Page 20 of Incandescence
Alexander
I took my weight off Charley to lie on my back beside her, my hand clasping hers and our breathing in sync as we stared up at the ceiling.
I didn’t doubt for a second that Charley was as awed as me, knowing that we could make love without fear tainting the act. We no longer had to run and hide, no longer had the vampire in the back of our minds.
Charley tilted her head my way. “I can barely comprehend we now have a future to look forward to together.”
I squeezed her hand. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
She smiled, her gorgeous eyes glowing even as she squeezed my hand in return. “Incredible,” she agreed.
“But?” I asked, sensing more than just happiness behind her stare.
“But, I believe to move forward, we need to put the past behind us.”
I searched her stare. “Sometimes it’s good to share what has defined us. What made us who we are.”
She nodded. “And to go into a relationship with the blinkers off and everything out in the open.”
I brushed my thumb along her lower lip. “Are you volunteering to go first?” I asked.
She blinked. “I am. Just don’t...judge me.”
I shook my head. “Believe me, my days of judging people are way behind me.”
She pulled her bottom lip into her mouth, as though unsure where to start. I lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Take your time. There’s no hurry. Not anymore.”
She nodded. “I guess I’ll start from when my childhood was a happy place. Before my father died in a workplace accident on our farm and my mother went off the rails.”
“How old were you when he died?”
Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment, as though masking her pain. But when she focused on me next, there was a quiet strength in her stare. “I was almost thirteen. I remember that much, at least, because my thirteenth birthday was a non-event, when our birthdays used to be such a celebration.”
My heart squeezed with love for her. As if it wasn’t bad enough she’d lost a parent, she hadn’t had her father either to celebrate her becoming a teenager, and guiding her through those formative years.
“My mother was too drunk to even acknowledge my birthday. She was too deep in her own grief to acknowledge I was also grieving.”
I fingered a piece of her hair that’d escaped her ponytail, before I brushed it behind her ear. “She must have really loved your father.”
Charley sighed. “Yeah, she did. He was her life. I was just the kid who reminded my mom of the man she missed every single day.”
“That should have been a positive for her.”
“Believe me, it wasn’t.” She exhaled softly.
“Alcohol might have helped her to forget my dad, but it didn’t stop the bills from coming in.
The farm went into debt and mom sold it dirt cheap before we moved to Sydney.
It was there that drugs became her amnesia of choice.
It was also there that she began to use her body to get her fix, fucking strangers and even her drug dealer to afford the habit. ”
“I’m sorry, Charley.”
She managed a smile. “Not even six months after she kicked me out of our dingy home, she overdosed, finally getting her wish to join my father in the afterlife.”
I shook my head. “You should be proud of yourself and how you’ve turned out. I don’t know many people who would have survived that kind of childhood.” And I had no doubt there was a whole lot more to the story. I only hoped she’d tell me all about it one day.
She arched a brow. “Yeah, in my case it was a matter of either getting on with my own life or turning into my mother. And if dad really was watching me in spirit, I wanted to make him proud.”
I kissed her then, needing her velvet-soft lips against mine, to touch her as much as to reassure her. “I’ve never met a stronger, more courageous and beautiful woman in my life. Your dad would have been beyond proud of you.”
Her lashes fluttered and she sighed against my mouth, for a moment clearly losing herself in the kiss. Then she pulled back, a determined glint in her stare. “What about you? I know so little about you.”
I shrugged. “Honestly, there’s not a lot to tell. My childhood wasn’t anything to complain about. I had strict but loving parents who provided me with everything I could want materially. They were proud of my good grades, of my rising star in the law firm where I worked.”
She seemed to process the fact I had once been a lawyer, before she asked, “How did the vampire get you?”
A sigh shuddered from my lungs at the memory.
“I was working late at the firm. Everyone but a couple of cleaners had gone home hours before I finally finished working on a case. I made it as far as the car park before the vampire intercepted me. I have vague recollections of his voice washing over me, and not much else.”
“He brainwashed you into following him into the nest,” she whispered, clearly appalled that the vampire had been able to mislead us with such ease.
“Yes, though I don’t recall following him like a dumbass sheep. I think he must have oversaturated my mind with his command, because I’ve never experienced that level of persuasion since, not to the point of having big memory blanks.”
It was her turn to touch my face, her fingertips gently grazing along my jaw. “I’m glad you had a wonderful childhood. You would have needed to draw on that while living in the vampire’s nest all those years.”
She was right. At first I had drawn on my childhood memories to endure the vampire and his nest. But at my lowest point I had despaired at having known such happiness, and had done my best to forget my old life.
The only way I’d survived was to neutralize my emotions, ensure nothing touched me and made me yearn for what I’d once had.
“Oddly enough, I blocked out my childhood memories, while the most recent memories of my marriage and my career faded without even trying.”
“Maybe all those women the vampire brought to the nest had something to do with it?”
I didn’t like the thick lump of grief sitting deep in my belly from the women who’d arrived then died at the nest. I’d played my own part in not once trying to help any of them to escape.
After all, I’d been stuck there for so long, I’d never once entertained the thought that it was remotely possible to leave.
“Maybe,” I said hoarsely.
She smiled, but there was more sadness in her face than joy. “Let’s sleep on it. Things always make more sense in the light of day.”