Dark Secrets (47 page)

“
To know that you’re
battle of conscience is not winning against your heart.”

I pressed my hands
flat to the wall behind my hips. “One will have to win
eventually.”

He jumped off the
ledge, landing silently in my room. “I know.”

“
David, please—” I
put my hand out; he stopped advancing. “Just stay back,
okay?”

“
I won’t hurt
you.”

“
I know.” I tried to
take a breath, but couldn’t.

He looked up from his
feet, smiling, with a hint of mischief behind his eyes. “Do
you?”

“
Yes. I’m not afraid
of that, right now. I—you know how I feel about you. And knowing
what I know about you should change that, but it hasn’t.” I touched
my chest. “And until it does, even a little bit, I won’t trust
myself to touch you.”

“
Why?”

“
Because it’s
ludicrous, David. You kill people—with your teeth. I should hate
you.”

“
And yet you want to
accept me.”

“
Which means there’s
something wrong with me.”

“
Or maybe you’re just
in love.”

I shook my head,
reinforcing my warding hand when he took another step
closer.

He sighed, letting his
arms fall loosely to his sides. “If I could perform a memory charm
on you—make you forget, would you want me to?”

“
You could do
that?”

“
Just answer the
question.”

“
I—” I didn’t know;
happiness was a part of my life when I was in love with David, the
boy. All of this reality was just too unusual. I felt insecure,
like I was walking on a glass cliff top—sure I might fall through
at any minute. But, would I want to love him if I didn’t know he
was a killer? “Yes,” I said very quietly, looking down.

“
Then why can’t you
accept me, now?”

“
It’s
complicated.”

“
Ara, look at me,” he
said. “Love is complicated, but you can’t deny this is
love.”

“
I can
try.”

His eyes, green and
intense, searched mine. “You refuse my affections, you will watch
me walk away, give up our love, for what? To make a stand against a
natural predator? That’s all I am, sweetheart.” He slowly came
closer, laughing softly. “Would you give up your firstborn to
protest against lions killing a zebra?”

“
That’s the problem, David. I
will
be giving up my firstborn. I’ll
be giving up
everything
.” I pushed away from him and darted across to my desk. “I
can never have a family, a life, not even a death if I choose you.
I’ve been over it—there’s no right way to do
this.”

“
That may be so, but you still have a choice to make.” His
voice shook on the word
choice
.

My lip quivered and
fresh tears stung the edges of my dry eyes. “Why did you have to
make me fall in love with you?”

David stood stiff. “I
didn’t
make
you.”

“
I know.” I folded my
arms and rolled my chin to my chest. “But I do love you, and now I
have to choose between love or life and, David, I want a
family—like Mum had; I want a little Harry. I want to be a soccer
mom and do carpooling and argue with my daughter about the boys I
think aren’t good enough for her. And then, one day, when I’ve had
a good life, with the man I love, I want to know what it’s like to
be old—and die.” I looked up, my eyes narrowed. “Can you understand
any of this?”

“
More than you know.”
Misery swallowed his voice, then he evaporated. A breathless second
passed before he appeared on the edge of my bed, his face in his
hands.

For the first time
since his confession this afternoon, I really let myself look at
him—see him for what he was. I pictured the vampire, the monster,
and under it, with his shoulders stiff, his grey shirt hugging the
knuckles of his curved spine, was the boy—the one with a heart,
which was probably very broken right now. “Damn you for being so
cute.” I slumped beside him on the bed. “Why did your uncle want
you to leave with him the other day?”

He laughed into his
hands then sat up straight, wiping them over his jeans. “I called
him—told him I was in love—that I couldn’t leave you when the time
came. And he told me that was exactly why I had to
leave.”

“
Because you were in
love?”

“
No. Because I love
you enough to wish I could give up everything.”

That made me feel
heavy and a little numb. If David had just gone, I would be so
broken right now, but it would be normal. “Maybe your uncle was
right.”

“
Oh, Ara, please
don’t say things like that.” The anguish in his eyes forced me to
close mine. “Have you even considered coming with me?”

I couldn’t answer him,
because I couldn’t give him the answer he wanted.

“
Ara, please. For the
sake of a few drops of blood?” His voice edged beyond desperate.
“You would throw away everything? You would turn your back on
love?”

“
No, David,” I said. “I won’t turn my back on love. But I
won’t be a part of murder, of death, of fear. It’s more than a few
drops of blood. They’re
people
. Does that mean nothing to
you?”

“
It does have meaning
to me, but not in the way it does to you.” He lowered his head,
maybe ashamed of himself. He should be.

“
David, I will always
love you—to the very depths of my soul, but I won’t live out
eternity as an immoral killer,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“
Immoral?” With a
slow breath, he floated up to stand and towered over me, casting a
dark shadow across my face. “You think me—immoral?”

“
I’m sorry, David,
but…I do.” I kept my head down, my eyes on David’s clenched
fist.

“
If
you could
only
see what you are doing—what it will do to me to be without
you.” The energy—the kind of force surrounding him that was
normally warm and soft—turned cold, chilling the air with a tearing
sensation. “I am not immoral, and I do have a
heart—
feelings
to
be exact.”

When our gaze met, my
stomach tightened into my throat at the sight of the liquid agony
in his very human eyes. “David—”

“
No. Can’t you see?
Ara, you have no idea what you’re giving up.”

“
If you knew my
heart, you’d know those words are untrue,” I whispered, looking
away from the broken pieces of the boy I loved.

“
If
I knew your heart, Ara, I would’ve known I should
never
have shared myself
with you.” He cut the air with his hand.

“
You’re right,” I
said irresolutely. “You should never’ve told me. I didn’t want to
know. I didn’t need to know. Now, I have to lose you still, but
it’s worse, because I know you’re out there, every day, taking
life. And I kissed you. I let myself love you. And I wish I
hadn’t.”

“
So that’s it, then.”
He nearly choked on his words. “You want nothing to do with me,
now?”

“
You should’ve given
me more time. I wasn’t ready for you to come back yet.”

He took two slow steps
away from me, touching his chest as the distance became greater.
“Well, have no fear, my love. I shall not make that mistake
again.”

He sounded a hundred
years old to me, then. The weight of his existence tore down my
walls as I watched him walk away, and somewhere inside me, a little
voice screamed out, echoing from the depths of my soul—warning me
that if I let him leave now, I would
never
see him again. “Wait!” I
called in a breath of desperation, reaching for him as I jumped to
my feet. “David, wait.”

He stopped, crouched
on the ledge of my window, keeping his eyes on the night
below.

“
Please, give me more
time. I’m not ready to let go, yet, I just—maybe we could have
until the end of the summer, at least. But, I just need time to
think about it.”

David turned his head
and looked into my eyes. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and when
the vampire jumped back into my room and stood right before me, I
didn’t even flinch. Not one uneven breath escaped me. He leaned
down and pressed his cold fingertips to my face, rolling it firmly
upward to meet his. “Follow your heart, mon amour,” he said. “When
nothing in this world makes sense anymore, just follow your
heart.”

I drew a shaky breath
and closed my eyes as an intense exchange of hope and fear consumed
our souls and, in a flash, as I opened them again—he was gone.
Gravity made me stumble forward a step in his wake, his absence
leaving my heart burning.

The night below my
window, cool and quiet, regarded none of the tension in my soul. A
lonely cricket hummed his perfect song, and I closed my eyes as the
last day that life was everything I expected came to an
end.

Squinting in the
bright morning sun as my sneakers clapped over the pavement, I
started down the street—in the opposite direction of the school. I
wanted to be as far away from that building as I could
get.

I drew deep,
throat-grazing breath of the near-autumn chill, blowing it out in a
slow, controlled breath. I’d almost forgotten how to breathe while
running. I’d let myself get so unfit that, instead of feeling free
and fast now, I felt like I was trying to jump under water. But the
tight stitch, the inability to breathe, and the sweat beading on my
brow was all normal. And none of it was fair. I should be ignorant
to all of it—sunshine, birds singing, hearing my dad talking in the
kitchen, or a car taking off down the street. No one my age should
appreciate little things like that. When I wake up, my only dilemma
should be which dress I want to wear. It sucked that I’d felt grief
so deep I could value the little things. And it sucked that I had
to either lose the boy I loved, or become immortal—and the fact
that David killed people
really
sucked. No pun intended. The only trouble was,
when I concluded not to love him, it hurt inside—a physical ache in
my gut, like the one that made me throw up on the first day of
school.

“
Hello stranger,” a
soft, soprano voice called.

I stopped dead and
turned around. “Hey, Emily. Do you live around here?”

She shook her head and
motioned behind her. “Spencer lives here. I stayed over last
night.”

“
What?” My eyes
bulged. “Stayed over?”

“
Yeah.” She nodded.
“Oh, I mean, not like that—I was just babysitting his little
sister.”

“
Oh, okay.” I folded
over a little, trying to catch my breath. “Didn’t you go to the
wake, at Betty’s?”

“
Yeah, but Spencer’s
mom’s a nurse. She got called in on nightshift after.”

“
So—can’t Spence
babysit?”

Emily scoffed,
obviously humoured. “He’s just not that kind of guy.”

“
Oh.” I wandered over
and leaned next to her on the brown picket fence. “Give his mom my
number then. I love babysitting.”

“
Okay, I will. So—”
she looked down at my running shorts, then my sweat-covered
forehead, “—I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess you
were—going to a ball?”

We both
laughed.

“
Uh, yeah.” I looked
down at my shoes. “I thought I better start getting
fit.”

“
Hm.” She folded her
arms. “Fit. Is everything okay?”

“
Of course it is,” my
tone rose upward.

“
Is it
David?”

“
A little.” I sighed
and sat down on the curb.

“
Let me guess—” she
sat beside me, “—he’s got you all confused?”

“
It’s a talent of
his, isn’t it?” I said.

“
Yeah. So, what is
it? What’s he done?”

He’s a vampire and he
kills people
. “He said he loves
me.”

Her mouth fell open a
little, but nothing came out.

“
Yeah.” I laughed. “I
know, hey.”

“
Hm, well, he’s never done
that
before, either. Are you
happy?”

I nodded and sort of
shook my head too.

“
Have you said you
love him?”

“
Yeah.
Why?”

“
I dunno. Just
wondering.”

I tensed. “Is that…a
bad thing?”

She laughed. “Why
would it be bad?”

“
I just…I don’t know.
I’m not really too good at this boyfriend thing. Normally, when I
have this kind of crisis, I ring Mike, but—” But I couldn’t tell
him about this one.

“
But?”

“
I think he’d laugh
at me.”

“
For being in
love?”

“
Maybe. He never
really takes that stuff seriously, you know. I don’t think he’d get
it.”