutched her face in both hands. “Not because you’re my wife. Not for who you were before, but for who you are now.”
Her blue eyes searched mine, looking deeply before she would believe it. I didn’t know how badly she’d needed to hear that until I saw her eyes change, as if maybe I could’ve said that to her a long time ago and things would have been different.
I pulled her close and hugged her; she felt so soft in these clothes, and the feel of her bare shoulders made my blood warm.
“Nothing has to happen,” I whispered in a deep voice, glancing back when someone walked into the room and then quickly back out again. “I can tell that you’re scared—”
“It’s just because I don’t want to get your hopes up, or the kids’, when we don’t know if things even can work between us now.”
I nodded, looking down into her innocent face, her big eyes so bright in that blue dress, her lashes framing them like the petals of a flower. “I want to rush into things, Ara. But not for the right reasons. There is still a big part of me that’s trying to get back what we had before, and I don’t think that’s right for our situation now.” I squeezed her just a little bit tighter, and she softened even more, like a baby as it falls asleep in your arms. “It’s okay for us to know where we stand with each other and still be happy to take a back seat to this thing until we’re certain—”
“Really?” She looked up at me again.
“Yes.” I kissed her brow, holding my breath as a painful flashback surfaced, and for a second, I saw my bleeding wife in my arms, her hair scraped violently off her scalp and every other inch of her body. “When we get to a place where you’re ready to give yourself to me out of love, then we’re ready to commit. But until then, let’s just stay friends—but maybe now with the knowledge that we’re both open to more,” I said, but it was more of a question than a statement. I was stepping out on a limb here. She hadn’t said as much to me yet, but I could read it. I hoped.
When she nodded, my soul soared. I’d won her over, finally, and I wasn’t even sure how.
“But,” I added, moving back from the embrace. “If we’re ever going to get back together, I can’t have you being with Cal, or—”
“I’m not with Cal,” she insisted.
“Not now. But he’ll be a vampire after tonight and—”
“And how will that change anything?”
I gave her a look that said it all.
“So you don’t want me if I’m, what? Tainted by another guy’s penis?”
It should not at all have been funny, but I had to laugh. “Something like that, yeah.”
“Wow.” She stepped back, her body language changing, closing her off. “I thought love was unconditional.”
“It is, but—”
“But not if I sleep with Cal?”
“Get out,” I told the person that walked in. I didn’t even see who it was, but they left immediately. “Ara. Look at me.”
She shook her head defiantly.
My teeth caged, blood surging through my body with an angry rush. “Look at me!”
“You don’t own me, David!” She looked right at me with fierce, controlled eyes. “I wouldn’t even think of sleeping with anyone if we were trying to work things out, so you didn’t even need to say it.”
“But I did, Ara, because you’re a child and you don’t understand how much that would hurt me—”
“Don’t I?” she said, lowering her voice a little when it got louder. “I’m not as dumb as you think I am—”
“I didn’t say you were dumb. I said you’re a child—”
“And you think I don’t understand anything about love, but I do. Probably better than you do, because I at least understand that you don’t hurt those you love. Not emoti
onally and certainly not physically—”
“So we’re going to bring that up—”
“I’m not bringing it up. I’m just trying to point out that my relationship with Cal does not affect my relationship with you. I know it would hurt you if I slept with him, so aside from the fact that I have no desire to sleep with him, I would just never do that to you.”
“You won’t be able to control it.”
“Why do you think that? Why do you not realize that I actually have a lot of self-control—”
“Sure you do.”
“I do!” She stomped her foot. “Because I’m using it right now to stop myself from kicking you in the shin.”
“What happened to not hurting those you love?” I muttered sarcastically.
“Argh!” She stomped her foot again and then kicked me in the shin.
“Ouch!” I folded in half, rubbing my leg. “Why did you do that?”
“Because you’re annoying and I hate you!” she said, but she didn’t mean it in the way it came out. She hated the way I was acting. She was frustrated because she didn’t have the vocabulary yet to argue with me, and I knew that. I knew I could win. But it was wrong of me. All she needed was to get a message across to me, and I knew then that I had to hear it. Or she’d kick me again.
“I’m not accusing you of lacking self-control, Ara.” I stood tall again, flexing my foot a few times because my leg still hurt. “I’m telling you that blood changes things; that with a close friendship and blood-sharing, things happen.”
“Then you can be there every time I feed from him,” she said, hands on her hips. “Agreed?”
I did not expect that. My shoulders rolled back and my brows pushed up with shock. I didn’t know what to say. “Really?”
“Yes!” She scrunched her face up, rolling her hands out. “Why are you so shocked by that?”
“I just… I guess you’re right,” I realized. “I guess I didn’t believe you about Cal—that you were just friends.”
Bound by Secrets Page 38