Chapter 359) Here We Are

Here we are
Face to face
Here we are
Once again
But this time we’re only friends
Funny world, sometimes lies
Become the game, when love’s the prize
And though no one knows what’s going on inside
And all the love I feel for you
Is something I should hide
When I have you close to me
The feeling’s so sublime
That there’s nothing I can do
To keep from loving you

University of Britchester
Cameron Campus Home

She entered her room, shut the door and turned around, then with a shriek Bianca winced, staring at the young man sitting on her bed, who now rose up.

“What the hell are you doing in my room?!” she demanded.

He just looked at her with an unreadable, unhappy look.

“Gavin!” she hissed, demanding a verbal reaction, but he only continued staring at her, indecisively, as if looking for the right words, which seemed to keep eluding him.

With an exasperated huff, she continued.

“What if I had my boyfriend with me?! How would you have explained this? How should I have? He doesn’t know what you really are. Or are you trying to get me in trouble?!”

Gavin looked up at her, stepped towards her, but halted as if he had run into a wall when he noticed she took a step backwards, away from him. He closed his eyes, shoulders slumped. With a sigh she shook her head and stepped close to him, grabbing his hand, playing with it gently, which he allowed like a marionette, while she started talking.

“Sorry, that was a reflex. I didn’t mean it the way it probably came across, I am not afraid of you. But Gavin, why are you making this so hard? You shouldn’t be here, at this place and especially not in my room. I just don’t get you. You’re Blaine Cameron’s son. It cannot be so hard for you to find someone new. Someone more special than I am. I am just one of many, the only thing I have going for me is a wealthy dad. That’s it. I can’t sing, not a good dancer, can never remember jokes right, I am not particularly smart or anything that would make me stand out. Plus, like most of the Auditore sisters I have my mom’s Ruben’s figure, while Adrianna got the height and shape of a model.”

Gavin’s glare at her made her feel like she had just told him the stupidest thing in the world as he pulled his hand away.

“Do you love him?” he asked dryly.

“What? Of course I love Carson!”

“More than me? Even though he makes you feel like all that?”

“Gavin! Come on now!”

“Answer. Shouldn’t be so hard. I know I made you feel special, you told me so yourself many times. I never heard you say any of those things when you were mine.”

“Stop it! It is hard to explain. You can’t compare the two. It’s different with Carson. We just … we’re a much better match on so many levels.”

“Because he’s mortal? Because he has a mirror image and no fangs. That trumps what you know I would and could give you? You’d be my world, not like Carson, to him you are just some rich girl that matches his portfolio and his parents’ idea of a suitable girlfriend!”

“Carson loves me! And you are twisting the facts, Gav. You make it sound so bad, when there is a lot of validity to my points too.”

“Is there? If there is, I am missing it. Why is it so bad that I am … not mortal? And if you really think he loves you like I do, then I feel sorry for you.”

“Come on now. It just is the way it is. It doesn’t work. It’s all too weird. Plus, my sister is already married to a Cameron, one you are weirdly related to. How would that look?”

“I am Nick’s uncle, what’s weird about that? And who cares what that looks like? You really think people will sit there with both our family trees pulled up and a red marker?! Since when does anyone pick their partners by what it would look like to others? Who even cares?!”

“Just imagine you and I were to ever get married. Me having the same last name as my sister, even though we’re both married would be weird too. Then to explain that you are my brother-in-law’s uncle, even though you’re a lot younger than Nick. That’s just … strange. An uncle should be older. That doesn’t even touch the whole Vampire bit. I know people know they exist, but we don’t have to rub their faces in it like that.”

“Names are names, you could always keep your maiden name or whatever. That seriously is not a real reason, no matter how you turn it. Plus, your younger brother has nieces and nephews much older than him …”

Bianca swallowed.

“Right. Okay fine, you got me there, I forgot about all that, my young stepmom plus half-brother. But it still … I just … we’re just not compatible. People break up. It happens. All the time.”

“But I still love you. WE didn’t break up. YOU dumped me. For no real reason at all. You suddenly don’t want me anymore for things I have no influence on, things I can’t even change if I wanted to.” he pleaded, taking her hands in his.

She pulled her hands away from him.

“Oh Gavin, stop, please. I am gonna graduate in a few short years, sometime after that I will be planning my wedding to become Mrs. Carson Eastwood and … you know, all that. You can’t … you … you could never … like … on a honeymoon, you can’t jet ski and tan and play in the water with me unless it was at night or something. But that is all part of the experience. When I think honeymoon, I think the bride and groom laying lazily around a beach somewhere drinking one frilly cocktail after another while eating too much. You can’t even eat without taking some serum first and you don’t even really taste the food then still. I don’t want to live in the shadows for the rest of my life. It’s just too complicated. We don’t work together. Why is it so hard for you to see that, accept it? I have.”

“Maybe you are right. Maybe we are not compatible, because I thought you were a modern woman, getting a college degree to be someone in your own right, not go from being someone’s daughter straight into being someone’s wife. You said it yourself, Mrs. Carson Eastwood. I would never want you to be ‘Mrs. Gavin Cameron’. I would want you to be Bianca, first and foremost, by any last name. I don’t want a girl who identifies herself through me only, someone who stands in my shadow. And where is all that talk about marriage coming from all of a sudden?! What’s the rush? But if all that nonsense is so very important to you, then maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you are not the girl I thought you were. Maybe you really are better off with a guy like that!”

“That is not what I meant! Obviously I want to do what Adrianna did and get a good degree, maybe Pappa will give me part of his businesses to run like he did with her. I do want to be my own person, and I am sure Carson wants that for me too. Please quit making what we had into more than it was. Just puppy love, not whatever you blow it up into. We were kids, teens, priorities change, I am older now.”

“So that’s it? The fact you are 2 years older than me makes you blow off everything we had as sandbox romance while I am just not a priority anymore?”

“Almost three years.”

“No, still two. I can count, Bianca. Two years and a few weeks. You being 20 and me just 18 erases everything for you? For two measly years and that fact that I am … different, you want to throw it all away? Your sister and Nick didn’t have it very easy with the distance and all, they were our age and made it work. Why can’t we? You wanted a break to go off to college while I was just in high school. It hurt, I’ll say that, but I gave you that, I waited for you, stayed true to you. You asked I wouldn’t visit here until you are settled. I waited and waited, thought I was giving you space, yet more time passed, and you never invited me, so I just came to see you and you present me with a boyfriend! How is that fair? That is not a breakup, from where I sit you cheated and you still are cheating, cos nobody ever spoken the words out loud. And say what you will, your lame excuses and reasons don’t hold. Is it your father? It’s him, isn’t it?”

“Even if it were, Gavin, I wouldn’t tell you, so you don’t hurt him. I love my dad.”

“You think I would hurt him? Do you really think I am a monster? Just because I have fangs?”

“No. But I think you lose control sometimes. I do not know what happened, I don’t remember a thing, but I know that those marks I had on my neck were not bug bites. I really don’t know what you did to me, but I know AG was acting strange about it all and your mom came by more often than usual, all mysterious and all, Chase came by several times even though I know he is working on a new album and doesn’t have time for social calls, and when they were here, they stared at me strangely like I was some specimen in a lab. I think they think they were covert about it, but I noticed. I KNOW you bit me. I just … know. And I know I can’t remember anything because of something you did and if it wasn’t you then it was Chase or your mom. So, yes, I do think you could lose your temper with my daddy. I know he can be very aggravating. Not worth the risk.”

Gavin swallowed hard, closed his eyes, reveling at the fact how she had put two and two together, while he was feeling caught and guilty.

“Can I have one last kiss. A kiss goodbye?” he asked.

“No. I don’t want you near me. What if this time you lose your shit again and finish the job, turn me, cos you think I would have to be with you then or some rubbish like that. No. We’ll keep our distance.”

“I lost your trust. I see …”

Gavin crumbled together, standing there, saying nothing anymore, not moving, Bianca felt terrible.

“Gavin … I really am sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I honestly didn’t think you were this attached. I swear I never would have guessed you would take us breaking up as hard as you have. I don’t want you to hurt, but I cannot be with you. Please do try to understand me.”

Gavin looked at her as if considering it, then shook his head.

“I gotta go. And don’t worry. I made a mistake with you. Won’t happen again.” the sadness underlining his words echoed in her room in his wake, as he had ported away already, leaving Bianca to wonder what his words really meant. Was the mistake he was referring to the bite he never really admitted but also didn’t deny, or was it their failed relationship? Somehow thinking it could be the latter hurt Bianca.

“You’re just not right for me Gavin. I wish you could see that too and we could at least be friends. I miss you. But I cannot be the girlfriend – or even worse – wife of a Vampire one day. Just can’t.”