Eternity and a Year Read Free Page A

shoulders and eased her into a sitting position. His eyes gleamed burgundy in the moonlight.
    “What about you?” she asked. “Is something wrong? You look…well, you look upset.” She frowned as she spoke. She was still sifting through a landslide of her own emotions, but deep down, the one that stood out the most was happiness—shocked, incredulous happiness, but happiness nonetheless. Wouldn’t—shouldn’t—Brendan feel the same?
    “Not upset,” he said, dragging a fingertip idly through the dust that was so thick on the floorboards. “Just…empty. I mean, that’s how I feel, and I don’t know why. I waited for this for so long, and I thought it would be different from the other times.”
    Carrie stared at him in numb shock. How Brendan had spent the last year was still a mystery to her—one she’d always suspected would break her heart if she ever solved it—but hearing him talk about it so casually made her feel as if her breast had been pierced by a poison-tipped arrow. Its venom began to spread and course through her veins, a potent mixture of jealousy, anger and grief.
    Brendan met her gaze with his strange, red-hued eyes. They held sadness, and the set of his mouth suggested what he said shamed him. He reached out tentatively towards Carrie and she jerked away from his touch. He sighed. “You think I’m disgusting.”
    Tears stung Carrie’s eyes again. “Yes, I do,” she snapped. “Do you have any idea what the past year has been like for me? You left me—just left, without a word—and I’ve been alone ever since. And you were here, in the same city all along—sleeping around, apparently—while I sent out notes to all our family and friends explaining the wedding was cancelled!” Her chest was heaving by the time she finished and her tears streamed freely down her face, dripping onto her bare breasts. Her cheeks flamed, the blood that rushed through her veins fuelling her anger just as efficiently as it had fuelled her lust.
    Brendan jerked back as if he’d been slapped. “Carrie, no! That’s not what I meant. I—I haven’t slept with anyone else!”
    Carrie glared incredulously at him through tear-filled eyes. “ The other times ?”
    “That’s not what I meant!” He reached out to take one of her hands and clung to it like a liegeman beseeching his mistress. “Some nights, though,” he said, dropping his gaze to the floor, “I fantasised about you, remembering your touch. Other nights, I dreamt of you. But when I woke—from daydreams or real dreams—I always felt so empty,” he finished in a subdued voice.
    Carrie leant forward, drawing Brendan into a fierce embrace as tears slithered down her cheeks. “Every night for the past year I’ve lain in bed and wondered where you were,” she said. “I wondered if you were dead, and if you weren’t, who you were with. Why else would you have disappeared? I thought that if you were alive, there must be someone else.”
    Brendan stroked her hair. “No,” he said, “never.”
    Carrie relaxed, allowing herself to wilt in his arms. Brendan’s explanation was a two-edged sword, filling Carrie with blessed relief and creeping worry at the same time. Empty ? “Then why…” she said, “why aren’t you as happy as I am?”
    “I am, deep down.” He tangled his hand farther into her hair and pressed his lips against hers. The kiss was salty, filled with her tears. “This just doesn’t seem real, yet. I’m afraid you’re not actually here…like a dream.”

Chapter Two
     
     
     
    Carrie awoke in her bed the next morning. Brendan had insisted she spend the rest of the night alone, leaving him to hunt. He’d said the taste of her blood had awakened something within him that couldn’t be ignored—the need to feed. So Carrie had reluctantly returned to her apartment and eventually fallen into a fitful sleep marked by nightmares and wet dreams alike.
    Her alarm clock woke her for work at seven the next morning, and her