Chapter 31

Me + editing = :(

I'll admit it, this chapter gave me...problems.  I'm not really used to writing this type of relationship.  Hate is more my thing, but alas I hope it makes somewhat sense.   If not, lemme know and I shall fix n stuff.

Please, for the love of my sanity let me know what you think?  Nikki needs feedback, especially when attempting to edit, when she darn well can't, takes such a toll on her nerves.

Also, this will be the last cover.  What do you think?  Next update I'll have everyone pick their favorites from all of the ones I've used in the past and use that cover permanently from that point on.

Again, please gime feedback.  Pretty please?

*Also, those of you reading Staked...let me know what you think of this chappy.  ;)*

Chapter 31

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It really was him, she realized as the light from the field illuminated that pale skin.

She wasn’t hallucinating.

He stood by the doorway, dark eyes taking her in. From her body curled haphazardly on the floor, down to the hockey stick still clutched in her shaking fists.

He didn’t move.  Instead, he just tilted his head to the side, eyes narrowed, and said; “Your heart is racing.”

Sure enough, it was.  Miriam could feel her blood pulsing through her veins in a manic swish.  She couldn’t even catch her breath.

Everything felt shaky.

But, as she glanced up, pushing the hair from her eyes, she had to wonder whether the reaction was from fear or…

Something else.

“You’re here,” was all she managed to say.  But there was so much more to it than that.

You’re here.  You’re real.

I’m not going insane.

And, maybe most pathetic of all…

You didn’t leave.

He didn’t answer.  Taking a step forward, he allowed the shed door to close behind him so that the artificial light fully washed over his face.

His jaw was set in a firm line, eyes smoldering—but he didn’t speak until she finally managed to loosen her grip on the hockey stick and shove it aside.

He was over in an instant, nearly blocking her in with his massive height alone.

“Are you alright?”

The concern in his tone surprised her.  Maybe even thrilled her a little bit too.

She couldn’t deny it.

It confused her, and she couldn’t keep herself from joking—her nervous habit—even as her heart thudded like a sledgehammer against her ribcage.

“Do you really care?”

It was the wrong thing to say.

Those red eyes flashed, and he pulled back as if she’d slapped him.

“I’m s-sorry,” she said quickly, reaching out.  “It’s just that…”

Just then, she made the mistake of looking up, into those amber eyes and promptly lost her voice.  That gaze sucked her in—wide and open and insanely worried.

For her.

“It’s just that,” she tried again, realizing that her train of through was hopelessly lost.  “You weren’t there.”

She frowned, thinking of that morning; waiting in the cold for a car that never showed.

“I thought…”

‘You didn’t like me anymore,’ was the childish part she held back.

“What’s wrong?” Eliot said, as if she hadn't spoken, glancing suspiciously around the small room.  “What happened?”

As if he had a right to care.

Maybe, if she was a blunt girl like Sidney she might have said so?

“How did you know I was here?” she blurted instead.

Abruptly, he broke the eye contact to glare the floor, jaw clenched.

“I heard your heartbeat,” she heard him mutter.

It wasn’t until a split-second later that the full truth sunk in.

“You were watching me,” she whispered, though the word came out more of a puzzled question.

It was like instantly being transported to the other day, back in her bedroom when the very same question had been on her lips.  Although this time, she had to admit that she was hoping for a very different answer.

The look in his eye made her breath stick to the sides of her throat.  She could only stare, numb as his gaze slowly wandered to hers once again.

Zap!

Just like that, she was glued in place.

He didn’t answer—but he didn’t have to.  The truth was all too obvious in way that gaze scanned her skin carefully, as if looking for the tiniest scratch or bruise.

The depth of his worry unnerved her somewhat.  Nervously, she pulled away and turned around to face the other side of the room, where that narrow window started out into the rapidly falling night.

“Were you?”  She pressed in almost a whisper.

She didn’t hear him move, but she could sense him behind her—that cool breath gently brushed the nape of her neck making her shudder.

“Did you have a seizure?”  He asked, changing the subject.

“I just fell,” she said, shaking her head.

In retrospect, she didn’t know why she left out the part about being spooked by a giant wolf-thing with glowing eyes.

Maybe—even despite the fact that he claimed to be a vampire—she didn’t want him to wonder if she was going insane?

Or at least, more insane than she already was.

But, of course, she was quickly realizing that Eliot wasn’t like everybody else who just lapped up her lies with a smile.

She shivered at the feel of a cool finger, trailing gingerly along the width of her collarbone.  The touch was deliberate, intentionally throwing her off balance as if punishment for the lie.

“Tell me the truth.”  It was an order.

She hesitated, and then it all came out in a rush before she could help it; though, surprisingly it had nothing at all to do with being terrified by the mysterious prowler.

“Do…do I really look empty?”  She asked, voice shaking.

She couldn’t even look back at him, and just faced forward instead, nails digging sharply into her palms.

The question had been bothering her since lunch; what was it about her that truly pushed everyone else away?

She had always assumed it was just the stigma of being the weird girl with the seizures, but now...

He moved closer, an icy gust chilling the flesh of her back, even though her sweater.

“What do you mean?”  His voice was soft, gentle.  Despite herself the tone pulled at her, making her voice the things she hadn’t admitted out loud—ever.

“It’s just…”  She trailed off, shaking her head as Sidney’s words ran through her mind.

‘Poor, spoiled little rich girl.’

“I try so hard to keep from getting close to anyone, because—”  She forced a dry swallow and fidgeted nervously with the hem of her sweater.  “I think that I’m saving them the trouble, you know?”

He wasn’t going to make it easy for her.

“The trouble of what?”

She shifted on the balls of her feet, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Of leaving,” she admitted softly.  “In the end, they always leave.  It’s like…I’m broken…”

“No.”

He purposefully touched her for the first time, chilled hand curling around the width of her forearm so that there was no mistaking it. Her heart skipped at beat at the frigid touch.

“You are not broken,” he snarled, voice almost a growl.  “But you hide and pretend and put on a smile when I know that all you really want to do is scream.”

His words made sense.  Slowly, Miriam could feel a burning itch behind her eye turn into something warm and moist that dribbled down her chin.

“I can’t help it,” she admitted almost on a sob.  “I’m used to lying and hiding and denying because…”

When she didn’t speak, she saw the pale flash of his hand from the corner of her eye, carefully brushing a lock of her hair from her shoulder.

“Because what?”

She sighed, and added so softly she had to strain her own ears to hear, “Because I’m afraid that if they ever get to know the real me they’ll leave.  Just like…”

She couldn’t do it.  It hurt too much to even go there—not even with him.

“No,” she said, shaking her head.  “I can’t.”

Pulling away, she headed for the door, nearly stumbling over her own feet in her rush to get there.

But, of course, he beat her to it.

This time, she did see him, if only just a glimmer of pale skin and a flash of darkness before he appeared in front of her, blocking her path.

She scrambled back, aiming to run, but he caught her easily by the wrist, dragging her forward until she had no choice but to look up.

And be swamped by those burning eyes.

“Leave just like, who?”

She bit her lip, trying to trap the words inside, but it was no use.  Her control was already slipping, and on a wail, the words broke loose before she could rein them in.

“Like my mom!”

She didn’t know how, but the next moment she wasn’t standing on her own two feet.  No, she leaned fully against him, arms up cinched around his neck, as if she’d fallen and he was the only thing to grab onto.

His chest was cold, she couldn’t thinking.  It was like pressing her body against ice, hard and un-giving.

But…strangely enough, it was the more comforting than any other embrace she’d felt in a very long time.

His arms were around her, palms resting carefully against her waist.  He was so frightfully cold, but even so she held on a little tighter as the years-old tears started to fall.

She hadn’t spoken about in mother in two long years.  It was as if the memory of her was poison and her name the magic word that would bring up the pain all over again.

The same agony that had nearly killed her father, and left her…alone.

“She left when I was fifteen,” she managed to croak into the front of Eliot’s sweater, if only to keep from being swamped by the sadness.  “One day we were picking out stupid party dresses at the mall, and the next…”

It had been sudden.

All Miriam knew was one morning she’d come downstairs for breakfast, expecting her mother to be waiting in the kitchen with a bowl of cereal and a piece of burnt toast, just like always.

‘Your mom can’t cook, but she can make one hell of a cup of coffee,’ she’d always joke.

She couldn’t cook of course, but that didn’t stop her from getting up every morning and trying to do the best she could with milk and a bowl.

Only that morning, her father had been there instead, sobbing openly over a crumbled note written on computer paper.

To this day, they hadn’t heard a word.

A letter.

A whisper.

Not even a set of divorce papers; even after all this time her parents were still legally married—not that the fact consoled her father any.

Every day without a word just seemed to make him grow smaller—diminish him until he was just a shadow of his former self; a ghost merely tethered to a living body.

“You blame yourself.”  The statement came from Eliot, as emotionless as always, but she could feel his hands, soft and sure press into the small of her back.  “That’s why you—”

“Wear a mask?”  Miriam asked on a shaky bit of tortured laughter.  “It is my fault,” she added in a hard voice.  “She left because of me, because of my seizures—”

“Shut up.”  Eliot’s hand curled forcefully beneath her chin, jerking her head up to meet that amber glare.  He looked angry, she realized, though she couldn’t understand why.  “You don’t really believe that.”

She nodded, bringing her gaze down to the floor.

In a normal world—coming from a normal person—his words might have made sense.  To her, they just stung.

Because the truth of the matter was that if she dug hard enough, she had to admit that her mother’s disappearance hadn’t been quite so abrupt after all.

There had been subtle little changes; tiny clues that added up if she thought hard enough.

In fact, they coincided right when her seizures had reached a fever pitch—not too long before her sixteenth birthday.

She could remember the first one as though it had been yesterday.  One moment she’d been doing laundry, and the next she’d regained consciousness at the bottom of the steps covered in dirty clothing.

It had happened in her bedroom after that.

Then the bathroom…and the kitchen…and then school.

With every one her mother had grown more and more alarmed, worn lines twisting the skin of her beautiful face.

Though she would never admit it out loud, Miriam knew full well why, in the end, her mother had left.

Because of her.

For a long moment, Eliot didn’t say anything.  He just stood there, allowing her to hold onto him and somehow that was enough.

She didn’t need the false sympathy.  The fake condolences.  The forced sighs.

His silence was enough, and the fact made her cry even harder.

It was only when she quieted down to sniffling into the fabric of her sleeve that he finally spoke at all.

“What was your mother’s name?”

The question threw her off, and she answered without thinking.

“Allwyn.”

Even saying the name made a rush of pain tear through her chest, but surprisingly enough it wasn’t as bad as she would have thought.

“Allwyn,” he repeated, almost sounding as though he were hesitant.  Carefully he added, “That’s an unusual name.”

Despite herself, Miriam felt her mouth curl into a tired smile.  “It is.  She always joked that my grandmother was a witch who insisted that all of the girls have odd names—”

He stiffened, fingers digging almost painfully into her sides.

“What is it?”  She pulled back, glancing up through a fringe of her hair.  “Did I say something wrong?”

His face was expressionless, but she couldn’t help thinking that it was almost too blank.  As if he was carefully forbidding any emotion from showing in those dark eyes.

“Did she have a family name?”  He asked quietly, ripping his gaze away to stare at the wall behind her instead.

“Do you mean last name?”  She asked, confused.  When he nodded, she shrugged.

“Danva.  Her name was…is Allwyn Danva.”

Judging from his reaction, she might as well have said ‘the bane of your existence.’

He stiffened and went so incredibly still that she almost wondered if he had turned to stone right before her eyes.

“Eliot?”  She reached up without thinking, fingers caressing the side of his face.

He moved before she could react, hand curling around hers, trapping it there as he leaned deliberately into her touch.

Whoa.

It was all Miriam could think as everything else left her mind in a blinding rush.

His eyes glowed—softer than the mysterious monster’s but no less dangerous.

She blinked, wondering if that might diminish it, shatter this hold he had over her.  But it didn’t work.

She only fell harder, twisting helplessly in those scarlet depths.

I’m losing my mind, she realized frantically.  He’ll drive me insane…

Not that she seemed particularly alarmed at the possibility.

Her only conscious thought was to lean closer, straining on tip toes, just to press her mouth against his.

Ice exploded through her veins, churning through her heart in almost painful waves.

He didn’t move anymore to tilt his head, lips brushing firmly against hers, but it was like being set on fire.

Her hands moved up, curling in that dark red hair, as his arm slid around her waist pressing her tighter.

She was shivering she realized. Shaking as his tongue hesitantly brushed her lower lip—but she didn’t care.  She only pushed herself closer, balancing precariously on the tips of her boots until her whole body went numb with cold.

“Your heart is racing,” he breathed against her chin, pulling back to stare down at her chest where she could feel her pulse thrumming; thump, bump, thump!

She watched, breathless as one of those white fingers came to slide slowly along the length of her shoulder blade right down to circle the slender hollow of her throat.

“Are you afraid?”  He asked, voice mocking.

“Y-yes, I am,” Miriam admitted with a nod.  “…I’m done lying.”

Then, she kissed him again.