by A. M. Hudson
By the time Dad told Emily to ‘let me rest’, I had formed a real smile at least twice, and had
managed to forget about the attack for a while.
“Em?” I said as she went to close my door behind her.
“Yeah?”
“Can you come back tomorrow?”
She pressed her lips into a tight line and blinked rapidly, then nodded and closed the door
before I heard her burst into tears on the other side.
Rising from my fir st dreamless slumber since I woke from my nightmare, I drew a deep
breath and watched the sun rise higher in the sky until it reflected off my light-catching mirrors
outside, making a small rainbow dance on the wall above my dresser. I looked away from it; colour
didn’t belong in my life anymore. I wondered if it’d ever be a part of me again.
I found the bright side in all the gloom easily though as I extended my limbs into a stretch
and, for the first time, they didn’t hurt quite so much. I felt the cold as if it were only cold, not sharp
pins, and could actually find appreciation in the beautiful winter that set in deep while I was in a
coma. It h ad been a sh ock to my ne rves when I fe lt the sting of the frost on that first day they
brought me home. It’s not so bad now. I actually like it—more than I once liked the autumn.
“Hey? Good morning. I di dn’t know you we re awake,” Mike chimed, leaning on my
doorframe.
So, being awake is some miracle. Obviously, three weeks of being alive isn’t enough for
him to feel normal.
He looked a little more rested today; his hair was still wet from a shower, and the smell of
his fresh, powder-scented cologne filled my room.
“Yeah, hi. I’ve just been…doing some thinking.” I sat up in my bed.
“What about?” Mike dropped his folded arms and moved to sit beside me.
“Just stuff.”
“Ara—” He paused, seemingly assessing his words. “I love you. And—I’m your best friend.
I always will be. But I’m not stup id, and I’m not blind. ” He opened his eyes a little wider, then
focused on my face.
There’s only one di rection this could be going ; he must have pieced it all together, as I
feared. I looked away from him and braced myself for his fury. Everything that happened; being
kidnapped and nearly murdered by J ason was all my fault—he’d be right to yell at me; I let a
vampire into my world, and it nearly cost me my life—and his.
“Hey? Don’t do that.” He rolled my face upward with his fingertip. “Please don’t turn away
from me, Ara. I just want to see you happy again. I want that mor e than I can express. I just—I
wanted you to know that—you’re not alone. Okay?” He stroked my hair once and pressed his lips
together—studying my averted gaze. “Look. In t he hospital, I saw the way he loved you,” Mike
continued. “It was…undeniable. I…I don’t know what happened between you two, and maybe I
never will—but you need to know that, alt hough that part of your life is over now, I’m still here.
And you still have a chance to be happy.”
“I’m not sure I’m capable of that anymore, Mike.”
Mike nodded. “What if I could promise you you are? What if I could guarantee that you will
one day find a smile again? Would you believe me—at least start wanting to be happy again?”
“I—” I frowned to myself. “I do want to be happy.”
He went to shake his head, but stopped and exhaled. “Only you know the truth of that, Ar.
But I’m not giving up on you. Not ever. I don’t care what you say to me or do to make me mad or
hurt, I love you, and I’m not giving up on you.”
My eyes watered and my lips parted with elation. “What if I asked you to go?”
He didn’t even answer. We both already knew the answer. But he didn’t know the truth—he
was right, only I knew that. And the truth is, they all think I’m depressed and miserable because of
the attack, and while a part of that’s t rue, the core of it is because of David. But David’s gone. He’s
a part of my life I have to let go—I have no choice. And time, death and tears haven’t changed that,
and won’t change that.
David is never coming back for me. I just have to believe that he’s dead. Finality. Like Mum
and Harry. I grieve for them, and I can grieve for David. I shouldn’t wait for him to step around the
corner anymore.
I don’t want to let go, but it’s time to move on—be happy. Well, try to be happy.
I squeezed Mike’s hand and reached up to stroke my thumb over the thin bor der of stubble
following his jaw-line. “I like this.”
“Yeah? It was Emily’s suggestio n. She said I have the r ight jaw for it.” He gr inned and
rubbed his chin.
I chuckled. “You can always trus t her to give good fashion advice. When’s she coming to
see me again?”
“This afternoon.”
“How come they wouldn’t let her in at the hospita l,” I asked. “She said she came to see me,
but you had to sneak her in.”
“Yeah. They only allowed immediate family.”
“Then how did David—?”
“I lied. Told them I was your brother, and he was your fiancé.”
“You did that? For me? For him?”
“I know how much he means to you.” Mike sh
rugged. “It was…it ’s what you would’ve
wanted.” Mike lowered his head a little and looked away.
That must have hur t him—a lo t—when he realised the love David and I had t ogether. I
clasped his warm, squishy, human cheeks in my fingers and turned his face to mine; “You’re a good
man, Mike.” My head rocked from side to side. “I’m glad I’m marrying you.”
Mike’s frown softened and a br oad smile spread across his face, like the li ght touching the
earth at sunrise. “Then...you still wanna get married?”
“Of course I do, dummy.” I slapped his arm. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I just thought, with the whole near-death experience and all—you know, people change
from those things, Ara. I didn’t know if you’d want the same things anymore.”
“And you stayed? Even though you weren’t sure?” Admir ation crinkled across my nose.
Mike let everything he worked for in Australia fall apart to be here and make sure I got better—even
though he thought I didn’t want to marry him.
His eyes narrowed; “Ara. I’m in this for life. Whether you marry me or not, I will always be
here to love you and protect you and be your friend. That will never change. Never.”
How could it be that I’d missed this? All along, I’d been looking across the road to the boy I
thought I loved, when I should’ve been looking right beside me. This is my saviour, my true love—
this is my knight in shining armour. He always has and always will come to my rescue; he has never
left me in the dark. “Good,” I said. “Because I don’t want you to go anywhere.”
“Good, because I don’t plan to.”
I smiled and looked down at his big hand propping him up on t he bed beside me. “You are
right, though—about one thing,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Things do change. I do want different things now.” I grabbed his face again wi th both of
my hands and pulled him a little closer. “And I have never been more sure, in all of my existence,
that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Mi
ke.” I moistened my lips with my tongue and
took a deep breath. “I choose you—and I choose life. For forever.”
He leaned down, and his warm, velvet smile melted onto my lips as his breath brushed hot
against my skin. It was the first kiss. My first kiss, in my new life. I’d been given the chance to start
over—cleansed of all the mistakes of the past.
Today, I begin a new journey with the man I should’ve been with from the start.
The hourglass rocked and the balance had t ipped in r everse, but everything was back i n
place—just the way it was destined to be.
True love will be ours now, and happiness will be in every breath that I take beside this man.
We will go on—live, as living was intended, a nd I will love him for forever—for our forever—
because they’ve always been the same.
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
True love, by definiti on, means “someone that is truly loved”. But t rue love must be
reciprocated, or it is only excruciatingly unbearable and devastating—a never-ending lonely night in
an empty room.
By the dictionary of Ara, true l ove means you could not live wit hout that person. That the
love you feel for them is as honest and deep as the love they feel for you—a soul mate—a perfect
match. For me, that’s Mike. And in only a few hours, we’ll be sharing this truth with the rest of the
world. The presence of my hand over my belly was s upposed to settle the feeling of nerves—like
black bats had assembled in my gut and bludgeoned the ogre to death—but it didn’t. And it didn’t
hide the fact that, in truth, I wa sn’t ready for this. But Dad wouldn’t let me go back to P erth with
Mike unless we were married f irst. So, I stood in front of the full-length, oval mirror, with golden
light spreading its warm beams of morning over my empty bedroom floor, and let time pass around
me. Unable to control it or make good use of it. Just existing as a part of its greater plan.
I reached across and tilted the frame of the twisty-hinged mirror, changing the image to the
plain white of the roof. I couldn’t look at the reflection staring back at me tod ay; she was error,
beautified by justification, and painted in the form of a bright-eyed young girl. A young girl who
was doing what was expected of her, not what her heart truly wanted.
Don’t get me wr ong, I really do love Mike, and once we’re far away from this town, I’ll
forget David ever existed. But the quiet prelude to the tempest had me wondering if I was doing the
right thing. If marrying one man, when I was still in love with another, would perhaps destroy not
just my life, but Mike’s as well.
The blue light of the winter flashed behind my eyelids for a second as I visited the past—the
Christmas gone by where I spent the day on the armchair by the fire downstairs, talking to Mike on
the phone all day. It was cruel of his parent s to demand he return home for Christmas, and it did
them no good since we spent the entire week on the phone to each other anyway. The bill was huge,
but Mike just l aughed and said it was s mall change—a minor drawback in the greater scheme of
things—and covered the costs himself.
When he finally came back, I had never been so glad to see him in all my life. I’d had so
many nightmares while he was gone—one’s that ended in him calling to say he’d changed his mind
about me, or some where his plane crashed while I waited at the airport for him, and some where I
slipped into the darkness again, and he wasn’t here to save me.
I can’t live without him. I need him, almost as much as he needs me.
I shook my head a few tim es, releasing the shiver of memories past, and looked behind me
to the near-empty room. My bed was gone, and the spongy white ca rpet dominated the space. The
new day bed in the co rner had become a shelf for all things bridal, while the bouquets had been
lined up on the hallstand beside the window.
It might not have been my r oom anymore, but it still felt like my room, except, like me, it
had been changed beyond r ecognition. My face, my hands, everything had been polis hed and
shined, shaped and fashioned to look like the bride standing by the mirror in her wedding dress.
The swirling vortex of time had swept everything up, and I was next—destined to leave
everyone and everything behind. But that was always my destiny, wasn’t it? And one day soon, I’m
sure it will carry me away from Mike.
I smiled, looking down at the veil over the chair back beside me.
Then again, Mike would probably find a way to come back to me, just like he did after
Christmas—with a small surprise in a shoebox. I ran my fingers over the silk-stitched flowers on the
veil that was inside the box; the only piece of my mother that would be with me on my wedding
day. I thought it was lost—like ever ything my dad made me leave behind when he dragged me
away from my home, but Mike brought it back to me, and now, just like mum and I always planned,
I’ll wear the same veil she wore when she married my dad.
The familiar chatter of my little bluebird friend on the window formed the song to my empty
silence. I snapped from my reverie, tilted the mirror back down and watched the bird dancing in the
reflection; bouncing happily as if life just went on. So simple. That’s it; eat, sing, dance and play.
I wish I was a bluebird. I’d fly away—over the rainbow.
But life is not a novel, and people don’t really get happy endings. I understand all the
negative philosophical one-liners this town loves so much now. Th ey’re phrases invented by smart
people who know life isn’t made of dreams, even though it sometimes feels like a dream. But we’re
not the leading ladies of our own i llusory films. This is li fe, and I am real. At least, they tell me I
am, anyway. They tell me this is the real world. Time to grow up, Ara. Time to stop dreaming, Ara.
David said it best; “Even dreams eventually die.”
So I’m living a lie instead. Lying to my family, lying to Mike—making him believe I can be
normal. Time to be normal, Ara. I blinked, taking a deep breath, suffocating under the mas k that
slipped into place. “There, that’s bett er.” I smiled at my no rmal-self in the reflection; she smiled
back. “Everything is wonderful.” I must repeat this every day; “This is my lif e, and everything is
truly wonderful.”
I ran my fin gers over the yellow and silver embroidered cherry blos soms, flowing like a
swarm of butterflies over the fitted bodice of my white dress. My waist looked small, and my skin
was golden-brown, thanks to Emily forcing me to have a spray- on tan. She was ri ght, it did look
great. I looked healthy, li ke there was a kind of glow around me. I wasn’t totally sold on t he full
hoop skirt and l ong train, but it had been a s tipulation of Vicki’s that she get to help choose the
dress—without any arguments.
Despite my distaste in ostentatious imagery, I love my dress.
I love my ring—the one Mike designed for me when he was younger; the rose made of ruby,
with emerald-adorned gold vines. It rested safely back in place since the first day I woke from my
nightmare. Not that planning a wedding had been any less of a nightmare.
The white bouquets, embellished with a few pale-yellow roses filled the entire room with a
soft, fragrant perfume, b
ut though th ey smelled sweet, they’d caused a lot of trouble. Vicki, of
course, wanted red roses. Mike intervened in the end and told her it was my choice. She meant well,
and red would’ve been great, but she can never understand what the red rose once meant to me: how
it represented the part of me that would always belong to David.
That was a different time; I wish it were a different life.
I took a wispy breath and fel t my heart fl utter as I pu shed his face away from my mind. I
can’t have any thoughts of him today, or I’ll fall to pieces.
There is, and never was a David Knight. He died in nineteen-thirteen when his uncle bit him
and turned him into a vampire: he never loved me, never promised me eternity—never existed.
I am moving on, as he did, and leaving all hope of love and destiny to the children who read
fairy-tales.
They say that spring represents new beginnings—the end of the dar kness, the cloaking of
faux pas, the chance to wake up and start all over again. David will never be far from my thoughts,
but I will live for the rest of my life without him in my embrace.
I looked at myself in the mirror again, at the bride, the woman that now stood before me:
this is moving on.
“Ara? Are you okay?” Emily smiled at me from the doorway.
“Emily—you look beautiful,” I all but squealed and hugged her as she walked over to me.
She held me tight . Then, standing her at arms-len gth, I smiled, admiring her dress. “Yellow is
definitely your colour.”
“Well, thank you for choosing such a tast eful bridesmaid dress.” She smiled, r unning her
fingers over the chiffon.
“I’m glad we went for the shorter dress—it’s says spring to me.” I tapped my chin with my
finger.
“It doesn’t feel like spring. It’s so cold today.” She smiled and tilted her head to one side,
pausing there for a second. “Is it David? Is that what you were thinking about just now?”
A rush of hot blood shot through my stomach; I clutched my silver locket.
On my own, with the f our walls of my room surrounding me—closing me in—convincing
myself that life was that path I’d chosen was easy. But in the presence of those who prove li fe is
still real and still hurts, believing I no longer belonged to him made me want to fold over and cry.