Hell, maybe I had. He needed my blood, but that didn't mean he needed to be around me otherwise.
My life stretched out before me. It was the same lonely existence I'd always imagined, only now it was way worse. Because now I knew what I'd be missing.
The front door opened behind me, but I didn't turn. I didn't want to talk to anyone. Couldn't pretend everything was fine when I'd just destroyed the one good thing in my life.
"Talin?" Alice's soft voice drifted over me like a soft breeze. "What are you doing out here all by yourself?"
"Waiting." My voice was raw, scraped thin.
Fabric rustled as she sat beside me, her flowing skirt spreading across the weathered wood. We sat in silence for a moment, watching the shadows lengthen across the garden.
"You want to tell me what happened?" she asked gently.
"Nothing happened."
Watching a bird fly across the sky, she said, "Okay."
I followed its flight, blinking my dry, burning eyes against the setting sun. "I fucked everything up. That's what happened."
"With Elias?"
Just hearing his name sent pain lancing through my chest. "He kicked me out."
Alice's hand found mine, warm and steady. "Why?"
Her familiar touch opened the dam, and the words came pouring out. The fight, the accusations I'd thrown at him, the way his face had gone cold and hard before he'd ordered me to leave. By the time I finished, fresh tears were sliding down my cheeks.
"I just... I couldn't stop myself," I whispered. "All these thoughts kept spinning around in my head about how he didn't really want me, how it was only fate, how one day he'd wake up and realize he was stuck with someone like me and?—"
"Stop." Alice's voice cut through my rambling, uncharacteristically sharp. She turned to face me fully, her brown eyes intense. "Talin, you're not afraid Elias doesn't want you. You're afraid he does. And you never thought that would happen, so you don't know what to do with that."
The truth of her words rang through me. My chin fell to my chest, a sob tearing from my throat as fresh tears flooded my eyes and fell down my cheeks.
Alice's arms wrapped around me, pulling me against her as I fell apart.
"I just don't understand how he could want someone like me?" I gasped between sobs. "Who looks the way I do, when he's so perfect? How can he want this? How can he want me when I wake up every day hating what I see in the mirror?"
Alice didn't bother to argue with me, she just held me tighter, rocking us slightly as I cried into her shoulder. Her love pulsed around me, warm and comforting, creating a cocoon of safety on Aunt Judy's front steps.
"When this happened," I choked out, "they told me I might die. That the cancer was aggressive, that even with surgery I might not make it. And all I could think was at least then I wouldn't have to grow up knowing I'd never be normal, or beautiful. Knowing I'd never be wanted."
"Talin—"
"But I lived." The words tasted bitter. "I lived, and I learned to deal with what I looked like and what my life would be. To hide it. To never let anyone close enough to see. To pretend I didn't care that no one ever tried to climb the walls I'd built around myself. And then Elias just... crashed through all of them like fucking King Kong."
I pulled back, sniffling and wiping at my face with shaking hands. "He kissed my scar, Alice. He kissed it and called me beautiful and I wanted so badly to believe him. But how could I? How could I believe that someone who looked like him, a vampire who could have anyone for Christ's sake, would choose this?" I gestured at myself, at the vest that hid what I couldn't bear to show. "Fate chose for him. Not his heart. Not his desire. None of this would've happened if I'd never gone to that club and asked for his help."
Alice took my face in both of her small hands, forcing me to meet her eyes. There was something fierce in her expression, a strength reflected there that I rarely saw from my soft-spoken cousin.
"Listen to me," she said, each word deliberate. "He sees you, Talin. All of you. Your scars, your power, your strength. And he's still there. That's not fate—that's his choice."
"But—"
"No." She shook her head firmly. "I know everyone has started mating up, and whether that's fate trying to protect us or that damn djinn trying to destroy us, we'll never know. But I've watched him for years. Years, Talin. The way he looks at you when you're not paying attention. The way his whole body turns toward you when you enter a room. That's not obligation. That's not anything forcing him. That's a male who'd already chosen, and fate just gave him a little nudge in the right direction."
Fresh tears spilled down my cheeks, but these were different. These carried hope, fragile and terrifying.
"Do you care about him?"
