CHAPTER TWENTY

Christian’s New and Terrible Secret

Back on the surface world, Christian was feeling much more like himself. He took me to Vancouver swearing that no one would recognize us there. I wore my hair stick straight. It was longer than it had ever been in my life. I wore shades over my eyes and a long coat, hoping to pass for his plaything. It worked… after a fashion. Everyone looked at Christian and me as if we were movie stars.

When we arrived, I gazed at him across the white tablecloth of the hotel restaurant where he took me for lunch.

He ordered a long list of dishes like he was planning on eating enough to make up for all the lackluster meals that had been fed to him in the prison… if they had fed him at all.

“Didn’t they feed you?” I asked when the server had gone.

He shook his head at me with such grave disapproval, I might as well have asked him if he was circumcised. “I don’t think about that stuff after it’s over. If you think about the captivity, the torture, your brain forms neuropathways and it becomes hard to think of anything else. You have to forget about it completely.”

I doubted he would forget about it immediately.

In any case, he ordered lobster off the dinner menu and I ordered calamari and strawberry shortcake with whipping cream.

Our room upstairs was not ready yet, so Christian proposed we go shopping to fill the afternoon. After all, being together in this way was new to both of us. He wore his own face, so he was not Christian Henderson who was out with Beth Coldwell. Instead, we were Beth and Christian. He just happened to have the same first name as my guardian. We were together. We were on vacation. He didn’t have to treat me like his daughter or keep me at arm’s length. Though, it did still feel like he was keeping me at arm’s length. He preferred to hold my hand rather than tuck me under his arm as we toured the shops.

The sunglasses were meant to keep strangers away, but more than once, talent scouts approached us. I thought they were after Christian because people like that had attempted to recruit him when we were on vacation before. In those cases, I was relegated to being the awkward child he was babysitting. Now, the talent scouts look past him, at me. It was a bit of a thrill when I realized the dollar signs in their eyes were for me. Christian allowed them their compliments before brushing them pleasantly aside.

He was on cloud nine as he passed me gown after gown over the top of the dressing room door. He wanted me to have a white wedding dress and frankly, I didn’t care what it looked like as long as he was satisfied.

Except, nothing satisfied him.

I tried on every dress he asked me to in four shops and the afternoon was wearing on. How perfect was he trying to get? I realized the core of his dissatisfaction. Most of the designs were boring and nothing was wowing me either, but what I wanted wasn’t a perfect moment. I just wanted him to look at me in the dress, say I was his, and rip it off.

I considered seriously exaggerating how much I liked one of the dresses, just to get him to stop… when I suddenly realized what was wrong.

In between the curves of the sweetheart neckline I was wearing, a black sword protruded. He knew why he couldn’t pull it through, why he couldn’t align the poles, why he couldn’t speak inside my heart the way Brandon spoke to Pricina, and he was going through this ridiculous dress search because he was powerless to change it. He was doing the wedding to compensate for being unable to forge the connection between us.

I opened the door to the change room, tilted my head to the side, and looked at him. He was talking to one of the shop girls. She was smiling at him and confused that he was the groom helping the bride choose her wedding dress. Grooms were not supposed to see the bride before the wedding.

I wanted to hurry him, but if I wasn’t sensitive and patient, he might not tell me what was wrong. I had already waited so long and I steeled myself to wait a little while longer. I’d get his secrets eventually.

“I don’t want to try on any more dresses with his neckline,” I said.

Christian smiled his winning smile and I tried to smile back.

***

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Back at the hotel, I asked the woman at reception to give us a second room. I turned to him, imitated his fakest smile, and said, “It’s really important to you to get this wedding right, so I’ll stay in my own room for the time being. I’ll join you in your room after the wedding.”

His expression was unfathomable. At the least, he was a man in control of himself.

I took my keycard from the receptionist. My room was on the other side of the hotel. I thought that was perfect, as I sent him with the one sad bag of clothes he had taken from Nhagaspir off to another part of the hotel.

I had a bag too. I dropped it off in my room and went straight up to the lounge on the top floor of the hotel.

I took a seat at a small table that overlooked the city lights. A waiter came up and asked me what I was drinking.

I turned to him, floppy and tired, and said, “I want the prettiest drink you have. I want it to be so pretty, I won’t want to drink it.”

He nodded and disappeared.

Strumming my fingers on the table, I waited. When my cocktail finally arrived, the waiter was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Christian brought it. The drink was pink and it was presented in a shallow bowl goblet with a pink cloud hanging over its head.

He smiled his least fake smile as he placed the glass in front of me. “It’s called a Turkish Delight. It’s made with rose water and topped with fairy floss.”

I returned his sincere smile and pulled the drink toward me. “Thanks. It’s nice of you to hit on me in a bar. That was on my bucket list.”

“What’s the matter?” he asked patiently.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I can go back to living in this world. Do you know what happened to me when you were in prison?”

He looked at me with intent, caring eyes. “Tell me.”

I opened up to him as I had when we went on vacations before. “You know, I don’t know what vision I had of our lives before I found out that you were immortal. I wanted to be with you, but what were we going to do together? I didn’t have a clear picture. I think I may not have had anything more complex on my mind than crawling into a hole with you somewhere and never coming out. You were so rich, I never needed to worry about what else I wanted other than you.”

“And now?” he said evenly.

“Everything has changed. I killed seven--possibly nine people last week. I want to crawl in a hole with you more than anything, but you’re saying you want to have a wedding.”

“I thought you wanted a wedding?” he said softly.

I scoffed and tore at the fairy floss on the lip of my drink with my fingertips. “I don’t care much for the vows everyone else makes. I want our hearts knit so close together I can feel you breathe when you’re on the other side of the world. When was the last time you strolled through your Red Forest? If I zone out for a moment, I can skip down a lane beside the dark hedge that makes up my liver. I’ll arrive at a clearing, leap across a mote of blood, and step inside a building. It’s a small building and it’s yours. You have your own nook inside me. All at once, a version of you is there to greet me. He wears a crown on his head and he’s determined to turn me into the best version of me.”

Christian looked around uncomfortably. This conversation was filled with things he did not want to talk about.

But I went on. “If I ask him to, he’ll kiss me.”

Christian glanced up, alarmed.

“Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t like you, but it’s warm and peaceful. It feels like we’ve accomplished a love so deep that it is almost complete. You have all kinds of access to my body and I have all this access to your mind. In the past, you worked so hard to keep your secrets from me and when I go there, you tell me everything. You don’t hesitate. You give me everything.” My voice turned slow. “No one else who is married has this kind of access to their partner. I’ll do the wedding if you want. It’s what you said you wanted, but I thought you were going to slap a dress on me, slap a ring on me, and you were going to show me how much you loved me by ripping that dress off. Why does the dress matter so much if it’s going to be torn to shreds? Why are you hesitating?”

Christian frowned and licked his lips. He brought his mouth close to my ear, “It is all my fault.”

“What is all your fault?” I hissed back.

“I let myself get too weak. I forgot too much… and I have spoiled everything.” Looking at him again, his playboy look was completely wiped from him. He was so good at playing that part, he could do it even when he was utterly miserable, but now, the mask was down. He was a man who had been secretly living in hell. “I have to tell you something.”

I nodded for him to go on.

He opened his mouth, shut it, and then downed my drink in one gulp. He paused and he gave the empty cup a dirty look. Buying a woman a drink and then drinking it himself was so unlike him that he did a double-take.

I buried my fingers in his hair and redirected his focus back to me. “What is it?”

He groaned. “My heart started beating.”

I nodded. “It was supposed to start beating.”

“No,” he said, impatiently scratching his eyebrow and pulling away from me. “It was not supposed to start beating. When those crazy scientists were doing operations on me, they tried a lot of things and failed to accomplish them. I would heal fast enough that they couldn’t extract any of my organs. As a point of note, they never tried to take my heart. It wasn’t beating and it was behind a ribcage. They couldn’t even get a kidney. My heart was worthless, but during one of their surgeries, one of the doctors found my heartbeat and when they realized it was healed, they cut it out immediately. I fought them as hard as I could, healing as quickly as I could, but one of them got the bright idea to saw off my leg at the same time and I was so overcome with pain that I lost your heart. They gave me my leg back when they were finished because they already got what they wanted.”

“Do you have any idea where it is?” I asked, realizing immediately that Christian would not be able to pull the sword through to his body if my heart was somewhere else.

His mouth hung open as he prepared to tell me the terrible truth. Finally, he shook his head and admitted the worst. “It’s inside Charles Lewis.”