Amaia had indeed forgotten that Lawrence knew her better than anyone. Of course he would have been able to see her struggle. She simply nodded.
“What’s the problem? Do you want to go to him?” Lawrence was so sympathetic. His blue eyes peered at her with all the affection she thought she could ever have.
“Yes. I want to go more than anything.”
“But you’re not.” It wasn’t an order or an incrimination, merely a statement of understanding.
“No, nothing good can come of it.”
“No, nothing can. But that doesn’t make it any easier, does it?” Lawrence sat next to her, rubbed soothing circles on her back, and kissed her hair as if she were a little girl again.
Amaia shook her head.
“Cheer up, my girl. You’re making the right decision.”
“You don’t understand. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to stay away.”
Lawrence chuckled. “I was in love once too. I know what it’s like, Amaia.”
“What do you mean you’ve been in love? You’ve never mentioned her. You’re not mated. Don’t lie to me, Lawrence. Not you.” If she couldn’t trust Lawrence, she didn’t know how she would continue living. Even with him, she felt as if only the barest of threads held her to the earth.
“Her name was Abigail: my little Abbi. It was during my mortal life. She’s dead. I killed her.”
The words stunned and, to some degree, calmed her. If it were true, Lawrence might be able to help her more than she had thought. “You killed her? When?”
“After Zenas turned me.”
Wait, that would mean…“Does she haunt you then? The way Michael haunts me?”
“No. I don’t understand it. The only explanation I have is that she wasn’t my transformation kill. That must have something to do with it. If I had known, I wouldn’t have insisted on him being your first.”
“What do you mean? You had nothing to do with my transformation kill. Everyone knows you can’t control that.” Or at least that was what she had been taught to believe. She knew differently. She knew she had killed Michael because she was incapable of love. She couldn’t have killed him if she had felt for him the way he did for her.
“Do you really think me stupid, girl? Of course I had control over it. When have you ever known me not to have control?” He made a fair point. There were no mistakes with Lawrence. In all the time she had known him, he had perfectly directed the world around him. “I arranged for him to be there. That’s why I timed your turning the way I did.”
Amaia heard a buzzing. What was Lawrence saying, exactly? All this time, she had thought it was an accident that Michael had been there. A horrific accident that she hadn’t been strong enough to prevent. Anyone else would have been strong enough to resist the urge to kill their lover. Meg wouldn’t have done that to Liam, even though she defended the inevitability of the transformation kill. Not a cell in Amaia’s body doubted that if the roles had been reversed and it had been Michael who had turned, he would have resisted killing her. That’s how he was. That’s how normal people were. They felt affection, love, passion. She had felt nothing.
“What do you mean? You wanted me to kill Michael?”
“Of course I wanted you to kill Michael. The man was a menace. He was going to take you away from me, Amaia. You were mine. I raised you, loved you from the time you were a child. I couldn’t let him barge into your life and take you away from me. When you told me he had proposed to you, I saw the ring and knew that you would be foolish enough to take him, to follow him to the ends of the world. I saw the silly look of love in your eyes.”
Lawrence had thought she was nothing more than a foolish, lovesick girl. “You did all of this to keep me from him?”
“Love—mating—makes us weak. You know that. I’ve seen the contempt in your eyes when you see a mated pair. You’re right. I knew firsthand the consequences of letting a human love us. I wasn’t going to let what happened to me happen to you. Having you kill Michael right away was the best thing I could have done for you.”
“How can you say that when it has caused me nothing but torment?”
“I’m sorry about that, my child. I really am. Had I known, perhaps I would have done things differently. I knew that this was the life for you. Can you deny it?”
No, she couldn’t. Every part of her cried out that she belonged as a vampire. This was her reality, her purpose, her life. There wasn’t anything she didn’t love about being a vampire. Except, of course, the fact that her lover was human.