Page 9 of The Heir

“I vaguely remember a boy who looked like you, trying to build a fire back here in the fire pit, and—” He swam to me and covered my mouth.

“Okay, okay, so I am not good at making fires; I get it. I was just a bit rusty.” His hand, pressing on my mouth and touching my lips, felt strange. I looked into his gray-blue eyes; they had always been beautiful, like the ocean after a storm, or the sky on a partly cloudy day—such a beautiful, unworldly blue. But they were not warm and golden like the sun shining in my dark world and pulling me from despair.

He was my best friend, and he’d always been a constant as long as I could remember. But, he had left during the time I needed him the most—that summer. I was disappointed, but knew he couldn’t stop his life just because my parents—I stopped that train of thought slammed on those breaks really hard.

His eyes looked at my lips after his fingers released my mouth. I cleared my throat and pulled away. I was happy to see my best friend again, finally, but I didn’t want to be close to him like I wanted to be close to Shad. That feeling–desire, or want, made me feel ashamed. I shook my strange feelings aside.

“I came out here for a swim, so if you don’t mind,” I said, then dove under the water, still hating that I had that feeling of needing to escape him.

That night, I tossed and turned in a fitful sleep for the first time in a month.

Chapter Five

With hesitation, I opened my eyes, blinking slowly: once, twice, three times, but it didn’t matter how many times I blinked, for the image in front of me never changed. I focused on the blinking light, tracking my heart beat. But what it couldn't track was the ringing in my ears and the hole in my heart. Ryker lay beside me with his arms wrapped around my body. I moved closer to him so my back was fully pressed against his chest. Warmth flowed through me, and I wiped my eyes, searching for the forgotten tears.

“Em?” Ryker’s groggy voice whispered behind me. He squeezed my hand, and heat pulsed through me there, sending the sun into my endless dark night. I turned and rested my head upon his chest, not caring about anything else but the need to feel him near me.

“Thank you, Ry. Thank you for not leaving me.” I tried to stop the tears that spilled from my eyes, but I couldn’t contain them.

Ryker reached over and brushed my cheek. “Em, there is no other place for me to be right now—only with you.” His voice was tender, his blue eyes looked into mine.They reflected somany emotions back at me: sorrow, sadness, fear, and one more I didn’t know.

“I just—” I tried to express in words how unfair life was, how it all had to be a sick joke, that it wasn't—no, it couldn’t actually be real,I told myself.

“I wish I could tell you—” He paused and shook his head. I watched as tears dropped from his eyes. He must have really loved them, too. “—that we are not in a hospital bed and that—that your—”

I put a finger to his lips. “Don't say it yet, Ry. I need time before you say the words. If you say them, then it’s real.”

He smiled at me sadly and nodded. “I'm here for you, Em. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

“Please, Ry. Just hold me. I need you to never let me go.” I scooted my body even closer to his, my legs meeting his, my face a mere inch away. and I needed it more than I needed to breathe.

“Nothing could move me from this spot, Em—nothing.”

I woke up with a gasp, clutching my hand over my chest. I had not had a nightmare in days. The darkness of the room reminded me again of being in that hospital room after the crash.

Ryker had been with me for the whole thing. Maybe his return had made me think about it–think about the things I wanted to forget.

He held me for hours, was with me for days as I cried in that hospital bed.

It was that first night, however, when I had discovered the misery, which had started to curl itself around inside of me. No matter the warmth I felt from Ryker, misery had still slithered deep inside my heart and had made a home there. It had constricted my once beating heart and filled up my emptiness with endless pain. That was when my heart shattered. That night, after I realized what had happened to my parents, Icame to understand that there were worse things than dying. I discovered just exactly what those worst things were: like living without the ones you love, being left behind, having a hole carved out of your insides–and the frightening truth that misery was a venomous snake, slithering inside of me, threatening to poison me with a numbing, final end, yet it never struck.

It’s okay; that is over. You are better now.I told myself, running fingers through my hair as I lay back down. Misery, true misery, was a horrible thing. I still missed my parents, mourned the loss in my life without them, but I could no longer feel the snake curling inside. I could not feel the shattered, broken pieces of my heart, poking me from the inside. It was no longer my regular pain. I felt only past memories of it .

That is good. You are making progress. It’s okay, everything is okay, I told myself.

I closed my eyes and hummed the melody that had been in my head since meeting Shad.

Shad. He is a better thing to think about.I pictured his smile and the rose he had given me as I hummed that made up tune out loud to soothe me back to sleep.

Chapter Six

Okay, here it is, the first day of my junior year. I am a new me, a braver me, and not a sad, miserable me. Truth or not, that was what I told myself as I sat up in bed.

It had already been seven months since my parents took their last breaths. It seemed like I had spent an eternity away from them, and at the same time, like it had only been a single day since my dad smiled at me and my mom had held me in a hug.

I didn’t see Shad for the rest of the summer after our two encounters and once Ryker had come home. I tried to spot him from my house—coming out of his, but I never saw him. I started to wonder if he ever even left his house.

Vampires liked to stay indoors–oh, my heck, stop it.Obviously I had been thinking far too much about my neighbor who seemed to shake up my entire world, as well as to cause me to have feelings I had never felt before. It came at the perfect time. I was in need of a distraction. Focusing on Shad and thinking of him really helped me stay away from my bad memories.

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