He … he …
I can’t believe he came here to say this to her.
“Winnie?” Mum shoves her tissues under her pillow and hops off the bed. “Are you in there? You didn’t make a peep. I was just having a cup of tea with your friend Alaric.”
“I—” I gasp through my sobs, furiously wiping at the snot running from my nose as I step into the doorway of the bedroom. “Mum, I?—”
“Oh, Winnie, there’s no need for all this crying.” Mum’s eyes dart nervously to the kitchen. She’s uncomfortable with displays of emotion. She doesn’t like to think that I heard what she said to Alaric. “Do you need a cup of tea? Tea makes everything better.”
For once, I don’t want to push down these emotions. I’m sick of tidying away my feelings into neat little boxes to make other people happy. “Mum, can you give us a moment alone?”
Mum looks as though she wants to argue, but she twists her face into a faux smile. “I’ll just go and put the kettle on.”
It’s a lie, of course. Mum can’t find the kettle in the disaster of a kitchenette. She shuffles out of the room and closes the door behind her, leaving me and Alaric alone, although I bet every storage container I own that she has her ear to the door, listeningin on every word.
Alaric stands. He’s so tall that he has to stoop a little to avoid hitting his head on the grimy light. The sight of him standing amongst my mother’s accumulated piles of crap, his clothes so out of place, his features pinched tight, drives me to ruin.
He’s even more beautiful than I remember.
A warrior out of time, his noble steed long ago retired, but he’s still here … fighting … but for what?
Alaric nods to three boxes of paperback novels and a couple of old toasters stacked at the foot of the bed. “This is how you grew up?”
Beneath the gentle question, I catch a tentative plea.Is this what I did to you? Is this how deeply I hurt you?
I swallow once, twice. “She goes out shopping while I’m at work. She thinks that she’s helping – setting us up with the things she needs after the fire took it all. If I didn’t throw most of the junk out while she’s asleep, this room would be filled by now.”
“Winnie, I—” His Adam’s apple bobs. When he raises his eyes to meet mine, they’re swimming with pain. “I never meant to hurt you like this. The moment you walked into this room, you shrank. You became less of yourself. I never saw you shrink at Black Crag until you found that secret room. I am sick to my heart that I made you feel like that.”
I stare at the boxes because if I keep looking into his eyes, I will collapse. Shame burns white-hot in my throat, on the back of my neck, in the pit of my stomach. I don’t want to feel this way about my own mother. But Alaric’s right – I’m shrinking, and I don’t know how to stop.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I mumble. “Perdita is probably wondering where you are.”
“I am precisely where I need to be,” he answers. “And Perdita is back in Italy, where she belongs. I came to give you something. I presume you haven’t opened that pretty box in your hands?”
I glance down at the jewellery box Viviana gave me. I’d forgotten I was holding it. “No.”
“Good. Don’t open it yet. Your gift is inside, but I’m afraid it won’t make much sense without the second half.” He pausesto visibly collect himself. “Winnie, I have so many things to say to you. Most of them are apologies. If you wish me to leave and never return, I will walk out that door right now. I know you cannot trust my word, but please trust that much.”
“How did you get a gift inside—” The butterflies are back ... and they’re flamenco dancing. “Youarranged the job with Viviana? Butwhy?”
Instead of explaining, Alaric steps around the corner of the bed, over the boxes, to stand in front of me. The air between us fizzes with static – the magic that drew me to him from the moment we met still dancing on, even though the music has died.
I can’t look at his eyes, so I stare at his perfectly shiny shoes.That looks like Reginald’s work.
“I’m here because I couldn’t face eternity without explaining why I broke us.” Alaric clears his throat. “All the time you lived at Black Crag, I grew more afraid. Afraid that I would let slip my true nature, and you would see my fangs and run. But you didn’t run, Winnie. You saw something beneath the monster, and that something made you laugh and made you feel safe. I have never met anyone who looked at me the way you did, as if I was their harbour during a storm. I wanted to prove that I was worthy of you.”
“Alaric—”
“You turned me completely inside out. I’d never felt this way about anyone before. I was frightened and ecstatic and frenzied and terrified and completely in awe of you. I knew I could never be worthy of your love, but I wanted you to know that the gifts you’d given me would endure long after your heart stopped beating. So I made painting after painting of you, but nothing came out right. Then I thought to try a sculpture. On my moonlight walks down to the grotto, I found flowers the colour of your golden eyes. I dried them on a rack in the cellar and made wreaths, but they were flimsy, dead things. I kept objects you touched because they felt like holding little pieces of you. I found myself ordering gold glitter from the internet like a vampire possessed. I grewobsessedwith my task to make something thatcapturedyou. I planned it as a gift to you, but now I see that I was making this art for me – because I knew I could never keep you and I wanted to hold you in my heart for eternity. Each time I fell short, I hid away the evidence in that room so you wouldn’t see that I failed you.”
Oh, Alaric.
“I should have just told you how I felt,” his voice cracks. “I was so engrossed in my project that I didn’t consider how you might react when you saw the secret room. I hid those things away, and I hid the truth about the Kiss, because I was so terrified that if you knew these bad, rotten, monstrous things about me, you would leave. As everyone I trust leaves. In the end, I drove you away, not because I’m a monster, but because I’mme.”
I’m not prepared for the pain in his voice, for the way his words tremble in the space between us, so raw and sad and hopeless. More tears spill down my cheeks.
“Don’t you see?” I breathe through my tears. “This is exactly why I left. Because you shouldn’t have to change who you are for me. You have this wonderful creative mind and you shouldn’t have to shove it away into a secret room because of my trauma. You are right about something – Idoshrink. I hold myself back when things get tough, because the only way I survived growing up was by curling into a ball and waiting it out. But I don’t have to do that anymore. I don’t have to change, and neither do you. We’re perfect the way we are, but that doesn’t mean we’re perfect together. And I’m not just talking about being a vampire and a human. We never would have worked.”
