ANYTHING FOR RACHEL
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✒📓 {S.v Painter} ✅
#Episode_14
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📓✒Calvin P.o.v ðŸ’
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How can this be happening?
I knew this was going to be difficult, but standing in front of the council like this, standing in front of her, the reason I continue to live more or less, professing love for another is shattering what little heart I have left.
Carolyn raised her hand and told the council that I was telling the truth about my secret affair with Lexton, and Rachel’s swollen eyes only produce more salty tears, tainting the room with the smell of her sadness. I know that it isn’t true. I never had a relationsh!pwith Lexton that pas-sed friendsh!p, even after Rachel was gone, but I can only hope that Rachel believed me when I told her the truth all those years ago. The way she continued to cry only put fear in me that maybe she didn’t.
Marco called her to the podium and she stood fluidly even though I could see her apparent discomfort. I held back my sigh as I watched her walk with grace to the front of the room, the lovely blue of her dress ma-king her skin look even more beautiful. As she moved her scent was wafted around us all, and I looked around at everyone, silently threatening anyone who would even dare to notice her blood.
My eyes caught Octavia’s and she gave me a pointed look, probably knowing what I was thinking. Octavia is always very attuned to me, always there to keep me in check when I am thinking too emotionally and not using my s-en-ses. She tilted her head and I turned my head back to Rachel, even though it pained me beyond explanation to see her upset without being able to hold her in my arms until the pain pas-sed.
“Why would you leave the safety of level six?” Quincy asked her.
She pu-ll-ed her brows together and her heart beat a little fas-ter.
“I was looking for him.” She said, her voice low and lacking any emotion. She looked up at the room of vampires here to judge her for a crime she didn’t commit and she spoke with ease throu-gh her fear. She told them her story, leaving out a hvge chunk. “I would have never left.” She said strongly, pointedly at me even though she was looking elsewhere.
That couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. She would have been unhappy. She would have hated it here, being tra-pped, just like my mother had.
“And how did you feel?” Marco asked her without caring that she was alre-ady clearly on the edge of what she could handle. I wanted to reach out and pu-ll his heart from his che-st for ma-king her relive something that hurt her. Something that was sure to hurt me too.
She shook her head and giant tears sailed down her cheeks, crashing loudly against the wood of the podium, then rolling off and hitting the floor. I nee-ded to go to her, hold her, but I heard Octavia tapping her heel on the floor, pu-lling me back to the pres£nt situation. I can’t show any emotion here.
“How did I feel?” She cried. “I felt worthless.”
Baby, no, plea-se.
“I felt like I wasn’t good enough.”
No, it wasn’t you. You were too good for me.
“I felt like I had been betrayed by the person I loved more than anything in the world.”
Rachel, plea-se, you have to un-derstand. I lied to you to keep you with me, and I know that was selfish and I should have come clean so much sooner, but I couldn’t bear to lose you. Not then. I nee-ded to be with you. I nee-ded to have you as my wife, even if it was for a short time. I’m so sorry I lied to you.
She cried, her eyes so red and her face covered in little red splotches, flawing her usually flawless skin. She shocked me by turning to face me, her eyes locking onto mine and refusing to let me go until she was done with me. “I loved you.” She said. “I gave you everything and you threw me away.”
The pain I felt was worse than the pain when my shoulder was r!pp£daway from my b©dy and then morphed back on later. That had hurt, but this hurt ten times that.
She turned away from me, re-leasing me from her grasps on me.
“I cried for days. Weeks. Months. I wished and prayed every day that there would be a knock on my door…”
She wanted me to come back for her? I don’t un-derstand…I thought…
She finished talking and she turned away from the crowd, not waiting to be dismissed, just doing what she wanted, like she always did. Even in her moment of weakness, she was showing just how powerful and strong she really was. She wasn’t going to let the council boss her around anymore.
Octavia met her at the door, reaching around her b©dy to help her stand straighter as they exited the room.
I nee-ded to get out of here.
I nee-ded to go to her.
Despite what she says about the boy, she nee-ds me.
“Well, she certainly gave us a lot to think about.” Marco said and the others nodded in agreement.
“Again, I’m very sorry for acting so selfishly and for putting you all and our people throu-gh this because of my quic-k and non-thinking actions.” I said, bowing my head to everyone, still trying to sell my lies to them, hoping that they will believe me.
That would be the only good outcome of Rachel’s tears. Her emotional reaction today might just have been enough to convince the council of her innocence. Maybe that was what she was doing. That would make s-en-se, the things she said about wanting to come back here and wanting me to come for her.
That is the only thing that makes any s-en-se in my mind. She couldn’t have possibly meant it, she must have just been trying to sell her story well. She could’ve fooled me, and I’m sure the council will fall for it too.
Regardless, I nee-d to see her.
Now.
“Your majesty, we would never fault you for actions. You are the king after all.” Marco said graciously and I bowed my head to him.
“And she is your queen.” I reminded him, hoping that the love for the royal family would be enough to make then forgive us.
Marco nodded and re-leased the council and I flew down the halls as fast as I could, following her scent until I caught up to the guards trailing her. She was still sniffling, and the salty smell of her tears were still lingering in the halls.
“Rachel.” I said, gr-abbing a hold of her tiny wrist and pu-lling her closer, re-sisting the urge to pu-ll her all the way to me and put my arms around her. I dismissed the guards but she turned her face away from me.
“I don’t want to talk to you.” She said firmly.
“Rachel, plea-se.” I begged her. I nee-ded to know the truth, but I could hear people approaching, so I tugged her behind me, pu-lling her into the elevator with me. I tried to explain to her that everything I had said in the meeting was a lie, but she wouldn’t listen to me.
“Everything I said was the truth.” She said and I looked at her ha-rd , trying to discern if she was still lying for fear of being overheard, or if she truly meant it. I reached for her, nee-ding her skin against mine even if it is just my hand, but she j£rked away. I pushed down the pain of her denial and looked at her. “I can’t believe how stupid I was.” She snapped.
“What are you talking about?” I asked confused. How was she the stupid one?
“I let you get to me again.” She said. “I let you make me forget, but I remember now.”
She couldn’t have meant what she said before. She just couldn’t have.
“Rachel, I’m confused.” I admitted. “I thought you were angry at me because of all the lies I told you.”
She looked at me like I was the biggest dunce she had ever seen, then confirmed that that was what she was thinking. “How could you be so stupid?” She asked. “I got over that! What I couldn’t get over was how you tossed me to the side!”
Why couldn’t she see? “I thought I was doing the right thing!”
“By taking away my choices?” She yelled, new tears running down her cheeks.
“You deserved better than this life, Rachel!”
“That wasn’t for you to decide for me, Calvin! I didn’t want to leave you. I wanted to be with you and you didn’t let me!”
I was in shock at her words. I always knew that Rachel is a wild card. She does what she wants and feels the way she wants, and she never lets anyone dictate her. She is strong and willful, and fierce, but I never dreamed that she would have really, truly, after learning all the real truths behind why she had been here, have wanted to be with me.
She wanted me.
She still wanted to choose me, even after all of the lies I had told her. How could I have not seen that her love was stronger than the lies?
But she still wouldn’t have been safe here. Never. I saw the way her human friends were r!pp£dinto, and I know the way the car-nal drive for blood takes you over. She wouldn’t have been safe with me, or happy hidden away in the dark.
“What kind of future could we have had here?” I asked her, trying to make her see why I had done what I did, even though the reasoning is becoming foggy even to me.
She had tears fighting not to spill over the edges of her red swollen eyes, but her voice was full of determination to make me see just how much I’d messed up. “I could have been with you! We could have been together! We could have worked something out!” Her b©dy shook with sobs and my heart bur-st into pieces.
We could have been together? All these years that I have been alone, wishing for her, and those years that she was in the arms of the boy, we could have been together had it not been for me. I thought I knew what was best for her, but I didn’t even take her feelings into account.
“I didn’t know you would have wanted that, Rachel.” I sighed, wishing I’d known then what I know now.
“You never bothered to ask me!” She pointed out. “You decided to tell me the truth and kick me out of your life without a second thought!”
Without a second thought? I thought about it every second. I thought about it the second her b©dy was lying in the backseat of that car on her way out of my life. I thought about it as the car disappeared from my sight. I thought about it when I couldn’t hear the car’s tires on the gravel anymore. I thought about my decision every second of every day that she was gone.
“I did think about it!” I told her, knowing now that she wasn’t going to believe me. She thinks I have betrayed our love, and maybe I did. “I think of you every day, wondering if I’d made a hvge mistake!” I said running my hands throu-gh my hair instead of gr-abbing her and forcing her to un-derstand.
She shook her head at me, a strand of her hair falling out of the ribbon at the side of her n£¢k as she reached over and mashed the number five bu-tton and the elevator kicked back to life. “You did!” She screamed, and I alre-ady knew that to be true. “But now it is too late.” She whispered. I wanted to st©p her, tell her it was never too late as long as we are both willing to try to fix it, but she shook her head again and I lost my nerve. She’s the only woman who intimid@t£s me. “I don’t want to get su-cked back into all of this. I loved you, and I gave you my whole heart, and you didn’t trust me enough to let me make my own decisions. I wish I could forget everything. All of it. But I can’t, and I can’t do this again. Not after everything you put me throu-gh.”
She walked out of the elevator and turned to face me. “Rachel, plea-se, I’m so sorry.” The s£ntence fell flat and without enough power to convey the true sorrow I feel for hurting her, and ruining our chance at being together just because I was afraid. I was afraid of what might happen so much that I never let anything happen, not even the good stuff. I cheated myself out of her life and out of Rose’s life, because I didn’t take the time to st©p being afraid and seeing what she really nee-ded from me.
She nee-ded me, and wanted me,
but my choices… My choices took that away from her, and her away from me.
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✒Story_Continues📓