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Crying only hurt my head more, but I couldn’t make it stop. I was so resolved earlier to just leave, but if I listened only to my brain, it was certain that resolve was just a defense mechanism. And not to defend myself against getting beaten again, either. That would never happen. But maybe to defend my heart—stop it from falling for him over and over and constantly being shut out.

Looking at those wedding pictures tonight, I had to admit that my mind had changed, heart softened toward him. To see us like that, even if it wasn’t actually me in those photos, I wanted that back. I wanted David to love me like he used to, when I was his Ara, because while he was cruel when he hated someone, he was also a hundred times sweeter when he loved someone too. And above all the hurt he caused me, the love he could give seemed to outweigh it all. Why did I want that back? Why did I want him when he could be so mean and nasty? What the hell was wrong with me?

I buried my face in the pillow, wishing I could just go home to Brett. I needed a hug right now, and my new family could never understand how badly. They’d been compassionate, but I felt like they were more worried about what Brett would do if I went home with my head cut open than they were about my head actually being cut open. I told Harry that I fell over the planter outside, so he wouldn’t have to know what a beast his dad was, but I think there was a point, while I was getting him ready for bed, where he saw something. He didn’t mention it, but he had a strange look on his face.

I rolled over again, lifting my head off the pillow before moving, then laid on my other side, using the back of the couch as a source of comfort—as if it was a warm, loving body with a pair of strong arms. But it didn’t make me feel any better. My feels were hurt worse than my head, and every time I cried, my head would hurt worse. The stitches felt too tight and I could tell my immortal blood was trying to push them out. I wasn’t sure I’d get to sleep with such an icky feeling there all night. I just wanted daylight to come so I could get some blood. Eric started driving as soon as we told him what happened, so he’d be here just before sunrise, but that was still five hours away.

My ears pricked when a car pulled up then and the engine cut off quickly, a person jumping out before it had fully stopped purring. I listened to the footfalls on the pavement in the dead quiet of a spring night, praying Eric had made it back sooner. But as the front door opened, a wave of disappointment and dread washed over me. Mike was onto it before the door even closed back into place. I heard his feet on the floorboards above me and then his voice a second later in the entranceway.

“Where have you been?” he snapped.

“I went to get this,” David said.

“Where did you get that?”

“Let’s just say I have a few contacts in bad places.”

A paper bag rustled. “And what price did you pay?” he asked in a gruff whisper. “Because you look like you’re about to pass out.”

“A bit of blood for blood,” David said.

“You gave more than you got, by the looks of it.”

“It’s the price you pay for black market.”

“Yeah, well, you owe it to her. Now go to bed. I’ll take this to her.”

“No, let me, please,” David said. “I—”

“You’ve done enough for one night,” Mike growled. “That girl hasn’t stopped crying the entire night. She is still crying.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Look, thank you,” Mike said in his usual kind voice, “for this. But if you hadn’t beat the shit out of her, she wouldn’t need it. So just go to bed, would you? I can’t even look at you right now.”

Mike’s footsteps moved away from the entrance toward me, and David’s went up the stairs. I sat up a little as Mike came in, and the warm smile he offered made me feel a bit better, kind of like a hug from Brett would have.

“Got blood,” he said. “But you probably already heard that.”

I nodded, hugging my knees as he came to sit beside me, drawing a glass jar from a brown paper bag. “Where did he get it?”

“We have a few vampires that live off the grid here. They don’t register, which isn’t illegal, but it means we can’t contact them when we need blood.”

“But David knows who they are?”

He nodded, unscrewing the lid.

“Will it work?” I asked. “From a jar—being that it’s not directly from the source?”

“It won’t be as efficient,” he said, handing it to me. “But it’ll be enough to help you get some sleep.”

I brought the jar to my lips, closing my eyes as I tipped it up. The blood was no longer warm and had gone quite gluggy and lumpy, but I just drank it through my teeth to filter them out, and as soon as it touched the back of my throat, I no longer cared about the lumps. I drank the entire thing down in a few gulps, pressing my hand to my wound as the stitches squeezed out and it closed completely. “My head doesn’t hurt now.”

Mike smiled, taking the jar. “Good.”

“Tell David I said thank you.”

“I will.” He pulled my ankles to slide me down on the couch and then covered me over, tucking my body in tightly. “Get some sleep, okay?”

“Okay,” I whispered.

“Night.” He kissed my head as he stood up, taking the jar, the loose stitches and the paper bag away with him.

I rolled over again, feeling a thousand times better than I did a few moments ago, and closed my eyes, drifting to sleep.

Apparently, it was somewhat of a tradition, before I died, for Mike to spend every Thursday night at the café for open mic night. For the first part of the night, I sat here wishing I’d stayed home. Well, my ears did, at least. I, however, was enjoying the company of family—having a night out with everyone, including Brett, and it had been nice to see a softer side to David tonight; to see him with Harry, sitting off to the side of the stage teaching him guitar. Harry insisted that one day soon he’d get up on that little wooden stage with his Uncle Ric and play ‘Stairway to Heaven’. I hadn’t heard him play, but if he inherited the family talent, it wouldn’t be long before that dream became a reality for him.

Elora placed another drink in front of me and sat down, taking off her apron.

“Finished your shift?” I asked, hoping to God she had, because Jack could be a real stick-in-the-ass sometimes.

“Yep.” She laughed. “So are you getting up?”

“Up?” I frowned at her.

“On stage.” She nodded toward Eric, who was just starting his next song.

“Um…”

“Oh, right, no one else knows you play yet, do they?” she said quietly.

I swallowed hard, shaking my head, my eyes doing a sneaky scan to make sure no one else around the table heard her.

“I don’t get it,” she added, sitting back and taking her drink with her. “Why won’t you tell them?”

I turned my knees, leaning closer. “Do you know why your father did what he did to me the other day?”

Her eyes changed as her mind dredged it all up. I hated that she’d seen me like that—distraught and injured.

“He was trying to bash the old Ara out of my head,” I said.

Elora’s expression changed, realization sinking in.

“If he sees any signs of the old me, like, say… being able to suddenly play guitar or piano, he will push and push until I start shaping myself to be more like her. And it won’t even matter if I truly feel like her inside. He is desperate, and—”

“Why do you think?” she said, putting her drink down. “Mom, he—”

“I get it.” I took both of her hands. “I do get it. But he has to accept that I may never get my memories back, and if he can’t love me as the me I am without them, then he doesn’t deserve me.”

“So you’re just going to hide yourself. Not play piano or read the books you once read or—”

“Maybe.” I shook my head, shrugging. “I just don’t know. I’m scared to show him that side of myself right now.”

Elora’s long lashes touched her cheek as she looked down into her lap.

“I’m sorry,” I said, brushing her hair back behind her ear. “I hate that this has happened to you all, and I would give anything to make it right—”

“Then start being yourself,” she snapped. “You say you aren’t my mother—”

“I never said—”

“No, you did. You said you’re not her, and while you might mean to say that you’re not his Ara, that also means you’re not my mother. And yet look at you.” She shook her head at me, her jaw squared with anger. “You play music like her. You have her magic. You laugh like her, joke like her, but you don’t show that to him?” She pointed at her dad, who stretched up on his heels where he squatted by Harry, a curious glare snaking past all the heads in the crowd to study us. “I have to wonder why, Mom? Are you punishing him—”

“No.”

“Then why will you be the old Ara for you, alone, or for me and Harry, but not for him?”

“Because I—” Because what?

Because I wanted him to love me for me?

I glanced over at him and he quickly looked away. No, I decided. It wasn’t just that I wanted him to love me for me; it was because I didn’t want him to love me as Ara. If that happened, if I gave him his wife back, I was locked-in. I couldn’t back out if I changed my mind. I would have to take the weight of that entire past they had and carry it. Pretend. I couldn’t be myself because every time I was, he would pull me up on it. There was no middle ground here. I loved him. I was certain of that. But I didn’t want to be with a man that wanted someone else. That only wanted me because I was someone else to him. How was that fair?

Yes, he lost his wife. Yes, Elora lost her mother. But I had lost myself. I needed a life of my own. I wanted them in it. I wanted them as a part of my life, but for the right reasons. I just didn’t know how to say that. Didn’t know how to make David see me, love me. And I was still too mad at him to extend the olive branch and tell him any of this.

Not that it would matter. He was sorry for what he did to me the other day. I hadn’t seen the grief and regret strike him, but I heard it. I heard him sobbing in his room late that night and the one that followed and still, when he was in the same room as me, he never extended the olive branch either. So yeah, he was sorry, but he still hated me for not being her, which meant there was little hope right now.

“I’m not the bad guy, Elora,” I said quietly.

“No.” She got up. “You both are.”

I went to follow her, but the crowd rose to its feet then and cheered for Eric, blocking my path. Elora slipped out the door and into the night, vanishing at vampire speed.

“What happened?” Eric said, taking me by the elbow.

“She’s hurt.” I rolled back down from my toes and looked at him.

“What did you say to her?” he asked, but though he sounded angry, he didn’t look angry.

“She just needs me to be…”

“You?” he offered.

“No. She needs me to be Ara.”

He leaned in, bringing his lips to my ear. “Got news for ya, kid. You are her. Like it or not.”

Before I could respond, he was gone, pushing through the crowd to rescue my daughter. I turned back to Harry tugging my sleeve and pointing to the stage, and my heart sunk, filling me with dread. I’d never seen David play guitar before. I couldn’t possibly handle it now—in a room with all my family present. My blood would change. My soul would be drawn to him. I knew that. And everyone would notice.

“Come on.” Harry dragged me by the hand to sit back down, while I fought for an excuse to leave. But he put me in my chair then sat in my lap, linking my hands around his waist like a seatbelt. Before I knew it, David’s lips were at the microphone and his deep, husky voice came through announcing his name. My heart melted with only the words David Knight and then it liquefied and bled right out of my soul when he smiled shyly and averted his gaze from the crowd to play.

My eyes took in every angle of him, my soul tight with the sound of his voice. I barely even noticed Mike on the keyboard beside him, but the piano intro to the song was unmistakable. Wicked Game. A Chris Isaak song, but David and Mike seemed to perform it a little slower and with less rock and more soul.

That same deep, husky voice that announced his name moved through the mic and out of the speakers with the words of the song, surrounding him or maybe covering me with something I couldn’t escape. I was forced to see him through new eyes.

As he looked past the crowd in the bridge of the song, he smiled at Harry, but though I tried to catch his attention and tell him how amazing he was, he wouldn’t look at me. He looked everywhere but me.

Then he closed his eyes and sung the chorus, the muscles in his upper arm more defined where they pressed against the top of his guitar, the emotion he connected to in that song pouring out of him for all to see. He was admitting right there, openly, how broken he was. Admitting that he’d resisted falling in love with me. But why? What was so awful about me that he couldn’t love me?

“This is the Daughtry cover,” Harry said, looking up at me. “It’s great, isn’t it?”

“The what?”

“Chris Daughtry did a cover of this song,” he said. “Dad’s playing that version.”

I nodded. “I like it. A lot.”

“He knew you would,” he said, and turned back to watch his dad finish the song. I wanted to ask what he meant by “he knew you would”, but he was eight. It wasn’t right to bring him into this thing between David and me.

David finished the song to a soulful note, carrying it with his voice so effortlessly that I was suddenly jealous of him, but that wasn’t what bothered me the most. What bothered me was that I knew he’d get off that stage, lay his guitar down and sit among his family, celebrated as a musical genius, but he wouldn’t sit with me. He wouldn’t stop beside me to kiss my cheek and ruffle Harry’s hair. He wouldn’t look at me to see what I thought. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to love me, and it broke my heart. Made me question everything I was. Made me want to run to the nearest mirror and try to see what was so terrible.

I had to accept it, I realized. As much as it hurt, he was and would forever be Ara’s man. Nothing would make his heart stray. Not even another version of her.

Harry decided he was done drawing pictures for the day, so he went off to play with his friends outside, and I sat at the kitchen table, practicing my own artistic skills. I’d just made the finishing touches on a Halloween witch, themed for Saturday night’s party, when David snuck up on me.

“Since when could you draw?” he said lightly.

“Um…” I looked at the page, swiping off a rubbery roll of eraser. “Cal taught me a few months ago.”

“I didn’t know you had it in you.” He sat down, motioning for the book. “May I?”

I reluctantly handed it over. His Ara couldn’t draw. She was a brilliant pianist, cook, loved to read and even write, but this version didn’t. I mean, aside from piano. I did love piano, but I still hadn’t told David that.

He flipped through the pages one by one slowly, looking at each drawing like I had when I first saw Harry’s kindergarten scrapbooks—the same ones I actually made when he first started school the year I died. He stopped at the middle of the book—the point where my skills improved marginally—and traced a finger over the charcoal face of his son. “You really drew this?”

“Yeah.”

After considering it for another moment, he slid the book back to me, his eyes meeting mine a few seconds later. “You’re very talented,” he said.

I wasn’t sure what to say. He hadn’t looked at me like that since we first met, and I felt a little put-off, in a good way. “Do you wanna see some more?”

His eyes travelled to the book again. He clearly didn’t want to, but said okay anyway.

“You don’t have to.” I shut the book. I’d seen an open door—a way to relate to him—but he closed it when he saw it himself. He always did that, as if, by relating to me, he was further burying his wife.

“No. I want to,” he insisted, placing his hand over mine. “I just… I’m sorry, I never knew you had that in you.”

He never knew she had that in her.

“Or… that she did,” he added, catching me off-guard. “You’re both so different from each other.”

We weren’t that different. “I’ve been trying to tell you that.”

“I…” He moved my hand off the sketch book and opened it. “I can see that now.”

I sat holding my breath, while he looked through a book so personal. On the margins of almost every page, there was some poem or little quote about being yourself or about a broken heart. I wasn’t sure he even noticed them, but it made me feel very exposed. When he turned the page, actually, a fraction of a second before he turned the page, I remembered what I’d drawn there—twenty pages in, three months in to my new skill.

“Wow.” His eyes rounded, and mine shut tight to hide my shame. “Ara.”

I opened my eyes when he touched my arm, turning the book sideways to show me the picture.

“You hate me that much?” he said.

His exact likeness grinned back at me from the page, the devil horns and spiny tail reaching into the deepest part of my regretful heart and jabbing it. “It was right after a fight. I didn’t mean it.”

But, rising above all expectation, David just laughed, shaking his head as he flipped over a page. I watched him, expecting him to yell at me, and when he didn’t, I couldn’t handle the suspense anymore—just waiting for it to burst out of him. “Please don’t be mad at me.”

He looked up from the book with a smile in his eyes, but it wasn’t the usual arrogant one that accompanied harsh words in an argument. And it softened away to nothing as he looked at my face. “I’m not mad, Ara.”

“You aren’t?”

“No.” He cast his attention back to the book. “I think I drew one of you like that too.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, but not as detailed,” he said, “and it had two heads.”

I laughed.

“And it was a stick figure,” he added, closing the book as he reached the end. He slid it back to me and lifted my hand to place it on top. “These are amazing.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling quite proud of myself.

When he hopped up to leave the room, he didn’t just walk away without a word, like he usually did. He actually stopped beside me and bent slightly, holding onto the back of my head with a soft touch as he pressed a kiss to my hair. Then he walked away. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I took it as a kind of silent apology, and I wasn’t sure why.