David laughed. “Revenge will not bring satisfaction, Ara.”
“Says you,” I scoffed, biting my teeth together.
“If you want to get back at Sam for hitting you with a towel—”
“How do you know about that?”
David only smiled, ignoring that question. “You might try stashing dirty cups in his room for Vicki to find, then perhaps she will punish him with the dishes for the next month.”
I grinned—a wicked grin. “You are evil, aren’t you?”
“When it comes to little brothers, yes, I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”
“So, um…” I checked behind me, then whispered, “Can we go somewhere? Talk?”
“Would you like to change first?” David grinned, nodding toward my shorts and zip-up jacket, but stared just a little too long at the space right below my navel.
If only I knew what he was thinking then, when he looked at me that way.
“Inappropriate things, Ara,” said the annoying mind reader.
“Like what?”
His lips moved, twitching, while his smiling eyes changed shape several times. “Go get changed. I’ll meet you in the car.”
“But—” I said, stopping when my words struck an empty yard. “Damn it, David.” I stood up, dusted myself off and went to get changed.
Chapter Eighteen
The warm air of the fading summer skimmed across the glassy surface of the lake, filling my lungs with the scent of grass and clay. “I never thought I’d see this place again.”
“Why would you think that?” David smiled, already laid out on the picnic rug.
“Well, because, obviously, this place has no hold for me without you in it.”
“So, you weren’t planning to see me again.” He nodded to himself.
“It’s not that. I just…I thought, you know, after I broke up with you the other day that, maybe, I wouldn’t get the chance.”
“I wasn’t going to give up on you that easily.” He paused then, thoughtful. “Does it make you afraid? To be here alone with a vampire?”
“It’s no different to before, really.” I slumped on the rug, across from David, tucking my dress under my legs as I sat. “I’ve always been out here alone—with a vampire.”
“Yes, but…” sadness stole his smile, “—now, you’re repulsed by me.”
I twiddled my fingers in my lap. “I was wrong to react that way, David. I’m not repulsed by you, not really. I just…I have to separate it in my mind; this boy I’m in love with from this vampire who kills.”
“Why do you separate it? Why not just accept it—accept me, for what I am?”
“I guess I accept it in my own way. It’s like, I mean, if you were lost in the wild after a plane crash and had to eat the pilot to survive, no one would think anything of it. Humans are the element of your survival, and…I don’t think that changes who you are inside.”
“Of course it does, my love. You said it yourself—you couldn’t see me being a guy who liked blood and gore. If I kill, if I enjoy killing, that has to change what you thought I was.”
After thinking about that for a second, feeling the pull of nerves in my throat, I shook my head. “No. You’re a good guy. I know you are.”
“I am now. I wasn’t before I met you.”
“Are you trying to convince me to hate you?”
“No. Only make you realise that you can’t just say you accept me for who I am. I am a vampire. I kill people. Some of them you may have met. If you accept me, you have to accept me for everything I am. Not just the lie you tell yourself.”
“Well, I guess that’ll take more time. Baby steps.”
He nodded. “Baby steps. Fine. But we don’t have much time.”
“It’s okay. Making the decision to accept that I still love you was the hard part. I should move along from despise and repulsion quite quickly after that.”
“Onto what?”
“Extreme bliss, hilarity—the mind’s way of dealing with what it doesn’t understand.”
“And then what?”
I shrugged. “Maybe true acceptance.”
“But, you’re not about to come hunting with me or anything, are you?” He smirked.
I tried not to be offended, but I actually really just wanted to slap him. “That’s not funny.”
“Sorry.” He looked down by his leg and brushed a few leaves away that fell from a tree. “So, you don’t want me to leave with my uncle?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
“You’ll give me until the end of the summer, then?”
“If that’s all we can have.”
One corner of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. “But, you won’t give me forever?”
“Forever,” I laughed the word out. “That used to have such a different meaning to me.” I smiled and looked away. “I can’t even comprehend eternity, David. It’s too much for my puny human brain to take.”
“Yes, you can. Try this—think of the longest day you’ve ever spent,” he said, sitting up.
I thought of Wednesday—the day before the funeral; a whole day not knowing if I’d ever see him again.
“Now, spend the rest of your life like that,” he said, his voice dropping.
“Is it really that miserable?”
“Not all of it.” He tried to smile, shifting his fingers from the tangled hold in his hair to the ground beside him. “There are good things. But you get tired sometimes, you know? And then, once in a while, if you’re lucky, you come across something that makes your life worth living.”
I held the smile on my lips, but it went stale in my soul. “And what about when I’m gone? Will you find another person to love, then?”
“See, you just don’t get it.” He shook his head, leaning back on his hands. “There was a time where I was just existing, and I never knew any better. But when I saw you, when I held you, you burrowed right into my soul, Ara. You reached a part of me that has never been touched before and I—” He looked away. “I’ll never be the same again. Wherever I go, whatever I do in this world, I will never find another reason to live as good as you.”
“If you love me that deeply, can’t you just stay with me then—be human?”
“I’m not human, Ara,” he said, poorly disguising the ache in his voice.