Chapter 26
“JESUS CHRIST, I’VE BEEN DYING to talk to you,” Mother shouts in my ear when I answer her phone call. I run outside to the deck for privacy, always worried about what could come out of her mouth.
“Yesterday was a crazy day. I’m…I’m just so happy and scared at the same time.”
“How is he? Is he okay? No side effects? Not being a vampire could be a problem. A huge problem, but if whatever Grandma said is the key, then maybe we won’t have to worry about that.”
I look to the house, as if Bastian could hear her endless chain of words.
“Yesterday he was so great. Today…he’s adjusting. He’s calling Nicola right now, so I’m sure that will be a lot for him.”
“Well, when are you going to ask him?” she asks, ignoring anything I say about Nicola. “How can you stand not knowing? It’s driving me crazy!”
“He seems a little fragile today. And he’s so remorseful about everything that’s happened.”
“Aster,” and there it is. That tone I know so well.
“I supported you bringing him back for that purpose. I understand that you love him, but we need answers. The clock is ticking, and we are facing huge trouble soon. The elders are planning the blessing ceremony. I told them you would be traveling home in two weeks. They already don’t understand why you’re still out there. ”
“Two weeks,” I repeat, my mind taking it all in. “Okay. I—I just don’t want him to think that’s the only reason I brought him back.”
“Well, it was supposed to be the only reason. He’s not back just because you loved him.”
“Yes, he is. I was doing it no matter what,” I fight back, then bite into my lip, steady anger causing my fingertips to crackle with power.
I close my eyes, grounding myself. Mother is in New Orleans, doing the work, covering the mess I made.
I’m so grateful Cassius gave me his writing, but I was going to bring Bastian back without my mother’s support, and she knows that.
I know we’ll have to return to New Orleans soon, and I miss it yet love the bubble of protection we have here in California. Hundreds of miles away. Life on our terms.
“I’ll do it tonight,” I tell her and end the call before I scream. Checking my phone, I see that Jade has sent me a text congratulating me, so I quickly respond with heart emoji’s for now.
After quickly filling Chantal in on my plan, I return to our room where Bastian is seated in my rocking chair, staring out the window at the ocean with my opened journal I wrote for him on his lap.
I can see the deep introspection ticking within the walls of his chest. His beautiful face full of regret that I want to push away.
“Hey,” I say. “How did it go?”
He shakes his head, hand clenched over his mouth. I run to him, and he
pulls me onto him, his head pushing into my chest. “I can’t believe this all happened.
I want to run down the goddamn beach, screaming I’m fucking back, but then I’m also so ashamed, so angry.
I have never heard Nicola cry like that.
Never. She cried so hard, so fucking hard. Then she Facetimed me to be sure.”
“But was she happy?” I say, wiping the wet from my cheeks.
He smiles. “Yeah, she was overcome. She wants to turn me again,” he says, eyes locking with mine. “She says I’m supposed to be a vampire.”
Cassius’s and Nicola’s desire to turn Bastian makes my stomach sway. I had loved him as a vampire—his strength, his mystery, his immortality (to an extent)—but now, the idea of growing old with him has sewn itself inside my heart, yet I stay quiet about my feelings on the matter.
We rock back and forth for a few minutes, hands just running along each other’s skin, soaking in the reality.
“Was that your mom you were talking to?”
I nod.
“And?”
“We’ll have to go home in a couple of weeks.
But let’s not think about that now. Let’s just be.
Enjoy this time we have.” I place my hand on his cheek, my thumb running across his mouth.
“Don’t waste any of this precious life feeling regretful.
You’re here now, and that’s what matters.
I loved every part of you then, and every part of you now. ”
I place my hand in his, and he kisses the top of it and squeezes me tightly. I look at his perfectly cut chin, the skin of his shoulders, bronzed and smooth, his fucking mouth, and my stomach clenches.
He must sense the hitch in my breath, the slow movement my hips make from the tension because his finger finds itself running along my panty line.
In a perfect world, we could shut ourselves off from everything. Make love all night and sleep all day. But our son is in the next room, we’re parents now, and the stressors from all the danger that lies ahead weigh heavily on our hearts.
“Soon,” I groan, like we have an unspoken language, our bodies talking for us. Chantal is here all the time, the baby is awake, and we can’t just make love like we used to. “We’ll find a minute somewhere.”
“I’m going to need a lot more than a minute.” He laughs but then nods.
“Soon,” he agrees then moves his hand away from my skin, just to be safe.
Bastian spends the rest of the day taking on the daddy duties that he could manage, while also catching up on reading the journal I wrote for him.
I order groceries since Bastian has to eat actual food and decide to make him a steak dinner in preparation for asking him about my grandma and what she whispered in his ear.
“Guys like steak, right?” I had asked Chantal, and she raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms.
“Oh, yeah. Dudes love steak.”
Once it’s been prepared, she takes Aven into her bedroom, giving me a ‘good luck’ wink before she exits.
“Honey, you cooked,” Bastian teases when we sit at the table. Is it possible to choke on your own spit? I suddenly feel like I can’t breathe, trying to be Susie Homemaker when I’m really in a panic. Yet he sat down and stared at the meal with appreciation.
“Yeah, I think I still like things very rare.” He laughs, knife slicing through the red meat. “And, in case you were worried or wondering. I want nothing to do with alcohol,” he says, eyes turning earnest.
“Oh, I…I hadn’t thought about that. But that’s wonderful.”
He looks relieved once he’s said it and I wonder what else is plaguing him beneath those lovely eyes.
“Okay,” he says, chewing. “I guess you can cook. But let me guess, you used extra butter like I taught you.” There’s an uneasiness inside him, and I know it’s from the unexpected transformation, yet he still smiles. Bastian loved the sun but enjoyed being a vampire.
“Perhaps,” I say, drinking my water, my heart racing. I don’t want to hold out for too long. I need to rip off the Band-Aid. “Bastian, I…I need to ask you something.” I stand, grabbing Cassius’s journal from the mantel, and slide it in front of him.
His fingers graze the worn leather, recognition blossoming in his eyes from the initial monogrammed on the front. “Is this my brother’s?” he asks, eyeing me quizzically.
“Yes. I asked him if you ever kept a journal. I wanted it to help with your resurrection. And he told me you didn’t, but that he had begun writing bits and pieces of an autobiography, and he gave it to me. And I read something in it, something I couldn’t believe.”
His mouth ceases chewing.
“There was a conversation between my grandmother and you. Do you remember it?”
“Wait. A conversation between your grandma and me?”The fork and knife freeze in his fingers.
I nod, chewing on my lower lip. “My grandmother whispered in your ear one night in Pirate’s Alley.”
Placing the knife and fork on the table, his eyes meet mine, eyebrows creased with wonder. “What did she whisper?”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. I don’t know what I expected, but I’m sure it wasn’t that.
“Well…” I sigh, a wisp of hope sinking through my stomach. “I was going to ask you that.”
His fingers tap the table, eyes squinting at me. “Aster. That was a long time ago.”
I clasp my fingers tightly, a wave of worry slamming into my core because I hoped so badly that he would have an answer. I pick up the journal and open it to the page I have bookmarked.
“Do you remember meeting her? In Pirate’s Alley?
You had just been turned, and Cassius was with you.
You consumed a drunk man’s blood, so you were very drunk.
My grandma saw you in the alley and whispered something in your ear that Cassius didn’t hear.
Before that, she said out loud that you would change everything.
And Bastian. You have. Because of you, my coven has a male witch. ”
Pressing his fingers into his forehead, he closes his eyes tightly. “Pirate’s Alley?”
He opens them, reaching for the book. He reads in silence for a few minutes, and I watch his eyes glaze over, taking in the moments with my grandmother, the quarrel with Cassius. Then he looks up at me and says with astonished eyes, “That girl was your grandmother?”
He’s puzzled, but there’s a spark of memory, so I clasp my hands over my chest. “Yes!”
Emotions bubble up my throat because he remembers her, and I want to jump up and down.
But his face falls as he shakes his head.
“I remember a girl in Pirate’s Alley. Arguing with Cassius.
But that’s all. If I spoke to your grandmother on the street years ago, you don’t think I would have told you that?
I don’t remember a thing she said.” His look is incredulous, a vein of annoyance in his voice.
He must notice the tightness in my jaw, how I ceased breathing, how my neck turned to stone.
Because his hand reaches across the table to find mine.
“I’m sorry, I…at that time I was getting blood drunk as often as I could, consuming massive amounts of drunk blood that it was the equivalent of getting black-out drunk for humans.
I eventually had to stop drinking from drunks.
I vaguely remember Cassius being angry with me in the alley… but I’m so sorry. It’s a blur.”