Authors: April Smyth
She grabs the stake out of my hand and proceeds to open up a vein and push it into her boyfriend’s mouth. I feel stunned by her hatred and the realisation of what I have done. It wasn’t my place, was it?
The witches go inside to attend to each other and discuss what must be done next to stop this happening every day. The only people left are Oliver, Rose, Claire and I - how surreal.
I feel their gazes burning into me as if I have committed a heinous crime. I try to decipher why each of them is looking at me with such disdain. Claire is fuming. I stole her rightful duty to heal her boyfriend and embarrassed her by making the decision quicker than she did. Oliver is angry that I risked my safety for Gabe, again, I know this doesn’t lean in my favour in convincing Oliver that whatever is going on between Gabe and I is irrelevant now. I think Rose is just baffled by the stupidity and the rashness of my bold move to give Gabe my blood when the fellow Healer in our company was his girlfriend.
After ingesting Claire’s blood, Gabe starts to heal and I feel remorse as I watch him kiss Claire. It was not my place to heal him, I can see that but I just didn’t think. I saw somebody I love in pain, dying, and I acted. I shouldn’t have to apologise for trying to save someone’s life just because his girlfriend was otherwise occupied. Truthfully, I’m not used to having another Healer around and I didn’t have time to consider how she would feel when I saw my friend dying on a New York City pavement. I also didn’t give a second thought about how it would make Oliver feel but now he looks like he might cry.
‘Let’s go inside,’ Rose says to break up the sound of Gabe and Claire kissing and Oliver and I’s hearts breaking.
The tension is ripe and everyone is feeling it except Gabe who is thankful to be alive right now. He only has eyes for his adoring girlfriend. I don’t think he even noticed that I had offered my healing blood first and it bothers me. I’m in trouble.
TWENTY-ONE
Gabe and Claire head to their apartment while I am left with the uncomfortable silence of Rose and Oliver as my company. I know that the second Rose leaves I am going to get lectured for hours. After such a perfect afternoon with him, I’m not ready to give that up and start arguing again.
Arrow is waiting in the lounge when we reach the apartment. ‘Is everything alright?’ she asks with small pauses between each word as she gages our facial expressions. No. Everything is not alright. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place or that’s how I’m being made to feel but I shouldn’t. I love Gabe, I always will, but it’s Oliver I want to be with. I love him more but he can’t get to grips with that and he is making me feel terribly guilty for still harboring feelings for my ex.
‘How is Gabe?’ Arrow asks when she gets no response.
‘He’s fine now. Claire used her blood to heal him,’ Rose replies. There is no mention of my contribution to Gabe’s recovery and it seems that it is something I should be ashamed of, something that will be swept under the rug because of its inappropriateness.
Rose clears her throat nervously, ‘It has been a long day, guys. I think I’ll hit the hay and get some sleep.’
‘Who knows what tomorrow will bring,’ Arrow smiles at her second cousin who could not have been more hasty getting away from us.
I try to avoid being alone with Oliver though so I stay with Arrow and her strange tea concoction for as long as possible but the inevitable happens and Arrow goes to bed leaving me alone with my very unhappy suitor. He gives me a stern look before stalking back to our bedroom expecting me to follow him. I figure I better not madden him any more so I oblige and follow him into our bedroom with trembling hands.
He perches on our bed and, for the second time today, buries his bearded face into his hands. This time I don’t wait for him to talk. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve... done something wrong, Oliver,’ I stutter. I am not entirely sure what it is that I have done wrong.
‘Let’s just go to sleep, okay?’
If he wants to have an argument with me, he should go ahead and start one. I’m not stupid enough to think that going to bed mad at someone is a good idea. It will only give him time to mull over how upset he is with me and in turn get even more upset. ‘No, you’re mad at me,’ I say, almost accusingly.
There are moments in life where you wonder if things are going to work and if you will ever be truly happy. Happiness is fleeting and leaves my life almost as quickly as it entered it but I assume that one day I will find the sort of contentment that sustains. Right now I’m struggling to see if that future will ever appear anymore especially if Oliver can’t resolve his issues with Gabe.
‘This is exhausting,’ he sighs and lies back on the bed.
Tell me about it... Living inside my own head is dizzying and it’s making it difficult to focus my eyes solely on Oliver. I don’t even know what I want or how I feel anymore. I’m only eighteen, am I supposed to know? Oliver seems to be at the centre but the blurry periphery still exists where the gentle background noise is a constant reminder of Gabe, Claire, Maurice, Rose. I feel like I haven’t slept in a year and the weariness only dissipates when I’m around Oliver, when he’s not upset with him. I feel a tonne weight falling onto me as I think about how much I am hurting him. I don’t want to be the reason there is pain in his eyes. I want to take it away like he does for me.
Oliver bites his lip and looks up at me. I give him a long look of apology and of hope then he pulls me into him and rests his head on my chest. ‘I’m scared you’ll run to him,’ Oliver’s voice shakes with fear. I want to step inside of his mind and make him see that no matter how much I care for Gabe I want Oliver more.
I still can’t find my voice so I just stroke his hair tenderly and hope that is enough to ease his anxiety until the right words come to me. He continues, ‘Can I live my life loving you without being sure you love me back?’
‘How can you doubt that I love you?’ I pull away and look at his forlorn face.
He winces, ‘It’s not that! I know you love me but do you love him more?’
I’m not sure I even love Gabe at all. I was seventeen, lonely and bored when I met him. He was handsome and he was a bad boy who excited me. There was pain in his eyes and I felt sorry for him then I projected a lifetime of rejection and feeling left out onto him. I care, cared, for him, yes, but did I love him? Was it love or infatuation? Did I have any right to love him when I knew so little about him?
With Oliver, I am certain it is love. I’d done some growing up and thinking before he came along and he was like a breath of fresh air into my clammy, claustrophobic life of feigned normalcy. He opened up to me. I know his pain, his past but also his pleasure and his present. So far, other than unnecessary jealousy, I haven’t seen anything about Oliver that makes me want to run away in the opposite direction.
I try to explain this to him as best as I can but the pressure of his emotions and the exhaustion of the day’s events are weighing heavily on top of me so my words are stuttered and clumsy. When I look at him I am begging him to believe that I will be faithful to him. My feelings for Gabe are confused and befuddled but I can sort them out, Oliver can help me, and we can move on and be happy together. Once the vampires are out of our way there will be no more stumbling blocks and we can be a normal couple, right?
‘What happens next?’ Oliver asks wistfully.
What is he asking that for? What is he suggesting? I want to say I’m sorry, go to sleep and feel the safety of his touch. I don’t like the uncertainty in his voice. I know he is upset with me and worried about Gabe’s place in my life but surely he isn’t doubting us? I thought we were beyond this. Truthfully, I could not imagine my life without Oliver now. Losing Gabe was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do and I’m not sure I could face doing it again. I couldn’t take the loneliness, the empty nights or the rejection. I couldn’t go back to my family and start pretending to be normal again. I need Oliver in my life. I can’t imagine how quickly the nightmares would return if he left me.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask and I’m aware that my bottom lip is trembling hyperactively. Maurice is dead; the tears should have stopped.
As I start to cry, Oliver beckons me to sit beside and pulls my body in tightly next to his. ‘I can’t be one of two men in your life when you’re the only one for me, Cassie,’ he says softly and brushes my hair gently even when he is hurting, when I am hurting him, he still finds it in his huge heart to reach out and comfort me and take my tears away. He can’t be throwing this away because he’s jealous.
I wade through my pool of tears and say, ‘Oliver, what do you want me to do? Unmeet Gabe? I would if I could but I can’t help that he is in my life.’
Oliver shakes his head. I know that’s not the answer he is looking for but I can’t lie to him and tell him I am willing to erase Gabe from my life. Gabe transformed me from the pitiful girl that I started this year as into the girl I am today. Would Oliver love the girl I used to be? Without Gabe, I wouldn’t be the Cassie he comforts and protects and loves.
‘Do you want to break up with me, Oliver? Do you want to end this?’ I ask.
‘No,’ he replies aghast. ‘I want to talk about this. That’s what people do, Cassie, they talk about their feelings instead of brushing them under the rug and hoping that eventually the tears and hurt will stop. They won’t just stop on their own.’
‘Do you think that’s what I do?’ I ask. If anyone sweeps their feelings out of sight it is Oliver, he can’t confront his demons either. He blames what he is for the death of his parent and so loathes himself to the core for being a werewolf yet he can never talk to
me
about that.
‘I think that’s what you used to do,’ he shrugs. ‘Until you met me.’
I smile weakly. He’s right. I spent six months pretending to be normal in Ayrin. I feigned being happy for my pregnant stepmother, playing hide and seek with my brother and sister, going to school and applying to University, going on dates with a boy who cared deeply for me but I couldn’t muster up an ounce of emotion for in return. I was making believe that my life was good, that it was the life I wanted, but all the while I yearned for something else. I spent so much time pretending to live that I forgot how to do it.
Then I found Oliver, bearded, handsome and wise Oliver, sitting in my bedroom one day and things changed entirely. Lying on his bed, laughing, talking about our lives, I was resuscitated from my endless slumber. I learned to stop living for my dad or for Gabe or in fear of Maurice, I learned to
really
enjoy the things that I was taking for granted. I went through the motions in Ayrin but Oliver taught me to realise how beautiful the simple pleasures in my life were: my morning run, fresh fruit for breakfast or having my lumpy body appreciated by another human being.
‘When all this is over, will you go back to not living?’
‘Only if I lose you,’ I sigh.
Oliver gently squeezes my shoulder, ‘I don’t want that for you, Cass. I’ll never leave you if you don’t want me to but... I don’t want you to depend on me like you did with Gabe. I want you to be able to be happy on your own because you’re too amazing, too strong and brave, to need a man to make you complete.’
I rest my head on his strong shoulder and stare into an uncertain future, ‘But I do need you.’
Oliver laughs, ‘You needed him and look where you ended up. When the vampires are gone and you can sleep easy, I want you to be able to do that on your own because you deserve that.’
Is he right? Is it wrong that I can’t sleep at night without his muscular arms encompassing me? I guess it is a sad story that an eighteen year old girl depends whole heartedly on a man to make her happy. Before Toulouse, before Gabe and Maurice, I believed that a woman should be strong and independent. She should chase after her dreams and a handsome knight on a white horse should never be her goal; he should just come along for the ride. When had Oliver, or Gabe, became my only desire in life? When did I lose my lust for life? I used to want to do things, travel, make something of my place other than Miracle Girl. Look what happened though when I tried to achieve my dream of meeting a vampire... Maybe I’m not destined to be one of those great women.