That cold feeling when something warm has left the room passed over us for a moment after his beautiful voice no longer filled the space.

He sat the guitar on the coffee table. “You okay, Ara?”

“I think you just ate my soul then spat it out into an airless vat.”

With a mocking hand to my shoulder, he leaned close. “Just breathe.”

“I totally get how groupies feel.”

David laughed, crossing the room to hook the guitar in the clamp on the wall, then just stood there, his arms folded, taking in the shiny blue instrument, as if at an art museum.

“Something on your mind, vampire-boy?” I said, touching his shoulder.

He half turned, keeping his arms folded. “Eric tells me the hunters discovered the true identity of the girl they were following—the one that was supposed to be you.”

I nodded. I expected that. Time passed so quickly; I barely even noticed the weeks. But Jason did say it would happen soon. I’d hoped for three months, but a month was better than the one night David originally promised me. “So, when are you leaving?”

He offered his hand; I took it. “Not yet.”

“When?”

His fingers tightened on mine. I knew the answer was When you let me go. But I also knew I wasn’t ready to do that yet. Those vampires would be beating down my door before I was willing to say goodbye, and even then...well...

“Just...not yet,” he said.

Chapter 15

They say that time passes—that it keeps moving on without us. But they’re wrong. Time can stand still. I’ve seen it in the sunset, or the snow falling onto a single, red leaf; watched it in the eagle floating on a breeze. And for me, while David’s been in my life, time has been absent. I exist each day for only him; to be beside him, to breathe him in, to feel him and touch him as he touches me. I’ve not had a student, or seen my family, I hardly speak to Emily anymore, and I can’t even look at Mike; every time I’m around him, the desire to be with him burns me like a desert sun.

The winter cools my flaming heart, though, and the days do pass, one by one—despite my denial of the ticking hand—drawing me ever closer to the time when my world will stop indefinitely; when David leaves, and I never see him again.

Time will have no meaning then, either, except for the past. Memories, that will be all that’s left of him, all that’s left of me.

“Everything looks so different in the winter.” I half closed my eyes against the glare of sun on snow, warming my hands in the pockets of my red coat. With the bare trees reaching toward the sun, and the golden ribbons of foliage blown away until next year, there was a kind of openness to the forest, like the privacy had been stolen away, leaving us standing in a spotlight for all to see.

David stood behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. “It’s more beautiful, I think. But maybe that’s just because you’re here with me.”

From his elbow to his wrist, I slid my fingers down his black corduroy sleeves and linked them through his.

Our lake had nearly frozen since we were last here, and as the afternoon sun settled on the clouded grey sky, the freshly fallen snow glowed a dense purple-blue.

But despite the nakedness of this once flourishing forest, the bare trees didn’t resemble lifelessness to me, anymore, as they once had—only the end of a chapter, the silence before a new beginning.

“Come. Walk with me.” David took my hand and led me to the water’s edge.

“David!” I stopped as he stepped out onto the lake. “It’s not completely frozen—we could fall in.”

“This part’s fine.” He tapped his foot on the narrow channel of ice, freezing up the once shallow sandbar to the island. “Do you trust me?”

“Implicitly.” I took his hand, stepping onto the slippery ice bridge.

“You see? Solid.” He swiftly wrapped me in his arms, my hips pressed to his, my body arching at the waist so I could look up at him.

“Okay. I feel safer now.” I let out a pathetic giggle, resting my hands on his chest. Close to his body, the sting of frost on my nose and cheeks tingled as hot blood flowed up under them; David laughed.

“What?” I asked.

“You still blush when I hold you this way.” He looked down and stroked a finger over my cheek. “I love that.”

The distant call of an eagle, like a swooping whistle, broke the blissful silence around the lake for a second. I buried my nose into David’s chest, breathing deep the faded hint of his musky soap as it mixed with the dry smell of ice and cold.

Quiet as a whisper at first, he started singing the words to the song he once dedicated to me here, by the lake, and we swayed softly, turning gently on the spot as I closed my eyes to the hum of his melodious voice, needing no music.

With the familiar words, my clumsy lips mumbled his harmony, and as he twirled me out from his body, I giggled, exhaling the words of the song when he spun me back in quickly, smiling.

I felt safe, warm, and though my skirt and tights weren’t really intended to be worn outside, I felt none of the cold at all in his arms. The limitless supply of blood—my blood—made him warmer than I’d ever known him to be, though the bite, the kill, was something he had to steal from the innocent while I slept.

When our song ended, we stood still on the frozen water; David rested his lips against my hair for a while—just breathing.

The eagle flew above us again, calling out as he circled on an invisible current over the murky sky.

David’s grip tightened. “Ara? I have to tell you something.”

I tensed all over, looking up as he moistened his lips, perhaps in preparation for bad news. “What is it?”

“It’s almost time for me to leave, and I—”

“What?” I took a long step backward. “No, it’s too soon.”

“I know.” He glided toward me. “I don’t want to leave, but I promised to stay until you were better—and you are now. I cannot stay any longer for fear of risking your life.”

“I don’t care—they can take it. It’s nothing without you.” I burst into tears, pinching the corners of my eyes to make it stop. “David, I—if you brought me here to say goodbye, then you might as well just throw me in the—”

“No.” He grabbed my wrists, pulling them away to look into my face. “No, I didn’t bring you here for that, sweetheart. I...I brought you here so we could talk—away from listening ears—to say…” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “To tell you that I’m sorry. That I made a big mistake when I said goodbye to you. I had to live with that mistake for longer than I could bear. I don’t want to leave you again, mon amour. I brought you here to say that we have to run away—” his strong fingers gripped my upper arms, “—we have to go as far away from here as we can, because if we don’t, they’ll find you—and they’ll kill you.”