Passions Page 15

  Gavin chuckled good-naturedly at her joke. “I can understand that.”

  They exchanged smiles and went back to watching the movie, although Chloe found it hard to focus on anything but the subtle changes on Gavin’s face at certain scenes. They’d gone from confused to pensive, then flickered with anger for the characters who deserved it. And towards the end, he displayed something that she hardly expected to see—envy.

  When Lieutenant McPherson and Laura had an intimate moment in the interrogation room, Gavin looked as if he wanted that connection that they shared. Chloe knew how he felt. She understood completely and wished that she could fill that longing for him.

  Chapter 12

  The jeep pulled up to the cabin, headlights shining through the murky darkness ahead to illuminate the porch and front windows. Gavin still hadn’t gotten used to the rough ride, and the tiny tear in the seat leather was a testimony to that. Yellow foam was beginning to stick out past the jagged edge of the fabric, but Chloe wasn’t about to make him feel bad about it.

  She cut off the engine and slid out of the jeep without a word. They hadn’t spoken since the movie ended and they made their way back to the cabin. Both of them could feel the end of the diversion though the night was still young. Chloe wasn’t a bit tired after sleeping all day, and there was plenty of writing left to do.

  She imagined that Gavin would be anxious to begin again, as he was every evening when he came back from his first feed after waking up. The way he obsessed over writing was almost disturbing and slightly oppressive to Chloe who longed for an extended break. Spending two hours away from the cabin wasn’t enough.

  Writing had never been an arduous task for her. She never regretted the choice she made to pursue her career as an author. But after several straight days of doing nothing but tap away at her laptop, the task was becoming monotonous. Perhaps it was true what they said—there was such a thing as too much of a good thing.

  Chloe hiked up to the cabin along the gravel path, the cool night wind teasing her long wavy hair. As soon as she got inside she’d pull it all back so it wouldn’t be in her way. Her efforts with the straightener did not last long without the added hairspray to make it all stay in place.

  When Chloe glanced over her shoulder at Gavin, she found he wasn’t in the jeep, but neither was he tailing close behind her like she expected. Instead, she marveled at the sight of him standing some distance down the hill, bathed in blue moonlight.

  He was facing away from her, standing so still as he gazed out towards the creek, his long coat tails billowing in the wind like they had the first night they met.

  “Where are you going?” Chloe called out. She didn’t know what provoked her to ask. It was none of her business what he did. Perhaps he heard a deer grazing on the other side of the creek and wanted to venture out for another snack.

  This was the second time she’d seen him in such a setting with the moon cresting in the midnight sky above and the crickets playing their usual song in the trees. And nothing had changed but the phase of the moon. He was still handsome, still alluring, and he still had an air of mystery about him that she couldn’t penetrate.

  Despite having known him for a couple of weeks, she really knew very little about him. Many questions still burned in her mind.

  Gavin turned and looked at her, calmness in his expression that left an indelible mark in her memory. She would forever remember him this way—placid, tranquil, and so ethereally handsome.

  “I thought I’d take a walk by the creek,” he replied.

  Chloe smiled, nodded, and turned away to ascend the porch steps, but his voice stopped her at the first tread.

  “Would you do me the honor of having your company?”

  She looked back and felt her heart beat a little faster. When she had invited him to the movies, it was an attempt to draw him out of the cabin and into society, into her world. Now, he did the same for her, offering to share a moonlight walk in a place she had known so well in the daylight, but never by moonlight.

  This was a night of firsts for both of them.

  “Sure,” she responded, as she carefully traversed the steep slope to catch up with him. She didn’t need another twisted ankle, though it would have been nice to have Gavin carry her back up to the cabin again.

  She joined him, and they walked down the hill together. After a short trek through the forest, they came to the creek.

  It wasn’t much different than in the daytime. The light from above sparkled on the waves like it did in Gavin’s gorgeous eyes, and the same breeze rustled the leaves in the branches that hung over the stream.

  How many times they must have come here by themselves, but never together. Along with the cabin, they had this creek and the mountains in common. Though they were so different in almost every way, they were still able to find some common ground.

  Chloe cautiously came to the edge of the creek, her boots fractionally sinking into the mud as her eyes settled upstream. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, letting her mind slip into a state of quiescent.

  “Are you cold?” Gavin asked from somewhere behind her. That was the second time he had asked that tonight.

  The timbre of his voice caught her off guard as she turned to see that he’d been staring at her from a few yards away the whole time.

  She had to admit that her jacket was a little thinner than she’d like. “A little. But I’m alright.”

  Gavin seemed to ignore the second part of her response, and she watched as he slipped off his jacket, revealing the masculine body beneath. He approached her and deftly draped it over her shoulders, the tips of his fingers brushing against her as he released the garment.

  The jacket was still warm and stained with his scent that engulfed her senses. Despite herself, Chloe shrugged into the sleeves that were far too big for her slender arms and hugged the flaps around her torso.

  Gavin didn’t shrink back into the shadows where he had been stalking, but stayed behind her, so achingly close. If she were to lean back, even a hair’s breadth, she would have grazed against his chest.

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, mist pluming from her mouth and disappearing with the wind.

  “Something on your mind?” he asked, his voice inviting and warm with affection as if he cared what she was really thinking.

  It’d been a long time since someone actually cared what was going on inside her mind. Not even Brent wanted to hear her most secret thoughts, though she had asked many times on a daily basis.

  But did she want to spill her guts to this man who had become her new and closest friend in the world apart from her family? She spent every day with him and yet she knew practically nothing. Yet, how much did she need to know before they bridged the chasm between them?

  Her mind was a jumble of thoughts that she couldn’t pin down anymore. If he knew what was going on in her mind, he would know that half of everything couldn’t be articulated so easily in one night spent by a creek.

  But Chloe felt compelled to try.

  “I have a lot on my mind,” she said simply as a test to see if he really wanted to hear it all laid out before him.

  “Would it help to talk about it?”

  Suddenly, she felt fear. Not fear of how silly she would sound carrying on garrulously about nothing that he should be concerned about. But fear of what would happen between them if she did tell him everything. Could she open up to him and there be no consequences?

  Everything inside told her to keep her doors locked, to not let a single soul in. She didn’t want to be hurt as she had been before. But there was a small voice urging her to open the gates and let this man in. He was different. Maybe he wouldn’t hurt her.

  Whatever the right course of action was, Chloe didn’t know if she was taking it.

  “Maybe,” she said, a slight tremor in her voice despite how strong she tried to be in the face of all that lay before her tonight.

  “Well,” he said with a light tone, “I
have a pair of ears that are waiting to be ensorcelled by your voice.”

  Chloe snorted, unsure of what he meant exactly, as she didn’t know the meaning of the word “ensorcelled”, but it sounded like a stab at flirting or flattery. She wasn’t going to scold him for it.

  “I have so many questions. I don’t know how to ask them, where to really begin, or if I should bother asking them at all.”

  Gavin was still for a moment, then she felt a hollowness behind her as he moved away. She wanted to make a sound of protest, but only turned to see him take a few meandering steps downstream. His eyes were fixed on the slow current.

  “I imagine you do have many questions. Feel free to ask. I will not withhold any answers.”

  Such invitation gave Chloe hope. She resolved to not make a muddle of this opportunity. Every question would be carefully worded.

  Beginning with the most pressing question, she asked, “I know you’re from England, but how did you come to be here in Georgia?”

  Chloe saw Gavin’s lips thin into a tight line. Recalling her words, she thought the question was structured well and without a hint of offensive tone. Maybe he was having second thoughts.

  But he lifted his chin, and he raised his gaze to the trees on the opposite shore.

  “I was born in Hatherleigh, in the county of Devon, in 1708. My father was a blacksmith, so naturally, I became one, too. I did well in the trade.” He gave a slight shrug as if he weren’t convinced of it.

  A corner of Chloe’s mouth twitched when she imagined him sweating away over a coal fire with a burning hot stick of iron in his fist.

  “I had a brother who was a few years older than I. Before I left, he had two daughters and a son. I won’t bore you with their names or appearances.

  “I married young. She was the baker’s daughter. We were of the same class, so it wasn’t so uncommon.”

  Chloe hated the small smirk that came to his face. He was remembering his wife. A smoldering jealousy burned in her stomach for the woman whom she didn’t even know. It was puerile the way she envied a woman who lived almost three centuries ago. She tried not to show her disappointment at the knowledge that he had been married once before. How could she expect him to have been a bachelor all this time?

  But the hate was ephemeral as his new look of disgust glowered in the darkness. “But I nearly ruined us with dreams. We had a son to take care of, and I chased after a career as a novelist. Manuscript after manuscript was turned down, and our debt was mounting daily.”

  Chloe didn’t know what hurt more, the punch in the gut that he had fathered a child, or that he had taken the same path she had in becoming a writer, and yet obviously failed.

  “But we were given a chance at a new life. We were given a grant to come settle in Georgia, which had become a sort of debtors’ colony in the New World. The journey across the sea was long, but we finally arrived in Savannah in February of 1733 on the ship called ‘Anne’.

  “We were all excited. We built that cabin together, and I set my hand to becoming a fur trader. There was no chance for me to write, but we could build a new life—a fresh start for all of us, especially my son.”

  Chloe tried not to wince at the affection in his voice when he talked about his son. She should have been happy for him, but she wasn’t. Not yet. It was like finding out her childhood crush had married and moved on with his life without her, but somehow in reverse. Gavin no longer looked like a shiny new penny, but a dingy coin that she couldn’t define. Had three hundred years polished that past life away? Considering the way he smiled and spoke so fondly of his family, she doubted it.

  Gavin heaved a sigh, and she saw the icy fog roll out of his mouth for the first time. There was a brokenness in his expression that brought her back to his story.

  “My son was four years old and had gone to play in the woods. To this day, I don’t know what happened out there. But, he came back with a deep gash in his arm, screaming that something bit him. We couldn’t calm him enough to find out what exactly had bitten him.

  “My wife cleaned the wound, but he got very sick with a fever. Then she and I both became sick with the same thing. It was an illness we had never known or heard of before, so we didn’t know how to treat it.”

  Chloe saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed back the wave of emotion that clouded in his eyes.

  “We were all too weak to move. As we lay in bed, I knew my son had slipped away from us. I remember my wife’s last words to me were of love and that she always believed in my stories.”

  Chloe was so rapt by the story that she had to remind herself to breathe. Every nasty emotion she felt towards Gavin’s family had been swept away in the creek’s current.

  She couldn’t imagine his pain in losing everyone he held so dear to him. Her heart bled for him, and she would have let him drink what came out if it were possible. She would have given anything to make that pain go away.

  “And I knew I had died. I can’t tell you what made me so sure, but I knew. When I awoke, it was nighttime. My wife and son lay beside me. They were both cold and pale and dead. But I knew that something was not right with me. I felt things I had never felt before. I heard everything around me; I could smell things that no human could possibly detect.

  “What disturbed me the most were the thoughts I had. When I sat up from the bed, I felt a need to seek blood. It took all my willpower to resist the impulse to feed on my dead wife and child.”

  Chloe wanted to beg him not to go on. She could infer the rest. He didn’t need to explain. But her vocal cords wouldn’t respond to her command. She just stood there, lips parted ever so slightly, wide eyes staring at Gavin as he continued explaining all the things she had not asked about.

  “But I buried them in accordance to what I could do at the time. I fought off the need for as long as I could. When I discovered that sunlight burned my skin like a hot brand, I sought shelter in the food cellar.

  “I tried to eat what was there, but I couldn’t keep anything down. When night came once more, I couldn’t fight it any longer. I fed on a beaver of all things,” he said with an ill-humored laugh.

  “As time went on, I learned what I had become. I heard of legends growing up about creatures that walked the night and drank blood. I don’t know how this curse came upon me or why. If it was the disease my family contracted, I should have died with them, or they could have joined me in this eternal curse. But I, alone, survived. The world went on without me, and I’ve learned to cope with this as best I can. But I don’t rejoice in this existence.”

  The vicious glint of his fangs on those last syllables curled over his lips made her blood run cold. “It’s just like you said that night when I cut myself,” she said, her voice meek and breathy. “You’re a man trying desperately not to be a monster.”

  Gavin looked at her for the first time since he began his story. She felt torn apart by the absolute misery in his eyes.

  Now she understood why he reacted the way he did to those first lines of the movie that night. He knew exactly how Lydecker, and all the others impacted by Laura’s death, felt knowing they lost someone they loved so deeply. But, unlike the movie, Gavin didn’t have a happy ending. He would have no ending at all. His family wasn’t coming back, and he couldn’t join them so easily.

  It was the most tragic thing she had ever heard.

  “I’m so sorry, Gavin.”

  Her words were nothing more than a Band-Aid on a severed limb, but it was all she could offer him. He gave his best attempt at a smile as if she were the one needing comfort.

  “You know what I miss the most?” he asked, coming towards her again with that soundless swagger that she adored.

  “What?”

  “The sun.”

  It sounded horribly cliché. Of course, a vampire would miss the sun. It was the one thing that he couldn’t have besides a pulse. Yet, Chloe half expected him to mention his son, his wife, his old life in England; anything but the sun that she took for gr
anted every day.

  “It’s nothing much. In fact, there are a lot of downfalls to the sun. You can be blinded by it, get a sunburn, and sometimes, it can get too hot. The sun is overrated.”

  Chloe said it all with a smile and flimsy gestures to amuse him. It worked, and he chuckled. But, when the laughter subsided, the tension of what they had been talking about settled in again.

  “Do you have any other questions?” he asked, obviously trying to give them a reprieve from the previous topic.

  After a few thoughtful seconds, Chloe asked, “You said you tried to make it as an author. Is that why you’ve been helping me?”

  Gavin smiled. “That’s one reason. But also because you can’t imagine how bored I’ve been since the house has been empty. It’s good to talk to someone again.”

  Chloe pressed her lips together to hold back the grin that so desperately wanted to shine through. She cleared her throat and continued, “This may be going a little out of order, but I saw the way your eyes turned red the other night when I cut myself. What brought that on?”

  Gavin’s eyes flickered off to the tree line for the briefest second, then back to her. “That would be the hunger. It was involuntary, I assure you. The change allows me to see heat.”

  “Like a snake or an infrared camera?”

  He gave her a blank expression but then nodded. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Do you even know what an infrared camera is?” she laughed, remembering that he was centuries old.

  “I believe I’ve read about them, yes. It just took me a moment to recall.”

  Chloe took a step closer, her boots squishing in the soppy ground. “And how do you know so much about modern technology? Is it from stuff you’ve read or from living in the cabin?”

  Gavin wagged his head a bit in apathy. “It’s a little of both.”

  “And I thought that vampires were supposed to be cold, but you feel very warm.”

  She’d completely forgotten her decision to be subtle in her questions, but it was too late when ill-chosen words came out. Gavin didn’t seem to mind.