Chapter 12 CALLAN
CALLAN
Beth Fraser gave me butterflies.
The soft blue glow of my phone’s screen briefly illuminated the dark room, indicating that a message had dropped. I reached over the cup of coffee set on the table beside me and grabbed the phone, the device weightless in my hold.
Elizabeth; Do you think Riven will die?
The message read, waiting for a reply.
I sighed, slipping a bookmark between the pages of the book left open on my lap and snapped it shut. Then I let my finger hover over the message bar for a few seconds.
It was 2: 00 AM. I should be asleep or better yet, doing something reasonable with my time. Instead, there was a copy of a book about dragons and their riders in my hands.
The buddy-reading idea had ended up becoming a ritual, one I didn’t quite anticipate taking so seriously.
Yet, here we were, deep into our second book.
And as much as I wanted to complain about her obvious disregard for time and the simple human need for rest, I never did.
Because despite myself, I liked this. This thing we always did where she would send me messages every second, complaining about every paragraph, and I would always sigh before replying, pretending I wasn’t getting a kick out of having her attention all to myself.
Her attention was always mine, had been mine alone for days now.
Because she was my girlfriend.
Beth Fraser was…mine.
Thinking about it made me float, like I’d been slipped something sweet, dangerous, and now my world was gently tilting out of focus.
When I was in high school, I always spotted boys my age, typing on their phones, smiles illuminating their faces.
And it wasn’t because they finally figured out that formula for that annoying math equation.
They were talking to a girl they liked. And I had often gotten curious, found it unexplainable and strange that a simple text with another human was so… special.
But now I understood.
It was all because of these damn butterflies; the army of moths buried deep within my chest, itching and frantic. Something I couldn’t scratch, couldn’t carve out of myself. So I let them eat me instead. Let them hollow me out.
I let them freely and utterly consume me.
Beth Fraser gave me butterflies. She made my heart race.
She made me want to smile even without meaning to.
God, I was obsessed with this human. My divine, ethereal, incomparable, precious girl.
I ached every time I realised she wasn’t seeing herself the way I saw her.
Only if she knew I’d build a temple in her name, worship the very essence of her.
Elizabeth; I swear to god, if he dies I’ll be so mad. He is literally the only reasonable character in this book.
Elizabeth; Well, him and Lord Korrin, but after his dragon died, that man has been making bad decisions.
I watched, waiting.
She always did this; ramble through text messages like she was thinking out loud, dumping all her frustration onto me in real time. And I would wait, patiently, silently. Fucking devotedly.
I never really had a problem with waiting. If anything, waiting had become an addiction. Every time her name appeared on my screen, something unnamed always shifted inside me.
No matter what gradient I tried to analyse this from, the moment we had known each other, the time we had spent together was far too short for two strangers to become this close.
I couldn’t explain why I dove into the water for her.
Yes, at that moment, fear was the only thing I knew, the fear of her drowning.
Because drowning meant she would be gone.
Being gone meant I would never get to see her again, never get to hear her weird laugh that was oddly comforting.
It meant I would never be able to feel that warmth only her company could provide. And I couldn’t have that. So I jumped.
I didn’t think, didn’t weigh options, didn’t search for a million possibilities like I always did. I just…jumped.
And then she kissed me. Pressed those fiery lips to mine and stole my breath, warped my senses, reached inside my soul and pulled out a part of me I didn’t remember burying there.
Just a little kiss. And she set me on fire.
If I wasn’t sure what I wanted with her before, I was sure right then and there. I wanted that feeling only she could evoke within me. I wanted that fire only her could ignite in my veins.
Mine. I had never wanted anything to belong to me so badly before, never wanted to stake a claim, never wanted to possess something…someone.
But I wanted Beth Fraser to be mine. So when she asked me to be her boyfriend, to be hers, I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t want to be anything if not hers. And I didn’t want her to belong to anyone else but me.
Mine. Beth Fraser was…mine.
My phone buzzed again.
Elizabeth; Okay, soldier, you can reply to my messages now.
My lips twitched, my hand lifting to adjust my glasses over my eyes. Then I typed.
Me; If he is wearing the protective talisman the high lady of the house of breath gave him, I doubt he’ll die.
That was a lie. Well, the author had tricked the readers, made them believe the talisman was a lifesaver. But it really had no significance other than to make you believe you could go to war and return unscathed.
Elizabeth; Do you think so? The writer kind of has this kink of killing off characters after readers have emotionally attached themselves to them.
My fingers hovered over the screen, itching to type the truth I had been afraid to tell her since we picked up the book.
Riven Greenwich was going to die at the end. I knew this because I had read this book last month. I only agreed to read it because she was so excited about it when she found it a few days ago.
I never really cared about happy endings. Never worried about who lived or who died. But she always did. And now I wished the author would have written the book a bit differently. Rewritten Riven Greenwich’s story. Given him a happy ending, so my Elizabeth would not be heartbroken.
Me; We could just stop reading it?
Elizabeth; Nah, I need to see how it ends
A quiet exhale left me.
Well, I tried my best.
???
It was about an hour later when my phone started vibrating again with messages over and over. The weight of Elizabeth’s new emotional state could be felt through the echo of every chime.
I sighed, knowing what it was even before checking. We were currently on the page where the dragon rider, Riven Greenwich, died.
Elizabeth; No.
Elizabeth; I hate this.
Elizabeth; This isn’t fair at all.
Elizabeth; No, like seriously, there were literally other things they could have done but killing him was unnecessary.
Elizabeth; God, I’m in so much pain, Snow White.
I rubbed my temple, my finger hovering over the phone, waiting. I could almost hear her voice in my head, rising with frustration, laced with that quiet, dramatic intensity.
Elizabeth; You could reply at least.
Elizabeth; My world, Callan, you suck at comforting people.
My lips twitched, then I texted.
Me; I do remember suggesting we stopped reading.
Elizabeth; No, you didn’t. What you did was give me false hope. You told me the talisman would protect him. You let me walk right into the fire.
I exhaled. She was…impossible, insane and dramatic. But hell, I wanted it all. Her chaos, her fire, her intensity. She was driving me insane.
Me; You said you needed to see how it ended.
Elizabeth; I was wrong, okay? You should have stopped me.
A pause. Then another flurry of texts.
Elizabeth; I actually need a moment to process this grief.
Elizabeth; Riven deserved better.
I dragged a hand down my face, exhaustion weaving into my bones. I just wanted to lie down and rest. Yet I was here, listening to her being utterly ridiculous, allowing myself to be caught in the whirlwind of her emotions, letting them bleed into me in ways I had never let anything else.
Elizabeth had done something to me. I had no clue what it was.
But I could feel it, in the way my body reacted to her, in a way I couldn’t control.
And that was dangerous, reckless. A soldier shouldn’t care too much.
Though temporary, I was sitting on the throne of a centuries old Russian empire.
I had so much at stake, so many people to protect, too much to lose if I suddenly found myself a weakness.
I shouldn’t be caught in a web of common human emotion.
No, not love. Love had never done people like me any good. If anything, falling was the first step to destruction.
But here I was, breaking that number rule. Falling.
I was falling, so fast, and so hard for Beth Fraser, like I would die if I didn’t hear her voice for a day.
My fingers moved on their own to her profile picture, subconsciously clicking on it.
It was just a portrait of her, her wild fiery hair framing her oval face, her rosy lips in a cute pout, two fingers, which looked like some sort of sign, held over her face.
And those green eyes that always had me paralysed, stared right at me.
Just like that, my heart began to race again, my veins trembling beneath my skin, my face, body on fire.
She always did this to me–made me tremble. Like I would fall apart if she touched me a second longer.
There was a time as a child when I felt emotions like humans did. I felt love, I felt pain, I felt sadness and I fear. Then I grew up and everything flattened into grey, empty, harmless things. I felt nothing because I sat at a place where nothing reached me anymore.
Now everything was colour and noise and heat. Too vivid, too alive. And the emotions all at once crashed around me, almost unbearable, like my body itself would soon shut down from the strain of remembering I was still alive and feeling again.
My phone vibrated again as her message dropped on the screen.
Elizabeth; Are you still there? Or has my suffering bored you to sleep?
I inhaled sharply, a faint tick in my jaw.
Me; I’m still here.