EIGHT
Looking at Hayden’s back, I began blurting out words like I’d done earlier. “I really love you, Hayden. I really, really love you, with all my heart. I love our baby, and I love our family, and I love being your wife. I trust you, too. I know it may not seem like I do, like, at all, but I do. I trust you to keep me and Chrissy safe. I trust you to take care of the situation with the Warrens. I just don’t like the way that you’re making me feel about it all, though. I don’t like the way this whole situation with the Warrens is making me feel. Like I said before, leaving things completely up to you is just making me feel powerless, and I hate that.
I hate it with every fiber of my being. Can’t you understand this? Can’t you understand why my urge is just simply to run, rather than stay here and have to just sit on my hands because I’m not a vampire and can’t help to fight the Warrens? Can’t you at least try to see all this from my perspective?”
From where he was standing maybe ten feet away, Hayden had turned to look at me with his expression so serious he was actually almost scowling. Maintaining this expression, he now came over to where I stood at the island and took my face in his hands. “I want to say something to you now, Sydney. I love you. I love you so much that sometimes I actually feel overwhelmed by how much I love you. I just feel like I’m never going to be able to tell you or show you just how much I love you, no matter how hard I try.
My love for you is why I do what I do, and say some of the things I say to you sometimes. It’s not because I want to take control away from you, or make you feel powerless. I can understand how you feel, even though I didn’t realize how you felt until just right now. I get it, though. I’m just sorry that it took me so long.”
After swallowing a lump in my throat, I told him not to feel sorry. “I should have told you how I was feeling earlier. The only reason that I didn’t was because I think that I just figured it out now myself. I just don’t like feeling powerless, Hayden…but I do trust you, and I do love you with all my heart. Nothing will ever change that, and I’m determined to make our marriage work.”
“So am I. In fact, I’m going to spend every day of the rest of my life trying to make it up to you for the couple of days that we didn’t speak.”
With my heart swelling and my eyes a little misty, I covered his hands with my own, smiling. “Well, we both had a little something to do with that, so I should probably spend every day of the rest of my life trying to make it up to you, too.”
Pulling me into his arms, Hayden smiled. “Tell you what. How about if we both just resolve right now to make a fresh start. No more silences. Better communication. More telling each other how we really feel. This way, our marriage will just get stronger and stronger over time…and eventually, we’ll look back on our ‘first real fight’ and the ensuing days of silence and just laugh.”
I laughed feebly right then. “I want that. I want that so bad…just to look back on the stress and uncertainty of these early days and all the problems with the Warrens and just laugh.”
Hayden told me that he really believed that that would become a reality. “That’s not to say that the Warrens, or some vampire group similar to them, will ever stop being something of a problem for us, but I know that in time, our Watcher community will have more peace. We just need to get through what’s happening right now.”
I know. “I just want our love, and our family, to be able to survive what’s happening right now, first.”
“It will, Sydney. We just need to continue with this open communication with each other, and we just need to have faith. Our love is strong enough to get through this. In fact, I still feel the same way I felt on our wedding day…that our love is strong enough to get us through anything.”
Deeply moved, I realized that my misty eyes had now overflowed with tears, and they were now sliding down my cheeks. I began lifting a hand to wipe them away, but Hayden stopped my hand with a little smile.
“Nope. Let me do it. Speaking of our wedding day, do you remember what I told you at the reception, when you started crying during our first dance because you were just so ‘overflowing with happiness,’ as you said? I told you that I’m your tear-wiper from now on. So, don’t you even dare try to do it yourself.”
Although I hadn’t realized it at the time, this was what I’d wanted Hayden to say when my eyes had first become misty while we both sat at the island. I realized now that I really hadn’t wanted him to just leave me alone to let me cry.
With the pad of his thumb, he wiped the tears on my cheek away, before brushing a tender kiss against my lips. “Now, no more crying. I have to get going to check in with my fighters, and I want to see you smile before I do.”
Still profoundly moved by the fact that he’d remembered exactly what he’d told me on our wedding day, I shook my head. “I can’t smile right now.”
Wiping my fresh tears away, Hayden gave me a little smile himself. “Come on, GG. Not even for your JV? Or am I not your ‘jello vampire’ anymore?”
Now I couldn’t help but smile, a very small one, anyway. Hayden’s smile got a bit bigger.
“That’s what I like to see. I like to see my GG happy.”
I smiled again. “You do make me happy.”
“Good. Now, twenty minutes ago, I told my fighters that I’d be by to check in with them in about five minutes, so what should I tell them about why I’m late? Should I tell them that I’m not quite as stoic of a vampire as I seem, and that I got hung up sharing an embrace and some cuddles with my GG? Do you think they’ll still respect me if they know I actually answer to the nickname of JV, or ‘jello vampire?’”
Soon Hayden had me not only fully smiling, but laughing as well. After we’d shared a few kisses, he then released me from his arms, saying that if he didn’t force himself to do it right then, he might be tempted to carry me upstairs to our room, and then he’d really be late. As disappointed as I was that he had to go, I knew he was right in thinking that if we kissed any longer, it would surely lead to other things.
As tempting and as devastatingly handsome as he looked even with dark circles under his eyes, and as good as the length of his long, hard body felt against mine, I was pretty sure I would have asked him to carry me upstairs to our room within a minute.
Right after he left the house, a few squawks through the baby monitor let me know that Chrissy was awake, and I went upstairs to change her, dress her, and bring her down for breakfast. Once we got back down to the kitchen, I found Carol sitting up to the island with a cup of coffee while Jen worked at the stove, scrambling at least a dozen eggs in a pan.
Smiling, I asked her if she was still hungry even after her breakfast-in-the-bathtub, and she said she was actually ravenous.
“See, I only got to have about nine or ten pieces of bacon before Wanted put his whole snout in the plate and gobbled all the rest up. We got our awesome selfie before all that, though. Gonna post it on all my social media pages later today.”
Carol glanced up from scrolling through her phone. “Just remember your dad’s rule, Jen. Just make sure that you’re fully clothed in any picture posted online, and never post any pictures that would, in any way, be embarrassing to our family.”
Looking from her pan of eggs to Carol, over her shoulder, Jen snorted. “Define ‘embarrassing.’”
Frowning, Carol had already gone back to scrolling through her phone, and she looked so preoccupied that it didn’t seem she was going to answer Jen.
After a quick stir of her eggs, Jen tried again, looking over her shoulder at Carol. “Carol? What’s ‘embarrassing?’”
Still frowning, Carol continued looking at her phone for a long moment before suddenly looking up at Jen. “I’m sorry, sweetie. My literary agent is trying to negotiate a new deal with my publisher, and I’m just a little preoccupied reading through a lengthy email from my agent right now. Did you ask me something?”
Jen said for her to just never mind. “But now that I’ve got your attention, how many eggs worth of scrambled eggs do you want?”
Carol said that two would be just fine and thanked her, and Jen turned back to the stove, muttering.
“No one in this house ever eats much…I’m surprised you don’t all just blow away in the wind.”
I pulled Chrissy’s high chair over to the island and began putting her in it, and Carol looked up at us and said good morning with a smile, as if she hadn’t realized we were in the kitchen before then. She remained distracted all throughout breakfast, saying “Sure, sweetie,” when Jen asked her if she could have “maybe about fifty dollars” to take with her into Sweetwater that day for “candy money.”
While feeding Chrissy a little bowl of mushy baby cereal and another little bowl of pureed peaches, I realized that Carol was kind of lucky to have the distraction of a successful career to distract her from the threat of the Warrens.
In fact, she’d told me a few days earlier that although that situation with the Warrens made her anxious sometimes, she found it easy to “just forget all about it” by immersing herself in plans for the new book she’d soon be writing. It was because her last book had been such a commercial success that her literary agent was negotiating a new deal with the publisher.
Although I had my own career of sorts being a full-time mom, not to mention that I still worked part-time at the creamery, I myself didn’t find it quite so easy to forget all about the Warrens. Even while I continued feeding Chrissy her breakfast, I couldn’t help but think about how the threat of the Warrens remained.
This thought took away from my happiness at being reconciled with Hayden. I was also kind of troubled by the fact that even though I’d finally identified what I hated most about the Warren situation, which was feeling powerless, and even though I’d finally shared my feelings about this with Hayden, I still hadn’t been able to come up with any idea to change the way I felt.
If I had been a vampire, things would have been easy. I would have just joined the guard patrol, like Mel. Or, I would have volunteered to also be a spy or a fighter, like many other vampire women on the farm who fought against the Warrens right alongside their husbands. This way, I would have felt like I was actually doing something, instead of just feeling powerless, waiting for Hayden and everyone else to take care of everything.
As nervous as I was about the prospect of becoming a vampire someday, and as many questions about it as I still had, I might have at least considered it as a possibility right then anyway, if not for one little thing, which was that Hayden and I had decided that we wanted to have at least one more child before I was turned.
No matter when this happened, I was sure that it wouldn’t be in time for me to be turned into a vampire so that I could help fight the Warrens. So, me actually helping the community in any physical way was definitely off the table. This put me right back at square one, which was feeling powerless at not being able to contribute like most everyone else on the farm.
Lost in thought, I was only vaguely aware that Jen was saying something to me while she polished off her second bowl of baby cereal. She said my name, and I turned my focus to Chrissy from Jen, feeling as if I were coming out of a dream.
“What’d you say, Jen?”
She gave her eyes the faintest of rolls. “Wow, between you and Carol today…doesn’t anyone care that me, Bucky, and Phyllis are having a ‘marathon paintball day’ today? We’re going to play paintball for at least two hours or so before going out to lunch, and then we’re gonna come back and play for at least another two hours or so. Bucky says I really need all the practice I can get to improve my aim. Then, maybe someday, I can be like him. He hardly ever misses a shot. Phyllis is pretty good, too.”
I developed an amusing mental picture of two senior citizens playing paintball, and I asked Jen if Bucky and Phyllis really got that into playing with her, or if they more just watched. Jen insisted that they “really got into it.”
“See, it’s been their thing for years and years and years. In fact, Bucky’s been playing paintball for, like…over five decades now, I think he said, because he started when he was, like, fourteen years old or something.”
Feeding Chrissy a spoonful of peaches, I glanced over at Jen, asking how that could really be possible. “Would they even have had paintball back then, when Bucky was a teenager?”
Jen nodded. “Oh, yeah. Paintball’s been around for a really long time.”
“Well, just make sure that Bucky and Phyllis don’t go too hard at it, just because you enjoy it, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they might be physically taxing themselves at their age by spending hours and hours playing paintball, just because they want to keep up with you. Just make sure you all take frequent breaks and everything, and call it a day if they start to seem tired, even if you’re still having fun.”
“Oh, I get what you mean. I don’t think Bucky and Phyllis getting tired will ever be a problem, though. They’re like, the biggest paintball enthusiasts I’ve ever met in my life.”
Just then, Trevor got home from running patrol, asking Jen if she was ready for her “surveillance detail” to follow her into Sweetwater in about an hour, adding that he just needed to take a quick “vampire nap” and then take a shower before he’d be ready to go.
Rolling her eyes at Trevor a little, Jen said she’d be ready to leave in an hour. “If you insist, I guess, even though that’ll be cutting it a little close for paintball.”
Trevor rolled his eyes back. “I won’t make you late for paintball. Wouldn’t want to make you mad by doing that, because I wouldn’t want you to grab your paintball gun and shoot me.”
Jen said she never would. “Although there is one person in this family that I’d like to do that to, and I won’t name any names, but…well, that person is Mel.”
By the time Hayden returned home, the house had cleared out except for me and Chrissy, who I’d just put down for a nap. Greeting Hayden in the kitchen, I gave him a tight hug and a kiss, which he returned with tenderness and then passion, seeming reluctant when he finally broke it. The look in his eyes was one of complete seriousness, too, and when he spoke, it was in a low, husky sort of voice.
“I want to tell you something, Syd.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t want you to feel helpless anymore. I don’t want you to feel powerless. I want you to feel just as involved in the effort to defeat the Warrens as the rest of us are.”
Thinking that he was going to suggest that he turn me into a vampire without us even having a second child, I asked him what he meant.
Seeming to be reading my mind, he said that he didn’t want to turn me into a vampire before I was ready for that, and before we were ready for that as a couple, and as a family. “There are other things you can do to help, though.”
“Well, like what?”
“Like helping to keep the farm secure. Or, at least secure until it’s time for us to fight.”
Again, I asked him what he meant, and he took a deep breath, still holding me in his arms, before responding. “We know that the Warrens are going to attack us sometime soon. With the intel we’ve received, and as cocky as they’re getting, that’s a certainty. We don’t want them all just streaming into the farm, though. Given our limited numbers, that just wouldn’t go very well for us, I don’t think. So, we need to find a way to have the Warrens enter the farm in small groups, so that we can handle them, and I think strategically-placed fences are the solution.”
“So…you mean, to kind of ‘funnel’ them in single-file sort of?”
“Sort of. We’ll use the fences to get the Warrens to go where we want them…and where we’ll be ready for them.”
“Well, if we can use fences like that, then why don’t we just wall off the entire property to keep them out so that there’s no battle in the first place?”
“Lots of reasons, the first being that I don’t think we have that kind of time, to wall off a massive property that includes so many acres of farmland, woodland, and dozens of homes. I think construction like that could take a year, and maybe even several. Not to mention that the construction would almost have to consist of actual walls, and not fences. Which might get people in Sweetwater a little suspicious of us, and what we’re doing here at the farm.
The other reason I don’t think walling off the entire property is something I want to do is because I actually want the Warrens to attack us. I want them to do that because I want to decimate their numbers, but on our turf, where it’ll be easiest for us. So, I actually want this battle to happen. I just want strategically-placed fences to be part of our preparations, though, so that we can force the Warrens to attack us in a way so that we can be prepared.”
“Well, where do I come into play in all this?”
“I want you to coordinate our defense. Fences, mounds of earth to use as barriers to slow the Warrens entering the farm…I want you to coordinate all of this.”
“‘Coordinate’ or ‘construct?’ Because, Hayden, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this before, but I have zero experience in construction work. Like, none.”
Hayden cracked a smile. “I know that. But you’re smart, and shrewd, and analytical in your thinking. Which makes me think that you’re the perfect person to coordinate the efforts, and plan everything out. Your first step will be to draw up a rough ‘blueprint’ of the farm and all the surrounding property. Then, keeping in mind that the Warrens will probably be attacking from the west, you can plan where we’ll place the fences and the earthworks. Then, once construction is underway, which will be done by a team of my vampires, you’ll be in charge of overseeing it all, making sure that everything goes according to plan.”
I had to admit that I really liked the idea of this, and I told Hayden that.
“But do you really think I’m the right person for this, though?”
He didn’t even hesitate in his response. “Yes. I do. In fact, I don’t think there’s anyone better for the job.”
After thinking about things for a moment or two, I smiled. “Well, then, when can I start?”
Hayden smiled in return. “The moment you’re ready.”
I smiled even harder. “I think I’ve got about an hour before Chrissy wakes up from her nap.”