Tears of the Broken (53 page)

I
stood up quickly, but my heel shattered the step under my
foot—dragging my shin through the jagged claws of wood before my
knee smashed, with rock-on-rock force, into the edge of the top
step as I fell onto my hands.

Without thinking, I rolled over and pulled my leg free from
the tenuous cage of the step-remains, scraping the flesh back the
other way, making it sting as a mix of blood and sweat smeared into
the shredded skin.

“
Ow!
Ow! Ow!” I hugged my knee, then dared to open my eyes and examine
the damage. The minced skin along my shin pooled with tiny,
pinprick spots of blood, and a purpling line appeared on the top of
my knee where it cracked the upper step.

Not
bothering to see if I was okay, Skittles bolted off with his catch
of the day. “Traitor!” I yelled, blinking back the tears that
coated my vision.

“
Ara? Are you okay, dear?” I jumped a little as the front door
swung open, disturbing the quiet. “What happened?”

“
Had
a fight with the porch step—” I took a breath through my teeth,
rocking back and forth, “Step won.”

Vicki tilted her head and sighed. “I told Greg to fix that a
few
weeks
ago.
I’ll go get the medi-kit.” She ran inside, leaving the front door
open, and quickly came back to sit beside me on the remains of the
once creaky bottom step. “What were you doing out here anyway, Ara?
It’s very early.”

“
I
went jogging.” I winced as she put some sterile solution on the
cut.

She
stopped for a second. “I didn’t know you were jogging again. That’s
really good to hear.” She sounded pleased—with
herself
.

Maybe I should tell her that it isn’t a sign of my recovery,
but more of my isolation and desperate need to figure my head
out.

“
Did
you see Skittles out here? I thought I heard his bell. He has a vet
appointment this morning and I want to bath him before we go.” She
grinned.

“
Yeah, well, he’ll need one now,” I said.

“
Why?” She covered the cut with some gauze and
tape.

“
He
caught himself a nice, juicy mouse,” I probed, watching her face
for disgust. There it is, without any further prompting. Sam will
definitely be bathing Skittles now. Victory. I one-upped him, and
he won’t even know it was me.

“
Why
would you let him do that, Ara? You know how I feel about
that.”

“
Why?” I scoffed. “It’s what he’s meant to do, Vicki, he’s a
cat—they kill mice and—” I shrugged, then nearly choked on my own
words—unable to finish the sentence. Frozen, I stared into the
lawn—not even looking at the green of the grass. Catatonic is what
Vicki would call it, but I call it sudden realisation.

Skittles is right. He’s a cat—he’s
supposed
to catch mice. It’s what
they do. And I love that stupid cat—I’ve never thought he was evil.
Annoying, maybe, but not evil. And I’ve never punished him for what
he is.

Oh,
God. I was so mean to David. I had no right to judge him. I marvel
at the lion and laugh at the cat catching a rodent, but I shunned
David for the element of his survival. He wouldn’t kill if it
weren’t necessary. He’s a good, kind person, but he’s
also
a vampire. It’s not
the same thing.

Vicki waved her hand in front of my face. “Ara, are you all
right, dear?”

Blinking, I snapped out of my trance and looked at her. “Uh,
yeah. I’m fine.”

“
Well, come on, we’ll go inside and yell at Dad for not fixing
that step.” She took my hand and helped me to stand.

“
Actually, Vicki, I think I’ll just go sit
on the swing for a bit.” I need to think. I just realised what a
large proportion of this whole repulsion thing is
really
about.

“
Okay.” She frowned, then smiled. “Well, I’ll be inside if you
need to talk.”

“
Oh,
um—” I forced a smile, “thanks, Vicki.”

She
nodded and walked back up the stairs. When the front door closed,
my smile dropped. Poor David. I’ve known in my heart all along that
I love him—no matter what he is. I never needed time to think
about
that
.
Eternity is a different matter. But I’ve been punishing him for
what he is—in the only way I can—by denying him my
heart.

It’s
terrible that he’s a vampire, but he didn’t become one just to
annoy me. I never even realised it, but I was toying with him by
saying I’d think about the end of the summer—it always belonged to
him. That was really mean of me.

I
stumbled clumsily over the hedge at the side of the house and into
the backyard. Then, as I righted myself and looked up—met with the
eyes of a vampire. “David?”

Perfect as always, he leaned casually against the oak tree,
with one hand in his pocket and a very sexy smile across his lips.
“Hello Ara,” his tone seemed to sing the words.

“
What’re you doing here?” My heart begged me to run to him—but
my brain told me to stay away—because of my bleeding
leg.

David looked down at his feet as he shuffled up, very
human-like, from his lean against the trunk. I love it when he
looks human. “May I?” He offered his hand.

With
a short pause of hesitation, I looked at his long, outstretched
fingers, then accepted. My shaky legs turned to jelly as David
helped me to sit on the ground, and almost instantly, the morning
dew soaked through the tips of the grass and made my shorts
moist.

“
Now, what happened here?” he muttered, more to himself than
to me, and squatted down beside me, delicately resting his cool
touch on either side of my tender knee. I tensed a little while he
ran his fingertip down the long gauze-covered scrape. “You will
never have to be afraid of me, Ara.” He shook his head and kissed
my knee, then placed it gently back on the ground. “It would take a
lot more than a line of blood across your skin to make me hurt
you.”

“
I
know, and—”

“
Shh.” He placed his finger over my lip and nodded toward
something behind me.

I
stiffened. “What is it?”

“
Vicki—” he looked back at me. “She’s watching us from the
laundry.”

“
Well…what’s she doing in there—just watching us?”
Creepy.

“
No.” David’s intense stare softened to a smile. “She’s
bathing a cat, I believe.”

“
What?” I spun around to see her struggling
with something in the sink—something smudgy and dark-grey—almost
slimy, with claw-ending tendrils that thrashed out of the tub and
snaked along her forearms every few seconds. “Why is
she
bathing the
cat?”

“
I
assure you, I have no idea.”

I
turned back, folding my arms, probably wearing a scowl, too. “It
was a rhetorical question. Sam was supposed to be doing it—as
payback for…well…never mind.” I don’t want to tell him that I muck
around with my little brother like a seven-year-old. “Those deep
scratches were meant to be for
him
.”

David laughed. “Revenge will not bring satisfaction,
Ara.”

“
Says you,” I scoffed, biting my teeth together.

“
If
you want to get back at Sam for hitting you with a tea
towel—”

“
How
do you know about that?”

David only smiled, ignoring that question. “You might try
setting him up to be punished with dishes for the next
month.”

I
grinned—a wicked grin. “You
are
evil, aren’t you?”

“
When it comes to little brothers, yes, I have a few tricks up
my sleeve.”

“
So,
um…” I checked behind me, then whispered, “Can we go somewhere?
Talk?”

“
Would you like to change first?” David grinned, nodding
toward my shorts and zip-up jacket, but stared just a little too
long at the space right below my navel.

If
only I knew what he was thinking then, when he looked at me that
way.

“
I’m
sorry—” he straightened up, “but my thoughts are terribly
inappropriate for a young lady to hear.”

One
side of my brow folded and I blinked, supressing the festering
sarcasm deep in my vocabulary. Inappropriate? I’m not five! I’ll to
let that one pass, though; David is, after all, from a different
time. If Mike said that, I’d have answered with something very
cheeky—but it’d probably offend David.

“
Okay, well, I’ll just go get changed, then.”

“
I
shall wait in the car.” David watched me walk away, and when I
reached the back porch, I turned back to smile at…an empty
yard.

Chapter
Nineteen

“
I
thought I’d never see this place again.” I breathed the warm air of
the fading summer and looked at the lake’s glassy
reflection.

“
Why
would you think that?” David smiled, already laid out on the picnic
rug.

“
Well, because obviously this place has no hold for me without
you in it.”

“
So,
you weren’t planning to see me again.” He nodded to himself, then
paused, thoughtful. “Does it make you afraid? To be here alone with
a vampire?”

“
It’s no different to before, really.” I slumped on the rug,
across from David, tucking my dress under my legs as I sat. “I’ve
always been out here alone—with a vampire.”

“
Yes, but…” sadness stole his smile, “now, I’m a
killer.”

I
twiddled my fingers in my lap. “I was wrong to react that way,
David. I’m sorry, and I—” I stopped talking when I saw his beaming
smile.

“
I’m
listening,” he said with a nod.

“
What’s the point? You already know what I’m going to
say.”

“
I’m
sorry.” He sat up and took my hand. “I promise I won’t listen to
your thoughts—for now.”

“
You
can do that?”

“
Most of the time I’m actually not paying attention to your
thoughts. It’s just when you’re very quiet that I…help
myself.”

“
Hm,
that doesn’t make it okay, you know?” I shook my head. “Well,
anyway, I’ve been thinking. You kill people, David. I love you—and
you kill people.” David shuffled in his spot, and I added quickly,
“But Skittles made me realise something.”

“
Skittles? I didn’t know he could talk.”

“
I
guess everything has a voice, if you’re willing to listen.” I took
a deep breath. “What I wanted to say is…I realised that what you
eat doesn’t change who you are. I mean, if you were lost in the
wild after a plane crash and had to eat the pilot to survive, no
one would think anything of it. Humans are the element of your
survival, and…I can accept that…at least until the end of the
summer.”

One
corner of his mouth turned up, ever so slightly. “But, not for
forever?”

“
Forever,” I laughed the word out. “That
used to have such a different meaning to me.” I smiled and looked
away. “I can’t even comprehend eternity. It’s too much for my puny
human brain to take. I—” I pulled his clenched fist away from the
grip of his hair and held it tight, “—I love you. I love David—the
boy. Don’t you see? We’re looking at this all wrong. We
could
spend the rest of
our lives together—well,
my
life, I suppose—as just David and Ara, as human
as possible, and the rest doesn’t really have to involve me. I can
accept you for what you are, well…” I reconsidered my words,
“More
who
you
are—it doesn’t mean I have to be a part of it.”

With
his silence prompting me, I let my mouth wander. “I thought about
it all last night. We could wait ‘til we get older, then we could
get married and one day adopt if we wanted kids, and then, when the
ageing starts to show—my ageing—I could get plastic surgery to look
younger, and…” I paused, studying David’s shifting expression, “And
we could be together. Be a family—the way it’s supposed to
be.”

“
Ara?” David snatched his hand back.

“
No,
David. Don’t you get it? I don’t want to lose you. I need to be
with you—no matter what?”

“
No
matter what, huh?” He shook his head, a sideways smile lighting the
sarcasm in his eyes. “So, what you’re saying is…you accept me for
who I am, not what I am, and you want me to give up everything to
be with you—then, in time, give you up—go for eternity without
you.”

“
Yes,” I muttered solemnly. “I want you, but I want human
you.”

He
stared up at the sky, with his elbow rested on his knee and his
fingers tangled in the hair above his brow. The sunlight emphasised
the shadows of his temples, making them seem deep—showing contours
of his face I’d never noticed before. “David? What is it, what’s
wrong?”

“
I’m
not human, Ara,” he said, poorly disguising the ache in his
voice.

“
I
know.”