It’s still me. I love you.
~Sean
I closed my eyes, leaning my neck forward to put my face in my hands. I messaged my brow for a few seconds before I looked back up at the note. I laid it beside Liam’s before my left hand flipped open the book. I didn’t need to play the actual melody to hear Nat King Cole’s voice in my mind as I looked at each page.
I even began signing the last chorus softly aloud as I came to the last page, a page once empty and now complete with pictures we had taken on my birthday with my camera. I used my thumb to stop the escaped tear from reaching the bottom of my cheek as I shut the book.
I turned back to my clock to see it was only 10:00 AM. I had two hours until Liam came back. I shook my head at the melancholy of Sean, letting the thought of Liam form a new grin to my face, a moment before I bounced off my bed toward my closet. I opened it, pushing hangers apart until I found it, the green jersey sleeve dress I never had a chance to wear out with Liam. I hung it on the back of the door so that I could reach to the corner and grab the flats to match. I nodded with approval before heading to the bathroom to shower.
Once I was dressed I placed the top half of my hair back with the same off green clip that I had used last time before clasping my new locket around my neck. I waited two minutes to noon until I tip toed down the hall, listening for any volume from the TV. Hearing only silence, I blew out a sighed relief before I straightened my back to walk around the corner and into the kitchen. I found my mother in front of the sink wearing yellow rubber gloves. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, showing off her still youthful features.
“Hey mom,” I said.
She turned around with the plate she was cleaning, smiling at the very sight of me. The rise in her cheeks brought out my own.
“Emma, you look gorgeous. Date with Liam, today?” she said with one arched eyebrow.
“Thanks. Yup, he should be here any minute,” I said. I looked over my shoulder cautiously until I heard her light giggle.
“You’ll be gone before your dad gets back,” she said.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“At Lowes picking up some paint for our bedroom. Have you picked a color for your room yet?”
“No, but right now I’m okay with the white.”
She grinned. “Okay.” When the doorbell rang, I watched her wink before turning back around to dry the plate in her left hand. “Have fun,” she said
“Thanks mom. Love you.”
“Love you too,” I heard her say as I turned the corner into the living room.
The walk from the kitchen to the front door seemed longer than I remembered. But it was worth it once I opened the door to find Liam’s emerald green eyes brighten at the sight of me. My cheeks rose with a subtle blush to his smile.
“I’m glad to see you had another chance to wear Lillian’s dress,” Liam said.
“Lillian’s?” I paused looking down, at my left hand that had moved to rest on the material touching my abdomen, before back up at Liam. “Oh, I just assumed it was Grace’s.” He resisted a grin as he held his hand out for me. I guess that’s what I got when I assumed. “Well, remind me to thank her later,” I said. I took his hand in mine as I pulled the front door shut behind me.
“I will have to thank her again myself. It’s hard for me to control myself when you look like that,” Liam said.
I looked down with my cheeks continued blush as we walked down the porch steps and across the yard to his BMW that sat on the driveway. “So, what are we doing today?” I asked.
“It’s a surprise,” Liam said.
He let go of my hand, swiftly moving to open the passenger door for me to get in, shutting it once my feet touched the floor mats. Once he shut his driver’s side door, I reached my hand over to hold his hand again, unafraid of what the day held. He laced his fingers in-between mine as he pulled out of the driveway and onto the street.
With the daylight I took the time to pay attention as Liam drove. It didn’t bother me that he ignored most of the speed limits, just the dizziness that came from my eyes failing to capture the still objects parallel with the moving car. I had a feeling it would be the same if I opened my eyes when Liam ran. Once we got onto Highway 264 I started to become eager with each passing exit. The further east he drove the more uncertain I became of where we were heading, at least until he finally turned onto Camp Leach Road.
“You live inside Goose Creek Park? How did I not notice that last time?”
Liam chuckled amusingly.
“You were a little preoccupied the first time and it was too dark for your eyes to see much of either drive on Friday night.”
True. The first time I had spent a majority of the ride worrying about the meeting of the Alexanders, the second, third and fourth was too dark to notice anything anyway. I found myself intrigued as Liam turned onto the main road for the state park, following it for a few miles until he slowed at a new turn. The turn I did recognize. The narrowed private road. I never would have guessed this is where I was. I looked up at the familiar guarded trees as Liam drove by until they had become sparse enough to reveal the Alexander Mansion. It was breathtaking no matter how many times you saw it.
I took Liam’s hand before walking up the porch steps and following a step behind his surprise lead. Walking into the mansion was quiet, too quiet.
“Is anyone here?” I asked.
Liam looked back over to me as he led us to the right of the spiral staircase, down the hallway.
“Not at the moment,” he said.
His lips rose unevenly in a way that made my knees faltered one of my steps. He stopped, looking at me with a small worry. I grinned reassuringly.
“It was just my knee giving out,” I said.
Immediately I found my knees become useless all together once Liam swooped down to pick me up, pulling me inward. I wanted to simply tell him that I was fine to walk but once I was that close I couldn’t resist the need to stay that way.
He began a walk forward down the hall, enjoying the human pace as much as I did. When we reached the end of the hall, we were met by two large wooden doors, doors that Liam separated apart in different directions with his mind before stepping forward into the room and letting them shut behind us. He placed me to my feet with my neck’s turn away from him to let me see the breath taking sight in front of us.
It was the backside of the house and it was made entirely of thick glass. I hadn’t known from the roof but now I could see the mansion sat on the very edge of a cliff, revealing one of my favorite North Carolina views. It was beautifully surreal the way it beckoned my feet forward.
I felt Liam come stand behind me, lowering his lips to my ears, making it hard to resist the blood flow between my thighs. “I wanted to show you this the last time you were here but—”
“Things didn’t exactly go to plan that night,” I said.
My neck was still but my eyes shifted sideways.
“Yes,” Liam said. “I know you have forgiven me but I still feel the need to make things up to you.”
I turned around. “You…”
Liam put his finger to my lips to cut off my words. He moved so swiftly that I lost sight of him for a second, until I looked over to my right to see him in the corner. Across the room from him, nearest the glass, was a set up table for two. I had only a moment to resister it before he was back a few inches in front of me. But before I could say anything I heard the entire room ignite with a beautiful melody that I knew from my mother’s personal collection. “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”. My eyes gazed down at Liam’s touch of my left hand as he moved it up to rest on his shoulder, before trickling his fingers down my right arm, until his hand cupped my palm tightly. He pulled my body closer with his grasp of my waist with his right hand, resting it on the small of my back. My focus traveled up his chest until I made contact with the glowing emerald staring down at me. As I felt the beginning sway of his lead, I regretted not wearing my new heels at
least that was until Liam leaned his neck to meet my lips, interrupting our dance for a few seconds. It was certainly one way to apologize.
A few hours later I laid quietly on Liam’s king size bed, with my arms securely wrapped around his body and my head against his chest. I sighed, content to be near him as I listened to his voice read a passage from Jane Austen’s Emma. But now my eyes opened at the sudden absence of his words, feeling the delicate kiss on my scalp before watching his hands bookmark the next chapter. I was getting used to decoding his movements. He was alerting me.
I shifted up to his gaze, following it to the doorway where I found Sean patiently waiting with a cautious grin. He seemed to have timed my mood perfectly. Of course, it would make sense he would know the timing when he could read my thoughts. I was doing my best to resist the rise in my cheeks and lift in my lips. It had been two days since I had refused to see him. Was it so wrong that I had missed him?
I sat my body up so that I could see Liam, who gazed at me to see whether I was ready. I moved my left hand to the side of his face with a grin before finally nodding. As he stood off the bed, I looked over to catch Sean’s narrowed annoyance at Liam. It was like he was saying, “She is my sister after all. I think she’ll be fine.”
He’s just being protective, like someone else I know. I thought the words while shifting my eyes back on the bright green of Liam’s. He didn’t need to read my thoughts to know them. Both of us resisted an exhaled laugher to that before he finally disappeared from sight. Sean didn’t waste but a few seconds before taking a seat on my left. With him so close I felt I had to force my eyes to look back at him. Everything was different. A new aura surrounded him almost. I let my gaze fall back down to my shoes.
“It’s still me, Emma,” Sean said.
I felt compelled to raise my neck to look at him.
“Is it?”
“Yes. Still the same mind, you know.” He lifted his hand to point his index finger at his temple. “Just a stronger body.”
“A mind that can read others’.” He quietly agreed with a nod before I shook my head. “I don’t know how to handle it . . . to grasp that.”
“What about Liam?”
“This is so different, and you know it. You’re my brother. I’ve known you my whole life and now you’re . . . this.” Both of my hands gestured toward him as my eyes looked at his feet and then back at the bright golden honey of his eyes. “Something I don’t know.”
“But I’m still him, and I always will be. I’ve just had a calling for something bigger.”
I couldn’t roll my eyes enough or sigh loudly enough before making a condescending remark. I wasn’t surprised to know that Sean would be the one chosen for something like this. It just made sense to me that someone as special as Sean would have a higher destiny than most mortals. But then, believing and seeing something were completely different. Having to remind myself that Sean was immortal was like waking from a dream.
“Why couldn’t you tell me? I know the importance of secrecy with immortals, but isn’t this different? Couldn’t you have shown me without telling me? Like Liam did?”
I heard the plea in my voice. Sean tilted his head and straightened his lips.
“I didn’t want you to know.”
“Why?” I asked.
My eyes squinted and my lips nervously pushed back and forth. I couldn’t ignore the sting of his choice.
“Because I wanted to keep you away from this life. If you knew about me, you wouldn’t be able to help needing to know why and how things work. You wouldn’t be able to control the slow draw that would begin to pull you closer.” His eyes brightened as they looked over the features of my face. “I was supposed to be letting you go, but my humanity got in the way.”
I narrowed my eyes. His humanity?
“Do you remember your curiosity about Liam going back to high school?”
“Yes.” I nodded. I remembered very well how vague he had been about the question.
“Well, you were right. It is odd for immortals to even consider full academic focus with what we do.” Sean put his finger in the air as if to prove his defense of Liam. “He would have told you that if it wouldn’t have led you straight to me, something that I couldn’t let you see.”
“So why where you there?”
“I honestly never thought you’d come back. I thought it would be easy because your life would just go on without me.” He shifted his gaze to the floor while he shook his head in disbelief. “But when you did, I found that I couldn’t resist seeing you one last time. And when I saw you again, I realized how much of a hold you had on my heart still. So I pleaded my case to finish high school so that I may have just a little more time to say goodbye.”
I felt a small burn in my throat that I gulped down.
“So why did they join you?” I asked.
“For Sean.”
I turned my neck toward the doorway again to see Grace gliding through. At sight of her I remembered I hadn’t quite forgiven her, or hadn’t yet been confronted with the opportunity.
“They all did it for you?”
My eyes shifted back to Sean.
“Blame it on my age,” he said. He shrugged with a smirk and locked eyes with Grace. I couldn’t resist narrowing my eyes.
“I’m sure you also couldn’t imagine not having that diploma for eternity.”
He winked back at me with a smirk that caused my exhaled laugh, one that had been dormant for days.
“So how did it happen?” I said.
I found myself looking not just at Sean but also at Grace, for I had heard a story that linked her to Liam but never through her point of view. Call me a romantic, but I wanted to hear how an immortal found her other half, especially one who had to wait so long.
“It was seven months ago, while we still resided in New Orleans, the place where Lillian found William shortly after the war among the states ended.” Civil War, I thought with a clear image of the Alexander mansion. “A message had been sent for me, much like it had been before to Patrick and Lillian. It told of a boy in the town of Washington, North Carolina who unknowingly waited for a new destiny.” How strange it was to hear of Sean as if he were in a fairytale. “I took Liam with me to Washington before the others.”
“I still remember the day she bumped into me,” Sean said. “I couldn’t take my eyes off the glow of blue that brightened them.”
He glanced adoringly back at Grace’s inviting smile. I felt the more she was around me, the less intimidating she became.
“Immediately I studied Sean in order to figure out his movements, to focus on his observant nature, and to notice his charming human beauty.” Sean winked at her beaming sapphire blue eyes. “How strange it was to feel such desire for someone who could be seen as a child, but it’s not something that can even be explained. I just knew that when we arrived it didn’t matter. We were the same. I was his equal as much as he was mine.”
Grace walked forward to stand within Sean’s reach as she looked down at him with a focused desire that I understood. It was one I often gave Liam. It took her but a moment to remember I was still there.
“It was a week before I planned my approach. I was watching him walk around the square and found it hard to contain my enthusiasm at finally meeting him. But once I got his attention, my instincts needed no plan. I had no need for my gift either. I needed only to smile.”
“I had never seen someone like her, but I felt as if I would follow her into the gates of hell if she asked me to,” Sean said.
Grace moved to sit on Sean’s left, cupping her right hand over his left to signify support; support for both of them, it seemed.
“Luckily I didn’t ask such a thing, only for his company,” Grace said.
“So you just told him what you were? Right there?”
Grace grinned and shook her head. “No, I merely found myself caught in the moment of talking with him; caught in the moment of being with the one I knew I would be fighting bes
ide eternally.” She was almost gazing beyond me in relived bliss, like she had woken from a dream to remember that what she had was real, remembered she didn’t have to wait anymore. “I was told by Patrick and Lillian the steps but the experience was much different.”
“When did you finally tell him?” I asked.
“It was a month after I arrived and the rest of the family had joined us in Washington. Patrick told me that I would know when the time was right.” Grace held a subtle grin as if she had thought of an inside joke. “It was a day when he was sitting alone by the river.”
“I sat by the river most days thinking of how you were,” Sean said. He bounced his eyes from her to me. “When I saw Grace that day, it was as if I already saw in her eyes that she had to tell me something.”
“I knew it was right, but when I saw him I could still feel my immortal heart race. I couldn’t say the words, so I had to show him.”
Sean nodded, his brow raised in remembrance of Grace’s reveal.
“I had always believed in certain things, but that day—”
“I know. It’s one thing to suspect and another to witness,” I said. I could still relate, after all.
“Yes, it was a lot to process. But from the moment she said I was meant to be by her side, I felt a sense of belonging, like she was informing me of something I had known deep down. So when she reached out her hand, I didn’t hesitate to take it and follow her.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Not at all.”
“Really? Everything was going to change and you were okay with that?”
“I was more ready than I had ever known,” Sean said.
There was confidence that rang in his voice.
“Those immortals chosen are chosen for a reason, Emma,” Grace said. “There is something in them that is predestined to have traits of courage and acceptance. It is hard to explain to mortals because it really is only something you can know by experience.”
Bound Page 22