Chapter 39 Gideon
Gideon
Sinead: I know you’re busy shagging Arabella, but I’m just letting you know that Alyra is looking for her. She seems rather distressed.
ARABELLA STILLS IN MY ARMS.
I don’t dare to breathe, certain I’ve said too much, that she’s going to run again. My head feels as though it’s floating away from my body. Dreamless sleep hangs heavy in my limbs.
But I won’t take the words back. I won’t pretend I didn’t mean them. Because they’re real. This, right now, she and I – this is real. I love her and I’ll put everything on the line for her, and if she rejects me now, then so be it.
I’ve grieved her once, and it nearly broke me. But I would rather grieve her again than pretend for another moment that she isn’t my whole world.
“Arabella, did you hear what I said? I love you.” Every word struggles past my sleeping tongue, my body so close to collapse, but I refuse to succumb until she hears this.
“I’ve loved you from the first moment I walked into La Petite Mort.
All the years since, when I thought I lost you, I’ve been a shadow wandering the earth with a hole in my heart shaped like you.
I know things with us aren’t simple, have never been simple, and maybe the destructive parts of our nature enjoy that.
But one thing is a simple, immutable truth – I love you, and I always will. Please, can you say something?”
“Gideon.” My name, again. How I wish I could hear her say it over and over until the end of time.
“Please…” I try to say more, but my tongue is stuck and everything is moving slowly and too fast, all at once. My head spins. Stupid sun.
“I’m never myself,” she whispers, her face buried in my shoulder.
“Except when I’m with you. I show you who I truly am, and you never run away.
You never cower. Instead, you lean a little closer and beg for more.
That’s addictive, but I don’t know where the edges are.
I’m afraid that you’ll look so deep into me that you’ll see something that will make you run away, and I won’t survive it. ”
She looks up at me, and her expression is something I never expected to see. Sorrow. Another tear rolls down her cheek. I’m transfixed by it. I never thought I’d see Arabella so vulnerable. Are those tears really for me?
“Are you okay? Why are you crying?”
She shakes her head.
I try to catch the tear on my finger, but my hand doesn’t obey the messages from my brain, and I jab her in the nose instead. How late into the morning is it?
“Please, say something. I just told you I love you. Surely you have an opinion on that. You might want to share it quickly, before we fall asleep.”
“I’ve already said everything I came to say.”
Her dance.
The way she twisted herself around that pole…
the way her eyes locked on mine even though she was spinning crazily out of control, as if I were what kept her grounded and safe…
that terrifying drop where I thought she’d crash to the ground but she caught herself just in time.
Everything about her dance said, I am here, and I trust you, but I’m afraid.
That makes two of us.
“Being here with you brings back memories,” she says, her eyes flicking over the bar again. “Not all of them are pleasant.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing that we host the variety show here,” I suggest, trying to pull her away from deeper things.
Just because I said the words, doesn’t mean she’s ready to say them back.
She’s right – she’s given me so much of herself already.
“You can do over shum of the bad parts with a shappy— Er, I mean happy memory.”
My words sound slurred, drunken.
You can do this. Just stay awake a few moments longer.
Arabella scoffs. “There is nothing happy about listening to Isis Meriwether warble her way through show tunes.”
“Fair, but won’t it be nice to shee La Petite Mort full of people again? I know it son’t be the wame. I mean, won’t see the game. I mean, won’t be the shame, but—”
She rests her head on my chest. Behind her head, the lights swim in my eyes, an aurora of colour against her dark skin. “It’s going to mean a bunch of humans traipsing unbidden around Sanctus Estate. Our members won’t appreciate it.”
“They’ll get over it.” It sounds like I’m speaking with my mouth full of soap.
“This killer wants humans to know their place. They believe Upyr are so superior that we can do whatever we like. Winnie and Alaric have already made people shee that we can change, that maybe humans and Upyr can be closer, more intimate. Maybe the variety show is the start of something beautiful. What do you think?”
“I don’t think anything. I know it’s going to be a disaster.” Arabella tilts her head to the side. “But it shall be amusing. Are you feeling all right? Sun not too bright?”
“I feel like a man who’s getting his second wind.” I tug her to her feet. “Shall we have another dance?”
I reach out my arms to her. Arabella steps towards me, but then she tilts away, and with a THWACK that jerks through my body, I find myself embracing the floor.
It takes me a moment to comprehend that I’ve fallen.
I try to lift my head, but my neck is made of jelly and won’t cooperate. At first, I think I must be drunk. I’m assaulted by vivid, blurry memories of dragging my father to bed after he’d collapsed from drink, of carrying my brother home after he got into drunken brawls.
No, I can’t be drunk, because I don’t touch alcohol, and I’m a vampire. A vampire who has stayed up far, far too late, and is now caught on the edge of his dreamless sleep…
“Ah—” I try to speak, but my jaw won’t work.
Arabella leans down to inspect me. “Only a few moments more.”
What does she mean?
I try to pull her against me, but she flinches away.
“I’m sorry about this, Gideon. Truly, I am.
” She does look sorry. At least, I think she does.
Her face has gone all wobbly. “You may have the power of two vampires in your veins, but I can still outlast you. I don’t want to do this, but I have to protect my friends, and you have to protect your reputation for Sanctus.
This is the only way it can be. Consider this payback for taking what’s mine. ”
Payback? But…
Everything goes black.