Chapter 31 - Bee

I know loving me is a handful, but, baby, that’s why you have two hands.

~ Walker Thomas

It was on the tip of my tongue to say ‘love hurts and so does getting hit by a car, and I’d rather get hit by a car.’ It was the kind of caustic response to love I’d always had, defenses up, walls stacked high around my heart. But, I wasn’t that woman anymore. My walls had been torn down and my beating heart was now exposed to the elements. I’d fallen, hard. Had it changed my perspective on love? I wasn’t sure because I wasn’t sure if this would last, and history told me it wouldn’t. But the fall . . . damn if Mac wasn’t right. It was exhilarating, it was terrifying, and I could imagine that it would still be worth it, even with the painful crash and burn at the inevitable end.

“All that thinking looks painful,” Austin murmured, throwing my words right back at me.

I smiled and found myself standing from my chair and placing myself right into his lap. Austin’s arms wrapped around me and pulled me close as he pressed his face into the arch of my neck and kissed the tender place beneath my ear that made me moan like a wanton hussy every time. Turning, I rested my forehead against his and just felt him. This was my soul mate, and our bond was well under way. I could feel him in my heart, and it was like a missing piece finding home. He wouldn’t feel the bond on this level until he was immortal, but he was deeply in love with me, and I wasn’t saying it because of my over-inflated ego, it was simply a fact. And I was deeply in love with him. Our hearts were practically purring and we were coated in the sickly sweet scent of love. Was I scared of it? No. Was I scared of losing it? Scared spitless.

“I’m not sure it’s love I hate anymore,” I quietly confessed. Austin pressed his cheek to mine, his breath tickling my ear. “This fall is something I’ve never experienced before, it’s crazy and unplanned and while I don’t want to think past the right here and now, in your arms, a part of me wants to dream of our future. That’s what I hate, the unknown, the possibility of pain, deep, soul-wrenching pain.” 

“Why do you have to believe in the worst, Sugar? Why can’t we have a happily ever after?”

“Because that’s something reserved for books, Austin. It’s not real life. True love with a happy ending is rare.”

“Just because it’s rare doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There is no reason you and me can’t be wild together, forever.”

I sighed, his vision warming my heart. Pulling away, I glanced down at my arms and sighed. “I’m glowing like a freaking sign on the Vegas strip.”

Austin chuckled. “It’s not that bad.”

I rolled my eyes. All he could see was a faint, golden glow.  “You aren’t seeing me with immortal eyes. I’m glowing red! I look like a freaking stop signal.” Huffing out a breath, I pressed whispered kisses across his cheek. “How did you get me so into you?”

“It’s my charming personality,” he whispered. “What about me? Do I glow?”

He stretched out his arms, and my gaze wandered over his wide chest and strong arms. Running a finger along his forearm, I traced the tattoos there and watched as his aura began to intermingle with mine, like dancing smoke coming together, twisting happily until it merged and became one. It was almost hypnotic.

“You look like a stop signal, too.” I groaned, my forehead falling forward to rest on his again.

“That’s because,” Austin paused and my heart just about stopped beating. I knew what he was going to say and I was equal parts terrified and thrilled. “I love you,” he finished the sentence on a whisper.

My eyes fluttered shut and my heart skipped a beat, like literally. I think there were fireworks currently exploding somewhere, or maybe it was the rapid pounding of my heart in my ears.  My soul leapt with joy and the bright aura that surrounded me pulsed in an almost blinding manner. I wanted to take those words and lock them away somewhere safe where no-one could ever take them away from me. Who would have thought being loved could have such a profound effect on someone.

“Say it, sugar,” Austin coaxed.

Oh gods! My throat became tight and fear prevented those words from spilling. Of course I loved the big lug. I knew it in my heart, and yet saying it aloud scared me stupid. I’d only ever said those words to Mac, often accompanied with a slap across the back of the head. “I flove you, biotch!”

“I dare you.” Austin kissed beneath my ear again, right over my arrow tattoo, then my jaw, followed by the corner of my lips.

He freaking dared me, so not fair! Never one to back down from a dare, I inhaled deeply, then exhaled those words that struck fear to the bravest of hearts.

“I love you . . .” I breathed the words with only enough sound for Austin’s ears. “Bitch.”

He smiled, all smug-like. I rolled my eyes, all cool-like, then he kissed me.

“You know, I can just wave my wand and have this all fixed up in no time,” Mac offered, waving around her fake Harry Potter wand that Walker had bought her when they visited London a few weeks ago. We were playing pool at Savannah’s bar, which had almost finished the renovating stage and would be ready to officially open in a couple of weeks.

I snorted and shook my head. “Your wand is lame, and you can’t make furniture appear out of thin air, dillweed.” 

“My wand is awesome, and you can make furniture appear,” Mac argued.

“I can but how exactly do we explain it to Savannah who is doing stock take out back?”

Mac plucked the beer from Walker’s hand and glared at me as she took a long drink. “What’s got your twat in a knot? Austin, have you been denying my girl orgasms? She looks cranky in a sexually deprived kind of way.”

“Subtle, Mac,” I mumbled.

“Subtly is for people who lack the balls to be bold,” Mac answered, accepting Walker’s immediate fist bump for her wise words.

Austin leaned over the table and took his shot. “Not my doing. She had a date with her daddy last night. Apparently, she has to get back to work.”

Mac looked surprised.

“I’ve got my bow back, so there’s no reason why I can’t be out there shooting the town up.” I calmly replied, though inside I was anything but calm.

Father made it quite clear he thought my new-found experience with love would pull me into line. He used the words ‘proud’ and ‘forgiveness’ and then tried to quote the song “What A Wonderful World”: “the colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are also on the faces, of people gay or bi.” I didn’t even have it in me to correct his lyrical mistake. That wasn’t what made me cranky, though; it was centuries of shooting non-potentials that had me feeling all icky inside. I’d never regretted anything in my long, life . . . until now. Guilt was a powerful emotion; it had both the potential to hold you back or help you move forward. If I ignored my guilt, it could inevitably put a strain on my new relationship—I didn’t even cringe at the thought of the word ‘relationship’, go me!—I had no idea how Austin would react to me and my wayward arrows. However, if I acknowledged that I may have been a little rash in my hostile feelings about love, I guess I could work at correcting some of my mistakes, and I could begin working for ‘Cupids Catch’ rather than against it, and shoot potentials, allowing them to share this giddy feeling of being stuck on a never-ending roller coaster.

Right now I had no effing idea what I was going to do. My meddling in the human world would no doubt anger some of the new mortals in my life. I suspected Austin’s reaction wouldn’t be positive, so for the time being I had every intention of burying that hate-filled past of mine in a deep, deep well.

“What’s the quota? One hundred?” asked Mac, pulling me out of my guilt stricken pity party.

I nodded and took the cue from Austin before taking my shot.

“Okay, that’s easy. I thought Captain Love might have had you making up for three months off. A hundred large is totally doable. Shoot them.” Mac pointed to the woman behind the bar who was directing a delivery guy to the stockroom. Thankfully, it wasn’t Austin’s sister, but the woman she had recently hired, Stacy. She had just begun seeing someone, and shooting the tall, lean delivery man would no doubt interfere with her new blossoming relationship. Holy crap, I’d found my conscience!

“Are they potential soul mates?” Austin asked, scrunching up his nose as he tried to get a glimpse of the much older balding man wheeling cartons of liquor into the bar.

“Of course not,” Mac brushed him off. “But that’s the way Bee rolls. She doesn’t shoot potentials, and it makes it easier to meet her quota.”

Silence, the kind of silence that almost echoed and felt stiflingly uncomfortable ensued. I turned away from Stacy to set my furious gaze on Mac. She had just dragged my secret from the deep, deep well and highlighted it with stars and glitter.

“Who do you shoot?” Austin asked, looking more than a little surprised.

I opened my mouth to speak, and nothing came out. Gah, the guilt was getting thicker, and it felt as though my lungs were burning for air. I brought my hand to my throat and gently rubbed.

“Who does she shoot?” Austin demanded, his gaze slowly morphing to anger as he swung around to glare at Mac. Her trucker hat read ‘I don’t make the same mistake twice, I make it five or six times’. How effing apt!

“Ummmm,” she mumbled, inching closer to Walker. He may be immortal now, giving him that otherworldly strength, but he wouldn't be strong enough to stop me from whooping Mac’s ass right now.

“Who!” Austin demanded, making us all jump at his raised voice. He never raised his voice; this was bad.

“People, just everyday people, non-potentials, folks who just need a good boinking.” Mac quickly got the words out before disappearing with Walker.

Effing traitor, I thought at her hasty escape.

“Because you hate love.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Not anymore,” I carefully replied.

“Because of your childish dislike of something, you made others suffer?”

Ouch! “Nobody suffered, there was no pain when the arrow hit them.”

“What happens once the lust burns off?”

“They go their separate ways.”

“Happily?”

I never stuck around for the ending. I was supposed to do ‘recalls’ and check back on the couples I’d shot, but I saw no point considering they weren’t potentials and wouldn’t end up together forever. I’d heard enough from my father though to know the couples I shot were rarely anything but happy. The forced attraction began with high powered lust and usually ended in fighting and tears. The sheepish look I now gave Austin was pretty darn telling.

“I’m taking you’re silence as a no.”

I had no words. No amount of apologies would make up for the way I had behaved. I made people miserable for my own perverse enjoyment. If I was in a love-free, cold zone, everyone else would be, too. At the time, I thought I was doing them a favor, but now that I’d experienced falling in love, I knew that I was no better than the gods of old, messing with human life simply for sport.

“You played with mortals as if they were nothing but dolls, objects for your own entertainment.” I opened my mouth to try and defend myself but Austin was quick to continue, “You screwed with people’s lives, Bee! How many of these people missed out on experiencing love because you didn’t want it? What gave you that fucking right?”  His words stung, hitting me deep, creating the pain I knew accompanied love like a double edged sword. “Tell me about us. Why me? Why did your father come find me when he knew you hated the entire idea of love so fucking much?”

There was no point in keeping the secrets buried; I couldn’t even conceive a lie right now, anyway. And I didn’t want to. Go figure.

“My father brought me to you and shot me with an arrow.”

“He forced you to love me? Why?”

“He didn’t force me to love you,” I growled out. That’s not how the arrows worked and Austin knew that, but he was pissed and being a bit of a douche. “You were shot with an arrow of indifference. You would not respond to me until I actually began putting in effort, until I exposed myself and made myself vulnerable to love, only then would you see me. And it was to teach me a lesson, to teach me about love.”

Austin laughed but it was entirely without humor. I shivered. This explosive, pissed-off side to Austin wasn’t something I had experienced, and being on the receiving end of his ire filled me something akin to shame. Phoibe Cupid didn’t do shame, she didn’t do guilt and she damn well didn’t let a man speak to her like she was some sort of spoiled child. I pressed my shoulders back and raised my chin, slowly resurrecting the walls around my heart and erecting my defenses. I knew this was going to hurt; this was the unpleasant splat at the end of falling into love.

“I was a lesson, this was all a lesson.”  Austin murmured, as he looked to the ceiling in what I thought was a search of patience.

“It was, but it doesn’t make it any less real,” I pressed, working hard to keep my voice level.

“Oh, Sugar, this isn’t real.” The way he said ‘sugar’ took something so incredibly precious to me and twisted it into something ugly.  “We are built on lies. You are made of hate, and left in your wake is misery and devastation.”

I couldn’t stop from raising my hand and pressing it to my chest as if to block the knives that were currently shredding my heart to pieces.

“And this is why,” I growled out, my voice finally cracking. “Your hate filled words spewed with enough venom to destroy a soul, when love turns to hate, when all the sweetness disappears, and all that’s left is the foul stench of hurt and betrayal, this is why I hate love. This is why I refused to bow down to it. I was protecting mortals from this pain!”

“This is an argument, Bee, this is what adults do when they are in love, they disagree and they fight, deal with it.” Austin shouted. “I knew you had hang-ups, Bee,” he continued, his voice suddenly calmer. “But this kinda takes the cake. What you’ve been doing is wrong.”

This was the moment he would deliver the final strike of the knife that turned my once warm heart cold again. Love didn’t conquer shit. It was sweet and all-consuming, until it wasn’t. Then it was vicious, hateful, and devastating.

“I just need some time to wrap my head around this,” Austin confessed.

I held back my unamused snort. Time. He and time were like best freaking friends. The last time he had asked for time I almost lost my mind. Not happening again!

“You know what, Austin? You take all the time you want. I’ve lived centuries just fine without you, so you just go ahead and do what you’ve got to do. Take weeks if you need it, heck, take months, even years!” I spat out my frustration. “The orgasms were fun and all, but I’ve got places to go, people to shoot. Enjoy your time thinking about how I don’t fit on the damn pedestal you want to stick me on.”

I didn’t give him the chance to slay me with his cutting words any longer; instead, I disappeared.