Dark Secrets (Dark Secrets #1)(200)
Author: A.M. Hudson

“Nope.” I held the book to my chest as he sat beside me. “I’m good.”

“So, these are tears of hilarity?” He looked at the title.

“Yup. Funny scene.” I forced a smile.

Mike’s eyes narrowed, his head seeming to shake, though it held still. I knew he wasn’t born yesterday, but I also knew that with the prudence they all exercised with me lately, he wouldn’t push for the truth. The question was etching on his lips, though; he wanted to know why I cried if I didn’t remember much about the attack, and a part of him, I was sure, wondered if David had something to do with it.

He asked me once, if there was some reason David had become so upset when he saw the wound on my neck—more upset than anyone else. I simply told him it was because David loved me more than anyone else, and Mike accepted that answer, temporarily. But he’d eventually start piecing things together, I was sure of it.

“Ara?” Mike said, snapping his fingers in front of my face. “Quit fazing out.”

“Oh, sorry. What did you say?”

He sighed, eyes on my ring, then shook his head. “Nothing. It was nothing. I uh—” he stood up, “—I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

“Okay, Mike,” I said, and let him walk away. I couldn’t ask him what he’d just said—not when there was a strong chance it was about our engagement. We hadn’t mentioned it since I woke from the coma, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to yet.

I stared at the door again for a while after he closed it, trying not to embrace the past—not to look on it and remember the bad or the good. It was, and would remain, exactly as the dictionary described it—the past.

As another night rolled to a close, Sam sat at the base of my bed and sketched pictures in his journal. He was good company. It was enough for him to just sit and be silent; he didn’t need to probe or prod for details, attempting to assess my psychological state. It pretty clearly sat high at ‘completely messed-up’ since the attack—it didn’t take a genius to figure that out.

“What do you think?” He held up his book.

“Wow, Sam, that’s amazing.” Not just because the grey sketch of the girl looked exactly like me, but because she was smiling—something I’d not done since coming home.

He rested the book in his lap and kept his eyes on it. “Ara?”

“Yeah, Sam?”

“Do you remember much—about the attack?” He pretended to retrace the lines on his picture. “Does it keep you up at night?”

I stared at my thumbs, clicking them over each other. “Yes. It does. But I try not to think of it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Me too.” I rolled over and covered my head with my blankets.

No one told Sam the finer details of the attack, but gossip had a way of spreading. He came home late from school the other day, kept back on detention after punching a kid who told him my dad lied—that the truth was, my attacker really had…violated me. But no one knew what actually happened; I’d take the truth to my grave—however far away that may be. And I didn’t plan to stay in New England, either. My story made the news and all the major papers; there’d be no escaping the stares if I went back to school. Conclusions based on odd facts were the worst kinds of infectious humiliation. I’d already planned to jump on a plane and go back home as soon as I was well. Whether that was as Mike’s fiancé or not, I didn’t care. I just needed to get away from here—away from it all.

David once said that it was kinder for a vampire to kill a human than to leave them alive, suffering in agony until they finally passed. He was right. Death would have been kinder. Perhaps that’s why Jason left me alive—so I’d walk the Earth for the rest of my days, not only ashamed and broken, reliving the consequences of his cruelty in every nightmare, but also that I’d suffer it alone—without David. He must have known David would leave me if I wasn’t capable of change. He set out to punish David, but I was the one made to suffer.

A wild winter gale rattled my windowpane, and the darkness of the night touched every corner of my room. I couldn’t remember Sam leaving, and though I heard Dad and Vicki go to bed, I couldn’t remember if they came in to say goodnight—like they always did.

The music vibrating through my earphones helped filter out some of the clatter from the wind, but I should’ve been more careful about the playlist I chose because, tonight, in the darkness, these songs flooded my heart with the agony of missing David.

I made myself small against the wall and hugged my pillow to my chest. The skin along my cheeks hurt from the constant wiping of tears, but as the cold turned them icy against my lips, I forced myself to blot them away. Then, as I sniffled, the memory of David’s scent replayed in the darkness, an apparition of him appearing before me, making me lose the fight to subdue my sobs. I could hardly breathe, hardly stop my shoulders ferociously shaking as I bawled, muffling my cries against my hands. “You’re not really here, are you?”

He stared down at me, his liquid-green eyes intense with sorrow, as if our separation hurt him just as much as me. “If I were, my love, I shouldn’t be.” Then, as swiftly as he appeared, he was gone again, the tone of his smooth voice ringing in my ears as if he’d really spoken.

I remained breathless, watching the breeze blow in through my window, a second passing before my heart beat again.

“That’s it.” I tore my earphones out and ditched my iPod across the room, tossing my pillows and blanket on top so I wouldn’t have to think about it, then rolled over, shivering in the nakedness of my bed, wishing I’d at least kept my blanket. But regret only lasted another few sobs as the exhaustion of healing swept me under the grasp of sleep.

Morning has a funny way of turning up when it’s not wanted. The unruly wind from last night receded with the moon, and the sun cast a scarlet ribbon across the horizon. Through the reflection of my antique mirror on the other side of my room, I watched a murder of crows flock in the open sky. It was early, but there was still so much beauty in the morning, despite the world’s ignorance to its existence.

I snuggled up under my blanket, tucking my hand under my pillow, but held my breath, feeling something small and solid slip between my fingertips. I sat up and unfolded my hand, my skin going tight with bumps as a silver chain dangled down, swinging from my heart-shaped locket, the French inscription face up, bringing tears to my eyes.