Secrets...

SECRETS
March 15th, 2013
I had spent most of today avoiding people. Especially Johanna, Faine, and Jordan. Faine and Jordan for the obvious reasons that they read minds but Johanna because of what she might be. That sounds horrible, doesn't it? I'm marrying her in 3 days but I can't be near her for fear that she's part werewolf...
What if she doesn't even know?! What if this complicates things?! Oh god! Can't it be possible for me to have a normal, happy wedding?!
I want to be with her now, just to hold her, but I don't know if I could look at her the same way and not feel like the worst fiancée in the entire world. I shot her brother, the man I haven't seen since last night. How will she ever forgive me for that?
I decided that I should just face her, I'm going to have to eventually.
She was sitting on the couch reading a book, the look on her face was lost and in the middle of another world. I love her so much. She doesn't have to do or say anything for my heart to swell when seeing her again. And each time is like seeing her for the first, time stands still and nothing can distract me from her.
I lay on the couch and like she knows what I want, she lifts her book off her lap so I can lay my head in it. I slowly and carefully (because of my shoulder) lay in her lap and stay there. Johanna doesn't say anything, she keeps reading her book, but her free hand is playing with my hair. This is nice. It feels nice and normal. And that's all I could ask for.
"So how was dinner with my brother last night?"
...She just had to ruin the moment!
"We talked."
"And...?" She encourages.
"I didn't know I killed your boyfriend that night in the forest in Pennsylvania."
She stops in mid page turn, she remains completely quiet. I haven't moved from laying in her lap.
"I'm sorry."
She still doesn't say anything.
"Johanna, I-"
She throws her book on the table, "That jerk! I told him to be nice! And I told him not to bring up those kinds of things!" She has her hands covering her face, anger is ebbing off her body.
"I'm glad he told me. Johanna, I want to know everything about you, nothing is 'not important'. I don't care if you had a boyfriend, that was in the past." I reach my hand up and cup her cheek, "But I do care that you seemed to have put your entire life on hold for me and mine."
She grabs my hand and presses it closer to her, "Ours."
A nice moment, right? But again, as all nice moments are, this one is ruined.
The door is thrown open. It hits the wall with a loud bang and Ryder is there in all his glory! Leaning against the door for support and holding his side to stop the bleeding.
"Leave me alone! I don't need help!" He barks at another guy standing right by his side.
Without any consideration to my head, Johanna leaps up from the couch and over to her brother. My head hits the couch and I let out a low groan from the sudden movement of my shoulder.
"What happened?! Why did it happen?!" Johanna screams while trying to help her brother to the couch.
I moved and stood against the wall.
Ryder refuses her help and makes his way over to the couch where he collapses.
"I got shot." He says staring directly at me.
"Why?! How?!" Johanna begs for the answers.
"The usual way. Some idiot buys a gun and bullets. He loads the bullets into the gun, aims and fires."
"Who did this and why?!" Johanna is freaked out and I feel guilty that I am the cause.
Ryder's friend comes over and hands him a beer. This friend of his is really tall and also kind of muscular, could he also be a-?
"Do you like my friend, Gabriel?" He asks.
Another werewolf...this cannot be happening!
"I don't think Gabriel cares about your new friend." Johanna says as she grabs medical stuff from the downstairs bathroom.
"Well he should." A threat! Was Ryder seriously threatening me with his sister so close?!?
"Ryder! Answer my questions!" Johanna begs as she tries to stop the bleeding.
"'Why?' Because he is threatened. 'Who?' A dead man." His eyes are focused on me.
Should I be taking his threats seriously?
"Omigod! I still see the bullet!" Johanna whispers to him.
"Its okay." He grabs the peroxide from her and pours a whole bunch on the hole and a string of whispered obscenities follows.
"Please, let's go to the hospital." Johanna starts with the begging again.
Ryder grabs her hand, squeezes it, and says, "No." In his taunting, older brother voice.
"I don't know how to handle something like this though!" She starts crying.
I tried to move forward to comfort her but I heard the low growl coming from Ryder's chest before Johanna did and I stayed away.
"Just give me a really big bandage. And you, get me another." He directs to Johanna and to his werewolf buddy.
I watch her hands shake as she places a bandage over his wound. And I look at the friend who I see pour something into Ryder's drink, something that didn't look like more alcohol.
But the friend hands it to Ryder who looks and acts better than he should be.
"He will be sleeping soon." The friend states. Its the first time he's spoken since being here and I don't know if I prefer him to or not.
"What do you mean?" Johanna asks.
"I gave him something to help the pain and to help him sleep."
"Really? Thanks!" Ryder chirps. Its sounding obvious now.
My Johanna, well, she isn't taking this well. She sits in a chair across from the couch and puts her face in her hands.
"Even when my brother is injured he still does drugs." She mumbles.
This is the time I could have held her but Ryder mumbles my name," Gabriel?"
"Yes?" I reply.
"Come here." He whispers.
So I go closer.
"No, no. Closer." He whispers again.
I move a little closer.
"Closer!" He screams.
I move a little closer. I really hope he doesn't ask me to get closer, I wouldn't be very comfortable that close to him.
"I...hate you!" He half whispers.
Then he falls asleep.
I stand up slowly. What a great thing to say.
And then he laughs really obnoxiously and falls back to sleep.
The laugh really freaked me out, I jumped.
So the three of us just stood/sat there, not sure what to say.
I was half expecting Ryder's friend to go outside, grab his suitcase and then take over the guest room (or Rhoan's) but I felt so much relief when he said, "I'll be back."
And then he just turned and left. He's quite an odd fellow.
"So we're having dinner with your parents tonight? Just us and them?"
She nods her head in reply.

That's all that happened in the morning and afternoon. Nothing new happened except that Ryder woke up, refused my help to get him to his room. And then I caught him shooting up in his room. And I said, "Can't you confine your illegal activities to just one room?!" And then he gave me his finger. Yeah. Epic afternoon, right?

"What's this that I supposedly cooked?" I ask Johanna.
I honestly had no idea what she was making and, I had no idea how to make it. But we're telling Richard and Susan that I did make it.
"Its grilled wild Alaskan salmon." She smiles, "And it tastes delicious!"
I phase into my human self and take a bite, swallow, and phase back.
"And your right." I press a kiss to her lips.
We set the table together and then Susan is walking down the stairs.
"Oh, you two! You shouldn't have done everything! Now I can't help." She muses.
"Just sit down, mom. Where's Daddy?"
Susan takes a seat, "He sends his regards but he can't make it. He saw your brother and is trying to help him."
I notice Johanna's knuckles turn white as she grips the back of the chair.
"Well, he's the one that's missing out. Gabriel made and awesome grilled salmon!"
Johanna sits down and I sit down. I ask Susan how she likes it here and she replies that its beautiful and the people are so nice.
Yeah, so dinner is nice and all that. Susan and I clean up dinner while Johanna sits there patiently. Then we all grab some coffee and just talk.
"Gabriel, we really can't wait for you to be part of the family!" Susan gushes.
"Well, I feel like I already am. Your the closest thing to a mother that I've had in a really long time." I reveal.
"Oh that's right. I forgot about your parents, dear. You poor boy." She says.
Susan really is very nice and I couldn't be asking for a sweeter mother-in-law.
"Speaking of death, Johanna told you about hers right?" Susan inquires.
"Mom!" Johanna hisses.
We both ignore her, "Yeah, she told me about that night in the woods in Pennsylvania."
"Oh, I wasn't talking about that time."
"Please stop!" Johanna says.
"What?" I reply.
Was there more than this? More than all the times I knew of?
"Well, before she was-"
"MOM, SHUT UP!!!" Johanna screams and then runs out of the house.
There is nothing but silence for a few seconds.
"What happened?" I ask as I lean forward a bit.
"She almost died and she's afraid to admit that to anyone outside the family."
"No, I know about that night she was with her friends and also about the night with you and Richard as well. She told me all about it." I reply matter of factly. "That's not it. My daughter's entire life has been planned around death; hers. We raised her at multiple times being told that she wouldn't live another year. Richard and I, and Darla and Ryder as well, watched her go from our rosy cheeked beauty to a frail, deathly sick little girl. We watched her go to deaths doorstep and then walk away completely unscathed. We would wake up one morning to find our daughter not in her room but outside playing with our neighbor's dogs."
I was in shock. Had Johanna really kept these secrets from me? Was she afraid to tell me or did she just not think it was important?
"How long?" I wasn't sure who to ask and what questions to ask.
"Her entire existence." I must've seemed more than confused so Susan told me, "Go ask her about it."
I really didn't think Johanna wanted to talk about her multiple encounters with death but...I needed to know.
I found her sitting in the middle of Faine's garden. The flowers were in full bloom around her and fireflies lit up the sky.
I sat across from my tear stained beauty.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I ask as I take her hand.
"It wasn't important." Another tear rolls down her cheek.
"Everything about you is important." I reply.
She looks away and lightly strokes the petals of a nearby flower.
"I know what they say about me," she whispers softly, "I know they think I'm crazy. Even everyone here thought it when I first moved in. And you thought it too." There is so much sadness laced in her voice, "I wanted to jump off cliffs, I wanted close my eyes and pick a random place on the map and then travel there. I'm the weird girl. Nobody acts the way I act, I'm spontaneous and open, I don't think before I act, I love like its the only thing worth doing."
...What should I say? I didn't know this part of her life, I didn't think it could be so sad.
"When I found you here the first time you wanted to know why I am the way I am; I'm so alive because I'm so close to death. When almost everyother year is spent believing its the end, you learn to live when you can. Because living is the only thing worth doing. 'What do you die for?' A stupid question. 'To be with loved ones who have passed before me.' A stupid answer. Nobody knows what comes after this, what if our loved ones were reborn and are already with us? Well, my question to myself everyday of my childhood, and even now, is 'What do you live for?'"
She pauses and grabs my hand, "I live for love, I live because I won't leave my family alone, I live to fight death. I live to laugh, I live to dance and sing, I live to take chances, I live to learn. I live because its the only thing worth doing."
She waits patiently for me to respond, I don't know what to say. But it all makes sense now, Johanna always was, and still is, a little different. But why else would one person have so much life in them that death just isn't an option?
"Your mom said you faced death for your entire existence. What does she mean by that?"
"I died before I was born."

I kind of choked a little. It felt like my heart started and then flip flopped and stopped.
"Excuse me?!"
"Eight months and three weeks into the pregnancy my mom said she stopped feeling me kicking. She went to the doctor and got a sonogram, and sure enough I didn't have a heartbeat. I was just there. The machine wasn't broken, the equipment wasn't unreliable, I was dead. But my mom had to give birth to me to get my baby body out of her stomach, and when I came out, I was breathing and crying. It was a miracle they said. No one could explain it, but I had died they said."
I tried to pull her towards me, to hold her and comfort her, but she refused to be moved.
"Do you still want to know more?" Her grass green eyes glisten with tears.
I nod my head.
"Well, when I was seven months old I got scarlet fever. I cried and screamed and my fever rose over 105." Barely even a pause, "And when I was three I got cholera."
That reminded me of Alice and her past.
"For my fifth christmas Santa gave me Malaria. Lovely, right? And then when I was six and a half we went to the beach and I got Lyme's disease. But trust me, I didn't have to go far to get sick. For my seventh birthday to my twelvth, I had AIDS. It was four years of Hell! I was sicker than sick! Forget common colds, compared to having AIDS, Scarlett fever looked like a cold!"
"What happened to all your diseases?" I ask.
"They just disappeared. We have absolutely no idea. Do you know what its like wanting to live and die at the same time?" I shake my head, I have never felt those two at the same time, "Well, I wanted to beat those illnesses, to come out on top, shun Death, and live happily ever after with my family. But when I was sick I sort of wanted it all to just end. I couldn't be myself while I was sick and I was continuously causing heartache for my family. Do you want to know what else I had?"
"There's more?!?" I couldn't believe it! My love truly had been through Hell! I honestly didn't want to think about how much pain she had been in and to see her any other way than she is now; healthy and living with beauty of both her mind and body.
"Oh yes, so much more. When I didn't have deadly sicknesses, I could often be found having long lasting colds. They weren't deadly but I was still sick. I don't how you will take this next one but you wanted to know: when I was 16 I had a boyfriend...and he would hit me."
Time stopped. It took me a minute to process what she was saying. A boy...had hit her? This didn't seem possible to me! Johanna is so perfect and nice, why would anyone want to hurt her?! But then it hit me that maybe it wasn't anything she had done but instead was the boyfriends fault.
Time sped up. I was kissing her hands and her cheeks, her forehead and her nose.
"Why?! Who?! Where?! Who?!" I ask angrily. I would find this boy. And people would then be reading his obituary in the newspaper the next day.
Johanna laughs. She laughs!
"This is no laughing matter!" I yell.
"You said 'who' twice." She giggles again.
I grab her hands, "Johanna, I'm very serious. Tell me who dared to hit you. I will find him and I will kill him."
She pulls her hands away, "Gabriel, I love you. And I think its really sweet what you would do to protect me, but you can't kill everyone who hurts me. Death, I have learned, isn't an answer. It isn't an answer for me, for you, and it wasn't an answer for Jane."
I shuddered. Why on Earth would Jane be brought into this?
"It seems that Death just doesn't like us. Jane thought that killing me would solve her problems; but it didn't. I didn't die, I woke up. You thought that killing me the first time we met would solve yours; I lived. And even before you knew that, your life seemed to be ruined. You weren't the same vampire you were before we met."
"It was a good change." I reply. She was saying the truth. The whole, entire truth. Death didn't seem like a good answer, it was a quick one. But not a good one.
"I still wish that the boy who hurt you will die." I say.
"Oh, he is. Would you believe that his father hit him and ended up breaking his nose which, in turn, killed him?"
I shook my head. At least the boy got what he deserved.
"You pretty much know the rest of my life." Johanna whispers sadly.
I decided to not say anything. We sat there for a while with the moon rising over our heads and the fireflies lighting up the night around us.
"The other night when you called me a hypocrite you said that you wanted to know who you're marrying." She nodded, "The best answer I can give you is: Me. I'm just me. I don't always know who that is but I do know that I want you to be there every night, with me, holding me to humanity."
"That's all I want, all I will ask for," she kisses my jaw, "I couldn't ask for anything more than you being you. And as for who you are marrying; Me. I didn't tell you about Ryder and Darla because I thought if I brought them into my life with you then this life would vanish and I would just be at home with friends and finishing high school."
"So no more secrets then?" I ask.
"No more." She agrees.
We stand up and walk back towards the house. Before I open the door, I stop her.
"Do you remember when I said I didn't remember my birthdate?" She nods, "December 21st. I figured it out when we were staying in Russia."
Johanna doesn't say anything, she didn't need to. But she leans forward and kisses me.
"Well, next December we're celebrating!" Johanna demands and then opens the door. We pick up where we left off, having coffee with Susan. We only had one disturbance and that was when Rhoan snuck in to get himself some coffee.
"Why don't you just come sit with us?" I ask him. At this point I was in such a good mood so I didn't really care and I was no longer on edge.
"My don't you look lovely tonight, Susan!" Rhoan exclaims. What a kiss ass! But I know he's doing it for my sake.
After we finished chatting and drinking our coffee, Johanna and Susan went to go wash the cups, Rhoan went to bed, and I went up stairs to my room.
I grabbed a couple books from the desk in the corner, books about demons. I was going to return them to the library since I have time.
I turned to leave but the light caught on something shiny on my nightstand. I got closer to figure out what it was and I wish I had ignored it in the first place. On my nightstand was a silver bullet covered in blood. The same silver bullet that I shot Ryder with.
And smudged on the table were the words 'I'm back' written in Ryder's blood.
Ryder is out there right now with who knows how many other werewolf friends. He's out there, and he's waiting for me.
The pain in my shoulder flared.
"God dammit!" I curse.
Casually, I walk to the bathroom, grab a washcloth and wet it. I just have to get this blood off the nightstand before Johanna sees it!
Soon the fibers in the cloth were stained red. It was blood I was looking at, I only wish that it would freak me out as much as it did to Johanna. I set it on fire and drop it in the sink to burn. No poisoned werewolf blood for my family!
And then I look at the nightstand again, the blood is still noticable.
"Crap!"
-Gabriel
3 days until the wedding!