Chapter 72 #2
The dark veil lifted and my insides warmed.
The girls’ sense of humor was exactly what I needed.
I needed friends. For a long time I’d told myself I was fine on my own without anyone else, it was a lie.
But the lie was an armored door I kept firmly closed over the void of my life.
Scared that if I opened it, if I admitted I needed people, the emptiness would swallow me whole.
There was a moment of quiet.
Jodie jumped up. “Let’s see what he got you.”
Georgie squeezed my shoulder and moved back to the couch.
Jodie came back with a screwed-up face. “A backpack.” She unzipped it and peered inside, rifling through the contents.
“Blanket, head torch, GPS thingy, lots of shit in here.” She looked up.
“Jesus, Amy, that’s, like, way too practical.
If he’s trying to win you back, I would have thought he’d buy flowers and wine, or jewellery.
Exotic holidays, maybe a Louis Vuitton bag.
” She threw the backpack, I knew it would have cost a fortune, on the floor in disgust. She sat back down, leaned her head back on the couch.
Her eyes moved to the ceiling, as if she were thinking about something. She twisted her head back.
“I can just imagine when you were in the sack with him.” She put on her best doctor voice and gave a wicked grin. “‘Now this part of your anatomy is called your clitoris, I am just going to circle my tongue around it now, keep still please.’” The girls burst into laughter.
“‘Sorry, is my tongue cold?’”
“Jodie, no stop,” I giggled.
“What about Karson then?” Georgie put her best sergeant’s voice on. “‘Clothes off, turn around soldier.’”
The room erupted again.
“What about Ethan?” Sarah said, still laughing. “He’d be, ‘Wham! Bam! Thanks, ma’am. Now get out.”
“Nope, he’d be, ‘Wham! Bam! Thanks, ma’am. Get out.” Georgie raised her voice. “Next.”
“What about BJ?” Sarah said.
Jodie laughed. “I’m thinking he’d be, ‘Are you okay—do you need a glass of water?”
“Okay, let’s not go there,” I stopped her in her tracks. “I think BJ would surprise you, Jodie, you can let us know,” I winked.
She shook her head, chuckling.
“What’s all the laughter, girls?” Ethan came in, his eyebrows raised. BJ trailed behind, followed by Karson. I couldn’t look at any of them or I wouldn’t be able to withhold the giggles bubbling inside my chest.
“Oh, nothing,” Sarah said, keeping an impressive straight face. “Just girl stuff.”
I turned my head to the side and bit my lip.
Georgie lost it first. She made a ‘phhh’ noise, and then burst into loud, contagious laughter. The rest of us followed suit. The boys stood by the fireplace, staring down, with looks of disgust.
* * *
Later, after BJ and the girls had gone, we relaxed in the living room. Ethan was sprawled out on the chair, his legs splayed out, his head back. A small smile cracked his lips, whatever he was thinking about, it was a good thought. Probably sex.
The warmth of the fire and the gentle crackle filling the room was almost hypnotic. I stared at it, awake, but not fully functioning.
“I think it’ll be good for you to go away with the girls,” Karson said, out of the blue. My eyes snapped open. He was seated on the couch, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his thighs, his hands clenched.
His words struck me like a hammer to the chest. I felt my heart tighten.
Twist. Crack. He wanted me to be with another man.
He doesn’t care. I shake my head slowly dislodging the thoughts.
He came, he rescued me, he must care. Inside screamed with confusion and pain, but I fought to keep my face and tone blank.
“Yes, a one-night stand might be just what I need.”
“That’s not what I meant,” his voice came out in a low growl. He got up and went to the fire, staring into it, as if the flames spoke to him in tongues.
“And that’s my exit.” Ethan jumped to his feet, heading towards the door. Neither of us paid him any attention.
I knew what I wanted. I wanted to melt into his body, I wanted his arms around my back, my hands on his skin. I never felt so alive as I did when we were together, being with him felt like the stars shooting through the night. I wanted him. I wanted us.
“What exactly did you mean then, Karson?”
He turned to look at me, his expression was blank, devoid of any emotion. “It does not matter.”
I stared at him. A lump burned in my throat and eyes. I swallowed. “It doesn’t matter, or I don’t matter?”
“What do you want me to say, Amelia?” His voice rose and came out in a snarl. “That I do not want you with anyone else—that I cannot live without you—is that what you want to hear?”
I stood up. My legs felt like jelly. Desperation clawed at every part of my body. “Yes, Karson, that’s exactly what I want you to say.”
He stepped toward me and yelled with such fierceness my heart boomed in my chest and I fought not to shrink back.
“Well I hope it helps, Amelia! Because I don’t want you to be with anyone else, but I can’t watch the disappointment on your face every time I hurt someone.”
“God, Karson.” My hands flew out in disbelief. “So don’t hurt anyone.”
His eyes blazed into mine, I could see anger building, darkening his iris like clouds on the horizon of an incoming storm.
“How did you really think a relationship with a vampire was going to end? What did you honestly think might happen—we’d ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after?
This is not some fairy tale.” His voice was vicious.
“I was born this way. You think I chose this? To be like this?” He thumped a palm against his chest. “I did not choose it, it chose me, and I do what I am born to do.”
I bristled. “Are you quite finished? That’s the biggest load of bullshit I have ever heard.
You’re not what you are born, you’re not what’s happened to you.
Your parents and the people around didn’t make you who you are, like some mindless factory product.
You are a living, breathing, conscious human.
You use what you were born as an excuse to justify what you do, as an excuse for your cruel, shitty behavior.
You can lie to yourself all you like, but don’t you dare ever lie to me. ”
He stood there for a moment without speaking. Perhaps contemplating his response, or calming himself before he proceeded. The silence dragged on. Finally, he exhaled out his nose and shook his head slowly and deliberately.
“I’m not the one lying to myself, Amelia. You are. I am not a human. I do not have your emotions. I am a vampire. I have a rage, a darkness inside that, when it rises, it makes me dangerous—to others, and to you—and I cannot change what I am.”
I could see anger cross his face, hear the bitterness in his voice. But there’s something else there too, deep and almost lost beneath his fury—agony. My heart leapt, bloomed. If he’s hurting he must care about me.
“Karson,” His name came out as a whisper, a begging.
He tore gaze away as if he couldn’t stand to even look at me. He moved over to the window and stared out. I watched him as pain shifted swiftly across his face, unsure of what to say to fix this.
In the end it was Karson who spoke again next.
“And I will never be what you need.”
His voice came out with a terrible softness, but it tore my heart as if he’d reached in and ripped it out with his own hands.
All I could think was—all I need is you—all I need is us. I moved over to him with a strong stride, feeling my world, crumbling beneath me.
“We all have a darkness inside,” I pleaded, warm tears slid down my cheeks. “Every single one of us.”
He looked down with tortured eyes. He reached out and placed his hands in a gentle embrace on both sides of my head. My skin buzzed and my nerves all sprung to life.
He sucked in a breath. “No, Amelia, you do not understand. I do not have a darkness inside me. I am the darkness.”
Those words crushed the ground beneath my feet, and my heart, god my heart, shattered into pieces. The only thing holding me steady was his hands.
“Please just stay,” I whispered, a sob cracking my words. “All I need is you. I need you, Karson.”
My comments struck. His fingers trembled against the side of my head. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead softly against mine. The power thrummed between us, like all the stars suddenly shot through the sky.
He removed the ring from my finger and tucked it in his pants pocket.
Then he let me inside his mind. And his memories became mine.
I felt my heart knot and my breath locked in my chest as images flashed in my head like some heinous nightmare.
There was a dark haired man on his knees outside a tiny wooden cabin. He was surrounded by a group of men. Some carried swords, others pitchforks. Other’s held nothing, but they had their hands up, palms out, uttering a chant. Witches.
“Please, no,” the male whispered. The body of another man laid face down in a pool of blood beside him. “Let them go. He’s just a child.”
A man stood over him, a bloodied sword gripped tight in his hand. His lips pulled into a cruel sneer. “It’s an abomination and you will pay for what you have done.”
“Please.” The man cried out. “He’s just child. Karson has never hurt anyone.”
“And I will make sure he never does,” the man snarled, he raised the sword and removed Karson’s father’s head.
A woman’s horrified scream shattered the night.
She tore from the cabin. Her wide, frilled dress was on fire.
Flames clawed at her body and her arms. The witches chant increased in sound and tempo.
The woman staggered, her eyes filled with terror and terrible pain.
She dropped to her knees, and screamed and screamed.
The last thing I saw as she toppled to the earth, was the tears streaming down her face and her mouth whispering to a small dark-haired boy, run.
Then I felt it blast into my core, like a cold, hard wall. An unfathomable hatred of witches. And an endless abyss of torment, and loss and rage. It struck me so hard my whole body jerked.
“I’m so sorry.” Came out of my lips on a breath so soft it would have been impossible for human ears to detect.
Then I saw blood. So much blood—and death, death everywhere.
Witch after witch, attacking, and then slain.
And I heard so much screaming. The blood and death was one thing, but the screaming, the screaming pierced my mind and turned my blood to ice.
The color pulled from my face, my heart seized and stopped, my legs began to shake uncontrollably.
I tensed my legs so I didn’t collapse onto my knees.
And I learned, sometimes it was the strongest of men who harbored the greatest of pain.
So many victims, so much death, and so much pain.
He removed his forehead, and I was slammed out of his memories and back into the room.
He stared at me, his face expressionless. Not no expressionless it was hard. Cold.
Tears streamed silently down my face, dropping off the end of my chin.
My heart hurt so much I thought it would burst, for I knew the love I felt for him was not enough.
He was caught in a world so dark he no longer held hope of ever finding the light, and I’d lost him.
I said the only thing I could think of that might, somewhere in the frozen corners of his heart, ignite hope and bring him back to me.
A sob hitched in my throat and I croaked, “I will leave the light on for you.”
A shaft of agony shadowed his face. The Karson I knew, I loved was back. His lips touched my forehead, the kiss from an angel, easing the pain in my heart. I closed my eyes under his gentle, lingering touch, savoring the moment.
“I release you.” His voice was choked. But it came with the same terrible finality of a loving family gently clicking a coffin shut. His touch dissipated and he was gone.
I was left breathless and trembling, emptied by the power of loss. I stood, staring after him, broken-hearted, defeated, filled with the irrefutable knowledge we were done.
From the mantelpiece, the ring glinted unpleasantly. As gleefully vindictive as a witch’s cauldron.