Forget Ever After (2 page)

Under the pretext of dancing more freely, she
liberated her hand and tried to enjoy the music and the atmosphere
of sheer enjoyment emanating from the costumed dancers around her,
but one song ended, then another, and still Lena kept wondering
what she was doing there. Not only that, but she could practically
feel someone watching her intently, and combined with her earlier
misgivings about the club, she grew increasingly uncomfortable as
time passed.

After she gestured to Tony that she was going
back upstairs to the bar, she didn’t know whether to be glad or
annoyed that he accompanied her. His presence soothed that little
voice screaming of danger; yet, on the other hand, she had little
interest in spending time with him and no idea how to tell him
without being rude.

Lena would gladly have sat at the bar,
surrounded by other partygoers, some of whom she vaguely recognized
from having seen them on campus before. However, Tony led her to
one of the private alcoves at the back of the room. Lena slipped
into the booth, sliding to the very far end of it and reclining
against the back cushion only to realize she would damage her wings
if she did that. Annoyed, she sat closer to the table, leaning onto
her elbows, which had the unfortunate effects of bringing her
closer to Tony.

A waitress came and took their orders, then
returned with tall glasses. Tony started talking, and Lena made the
appropriate noises in all the right places. However, the entire
time, she paid no real attention to where she was and what was
going on around her. Her mind was back in her room, which she
shouldn’t have left, and she was mentally reviewing the definitions
she would be tested on the following Monday.

It was no wonder, with Lena being so distracted,
that she didn’t see at first the man who slid inside the booth to
sit opposite Tony. She only noticed him after her companion had
fallen silent. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw him staring
intently at her, and for a second Lena told herself that she had to
be hallucinating. There was no other explanation. Then the man
reached toward her to brush the back of his knuckles against her
cheek, and suddenly she could breathe again.

“Who do you think you are?” she heard, vaguely
aware that the upset voice belonged to Tony. “You weren’t—”

“I’m Lena’s fiancé. And who would you be?”

Four words sufficed to erase seven months of
pain, fear, and anxious waiting. Four words and Lena slid over the
cushioned bench to be as close to Liam as she could, and threw her
arms around his neck. There would be time, later, for the questions
that had haunted her for all these months. Time for answers too,
she hoped. Right now, all that mattered was that Liam had
returned.

For long moments, they remained entwined and
hugging in the small booth, oblivious to the music and chatter of
the club, indifferent to Tony’s huffy departure. Lena had dreamed
of this moment many times before. But the tears, laughter, and
words she had been sure would spill forth remained at bay, their
reunion too intense for her to express in any way other than with
her arms around him.

Eventually, it was her need to see him, to look
into his eyes that made her move. She pulled back, and smiling, she
brushed her knuckles over his cheek, just as he had done to her a
few moments earlier. His skin was as she remembered, smooth despite
the tiny prickles of hair, although cooler, paler as though he were
recovering from a long illness.

“I’ve missed you,” she murmured, choking on the
words.

His smile held both pain and apology, but she
could also guess his joy through it. “I’m so sorry, Lena. I didn’t
want to disappear like that, but I wasn’t given a choice. Finding
you here tonight was the best surprise I’ve had in a long
time.”

She waited a few seconds, but he did not explain
any further.

“I looked for you,” she felt necessary to add.
“I put flyers all around town, and I kept hoping…”

Her throat tightened and she couldn’t continue.
Liam’s hand rose to cup the back of her head, his fingers weaving
through her hair.

“I know. I saw the flyers. I wanted to call you
and tell you I was okay. I was afraid you’d drop out of school…You
didn’t, did you?”

Liam seemed relieved when she shook her
head.

“I’m glad you didn’t. It would have been a
terrible waste. I can’t follow that path anymore, but you’ll make a
fantastic doctor, I know it.”

Practicing medicine had been Liam’s dream just
as much as it had been Lena’s, and she couldn’t understand how he
could be so cool, as he talked about letting that dream slip away.
Part of her was afraid to ask and finally know why Liam had
disappeared months, what he had done, where he had been, but her
need to understand was greater than her fear.

“Why?” she asked, putting all her fears, all her
hopes, all her pain in that simple word.

Liam nodded, as though he had been expecting the
question and pulled back from her. Lena wanted to protest the loss
of contact, but as she was about to, Liam tugged at the collar of
his shirt, exposing two jagged scars at the crook of his neck. Her
eyes widening, Lena leaned forward and brushed her fingers against
the healed skin. It was cool to her touch, cooler than it ought to
have been, and no pulse beat beneath her fingertips.

Understanding came in a white blaze that made
Lena blink and lose her breath. She barely heard Liam’s quiet
explanation.

“I was caught coming back from running. It
happened so fast, I didn’t even have time to realize what was going
on. It’s only when I woke up in the lair that I understood.”

Her hand dropped to the seat between them, and
she used the support to hold herself upright. She stared at Liam
with a different gaze in regards to this new knowledge. This was
why he had disappeared without a word. This was why there had been
no trace of him. This was what had kept him away.

Didn’t he know she wouldn’t have cared?

“What’s it like?” she asked, her voice gentle
despite the weight pressing down on her chest that made it hard to
breathe.

Liam’s smile was unlike any he had ever offered
her. “It was strange, the first few nights. It was as if I was
seeing the world for the first time. I never imagined there was so
much I couldn’t see, or hear, or smell…”

His eyes seemed to lose focus for an instant,
and Lena ached a little more. How much had he experienced, in those
first nights, in the months since, that he’d never be able to share
with her?

“And then,” he continued after a few seconds, “I
got used to it all. Now I can’t picture how I ever lived without
it. Without catching the scent of the jasmine before it even
blooms, or seeing stars so clearly, it feels I could almost pick
them out if I only reached toward the sky.”

The quiet awe in his words forced a response out
of Lena.

“So…you like being a vampire, then?”

Liam blinked and frowned, as though the question
surprised him.

“It’s what I am. I never wanted to be one, I
never imagined it would happen to me, but it did. And now…sometimes
it feels as though I was never anything else.”

He hadn’t actually answered, but she took his
words as affirmative. The tone of his voice alone was clear enough.
She let seconds pass in silence as she watched him, finding him the
same as she remembered, though paler; his eyes seemed darker,
somehow, stronger.

“I wish you had come to me,” she said at last,
trying not to allow herself to accuse or complain. “I worried all
these months, wondered if you were still alive and held against
your will. Or if you had died. I imagined so many terrible things
that could have happened to you. I even thought a vampire might
have gotten you, but I was sure you would have come back to me if
that had been the case.”

His hand covered hers where it had curled into a
fist on her thigh. It felt cool, not cold as she would have
expected, and weighted nothing—and at the same time, it was heavier
than the entire world.

“I couldn’t. My Sire…” He hesitated at that, and
Lena thought for a second he even grimaced. “Alexei said I’d draw
attention to our clan if I went to anyone I used to know. He had
forbidden me to see you.”

The strain in his words hinted that there was
much more hidden behind them than he was saying. Lena knew very
little about vampire customs, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to
know anything more about them, but she had to ask.

“But you’re here now. Won’t he be mad at
you?”

“He’s dead.” His voice seemed flat, but again
Lena could have sworn it was only a mask. “He died a few weeks ago,
and so did the Master of my clan. Those of us who were left tried
to stick together but…” He shrugged. “It didn’t work out and we all
went our own way. I’m living on my own, now.”

Lena still had dozens of questions that she
wanted to ask. Hundreds of them. But at the same time, she
wondered, yet again, if she truly wanted to know. As long as she
didn’t ask, she could tell herself that Liam had been happy all
those months. That he had found a new family, a new life. That he
didn’t kill to feed.

Once more, silence stretched between them, and
Lena could feel his eyes on her even as she observed him and
thought about what he had said, and not said. In the end, none of
it changed anything, and she had to let him know that.

“I love you.” To say it aloud again, to say it
to Liam after months of whispering it to a picture felt liberating.
“I never stopped loving you. Even when other people were telling me
you had bailed on me because the wedding was coming and you got
cold feet. Even when I started accepting that I’d probably never
see you again. I still loved you this whole time, and you
being…being a vampire makes no difference. I’ll always love you,
Liam.”

Months of endless waiting seemed to melt away
with those words. It wouldn’t have taken much for her to believe
Liam had never disappeared, never left such a void in her life and
heart. He only needed to say the words too.

But all he did was pick up her hand and cradle
it between both of his on the table. He wasn’t even looking at her.
The numbness was overwhelming, but she had to know, and she fought
to push the words out.

“You—you don’t feel the same anymore?”

Slowly, he brought his eyes back to her, and she
could have sworn there were flames dancing in them.

“
Some vampires change when
they are sired,” he said, his words barely loud enough for Lena to
hear them. “No one can know until
after
if they’ll be the same as when they were
humans or completely different.”

As before, he wasn’t really answering her
question, but she thought she could see where he was going with
that line of thought.

“You changed a lot?” she asked, fearing his
answer yet needing to know.

“I thought I had. I…well, you don’t want to
know, really. There are things that vampires do that would have
revolted me a year ago. I know I would have died rather than kill
anyone, but, I’ve done as much, and I don’t regret it. It’s just
what I am, now. I can’t pretend otherwise even if that means losing
you.”

He dropped his eyes to their entwined fingers on
the table, and Lena realized she was trying to pull her hand free.
She managed to stop. She had just told him she loved him regardless
of who or what he was now. She couldn’t go back on her words
because he was being honest in return, even if fear was beginning
to seize her.

“That’s another reason why I didn’t come to see
you,” he continued when she had relaxed a little. “I could have
gone against my Sire’s orders. He’d have punished me, but it’d have
been worth it to see you. I knew you’d be hurt, though, and I
didn’t want to see that look of pain on your face.”

His smile, somewhere between resigned and
bittersweet, broke Lena’s heart, and made her want to hold on to
him and never let go again.

“I thought I had changed,” he repeated, meeting
her eyes again. “My Sire said vampires can’t love. But I still love
you. I knew I did from the first night I rose, and he tried
everything to convince me it wasn’t possible. I thought I believed
him, but when I saw you earlier, dancing with that guy, I knew
nothing had changed. I knew I still love you as much as I did when
I was human. And that tells me it was the real thing between us, if
everything in me changed except for that.”

Lena moved first. Her free hand rose toward
Liam’s face and cupped his cheek, drawing him toward her as she
leaned forward. His lips were cool, but as soft as they had been in
her dreams and memories, and everything disappeared from her world
until only she and Liam remained.

His hands dropped to her waist, and
he pulled her to sit on his lap, his gesture as tender and careful
as he had ever been, but containing a restrained strength that
changed it—and him—at the same time. Lena noticed, she
couldn’t
not
have noticed, and realized that the man holding her in his
arms was different from the one she had once been weeks away from
marrying. But she didn’t care, or didn’t want to care. All that
mattered for now was being with him.

Intent on rediscovering him, she kept her lips
light on his, brushing against them, drawing back then forward
again, each touch bringing back a memory. He seemed content to let
her do as she pleased for a little while; but after a moment, his
hands tightened briefly at her waist, and in the same instant, he
deepened the kiss, his tongue all but requesting passage past her
lips. She complied with a quiet sound at the back of her throat
that he soothed by gently stroking her back along the edges of the
tulle wings.

At first, all she felt was pure tactile
memories. She wasn’t in a club anymore. She was on the top row of
the empty bleachers, the game long over and the warmth of Liam’s
mouth and hands on hers even greater than that of the sun, high
above them. She was in the park two blocks from campus, the
leftovers from a picnic and study session forgotten for a moment to
enjoy a much-needed mental break and cuddle. She was in that small
apartment they had shared for almost two years, a new ring on her
finger, a stunned ‘yes’ still echoing in the room even as she and
Liam shared their first kiss as an engaged couple. She experienced
their three and a half years of love, in a single kiss.