54. Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Four
Elowen Briar
“I need you, Beau Drewitt.”
Beau lets himself back in before Dr. Storms ever has a chance to tell him he can return.
Typical. My throat feels raw when the words come out.
“I don’t care what you are right now,” I say.
“I don’t care if you’re the worst person in the universe.
I don’t care if you eat people at this point.
I’m not afraid of you. I was scared. You scared the shit out of me, but how do you calmly tell someone that you’re a fucking vampire and not expect them to run?
I know now. That’s what matters. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I need you, Beau Drewitt.
” He watches me without blinking. Then, he crosses the small distance to the chair next to my bed and sits like a man returning to a place he has already been told belongs to him.
“I told you I’m not going anywhere. I appreciate your understanding, but I would feel better just to give you the time to properly absorb everything.
It doesn’t have to be right now. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow.
Right now, we just need for you to get better.
You focus on you and I’ll be right here until you tell me to get the fuck out of your face.
” His face softens as his hand cups my cheek.
“So, if you searched last night… How did you find me today?” I ask.
He looks up, surprise flickers across his face and then it’s gone in a breath.
Then he gives a small, wry tilt of his head.
“Imani came to kill me this morning,” Beau answers honestly.
The answer is both ridiculous and comforting.
Of course, she had been the thread that led him back to me.
He watches me for a beat longer and then his expression softens in a way that makes the room feels softer and less clinical.
“I know you have bigger things weighing in that pretty mind of yours, mi tesoro. Get it off your chest,” he says, the pet name slipping out like a warm thing in cold air.
His voice lowers. It envelopes around me like a security blanket and for a second, I forget about the numbness, tests, and doctors.
“You can ask me anything,” he says after a small pause.
“I just don’t want to push anything more on you right now, but if it helps you, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.
” The invitation sounds different after his admission, like a rope thrown to a shipwreck survivor lost at sea.
I try not to let my surprise show, but the flood of questions that have been sitting at the back of my throat surge forward without true consent.
“One at a time, I promise,” I manage finally.
My voice is smaller than I expect and the sentence steadies me, lessening my anxieties.
He nods and balances his hands on his knees the way someone prepares to catch another person falling.
If Beau is anything, he’s unbelievably understanding.
“How often do you drink blood?” I blurt.
The question feels vicious and childish, but necessary at the same time.
He answers without hesitation. “I ration,” he says.
“Once a day, usually. Sometimes less. There was an occasion when I first met you that was messy. I don’t pride myself on it.
Rationing is easier. Especially when I’m trying to blend in with regular humans.
” The words fall like a strange truth. They make my stomach knot and somehow loosen at the same time.
I don’t think I should have started with that in order to calm my worries, but it's too late now.
“How do you walk in the daylight,” I ask. “Do you burn? Oh wait, it’s like those shows. You have a ring, right?”
He lets out a small sound that might be considered amusement. “Myth. I am free to do as I wish in the daytime and nighttime.” I watch the light change across his beautiful face as the afternoon leans toward evening. It softens him in ways that makes the edges of my fear less sharp.
“What’s your special power?” I ask, because the question has thudded against my ribs since before I knew vampires actually existed. “Is it true you get like one power each?”
He looks at me as if the question pleased him.
“Power? I don’t know that we call them powers.
Although, I do have abilities that a normal man wouldn’t,” he says.
“I can read thoughts. Not everything and not always. And I try not to read without reason. I can move faster than the human eye can pick up. I use shadows to traverse places, and I’m stronger than most men.
I’m also very old. I wouldn’t say we each get anything special though.
” The admission doesn’t terrify me as much as it makes the room feel too small.
The idea of my private thoughts being accessible is a kind of exposure I’m not sure I want.
“You can read my mind right now?” I question.
“Yes, but I’m not.” he answers. “I’ve listened in when I shouldn’t have and definitely when you were thinking things that I should’ve waited to have offered.
” The assurance feels like someone promising not to open a letter that was folded into a private pocket.
It comforts me. My mind slides to the words he had exchanged with Kalevala.
He said, mate. The syllable feels strange, but heavy with implication.
“Are you in love with Kalevala?” I ask, the name raw in my mouth.
His chest heaves and the way he says the next thing is careful and honest. “God, no. She’s trying to choose me as her mate.
Not the other way around so, no. Never.” he says.
“You can be a mate if chosen, but a sino is chosen by fate. I have a sino and I will continue to choose her. Elowen Briar, you are the one who fate has chosen to connect me to. I told you there’s a lot to process.
Information that I’m not sure you’re ready for, but I’ve known for months that the universe made you for me.
And not in a way that is made up or a cliché; vampirism and bonds can be a lot to understand.
I know what you are to me. We’re connected.
Meant to be.” The sentences lodge in me like a small, bright needle.
“So, you’re choosing me?” I ask softly.
His eyes become a map of things he has released and said.
“There’s never been any other option. It’s always been you.
I spent quite a while kicking her ass, just to prove it.
” The way he speaks makes my breath stop for a fraction.
The fearful hollow inside my chest fills with something hot, dangerous, and utterly human.
“I have more questions,” I say, because safety has its own demands and ignorance is a thief.
He accepts each one as if they’re small offerings at a shot to win my trust back.
I ask about his dreams. I ask if he remembers people he had loved from a long time ago.
I ask if he felt lonely. Our conversation treads on a line, but never once does he back down.
He’s giving me every answer I request of him.
Beau tells me pieces of his life like he’s connecting constellations on a map.
He carries names and places with him. He remembers in long rivers, but it pains him to stay looking back for too long.
“Guess you’ll need to think about how you feel being involved with someone much older?” He laughs, lightening the mood.
“I worry that my parents won’t be a fan of it…
” I look up at him expecting him to laugh at my dark humor, but he just places his hand on his forehead, shaking his head.
Since the doctors want me on a liquid only diet, Beau fetches me a matcha that he ordered to the hospital.
He plucks the straw from its wrapper and places it in the drink before guiding it to my lips.
The room dims further as evening takes hold, while the hospital lights soften and the machines hum a lower pitch.
My brain runs at five hundred miles a minute, spinning with the thoughts of the numbness in my hands that begin to trail all over my body.
It knocks a sob loose that’s rising behind my ribs.
The fear of losing feeling is becoming more real, a live thing that pushes at me from the inside out.
Everything feels simultaneously fragile and fortified.
The numbness in my hands is a brutal present.
The warmth of his words are a glimpse at a soft future.
I let myself rest in the small space we’ve carved.
The uncertainty doesn’t vanish, but it settles into a shape I might be able to handle carrying.
Before I finally close my eyes the last thing I hold on to is the image of him saying hi to Imani as she walks into my hospital room, the feel of his voice calling me, mi tesoro.
The two facts sit together in my head like contradictory truths and somehow make sense.
Outside the curtain the hospital breathes in its measured way.
Inside the room, we sleep in the space between questions and decisions, and for a moment the world feels less like it might break.
I am surrounded by the two people I love most in the world.
The only thing missing is my sweet baby, Genie.