Chapter 16 I WAS IN LOVE WITH HIM
He was quiet for a moment.
"Keeping busy," he said. "Football. Swimming. Other people's noise." He glanced at me sideways. "Parties."
"And when the party ends?" I said.
He looked around the large, now empty room.
"Then it is quiet again," he said with a shrug.
The music continued.
I did not think about what I was doing. I leaned sideways and rested my head against his shoulder.
He went very still.
"Happy birthday Alexander," I said quietly.
He said nothing for a long moment.
Then, very carefully, he pressed his nose against the top of my head.
"Thank you Lily," he said.
The music played. Jake slept. And we stayed like that in the quiet of the big empty house while the night got deeper around us.
I do not know how much time passed.
The music kept playing with one song folding into the next without interruption. The room stayed warm. My eyes stayed closed.
I was not asleep. But I was somewhere close to it. That soft borderland where the body has stopped working on anything and the mind has gone quiet and the only things that exist were sensations, the warmth of his shoulder, the slow rhythm of his breathing, the music and the dark behind my eyelids.
I felt something shift.
He moved slightly and I lifted my head and somehow in the adjusting we ended up differently arranged. Him leaning back against the cushions. Me against his side with his arm around me properly now. My head on his chest where I couldn't hear his heartbeat.
It was not there....
He was a vampire.
"You should sleep," he said again. His voice was very low.
"You keep saying that," I said.
"You keep not doing it," he said.
"I do not want to," I said honestly.
A pause.
"Why?" he said.
I thought about it.
"Because when I sleep it will be tomorrow," I said. "And tomorrow everything goes back to normal."
He was quiet.
"And right now," I said, even more quietly, "this does not feel normal. And I do not want it to stop yet."
His arm tightened slightly around me.
The music changed into something even slower.
I felt something happening to me that I did not know how to describe.
It was not the bond this time. I knew the bond by now. This was different. This was slow.mThis was the feeling of lying against someone in the dark and realising that the dark could feel safe. That the someone was the reason it felt safe. And that somewhere between the arguing and the silences and the rearview mirror glances and the alcove and the nurse's bay, this person had become — without my permission— someone I trusted completely.
I lifted my head. He looked down at me.
In the low light his grey eyes were very dark.His face was close. It was always close these days. Or maybe I was always the one closing the distance without noticing.
"Alexander," I said.
"Lily," he said.
Neither of us said anything else. The music played and then he was kissing me. Or I was kissing him.
Honestly I could not tell and it did not matter because it was happening and it was nothing like the accidents and the almost moments and the things we had been pretending were not real.
This was real.
His hand moved to my face, careful and warm. His thumb dusted against my cheekbone like he was making sure I was actually real.
I kissed him back and my hand found his chest and I imagined that I could feel his heartbeat under my palm even though it wasn't there.
He pulled back slightly. Just enough to look at me.
"Lily...." he started.
"Do not say anything," I said softly.
"I was going to say...."
"I know what you were going to say," I said. "Do not say it.... yet."
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he kissed me again.
Slower and deeper this time. His hand slid from my face to my waist and I shifted toward him and the space between us disappeared completely and he leaned back against the cushions taking me with him.
I was above him now.
His hands were warm on my waist through the green dress. Mine were on either side of his face. The music was still playing somewhere behind everything else, soft and slow and completely indifferent to what was happening on Alexander Hollander's sofa at seventeen minutes past midnight.
He looked up at me and I looked down at him.
In two years of knowing Alexander Hollander I had seen him smirk. I had seen him cold. I had seen him guarded and deliberately proud.
I had never seen him look like this.
His lips were parted. He was open and unguarded like every wall had simply fallen off or maybe he had stopped building them.... for now.
I leaned down and kissed him again and he made a sound low in his throat and his hands tightened at my waist and I felt something crack open in my chest that I had been keeping carefully sealed.
I was in love with him. The thought arrived quietly.
There was no drama and no lightning bolt.
There was just a simple, terrifying and painfully undeniable fact of it settling into place. Because now it was something that had always been true and was only now being acknowledged.
I was in love with Alexander Hollander.
I....
"Mm...."
I froze and so did he.