90. Love is Complicated
Leah borrowed Gracen’s car, the one with the specially blacked out windows, but she arrives at that bridge a full hour after sunrise. She hops out the driver side door and races out onto the empty wooden planks of the walkway over the river. My phone and revolver lie abandoned on an empty stretch of metal. Her end of the call dropped when her phone battery died, shortly after she got on the highway. “Julian!” she screams.
“Down here,” I sigh. I can’t stick my hand out to give her so much as a quick wave. I’m pressed up against the underside of the bridge in the deepest of the shadows, but the waterway below me is sparkling with color and glimmers of deadly light. That doesn’t worry me. It makes me smile. I haven’t seen the sun in so long… I haven’t seen anything this beautiful in what feels like an eternity.
Though it is getting rather taxing, holding myself pinned up against the arch of the bridge like this with zero handholds and just the power of friction. I doubt a mortal would have managed to keep at it for this long. Though a mortal wouldn’t turn to ash the second they dropped into that sunlit water.
Leah leans out over the edge of the bridge and catches sight of me finally, gasping in relief. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Needed my hands free to hang on like this,” I numbly explain. “Still, I don’t see a way out of this. Even if I stay pinned up here all day…”
“No need. I brought Gracen’s Halloween costume.”
“You… what?”
It’s a six foot long, deep cowled, Grim Reaper cloak. Apparently, he and Leah went as Death and his bride when taking Ben trick-or-treating last year. The cloak does indeed cover every inch of me, though it was a challenge to get it on without plummeting to my death in the waters below. Leah catches my wrist as I start to drop, and I climb back to the surface of the bridge with gloves and cloak in place and face cowl fully lowered. I still feel myself starting to heat up regardless, like a rapidly progressing sunburn. “Car unlocked?” She nods, and I shuffle towards it as quickly and carefully as I can.
I sink down in the backseat and pull shut the door. “I’m… sorry to put you out like this. I’m always just--”
“Helping me through the hardest points in my life?” she cuts me off angrily, climbing behind the wheel. “I wouldn’t have survived without you, Julian. You are the kindest, most selfless sweetheart I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. That is not lip-service. It is fact. Sure, you get moody, depressed. But I mean… with the shit we’ve been through? Who wouldn’t get a little crazy, every now and again? Who wouldn’t melt down and cause a crisis?”
“You,” I offer, and she falls silent. “Even if you get depressed… you don’t drag anyone else down with you. You and Luc… You can survive anything. You never needed me.”
“I do. We all do. It doesn’t work with us without you.”
I consider her words, and I keep silent all the rest of the drive. We finally reach her building’s parking garage. Leah parks, then starts drumming on the steering wheel, eyeing me in the rear-view mirror. “You want to come inside?”
“Is Luc here?”
She looks down at her phone, plugged in to the dash and slowly regaining its charge. “Yeah. I just texted him, assured him you weren’t… ash,” she most tactfully phrases it.
“Good. I never wanted to hurt him, or keep him worrying. I’m just…”
“Not ready to see him again?”
“No.” I need a break. I need to sort things out myself and figure out my true feelings, my plans for the future, if there must be a future...
Leah pops open the glove compartment, pulling out a stack of elegantly signed and wax sealed envelopes. “I could always burn these on your behalf. They do contain some pretty sensitive information. He did want you to read them though, if you’re willing.”
“I’ll burn them myself,” I mutter, accepting them numbly. “Thanks for the ride and… for the rescue. I don’t really want to hang out in your parking garage for the rest of the day though, so if I could borrow the car…”
“You’ll high-tail it out of here before any more awkward conversations need take place?” she sighs. She holds out the keys. “Go ahead. I’m sure Gracen won’t mind. Just call me whenever you get to where you’re going, and…” She lifts my revolver from the place we set it down, cradled in the cup holder. “…keep being a sexy gunslinger, punishing the wicked and all that. Just know, you are not one of them,” she enforces, holding my eyes. “You are not evil, not beyond redemption. You don’t need any more punishment, so keep checking in regularly and… Come to Ben’s recital. I am telling him you’re coming, so really, you’ve no choice in the matter.”
I shake my head. She and Luc really are so very alike, from their talents and tastes to their pressuring tactics. They have the same attitude, the same vanity paired with surprising depth. They even have a near identical sense of wicked humor. Leah is Luc, the more I think about it, just without all the conditioning and ingrained bad habits of gas-lighting, guarding her heart, and trying to disconnect from her emotions. I really do have a type. From Heather, to Luc, to Leah… I have never been truly attracted to anyone other than this archetype of my total opposite: someone carefree, and confident, and able to bring me out of my shell and keep at bay the darkness.
No one does that better than Luc, truth be told, yet no one has caused me more suffering.
“I’ll come to Ben’s recital,” I mutter. “You can email me the ticket.”
She gives a satisfied nod, climbs out of the vehicle, and heads back upstairs to rejoin her family, and explain away my absence…
I set the stack of Luc’s letters down on the passenger seat. Then, despite what I told Leah, I stay parked underground and I read through his every message. Some of them are indeed packed with unnecessary details of our early sexcapades, but none of them seem to be trying to manipulate me. They all re-frame events of just why he has hurt me so badly and repeatedly, especially in those early years, but they do so in an entirely honest and self-aware manner. I knew about Roman. I have known for years that Luc had to pretend to care nothing for me, else his sire would have sadistically murdered me right in front of him, as he did with all his other, rare loves throughout the ages. Reading Luc’s perspective of those days though, how hard he was trying to break his conditioning and trust me enough to come clean and confide rather than simply manipulate… I read the last line of his last letter: *‘It is not just about how I need you for me. I will do whatever it takes to protect you, Julian.’* I know he’s being earnest. It took him a near novel of words to finally dissemble and arrive at that point of earnest apology paired with concern for my well-being, but I know now… I could never kill myself. I could never do that to him.
He meant every word he said to me after saving me from Resa. He has finally, earnestly set me free...
It’s approaching sundown, so I text Gracen that his car is still in the parking garage. I didn’t end up borrowing it like Leah told him I would. **And… Ben’s show tonight… Be awkward if I came, right?**
**You seriously not coming?** He texts back, obviously upset.
**You don’t have to pretend. Even if Ben wants me there...**
**We all want you there. If you don’t want to see Luc, we’ll tell Luc to steer clear. No one cares if *he’s* missing it. He doesn’t actually want to see it. He just…**
If this wasn’t a live chat, I wouldn’t have even been able to see him start that last sentence before deleting it. I can complete it in my mind though, ‘He just wants to see you.’ I look again to the stack of heartfelt, tear-stained letters at my side.
**It’s your kid’s recital, so it’s up to you, man. But Luc… I’d rather he came. If it’s not too much trouble.**
**I think you had a typo in that last message.**
**No, I mean it. Luc should be there. Sorry to put you out, but…**
**It’s fine. See you there.**
**Actually… Wanna carpool? I’m still…**
**Still trapped inside my car until the sun sets?** He pairs that with a laughing emoji, and I send my shame-faced confirmation.
Luc does not really care for Ben. He hates all children, and he has no interest in this recital, but if he does accept Gracen’s invite… Things are bound to get complicated.