In the hours after Christian went to sleep, I managed to calm down. After all, I wanted Christian here. He just had to understand we were meant to be together, that being Strigoi was a wonderful destiny.
I brought him French toast with bacon, which earned me a glare.
"I won't eat."
I snorted. I had never seen a plate of food in the cafeteria that Christian had left full. Teenage boys certainly weren't light eaters.
"You'll eat," I said dismissively. I received a second glare as he reached for the plate and started eating, which made me hide my smile.
"What's on the schedule today?" he asked between bites. Excellent question.
I opened the basket I had carried in. "Painting."
"Painting?" he repeated doubtfully, mouth half-full of food.
"It's what I spend a lot of my day doing, actually."
"When you're not killing innocent people," he fired back. "Eating orphans."
"You set Ivan on fire."
"Ivan, or whoever he was, was already dead. No loss."
"Is that how you felt about your parents?" His knife clattered to his plate. He stood up, shoving the plate on his lap onto the floor.
"How…. How dare you!" His face grew redder by the moment and I waited patiently on the bed for him to finish his outburst. "How dare you bring them up!"
"I brought them up because you loved them. You loved me too."
He sat heavily, his face in his hands. I waited for him to respond, shifting forward on the bed to lean towards him.
"Chris," I said softly. "It's still me."
He shook his head violently. "It's not," he muttered against his hands. Gently but firmly, I pulled his hands from his face. Tears were leaking out of his eyes, which I wiped away.
"It's still me." I leaned in even closer, daring him to stop me, hoping he wouldn't.
I pressed my lips against his and I was home.
In movies, people saw fireworks when they had a wonderful kiss. Rose and I had never put much stock in that, but we had believed in the kind of kiss we had seen in The Princess Diaries when we were 10. We had always watched the scene where Princess Mia's foot popped during her kiss with Michael. We'd sigh dreamily and talk about how magical our first kiss would be. Rose had poked me and joked that since I was a princess, I would get my own "foot-poppin' kiss." I had elbowed her to shush, but had always quietly hoped for my own love story. My first kiss of my old life wasn't magical. Aaron had used too much tongue and it had seriously made me reconsider kissing for a while. The first kiss of my new life? Magical.
Even better, he was kissing me back. Tangling his fingers in my hair, he pulled me closer to him. I kissed him eagerly, pushing myself chest-to-chest against him. He made a sound low in his throat, then pulled away abruptly.
"What is it?" I asked. He shook his head, looking out the window.
"You're not you. You know that." His tone was lifeless.
"Neither of us are the same anymore. Why is that so bad?" I kneeled in front of him, looking into his eyes. "We grow and we change. I still choose you."
"Can I just have some space?" he asked. "Please?"
"Of course," I smiled, rising to my full height and kissing the top of his head. "I'll leave the painting stuff for you."
Even after the door clicked shut behind me, I still felt like I was walking on air. Soon! Soon he'd be with me forever.
