Night Owl

Night Owl Ch. 11

The moment JK re-entered the room, I flipped my phone face down on the nightstand, a flicker of unease crossing my features. His gaze narrowed slightly, a crease forming between his eyebrows as he scanned my reaction.

"Everything okay?" he queried, "you seemed skittish just then." The concern in his voice wrapping the room in a subtle tension.

"It was just a wrong number," I said quickly, the lie slipping out before I could weigh its necessity.

Approaching me, he rested the warm towel gently against my sensitive area, his hands moving with tenderness. His touch, meant to soothe, sparked me again as I replayed the recent events.

Silence hung briefly as I wrestled internally. The urge to confess—that it was my ex stirring old fears—clawed at me, yet I pushed it down. He didn't yet know the shadows that lingered from my past, the scars Jin had left that I hadn't fully faced myself. How could I burden our newborn relationship with half-remembered horrors and unresolved pains?

Each memory of Jin, both bitter and sweet, clashed violently in my mind, a reminder of a chapter I had closed but not sealed. I couldn't bring myself to unveil these fragments to JK, not when our story had just begun its first page.

So, I let the moment pass, a silent agreement with myself to keep the past at bay at least for now, hoping the silence would be mistaken for insignificance, and he would disappear as quickly as he reappeared.

"Lily, are you okay? Seriously, you seem really tense," JK murmured, "and after all that work I just put in to relax you." His lips quirking into a smirk as he pulled on his t-shirt and slid under the covers beside me. His arms wrapped me in a warm embrace, pulling me close.

"I'm okay," I murmured into his chest, the words muffled against his skin. "Just... overly relaxed, maybe." The half-truth felt awkward on my tongue as I sank into the rhythm of his heartbeat—steady, alive, so utterly human.

Buried in his embrace, I listened to the vital pulse, a sound now foreign yet comforting. His heartbeat sketched out a rhythm of life that my own body no longer mirrored. Where his heart thudded against his ribs, mine lay still, an echo of what once was. My existence, suspended between life and death, relied on more arcane mechanisms—retractable fangs and a thirst for blood.

It was the peculiar rewiring of the undead brain that sustained me, a part once dormant in my human days now thrummed with pseudo-life. This hidden piece of anatomy, no bigger than a walnut, pulsed quietly, orchestrating the flow of blood through veins that should no longer carry it. It mimicked life so well that at times, I could almost forget the monster I had become. Almost.

The explanations they offer are half-witted, hypotheses hanging on the fragile threads of understanding. They speak of our biology as if it were almost normal—aside from the fangs and the unnatural thirst. But their theories are just grasping at shadows, barely touching the truth of our existence.

I've never indulged the craving lightly; no one's essence has ever been quite compelling enough to stir my appetite.

As I lay with my head against JK's chest, the steady beat of his heart beneath my ear is a lullaby of life—so vibrant, so delicate. His intense warmth encompasses me, a stark contrast to the warm stillness of my own being. In his arms, the world's dangers seem distant, trivial.

Yet as sleep claimed us, doubts threaded through my thoughts, weaving a tapestry of worry. Why couldn't I share the shadows of my past with him? The weight of Jin's ghost lingered between us, unspoken but heavy.

Morning broke with the insistent buzz of my phone. I groped around the bed, my hand flailing for the device as I grumbled in frustration.

"Lily, are you always this chaotic in the mornings?" JK's voice was tinged with amusement, his eyes crinkling as he watched my frantic search.