Chapter 61 #5
We spent hours up there, huddled together under drooping branches and swaying leaves.
Amara had perfected her sketching there, outlining every flower and leaf with infinite care.
Every last page of her latest sketchbook was filled, every corner taken up—an entire garden rendered in charcoal.
There were a few sketches of me in there too.
It was staggering to look back on how things used to be, before Amara kicked down the door of my previous life. These days it was impossible to imagine my garden without her in it. I couldn’t picture a life without her, or comprehend how I’d gotten by so long on my own.
There was a time where I’d drawn down the shutters of my life and kept the world and everyone in it at arm’s length. Now the windows were wide open, and it was all because of Amara. She blew into my life like a fresh breeze. Breathed new air into my lungs.
“It’s strange.” I signed the words as I spoke them, and Amara watched me with warm, wide eyes. “Of all the ways I pictured my life going—this wasn’t it. But now that I’m here, I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Amara’s mouth curled into a smile, coy and teasing as she sounded the words out. “I can’t believe there was a time when I considered you my enemy. I should have known from the start that something was up—nobody had ever pissed me off quite like you did.”
I exhaled a laugh, shaking my head as I drew her closer.
When she wrapped her arms around my waist I tilted her chin up, sliding a thumb between her lips to feel the prick of her fangs.
She’d finally managed to keep them under control, but they were still sharper than most—needle-thin razors that she turned on me occasionally when I dared to wake her from a nap.
Vampirism suited her, and now that she’d learned to control her transformations she was a formidable fighter when she wanted to be.
She was fast too, and when her wings sprouted from her back they might have been smaller than most, but that only made her speedier.
I’d watched her zip through tight spaces like it was nothing.
Sometimes she’d sail from one end of the apartment to the other without her feet ever touching the ground.
Even after all our time together, she never ceased to amaze.
Amara gently removed my fingers from her mouth and rolled her eyes at my massive, cheesy grin.
It was a proud smile that seemed to appear easier than ever these days, so much so that it had become something of a joke with the rest of our crew.
Everybody knew that the quickest way to coax me into cracking a smile was to bring up Amara.
So I’d become predictable, and softer. But I didn’t mind all that much.
With Amara’s fingers laced with mine, I leaned my head down and kissed her, a slow, secret collision of lips in that quiet corner—which didn’t stay quiet for long.
Footsteps and the clink of glasses announced company, and Maxine sashayed over in a glaring pink dress with Leah in tow. Ursula trailed behind them, already commandeering two flutes from a passing server.
“Okay, lovebirds,” Maxine drawled as she came to a halt in front of us. “Enough lurking. It’s very cute what you’ve got going here, but this is supposed to be a celebration. Come party with us.”
Ursula thrust a glass of bubbling crimson liquid into Amara’s hand. “The twins are looking for someone to dance with. Please. Save me.”
Amara read her lips with a furrowed brow that crumpled even more when she understood the request. She’d tried her hand at babysitting Hazel and Hilda a few times over the years, and while she was a delightful babysitter who the twins absolutely adored, she would come home afterwards and sprawl on the sofa, demand a blanket and a cup of coffee, and proceed to nap for the rest of the day.
This time, she went for a compromise, peeling away from me and signing an idea to Ursula. “You dance with one, I dance with the other. When we get tired, we dump them both with Dylan.”
“Hah—” I let out a humorless laugh and bent to put my face in front of hers. “No.”
But Amara only patted my shoulder and proceeded to drag me over to the dance floor with a devious grin. We joined the rest of the crowd, everybody moving and grooving on the designated dancefloor under a canopy of fairy lights.
Amara caught a giggling Hazel who catapulted herself into her arms, and proceeded to swing her around in a lilting, wild little dance.
I watched from the sideline as her hair spun out around her head, that carefree smile of hers spreading as she moved to the rhythm of the music, guided by the beat thumping beneath her feet.
My eyes tracked through the rest of the crowd, over every smiling face I’d come to know and care for.
Jordan and Sky were jiving together near the back, while River and Laurie aimed raised brows at their flailing excuse for dance moves.
Maxine was coaxing Leah out onto the dance floor like you might coax a wild animal to feed from your hand, and Hunter and Addison were fully wrapped up in each other, swaying gently with their foreheads pressed together, completely oblivious to the world around them.
True to her word, when Amara called it quits on entertaining Hazel she sauntered over with the little twin in tow.
“Oh no.” I raised my palms, shook my head, but my protests were useless. “Nonono—Amara I can’t even dance!”
“Liar,” she signed before gesturing for a thrilled-looking Hazel to stand on my feet.
The little girl did just that, balancing tiny shoes on the top of my sneakers while her hands came up to grip onto mine.
And so, like that, we danced. Hazel giggled and shrieked at the top of her lungs while I swirled us around, and Amara swayed beside me with a smile.
The fairy lights lit a haloed circle of light over her hair, rendering her angelic and glowing at my side.
There was a time when I would have called myself a drifter, a recluse, nothing more than a shadow on the sidelines.
Now, with Amara around, things were different—I was different.
When I looked at her, my heart seemed to swell ten times in size, squeezing tight in the confines of my chest. I looked at her and I felt tethered, whole, and unfathomably loved.
Amara
After a long, cavorting stint on the dance floor, I finally had to relent for the sake of my poor, aching feet. I sidled off to the side for a minute and stood there, feeling all kinds of emotions coiling in my chest while looking over the people I loved.
There used to be a time where the world felt like it was built for other people, and I would watch my own life pass by from the sidelines. Music, connection, intimate conversations—it all felt so far out of reach, a luxury I’d lost when my hearing went away.
When no one in my life was willing to put in the effort, I’d retreated further into my shell.
I found comfort in pen and paper, in sketches and doodles and drawings, imagining a life far more fantastical than my own mundane existence.
When I’d lost my sister, the last person who truly cared for me, I thought that was the end.
I thought I’d be alone for the rest of my life.
How wrong I had been.
Now I was surrounded by people who loved me, people who cared.
People who had gone above and beyond to prove that there was a place for me in their world, an accommodating place where I could feel comfortable, seen, and heard.
Sky and Jordan, Hunter and Addison, Maxine and Leah; and now, River and Laurie.
Laurie and I had a rocky start but now I looked at her and saw a friend.
I saw someone who had struggled through life, just like I had.
Someone who fought tooth and nail to survive.
I looked around me and I saw community, companionship.
And then there was Dylan—always Dylan—a constant in my constellation of connections.
The brightest star in my universe, burning hot and blinding like the sun.
I singled her out across the dance floor and found her already looking at me. Her violet eyes sparkled in the glow of the fairy lights. She winked at me, painted lips curling into a small, knowing smile.
I signed back: Stop staring, creep.
Her hand moved to sign back at me: Never.
My chest did the ridiculous fluttering thing it always did when she looked at me, even after all this time.
To this day, my extraordinary, smug, shadow-wielding wife could still make me blush.
When I’d first agreed to letting Dylan turn me, I assumed it would change me—not just physically, but mentally too.
I thought, maybe I’d be colder, harsher, more…
vampish in nature. But that’s not what happened at all.
If anything, I’d grown softer, kinder, comfortable in my immortality and forever grateful that I had lifetimes to spend at her side.
My graphic novel career was taking off too, and with so much time ahead of me, I had plenty of ideas in the pipeline.
I’d moved on from humble beginnings—small sketches on napkins and notebooks, doodled in the cold, empty rooms of my father’s home—to having my own studio, my own personal workspace where I could draw what I wanted, unashamed. My life was brimming with possibility.
A nudge at my shoulder snapped me out of my reverie.
I turned my head to find Sky standing beside me, looking stunning in a baby blue evening gown that accentuated her narrow, slender shoulders. She touched a finger to her lips and signed out a sentence: What’s got you smiling like that?
I could still remember the first time I’d met her, when the supernatural world was still so new to me, still so overwhelming. Sky had been a port in a storm to the very bewildered human being I had been, and to this day I was still grateful for the kindness she’d shown me.
“Just reminiscing,” I murmured, signing the words with a finger tapping my temple.