The Road to Healing Takes Patience, Time, and A Proper Proposal

I moved Gracen out of the coven and back into his apartment. It’s our apartment now. I got back my job at the hospital to cover the rent, and I encouraged him, after a few months, to go back to his paramedic work. It’s what he loves to do, and it is mostly all night calls.

He couldn’t do it at first. He said he wasn’t comfortable going out in public anymore in the city he destroyed.

I let him know he did no permanent damage. The chaos was covered up on the news as political protests turned to violent riots. No murders were even documented. Luc’s police force broke it up and quieted or turned all the witnesses, and months of bargaining with rival clan leader, Resa, and allowing her a non-hostile takeover of this country as well as Europe seems to have brought fresh peace to the vampire world.

Still, Gracen can’t bear to be seen anymore. He doesn’t like being a six and a half foot, drop dead gorgeous stud walking around the mall with me and baby Ben. It draws everyone to gawk at us, unless he’s using his powers to purposefully black them out and make them forget his passing. He hates that just as much though. He never wants to use his father’s gifting. He wants to turn off even the temptation of it, but most of all, he wants to hide, and I can understand why.

The worst attention he got was when members of Luc’s coven approached us while he was walking me home from my shift one evening. The women abandoned their game of luring off some guy from a bar in an instant and dropped right to their knees at Gracen’s feet, calling him master and saying how much they missed him, while picking at his jeans with greedy fingers…

Gracen changed in an instant. He wasn’t uncomfortable. He was furious. He commanded them to kill themselves, before my strident, horrified protest got him to come back to himself and rescind the order an instant before those newborns were dead.

He ordered them back to the coven instead, then didn’t say a word to me for the next week. Little Ben was more vocal, and he could only speak in gurgles and gibberish. When I finally did get Gracen talking again, he wanted to move out, claiming no one was safe around him. We worked through it though, when I finally got Luc to cave to my needs and give me the contact info for his warlock.

We got little Ben safely glamoured with a pretty passive charm, and I gave Gracen a newly made pair of power-concealing, face obscuring glasses.

That seemed to help a lot. He was back to looking like his dorky, old self, and wearing that costume, he could pretend we went back in time. He could go back to the ambulance, carry on the work Brett was passionate about and mourn his friend’s murder in a healthier way than sitting holed up alone in his bedroom all day.

He’ll take my blood to give him happy dreams when he needs the pain to stop, but he has lost all interest in sex. He lets me hold him, but it has to stay platonic, safe, or else he just dissociates. I’ve seen it, and I enjoyed beyond belief that night of rough, wild sex, leaving me so sore I couldn’t walk at all the next day. Gracen didn’t even remember it though. It’s like a redux of our first time together, only he was the one who was blacked right out. Then lying there the next morning, seeing my bruises and the nail marks… He went straight catatonic, flinching whenever I’d touch him for days following, so I behaved myself, and I never went there again. “Do you want to just be friends?” I earnestly asked him. “I’m okay with that--”

“I love you, Leah,” is all he most confusingly responded, wrapping his arms around me so tight I know he cannot bear to let go.

I didn’t ask his permission to return to Club Noctus when Luc finally reopened on New Years. I didn’t tell him about my continued, weekly three ways with Luc and Julian, and he never asked. He is not actually my husband, after all, they are, and we never swore to be exclusive. The sex makes me feel good for a few hours. Then Luc tries to manipulate me into never leaving that bedroom, each and every time I visit. That’s why talking with Julian is an even better refreshment than the pleasure sometimes, and he and Kate will take turns babysitting Ben, whenever I need a break. It’s quite the perfect, extensive support network.

But I am still strung out and exhausted, coming home from twelve hour shifts at a job I hate to a man I want so badly but know I can never, ever be with that way again…

Sometimes I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

But seeing him with Ben is more than worth it. I was worried to even let him meet the kid at first, but he is so good with him, so gentle. He smiles so wide, just holding him in his arms, even if that smile turns bitter sometimes, and those teary eyes cloud over with horror… I’m always there to take Ben back from him whenever that happens, talk to him casually, until he comes back to himself.

We’re curled up on the couch together tonight, watching old sit-com episodes, as I’m breast-feeding Ben. It is a chore that is so much worse, now that he has a full ring of teeth. I put up with the savage little biter anyway though, even now that we’ve got him on solid foods, because it keeps him healthy and happy, not to mention being the easiest way to put him to sleep. He has a habit of nodding off while sucking… Maybe the breast milk works the same as my blood. It’s a little weird, sure, but extremely useful.

I nuzzle up against Gracen all the closer when Ben finally conks out. He’s laughing at the absurd misunderstanding on the screen, and I’m just savoring that sound, wishing my eyes could focus on his face behind those glasses and appreciate the details of that smile. I want to see his mouth curling upward with dimples and all, instead of just this blur of white teeth that my glamour-affected eyes refuse to focus on.

“How would you react to seeing me get a pet monkey?” he asks me playfully,

“I would expect it to murder us in our sleep, most obviously,” I return. “I think the baby dropped off at the doorstep is the more acceptable scenario in this one. Who wouldn’t take in such a cute little sucker?”

Wrong thing to stay. I don’t even know why. It just triggered him. Now he’s staring down at Ben way too intently, smile vanished and eyes dark.

“Gracen?”

“I never want to talk about it,” he gasps. “I can’t. But I can’t stop thinking about it. What he… Luc told me he did it, with his other children. Killed them when they resisted, became threats. I heard him tell Julian the details, like it was obvious, no big deal. I should just get over it, because nothing actually… But it did. To you. I couldn’t--”

I switch off the television to silence the ill-timed, inappropriate laugh track. “Let’s go to bed, okay? I’m going to put Ben down. Then we’ll talk about anything you like.”

He doesn’t say a thing. Not for the next two days, so that weekend, when we’ve finished our rom-com, and Ben’s asleep in my arms, I whisper, “Can you try something for me?”

“What?”

I power down the television, so it’s just a black screen, reflecting the three of us like a mirror. “Do you think you could use your compulsion to compel yourself?”

“To forget it all?” he mutters. “What else might I forget? I don’t even want to try that. I might--”

“You should. I think you need to try it. Just look at this beautiful little one year old.” I tilt up Ben’s head, and he murmurs, shifting positions in his sleep.

“Hey buddy,” Gracen murmurs, eyes softening.

“He looks just like you, because he is yours,” I insist, gently pulling off his glasses. Then I turn his chin back over to the mirror of the television. “Repeat after me. ‘This is my son, Ben.’”

“This is my son, Ben. I love him.”

“I know you do.” I smile. “You never knew your own father. He was a piece of shit that went and abandoned you, just like mine.”

“I never knew my father,” he exhales, with eyes widening, transfixed by the sudden, burning red power of his reflection.

“But you are going to be such a great dad to this little boy, your son. You don’t have to repeat that. Just know it.”

He blinks. Then the glow fades from his eyes, and he looks over to me. “What just…?”

I don’t ask if it worked. I’ll just wait, watch him, and see if it helped, see if anything could fix this damage… “You caught sight of your reflection after the movie ended, and you were just like, damn, that is one hot new dad.”

He shakes his head, giving a little blush and murmuring sincerely, “His girlfriend is much hotter.” He pauses, eyes searching mine. Then he looks to Ben. “Leah… why the hell didn’t we get married?”

“That’s not much of a proposal…”

“I know. And I know… you’re still with Luc. And Julian. Thanks for letting me be in his life anyway,” He nods to Ben. “I know I’m just the guy who knocked you up--”

“You are so much more than that,” I breathe, chest tightening with hope. “I love you.”

“And I love you, more than anything. I love Ben, and I love you, and… I would really like to marry you.”

And I would really like to have an actual fucking wedding, not just some rushed ceremony out in the fairy woods with a shriveled near-corpse held up by a man he will always love deeper than he does his bride. “If you’re still thinking this way come morning, the answer is one hundred percent yes.”