Chapter 32
Dig Graves
At first, he thought he was having a heart attack.
Dig Graves flung a punch at the man who had punched him moments ago.
He landed the blow and curled over from the sudden racing of his heart.
He got into fights a lot at bars. People liked to mock him about his face and who he looked like.
This fight was routine, it shouldn't have made his heart thump faster.
Yet, his heart was racing as if he were running for his life.
Was it a heart attack?
He clasped his chest and breathed through it, trying to tame his body before it landed him into hospital or an early coffin. He couldn’t die. Not yet. He still had three months left on his gym membership.
Days scattered and Dig’s heart refused to calm down. It had been delicate at first. Just a flutter. Like butterfly wings. Though it beat fast, it wasn’t heavy, it was light and sometimes he could ignore it when he needed it to.
It wasn’t until he was strolling down the street, keeping his face hidden in his hood that a cry forced him to turn around.
Two young men on either side of the street ran to each other and met right there in the centre of the road.
Under the wash of the streetlamp, they collided into each other, tears streaking their faces, happy sobs leaving their throats.
They embraced, pressing their chests together and tore down their shirts.
Their blood slithered under the skin of their chests and the Soulmate insignia appeared.
Dig watched.
He watched as they found each other.
He watched as they hugged.
He watched as they kissed.
He watched their first moment that would span the beginning of an entire lifetime.
When he witnessed two people connect like this, he always reached up and touched his heart, feeling over the emptiness.
“Oh, fuck,” he said to himself.
His heart was no longer empty.
His heart was thumping.
That night he listened to those butterfly beats, soft and timid, but they were there. Not quite heavy enough to twist his feet and guide him to his person.
But his person was out there. His person was waiting.
Perhaps they were only just turning eighteen, still fresh and new, not fully ready for them both to find each other. Or perhaps their first Soulmate had just died, and their grief was not yet over.
But soon.
He laid in bed, discarding his music, his sketching, his screens… he laid in bed for days, listening to that precious tune in his chest, cupping his hand over it as if he could hold the organ. As if he could nurture it.
He thought of his Soulmate with a smile and who they might be and how they would embrace him.
He loved them.
However, the longer he thought about it, the less he smiled and the more he frowned.
The mirror did not hold a reflection he liked, certainly not one he thought the person he loved deserved.
Dig stuck on his sunglasses so that no one could see his eyes.
Whoever this person was, this person he loved… they did not deserve the chain of him.
He fucked everyone.
Night after night he sampled people, trying to rid the thumping in his heart, trying to discard whatever chain had been wrapped around some innocent person’s heart that would cage them to him forever.
An unfortunate result of the connection was arousal. His cock wouldn’t tame itself until it had found the Soulmate to his heart.
He tried to fuck the connection away, but when he came, he felt nothing. A glorious emptiness. Sex was an act, no longer a feeling. No blissful ending. People to him were meaningless. Bags of flesh and bone. All he could think about was his Soulmate.
The thumping in his heart grew heavier and heavier until soon his feet started to twist and walk without him, guiding him to claim his Soulmate.
When finally, one night, he considered slitting his wrists to end the numbness of his life and the chain around the one he loved, he decided to see them.
Just once.
His organ led him to an estate.
Two guard booths patrolled a huge wrought iron fence. Shrubs were trimmed into perfect spheres, the mailbox glistened with gold numbers. Under the slumbering moonlight, ‘De Astor,’ scrawled upon the entrance gate.
Weary, with his heart weeping, and his feet snaking toward the entrance, he knocked on the guard booth.
The security guard pointed his torch into Dig’s face, but did not have to ask him what the newcomer needed after seeing Dig’s hand crushed against his chest. The security guard laughed and congratulated him and phoned into the manor hidden among the trees.
Since Dig was not permitted to enter, the others came out to greet him. In all the staff that worked at the De Astor manor, there were two who did not yet have a Soulmate. They stood in front of Dig without thumping hearts. He walked around them and frowned, his feet guiding him back to the estate.
“Whoever they are,” he said to the guard and pointed to his destination. “They’re still inside there.”
The guard frowned. “They can’t be. Everyone else has a Soulmate.”
“They’re in there.”
“No, there’s no other staff. There’s only the family—” the guard paused. He looked over Dig’s creased leather jacket, his dust padded jeans, his boots with mismatching laces. “Oh no.”
“What?” Dig asked.
“I, uh… I need to call the head of the family.”
A man strolled out in a set of matching aubergine silk pyjamas. Itching with irritation, he pulled on a monogramed robe and tied it tight around his waist before combing back his sleep messed hair. After the guard whispered into the man’s ear, the man eyed Dig Graves.
Magnus De Astor.
It took Dig a moment to recall him, knowing his face from billboards and printed into newspapers. Magnus De Astor assisted in the round up and mistreatment of Soulless. Seeing as Dig assumed he himself was Soulless that meant Magnus De Astor assisted in the round up and mistreatment of himself.
Dig gritted his teeth.
“Who are you?” Magnus asked.
“No one you need to know about.” Dig crossed his arms. “You have to let me into the estate. It’s illegal to restrict a connection. I’m allowed inside.”
Magnus fingered a silver button on his pyjamas. “You believe your Soulmate is inside my manor?”
“Feel my fucking heart.”
Reluctantly, Magnus placed his hand on Dig’s chest. It took him only a second to realise Dig’s predicament and ripped his hand away as if he had touched poison. Magnus looked back to the manor and then to Dig Graves. Panic twitched into the fine features of his face.
“You have to let me in,” Dig said.
“You are mistaken.”
“No, I’m not.”
“There is no one inside eager to get out and meet you.” Magnus raised his voice. “If there was, wouldn’t they be walking out to you this moment?”
Dig narrowed his eyes, rage forming his hands into fists. “What the fuck? Have you got someone tied up in there?”
Magnus laughed. He clicked his fingers to the guards. “Take him away.”
After being beaten by Magnus De Astor’s guards, Dig came back day after day, waiting outside, across the street, listening to his heart. When finally, a car glided out of the front gates, his heart told him to follow it.
He hopped on his motorbike and tracked the car, following it down streets.
It rolled to park near a crowd. Masses of people had gathered at a public park where stages had been set up.
Flags waved in the breeze, a band played music.
People cheered as Magnus De Astor got out of the shiny car.
Dressed in brown slacks and a neat ivory suit jacket, he smiled his pure white teeth smile and waved over his well-oiled head, accepting the praise from his political followers.
The asshole coasted through a pathway as people gave him their babies to kiss and took their photo with him. They shook his hand and praised him for his dutiful work.
Dig Graves slunk through the crowd, following his heart, to the other side of the car. Stuck in the crowd, he touched his chest, searching the vehicle with mild desperation.
The door opened.
She got out.
Years had gone by in Dig’s life. Years and years, all of it meaningless, but in that second as he looked upon her, suddenly, this moment was worth everything.
His Soulmate. The other part of his heart.
The soul that would match his.
Love.
That was what she was, pure, undiluted, unconditional love.
She wore a matching blazer and pencil skirt, her hair swirled up in a neat twist, pearl earrings spotted in her ears. Her lips, the shade of tulip, smiled, and Dig thought he might just pass out right then.
Their future flashed into his head.
He and her, cuddled together for all time, soaked in each other’s bliss, his lips raw from sinking kisses into her skin, his voice sore from speaking her name, their arms only full of each other.
If he had known her smile would have changed his life, he would have looked for her sooner.
Delphine De Astor.
Dig clutched his heart and fell to his knees, bowing through the hardening pain in his chest, almost fainting from the extreme thrashing as it begged him to move forward and claim her.
“Oh, are you okay there?”
He looked up through the black strands of his hair, through the dark tint of his sunglasses and up to the face of the woman that was his.
Delphine offered him her hand.
“Did you get shoved by the crowd?” She offered him both of her hands now. “Sorry about that, people get pretty excited.”
His mouth parted.
His heart flung itself in his ribcage, the thumping so fierce and horrible, he was unsure of how he was still alive. Only a step between them.
This was it.
When two souls met. When they would embrace.
With her hand extended, she turned to the side and smiled and waved to someone else. He frowned.
Why did she turn? Why did she not run into his arms? Why was she not crunched over in horrible pain like him?
Why was she not looking for her Soulmate?
She had regarded him as if he were just a stranger, a forgettable face in the crowd. A nobody.
He was her Soulmate.
Her motherfucking Soulmate.
Snatching her hand, he stood up and tugged her into him. She lost a gasp as he embraced her, crushing their chests together.
Closing his eyes, he waited in that single second for their hearts to meet, for the thumping to cease, for the insignia to carve out over their skin, telling all the world that he was hers and she was his.
“Aw, nice to meet you too.” She patted his shoulder and squirmed out of his hold. “Have a lovely day, enjoy the speech.”
Fixing her hair, she strolled on through the path, shaking hands and taking photos and hugging children and elderly.
Dig pulled down his shirt. Nothing was there.
What the fuck?