Red Passion

Chapter 12

She wants to run right into his arms as soon as she sees him.

It's been less than two weeks since they have last been in the same room together, since they have last seen or spoken to each other, but, right now more than ever, it feels like an eternity has passed instead–

–and isn't that something? And shouldn't they be experts on eternities?

Because, what do they have for sure (and is it, even, for sure?), if not an endless amount of time ahead of them, after all?

And yet—shouldn't not even fourteen days be nothing compared to the months that they have spent apart during the whole summer, with her at college and him in New Orleans? What has changed since then?

The sense of completeness and peace, which she then feels spreading throughout her whole being–

–body, heart and soul–

–like a burning fire, not destroying in its wake but sanitizing new and old wounds, seems to be at the same time screaming and whispering the answer to her, because—who is she still trying to fool?

Definitely not herself, she's past all that now, and she doesn't need to hide behind false pretenses anymore—she knows that, she wants that. And she also knows that there hasn't really ever been any doubt about whether things between them were still the same or exponentially different now. Bond or no bond.

In the last month, they have shared extremely intimate and important moments together, new experiences and growing feelings—the blood bond itself is the proof (not the cause) of just that—and it doesn't matter how long it took for her to come to terms with it all, it had been rather careless and foolish on her part to think that distance, out of everything else, could ever really be a solution for them.

As if.

Distance between them is simply not a possibility, not anymore. It has only made things worse, if anything, and it's time that she fixes that.

In the blink of an eye, Caroline's body is colliding against Klaus' firmer one, her arms going around his neck as she burrows her face against his shoulder, the tears already streaming freely down her cheeks.

He's taken aback for the span of a second, before he finally encircles her waist, bringing her closer without even thinking. Almost unconsciously, he releases a huge sigh of relief, tightening his hold around her as he takes in the warmth of her soft, slender body, and in the unique smell of her unmarred skin surrounding him once again.

It's as if a huge weight has just been lifted from his chest, finally leaving the rotten, dead heart that it had taken to constrict in its vice-like grip to beat again.

It's such a new, strange sensation, for someone like him who has never before needed something in his life, as much as wanted it, demanded it, or simply taken it. And it goes way beyond the simple need to quench his bloodlust, or the suffocating strains of the bond that has been forged between them, there is just something about Caroline–

–only and always her–

–that he will never be able to get enough of. That he doesn't ever want to get enough of.

He supposes that that's it—that that's love—after all. The knowledge that there's only that one person who can fill a void which is so deep within you, that you hadn't even been completely aware of it, until that moment when it finally disappeared all at once.

And it's not dependency that he is feeling, he doesn't see this situation—this relationship, because that's what it is (what it has to be)—that is keeping on burgeoning and strengthening, as something that might ever restrict him or confine him—no. It was before, if anything, that he used to be bound. By the limits that he had set on himself, by all the beauty and possibilities of life that he had forbidden himself to see, just because he was a coward (just because that's all he has ever really allowed himself to be).