Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Levette
He had abandoned me. Warren had made me believe in love, in living, only to leave me. Not only in life, but he had tried to turn to ash so I may never redeem myself. For someone so focused on salvation, he had not allowed me the opportunity to be saved in his eyes.
How could one ever recover from that level of desertion?
The fury that roared in my veins lasted for years, but the only balm to my pain was somewhere halfway across the world, ignoring my voice whenever I called to him.
It was pitiful how much I ached for him.
I would call out to him in my lowest moments, begging him to come home.
To return to me and allow us to figure it out together.
I even considered what a domesticated life would look like for a vampire, ways in which I could change to be whatever he wanted me to be.
But he had learned to block me, and so my targeted thoughts would hit against the brick wall of his mind, smashing into dust.
“What are you thinking about?”
I looked across at the man dining with me.
His blue eyes and messy black hair made him handsome, but whenever he spoke, I wanted to throw my knife across the table.
He was good with his mouth, when he kept quiet and put it to use, which was not often.
I would never allow another to get attached, be close enough to imagine a life together.
They would always be expendable.
They would never be him.
“The mistakes of time gone by,” I answered, circling my finger over my wine glass.
He wiped his mouth with a napkin, taking a slow drink. He liked the fine dining I had introduced him to, always picking something expensive to eat and devour. A wise thing to do, in all honesty—why should he not take advantage and get as much out of our entanglement as he could?
“You rarely speak of the past,” he commented, shoving another bite of steak into his mouth. “We always dine and then…you know…but you are usually pretty quiet. You should talk to me more, Levette. I’m a good listener.”
“Hm,” I mumbled, watching him closely. He was in his mid-twenties, that half point of saying goodbye to your youthful ways before becoming an adult of complete independence.
He often gazed at me after I fed on him with a wistfulness I ignored, as though he was desperate to become a vampire, too.
I would never allow that, and I surmised he was aware, since the request never slipped from his lips.
“I mean it. We’re friends, are we not? Friends speak about things.”
I resisted the urge to curl my lip at the thought. “I do not have friends, and I wish to keep it that way. What we have is an arrangement, one carefully crafted over this past year. We enjoy each other’s company, and then we part ways. Let us not confuse it for anything more.”
The young man huffed, throwing his napkin on the table between us. “Why do you not allow me to be close to you? I have more to offer than—”
“I do not look for companionship. You will always fall short of the bar that was set, boy, so I warn you not to try!” I interrupted, my impatience getting the better of me.
It had been so long since I had conversed with anyone that made me feel alive, gave me a spark in my soul that made me want to speak and divulge all my secrets.
He had taken with him whatever piece of humanity I had left, and I was a husk of the Levette Fortier that had returned to New Orleans.
Now, I was a businessman, an untouchable force passing through the city.
I did not need friends, nor conversation—I kept to myself and people respected me for it.
“I want to be more!” he whisper-yelled in frustration. “You treat me as though I am a whore.”
I looked at him with nothing short of an emotionless glare. “If you were a whore, you would be getting paid. Is this not enough?” I said, gesturing to the high-end restaurant we were eating in. “Do you want money? If that is what this is, here.” I threw money on the table between us.
His eyes widened, and he pushed it away, knocking over my wine in the process. I cursed; what a loss of delicious Madeira.
“I do not want money!” he yelled, hitting his hand on the table. “I love you! I want you to love me back.”
My patience finally snapped and I stood from the table, standing behind my chair and gripping it to prevent me from causing a scene. I glared down at him, barely holding my fangs back as I wanted to pounce, ripping out his throat just for his foolishness.
“I will never love you back. Do you hear me?” I saw his eyes water and he began to cry. It disgusted me to watch—his face contorted in a manner that made him look ugly. “Nobody will ever be loved by me again. My heart belongs to another, and it always will.”
He sobbed harder, and I had to look away before I hit him. “This arrangement is done. We will not see each other again.”
I left him crying at the table, paying on my way out. The bills left could be considered compensation for the trauma I had caused. I honestly did not care—I just wanted to get away from him.
I love you.
Stupid. Foolish. I should have known better than to allow him to linger for so long. I had done so well at just passing time with whoever caught my eye, but he had seemed so enamored by me that my ego had coaxed me into keeping him around.
It was not like we spent a great many hours together.
Once every couple of weeks, we would have dinner together, and he would accompany me to my apartment where we would indulge in each other.
It was never anything more than a quick fumble and, for me, a way to quench my hunger and keep my brain distracted.
Afterward, he would dress and leave, grumbling about wishing he could fall asleep beside me, while I watched him leave and thought about the only man I would ever share a bed with.
He was also a way for me to avoid sleeping.
Vampires craved rest almost as much as blood, choosing to sleep in coffins to be as close to death as possible.
But I did not deserve that comfort. Sleeping felt like a way of cheating the curse that was thrown on me, and I did not like to cheat; I was not weak.
So, I slept as little as possible and never in a coffin.
He provided me a way to pass the time now that I no longer had Warren to keep my mind occupied.
After leaving him behind at the restaurant, I began to walk back to my apartment.
That first night without Warren in our home had been torturous.
I destroyed it in anger, throwing books at the walls and smashing whatever decorative ornaments I had into pieces until it looked like the war had touched it.
For days, I would sit in the mess and scream; it was the perfect imagery for how I felt within.
Whenever the sun settled for its rest, I would scour the streets for Warren, visiting all our favorite places in the hopes he would turn up there.
It went on for weeks until it became unbearable. I could no longer live in the place that had become home to us both in immortality, no matter how short-lived that had been. He was in everything and everywhere I looked.
I briefly considered leaving New Orleans, but I was not prepared to run away for a second time. I had been a coward when Leroy died; I would not repeat that mistake. Warren leaving was a consequence of what I had done, and so I had to learn to live with that.
Yet, when searching for a new place to live, I could not handle the idea of spending my eternity somewhere completely untouched by him. I needed a piece of him with me, even if it was painful. Which meant there was only one place I could live.
After some vampiric renovations to keep the sunlight out, I moved into the apartment Warren had once lived in.
A small, dilapidated place, if I was to be completely honest, but it made me feel closer to him.
The smell of death still lingered in the place, and it was a way of reminding myself of what I had done and what had led up to the moment Warren abandoned me.
The place served as a reminder of my love and his sorrow.
I would lie in the bed we had once shared, thinking of the years of solitude he had suffered before we met.
And then, at my hands, the heartache that had brought him to his knees.
I saw him everywhere, and though it drove me wild with longing, it humbled me daily so that I would never forget that my sadness was of my own making.
I had broken him, and the only way he could recover was to leave.
Even though anger and hurt burned through my veins, a part of me understood.
Somewhere along the way back to my apartment, the memories warped the path I was walking.
I ended up standing outside the home I had shared with Warren, the one where he had lived his first immortal weeks.
The rent was still deposited every month, and I hired a maid to clean every few weeks, but I could not bear to live there.
Yet, I could not let it go fully, either.
It housed some of my favorite memories of Warren, and terminating my lease seemed like severing the thread I knew still bound us.
He could block me all he wanted; I felt the tether between us still held tight in place. He had surrendered himself to me as I had to him, and I was not sure there would ever be a way to sever that.
With a sigh, I determined that the draw to remember was too much for me to ignore and so I took the keys I kept on a chain beneath my shirt and unlocked the gate leading into our apartment.
Stepping inside the door was like being hit with a barrage of things I wanted to remember, but did not know if I could handle.
I could still smell him in the air, his scent lingering from room to room like it was only yesterday he was there.
I inhaled deeply and let it fill my lungs, wishing it was something I could bottle forever.