For the first time since his confession this afternoon, I really let myself look at him—see him for what he was. I pictured the vampire, the monster, and under it, with his shoulders stiff, his grey shirt hugging the knuckles of his curved spine, was the boy—the one with a heart, which was probably very broken right now. “Damn you for being so cute.” I slumped beside him on the bed. “Why did your uncle want you to leave with him the other day?”
He laughed into his hands then sat up straight, wiping them over his jeans. “I called him—told him I was in love—that I couldn’t leave you when the time came. And he told me that was exactly why I had to leave.”
“Because you were in love?”
“No. Because I love you enough to wish I could give up everything.”
That made me feel heavy and a little numb. If David had just gone, I would be so broken right now, but it would be normal. “Maybe your uncle was right.”
“Oh, Ara, please don’t say things like that.” The anguish in his eyes forced me to close mine. “Have you even considered coming with me?”
I couldn’t answer him, because I couldn’t give him the answer he wanted.
“Ara, please. For the sake of a few drops of blood?” His voice edged beyond desperate. “You would throw away everything? You would turn your back on love?”
“No, David,” I said. “I won’t turn my back on love. But I won’t be a part of murder, of death, of fear. It’s more than a few drops of blood. They’re people. Does that mean nothing to you?”
“It does have meaning to me, but not in the way it does to you.” He lowered his head, maybe ashamed of himself. He should be.
“David, I will always love you—to the very depths of my soul, but I won’t live out eternity as an immoral killer,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Immoral?” With a slow breath, he floated up to stand and towered over me, casting a dark shadow across my face. “You think me—immoral?”
“I’m sorry, David, but…I do.” I kept my head down, my eyes on David’s clenched fist.
“If you could only see what you are doing—what it will do to me to be without you.” The energy—the kind of force surrounding him that was normally warm and soft—turned cold, chilling the air with a tearing sensation. “I am not immoral, and I do have a heart—feelings to be exact.”
When our gaze met, my stomach tightened into my throat at the sight of the liquid agony in his very human eyes. “David—”
“No. Can’t you see? Ara, you have no idea what you’re giving up.”
“If you knew my heart, you’d know those words are untrue,” I whispered, looking away from the broken pieces of the boy I loved.
“If I knew your heart, Ara, I would’ve known I should never have shared myself with you.” He cut the air with his hand.
“You’re right,” I said irresolutely. “You should never’ve told me. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t need to know. Now, I have to lose you still, but it’s worse, because I know you’re out there, every day, taking life. And I kissed you. I let myself love you. And I wish I hadn’t.”
“So that’s it, then.” He nearly choked on his words. “You want nothing to do with me, now?”
“You should’ve given me more time. I wasn’t ready for you to come back yet.”
He took two slow steps away from me, touching his chest as the distance became greater. “Well, have no fear, my love. I shall not make that mistake again.”
He sounded a hundred years old to me, then. The weight of his existence tore down my walls as I watched him walk away, and somewhere inside me, a little voice screamed out, echoing from the depths of my soul—warning me that if I let him leave now, I would never see him again. “Wait!” I called in a breath of desperation, reaching for him as I jumped to my feet. “David, wait.”
He stopped, crouched on the ledge of my window, keeping his eyes on the night below.
“Please, give me more time. I’m not ready to let go, yet, I just—maybe we could have until the end of the summer, at least. But, I just need time to think about it.”
David turned his head and looked into my eyes. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and when the vampire jumped back into my room and stood right before me, I didn’t even flinch. Not one uneven breath escaped me. He leaned down and pressed his cold fingertips to my face, rolling it firmly upward to meet his. “Follow your heart, mon amour,” he said. “When nothing in this world makes sense anymore, just follow your heart.”
I drew a shaky breath and closed my eyes as an intense exchange of hope and fear consumed our souls and, in a flash, as I opened them again—he was gone. Gravity made me stumble forward a step in his wake, his absence leaving my heart burning.
The night below my window, cool and quiet, regarded none of the tension in my soul. A lonely cricket hummed his perfect song, and I closed my eyes as the last day that life was everything I expected came to an end.
Squinting in the bright morning sun as my sneakers clapped over the pavement, I started down the street—in the opposite direction of the school. I wanted to be as far away from that building as I could get.
I drew deep, throat-grazing breath of the near-autumn chill, blowing it out in a slow, controlled breath. I’d almost forgotten how to breathe while running. I’d let myself get so unfit that, instead of feeling free and fast now, I felt like I was trying to jump under water. But the tight stitch, the inability to breathe, and the sweat beading on my brow was all normal. And none of it was fair. I should be ignorant to all of it—sunshine, birds singing, hearing my dad talking in the kitchen, or a car taking off down the street. No one my age should appreciate little things like that. When I wake up, my only dilemma should be which dress I want to wear. It sucked that I’d felt grief so deep I could value the little things. And it sucked that I had to either lose the boy I loved, or become immortal—and the fact that David killed people really sucked. No pun intended. The only trouble was, when I concluded not to love him, it hurt inside—a physical ache in my gut, like the one that made me throw up on the first day of school.
“Hello stranger,” a soft, soprano voice called.
I stopped dead and turned around. “Hey, Emily. Do you live around here?”
She shook her head and motioned behind her. “Spencer lives here. I stayed over last night.”