The Last of the Pure

Twenty-seven

I am so very happy with this chapter. Hope that you are as well! 

-M

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I didn’t mean to kiss him.

But after everything he’d told me, everything he’d showed me, I have to admit that I was curious to find out what his lips would feel like against mine.

And if I’m being truly honest with myself, I have to also admit that I did feel something.

Damon.

His name had been floating around my head for hours after we’d gone our separate ways. I was replaying everything that had happened at my parents’ old house during the excruciatingly long flight, blasting the headphones Thomas had given me as a going away gift a little too loudly to mask my thoughts from the boy sitting directly beside me.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to be thinking because I was so confused.

To think I’d been so hostile toward Damon all of this time when it turned out, he was extraordinary. His gifts, his smile, just the way that he spoke—he was so different than I’d initial imagined that the boy I’d spent most of the early morning with seemed like a wholly different one than the one I’d been envisioning.

“Lucas has told me that he has taken it upon himself to tell you of my situation,” this was his attempt at lowering the hostility level I was showing him.

He’d taken a step back, raising his hands in the air to show he’d meant no harm coming to find me, and the look he had given me was so timid that I found myself calming down a bit.

Later on, this had me wondering if he had something to do with my easiness in backing down, but I couldn’t really be mad.

I’d just nodded in response to his statement as he lowered his hands, digging them into the pockets of his jeans and glaring at the ground.

“You have to know, Alexandra, that I had no intention of using that as leverage to get you to join your father,” he told me without looking up.

“How did you even find me?” was my only response and it came out so low that it was almost a whisper.

All I could think about was how everyone was supposed to believe I was dead, yet here he was, showing up at the one place I hadn’t been in weeks.

This was no coincidence.

“Have you heard anything about my gifts?” he asked, finally looking up at me.

“I know they have to do with death and spirits,” I scoffed, feeling my hostility level rise once again, but he just smiled.

His smile was nice which was unexpected. I knew he was handsome, but something about his smile just brightened up his face.

He had long, deep dimples on either side of his mouth, a little closer than most, but I found myself staring at them. His eyes were dark brown, but when he smiled, they seemed to almost disappear, becoming little crescent moons above his high cheekbones.

“When you put it like that, it sounds so perturbing,” he chuckled, moving a step closer to where I stood in the middle of the wreckage.

He studied me for a few moments, like he was taking me in, the smile slowly fading from his face until he looked at me seriously.

“I have a special connection with the human spirit. I can feel the emotions it radiates; I can connect with them once they’ve passed on, and—probably the most disturbing part of all—I can completely disintegrate them if I wish to do so, leaving the bearer as, more or less, an empty vessel.”