The Beautiful Monster

"Why did you two break up? Did your parents not want you to hurt her either?" Alyssa asked him, curious about their history. If they were so close, why did they break up?

She also wondered who broke up with who. Even if Stella broke up with him the first time, that didn\'t mean that she didn\'t get feelings again and wanted to try again with him.

Elias leaned back in his seat, realizing that Alyssa meant business.

"My parents liked her. She\'s… a vampire," Elias said quietly.

Alyssa felt her blood run cold. A vampire that she didn\'t know was in her apartment alone with her.

Something terrible could\'ve happened! She sighed and brushed her fingers through her hair.

"She needs to stay away from me. I know she\'s your friend, but I don\'t want vampires and whatever in my life. I don\'t want to have to deal with this," she sighed.

She hated sounding whiny, but she just didn\'t feel like it was fair. She had such a good streak that got ruined in a blink of an eye. She hadn\'t even been able to prepare.

Elias looked a bit hurt by that.

"I\'m really sorry, Alyssa," he said, sounding sincere.

If he truly cared about her, he would leave her alone and take all of this danger away from her. Alyssa didn\'t know what to say to him.

She felt herself drawing away from him again. She was worried about her future, and what consequences would come from Elias trying to be a part of it.

There was still that glimmer of hope inside of her that things might be able to work out between them, but its glow was getting duller and duller.

"Things are just a mess right now. I worked so hard to get where I am now, and I just don\'t want that taken away," she said as she stared at the table.

She couldn\'t look at him right now. He looked too torn up about everything. Why couldn\'t he just be a jerk so that this would be easy for her?

Elias reached across the table and took her hand.

"I would never try to mess your life up. I\'m so proud of you for achieving your dreams. I never doubted you," he told her gently.

That was why it was hard for Alyssa to push him away. Because he would say the perfect thing to her that made all the bad thoughts go away.

She stared down at their joined hands, admiring how well they fit together, even all these years later.

She missed the feeling of holding his hand. She missed a lot of things.

"You achieved your dreams too," Alyssa told him. She was proud of what he did for himself too.

Just because they had a rocky breakup didn\'t mean that she felt complete ill will toward him. She had grown up a lot since then, and he had too. "I didn\'t doubt you either."

Elias smiled warmly at her, stroking her knuckles with his thumb.

"I never stopped thinking about you when I left. I wanted to reach out so badly, but I wanted to keep you safe too, especially with all of the turmoil going on in my family," he told her.

Alyssa wondered what all went on in his family life. He had been bringing them up a lot since he started opening up to her, and she believed that a lot of the things that he had to deal with came from that. His family was at odds, and that put pressure on him.

She knew all about family drama, but she was grateful that she didn\'t have to deal with it anymore.

She hadn\'t spoken to her mother in years, and she preferred to keep it that way. She wasn\'t going to rub her success in anyone\'s face. She just wanted to live a happy life.

"I thought about you a lot too, but I also tried to forget you," Alyssa admitted. She used to wish for amnesia because she couldn\'t stand the thought of him and how he hurt her. It would\'ve been easier to forget everything.

"Did it work?" Elias asked.

"No," Alyssa breathed out, meeting his eyes. It was so easy to get lost in them, to fall into their endless depths and forget about everything else. If only things were that easy. If only she could escape like that.

"Maybe that was for a reason," Elias suggested.

Alyssa shrugged, not knowing the answer. She was clueless about a lot, and she just tried to figure things out as she went along.

She messed up a lot. She made mistakes and overanalyzed things, but she was human.

She was supposed to mess up and then try to do better. She just wished that she knew what to do more often.

"What happened back then doesn\'t have to be the end of our story," Elias told her.

Alyssa wasn\'t sure if he was hinting at them dating or not, but it was something that she didn\'t feel strong enough to talk about right now.

Of course, she wanted the fantasy of them being back together, but she knew how cruel life was.

She knew that fantasies hardly ever became reality, and she wasn\'t going to throw away her life and hard work for a fantasy.

"Let\'s deal with this Scott stuff first," she told him. She could hardly focus on her personal life when she knew that a dangerous vampire was possibly out to get her. She hated not knowing everything, but the truth would come to light. It always did.

Elias\' smile faltered a little, but he nodded.

"I\'ll get to the bottom of this," he promised her.

Alyssa hoped that he did before it was too late. She didn\'t want to die now. She was still young, still striving for more hopes and dreams.

Her future could be bright, but there were a lot of shadows lingering around right now.

"He\'s choking! Help! He\'s choking!"

And the darkness of life always made itself known.