“It wasn’t like that, Ara. He wouldn’t show me.” His fists clenched. “I all but ripped it from his mind. When I saw you here, saw the tearing on your throat—I knew. There is only one person in this world who would do that to a girl everyone knew belonged to me.” He took off across the room, stopping by the window, with the daylight reminding us both that the real world still existed out there. “I went straight to him—forced him to show me. Only…I wish I hadn’t.”
“I’m sorry, David. I should never have went with—”
“No, Ara.” He appeared beside me, taking my hand. “None of this is your fault. None of it. I left you. I did this. Not you. You should hate me.”
That’s not possible, David. It’s not your fault—Jason did this, no one else.
He sniffed once, staying silent for a while, looking down at my ruby ring. “I will never understand why he didn’t finish what he started—but I am eternally grateful that he didn’t.”
“The darkness? He wanted me to be lost down there,” I concluded.
“No.” David shook his head. “No. He said something—as he left you. Something that just didn’t fit.”
“What did he say?” My brow creased; it felt so weird to use those muscles again.
“He kissed you on the cheek and touched your hair, but he did it so gently.” David absentmindedly copied the action of his brother. “He touched you the way I would. Then he said, You don’t know how special you are. I can break your body, but I’ll never break this.” David placed his hand over my heart. I looked up from my chest and into the confusion on his face. “It just doesn’t make any sense. I know him; I know what he’s capable of. Whatever changed his mind, you don’t know how lucky you are—how lucky Mike is. Ara, he was going to—” He closed his eyes.
An involuntary shudder edged up my spine. We both breathed heavily in the silence for a second.
“But he bit me. Why didn’t I change?”
David drew a long breath, masking the shaking in his chest. “I’m sorry, Ara. You—”
“I don’t have the gene?” Hot tears filled my eyes again. I felt myself being pulled backward—like I’d stayed put in the crowded lounge of an airport and watched myself leave. David looked away. “But, I…I changed my mind.”
“I know.” David nodded. “You just—it’s just not in your blood, Ara.”
My whole body stilled, my eyes closing tightly around hot liquid. “I don’t want to die anymore, David. I can’t be without you again.”
“I know. I know, my love.” He stroked my hair, holding my face to his chest, but there was nothing he could say. “You can never be a vampire, Ara. The promise of eternity was never mine to give.”
The emptiness of stolen dreams consumed me, and something died within my soul; all hope fell away to the darkness of my nightmares—like a rose, falling through eternity to a marbled ground of nowhere—laying lifeless and spoiled with a single drop of crimson on her pretty, white petal. The only colour she would ever see again.
David rested his forehead to mine and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear.
“How can that be?” My words touched his lips in a breath. “How can it be over now that I’ve made up my mind?”
His jaw tightened. “Sometimes, Ara, life is cruel.”
“I can’t do this, David. I feel like I’ve lost a part of myself that I’ll never get back—this can’t be the end.”
“You’re marrying him,” David’s voice quavered as he nodded toward the hall—to where Mike went to call my dad. “That’s as concluded as things get.”
“But you told me to. You wanted me to.”
David’s fingers tightened around my face. “I’m no saint, Ara. I want what’s best for you, but at the same time…” He let out a heavy breath. “I couldn’t care less if being with me meant the end of your future.”
“Then don’t let me go.” Hope filled my voice. “Stay with me. Run away with me, I’ll—”
“Ara? I can’t. You know I can’t. I have things I need to deal with—things I must return and take care of, and running away—” he looked down at my face, “—it’s not the answer, my love. Life is the answer, even if loneliness is the outcome.” I went to protest, but David shook his head and pressed his thumbs firmly into my cheekbones, gently pressuring me to silence. “You will have a good life with him. I know now that I’m leaving you in good hands.”
We both looked to the hall—to Mike, to my best friend and fiancé, practically bouncing around the corridor, smiling with more joy radiating from his heart than I had ever seen. When I looked back at David, he was already looking at me; his lips twitching as if words rested there—maybe words I wanted to hear him say.
“I don’t want to have a life anymore. I want to be with you.”
“I know,” he said sympathetically, like an adult telling a child her mother was dead.
“Don’t do that. Don’t speak to me with such finality.”
“I—”
“Please. I had a lot of time to think in the darkness, David, and none of it matters to me now.” I sniffled, wiping the liquid from my nose. “Love. True love—that’s all that matters.”
David shook his head. “You can never be immortal, Ara. I sat here, by your side, all this time, and I watched you die. I was helpless, unable to save you—forced to let you fade away a little more every day,” his voice broke to a whisper. “You disappeared into nothing, until every trace of what made you mine, what made you real—was gone.”
“But I’m still here. David, I—”
“It doesn’t change things.” A tight crease pulled his brow at the centre. “Look, I know I said once that I will always hope you would one day change your mind, but that hope no longer exists. It’s been ripped away by reality, Ara. I will not stay with you as a mortal—I have to leave.”
“Why? Am I so repulsive that you can’t love me with a heartbeat?”
David stood back and looked down at his clenched fist. “You know it has nothing to do with lo—”
“Then what is it?” I almost screamed. I could feel my face burning with heat. “Why won’t you just love me enough to think I’m the only thing that matters? I know I messed up. I know I’m moody and spoiled and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t let you take me away, I’m sorry I went with Jason, and what you’re doing to me now, David, is making me goddamn well sorry I ever fell in lo—”