Like how Jared and I were going to make things work between us.
I frowned and walked to the fridge for another bottle of water. It was just my luck that I’d fallen head over heels for a guy who wasn’t even human. Worse, for all his assurances, what I’d been left with was that there wasn’t any clear way forward, other than us behaving like roommates with each other forever, or worse, brother and sister – and of all the feelings I had for Jared, exactly none were sisterly.
I sighed in exasperation and headed back to the master bedroom to make the bed and tidy up. I took a shower and cleaned everything I could think of in the bedroom, which only killed an hour and left me wondering how else to busy myself so I didn’t constantly think about Jared and the impossible situation we were in.
I headed downstairs and used my phone to research vampires for a bit, wishing I had my more efficient laptop with me, but I quickly lost interest; it was obvious that the sites were sheer flights of fancy, and they bore little in common with what Jared had told me. I switched the phone off and let it continue to charge, and then walked to the banquet hall again and sat behind the console, my eyes drawn to the box of disks Jared had pointed out.
I powered on the spare computer and selected one of the disks at random. An image flickered to life, and I turned the speakers up to hear it better. It was a concert in a coliseum. Jared rooster-strutted across a stage, his chest bare and shirt unbuttoned to his navel, skin glistening and radiant. He finished the song, and the camera panned over the audience – thousands and thousands of young women screaming at the top of their lungs in an obvious frenzy.
A knot tightened in my stomach as I watched the disk, which continued with his performance, and then moved backstage, where yet more young women with supermodel faces, clad in slinky outfits, leaned lazily against walls, drinks in hand, while Jared held court nearby. The scene changed to another angle, and a trio of scantily clad brunettes flashed peace signs while the one in the center waggled her tongue lasciviously at the camera.
I ejected the disk and tried another one, and the coil in my gut squirmed when the first image was Jared and a winsome blonde in a hippie top and leather pants, on the tarmac of an anonymous airport. Both he and the woman waved at the camera and made their way to a private jet, her hips bouncing suggestively as the camera followed them to the aircraft.
I tried another, and then another, but it was more of the same – Jared surrounded by female fans, Jared hanging with gorgeous starlets in the studio, Jared leaving clubs with various chanteuses, pursued by the press, Jared on talk shows with conspicuously flirting hostesses ogling him.
It wasn’t just the gorgeous women that hit me; it was the whole lifestyle. So polished; so professional. So much money. Jared was over two hundred years old. I was barely out of high school. What he loved – what he thought he loved – was someone who’d died before I was born. Was she really me? I had none of her memories. Maybe a glimmer, maybe some feelings, but not like Jared’s memories. He didn’t love me; he loved some ghost.
After two hours of reviewing Jared’s disks, my self-esteem and self-assurance had been wrestled to the ground and punched in the throat. I was hyperventilating, and I felt a full-blown panic attack coming on – something I hadn’t had in several years. I groped my way to the kitchen and held a paper sandwich bag to my mouth, breathing deeply in and out, deliberately reducing the amount of oxygen I was taking in. Several minutes later I had myself back under control, and I crumpled up the bag in disgust and tossed it into the garbage.
All his reassurances given so earnestly in the park in New York City had vanished. He’d sounded so convincing then; but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was simultaneously pining after someone I didn’t even know, and treating me like a child. Which, compared to him, I was, of course. Which didn’t help! But why did he get to decide what information to share and what to withhold? Why was it his decision whether I stay or go? I’d only just started the studies I’d been looking forward to. I couldn’t even take the coding class I wanted until next year, but already I was on some indefinite leave of absence, and I couldn’t even discuss it with anyone else.
It took every bit of willpower I had to fight back the indignation that threatened to swell into genuine anger. The feelings lingered like toxic smoke in the air, now invisible but not quite gone. I knew his understanding of our situation was greater than mine, and knew I should trust him to do as he’d promised – to share more with me when the time was right – but logic and reason only went so far, and when I threw myself down on the bed, I was in tears, unable to make out the possibility of a future with him – or even to know if that was what I truly wanted.
Chapter 29
When I awoke, it was already
