Time Stood Still

Lived A Lie.

Josh’s POV

“W-where am I?” I blink a few times adjusting to the light as I slowly sit up on the sofa I was lying on. My hand reaches for my forehead and I groan quietly as I try to regain back my memory of how I got here. I see Oliver crouching beside me holding onto my free hand tightly looking back at me with strong concern black eyes and I knew then something bad had happened.
“You’re at my house.”
“What happened?” I ask, giving him a worried look.
“You suffered from an extreme head trauma which sent your body into a fit, so I gave you a shot of medicine to calm you down and to help relax your muscles and temporally take the pain away from your brain.” Ian Sykes steps into view and explains the situation to me and I glance down into my lap feeling a little embarrassed that my body reacted so badly that Oliver had to take me to his dad.

Oh. I remember screaming in agony in my kitchen but then it all went blank from there, I guess Oliver took me back to his house to try to calm me down and for his dad to find out what’s wrong with me. My eyes flicker to Oliver again who was still staring at me with the same concern look which made me feel uneasy.
“Hey.” I say giving his hand a light squeeze in mine. I wanted him to know I was okay and not to worry about me. I was okay now, the pain had gone away.
“You scared me Josh.” He admits and my heart sinks.
“I’m sorry.” Guilt swam through me when I saw how badly Oliver looked, he really did look hurt and I guess him seeing me in so much pain must have really effected him.

“Oliver tells me you’ve been suffering from headaches. How long have you been suffering from these roughly would you say Josh?”
Ian asks, making me pull my eyes away from Oliver’s and think about his question.
“Erm, a week. Maybe a little longer.” I admit shamefully and I see the disappointment spread across on Oliver’s face. He hated me keeping things from him, especially things as serious as this.
“These headaches, have they been increasing in pain everyday? I’m assuming they’ve gone from headaches to regular migraines and been causing you to suffer from all sorts of side affects; Vomiting, drowsiness, blackouts, dizziness, nose bleeds?”
Ian went through the list of side affects and I just ticked off each one in my mind knowing Oliver isn’t going to like what I’m about to admit.
I look down into my lap again and nod shamefully waiting for the lecture from my other half.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Oliver hisses, letting go of my hand and standing up glaring down at me.
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Worry? You have no idea how serious this is! I told you to tell me if your headaches continue or worsen and you’ve decided to lie to me about them!” he yells making me feel extremely uncomfortable talking to me like this in front of his dad and making me feel guilty about keeping it from him.
“I- I didn’t lie!” I yell back, defending myself but I knew he didn’t believe me. He looked furious, his hands had curled up in to balls of fists and his nostrils flared as his tempter started to stew. I knew I was in deep trouble from keeping this from him but I only did it to protect him, I didn’t want him to worry because I didn’t know what was happening to me!

I see his dad place his hand on his shoulder, a comforting motion to calm him down.
“Son, calm down. Getting worked up won’t solve anything. He’s okay for now, let’s just do what we discussed earlier and see what happens from there.”
Oliver nodded and reluctantly opened his eyes and glance back over to me but I swiftly turned my head away from him not wanting to look at me. I know he was angry with me and I didn’t need him to make me feel any worse about myself than I already do.
I feel my bottom lip quiver and my eyes water as I continued to stare stubbornly at the cream coloured wallpaper. I was trying so hard not to let a tear escape from my eyes; I hated when Oliver acted like this, so harsh and demanding it wasn’t the person I bonded with and it was bad enough that his dad was in the room witnessing it all to.

I feel a delicate cold hand cup my cheek and turn my face towards theres so I was looking at him.
“Baby, I’m sorry.” His face and eyes had soften and he generally sounded like he was sorry but I couldn’t help but feel all emotional and guilty now.
“I didn’t mean to keep it from you.” I choke, feeling a tear roll down my cheek.
“I know. Come on, please don’t get upset. I’m sorry for yelling at you.” He says, wiping the tear away with his thumb as he slowly pulls me up from the sofa to my feet and pulls me into a protective hug. I sniff back the rest of my tears and nuzzle my face into his chest and breathe in his scent as he kissed the top of my head. This is the Oliver I know and bonded with, so caring and loving and would do anything to keep me safe.

---

“I want you to meet the rest of my family. There’s someone in particular I want you to meet.” Oliver says, breaking apart the hug and linking our fingers together and that’s when my curiosity kicked in.
“Who?”
“Not before meeting me first.” I turn towards a feminine like voice to only have a pair of strong cold arms wrap around me and pull me close to their chest.
“Let me see your face.” A woman with boyish black short hair pulls away but keeps her hands on my arms as her eyes takes me in.
“Oh my, what beautiful blue eyes you have dear and such lovely chubby rosy cheeks you have too.” The woman says, stroking her fingers across my cheek and holding up my chin a little with her hand as she examines my face intently. I feel my face heat up and I know I’m blushing embarrassingly, who the hell is the woman?

“You have to forgive my mother, she has a habit for invading other peoples personal space.”
“This is your mum?” I ask, my eyes flickering up to Oliver’s and he nods making me look back at the woman again. He looked so different from her, she was beautiful and elegant and had the same pale features and eyes as him but they looked nothing alike. Oliver definitely took after his father.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you sweetheart, I’ve been demanding Oliver to bring you round sooner but he’s been so stubborn on keeping you all to himself and away from us.”
“Mum.” Oliver moans, obviously a little embarrassed and I can’t help but chuckle at his reaction.
“It’s nice to meet you.” I say politely, she had a nice warm mother feeling presence to her which was nice.

Hannah soon wonders into the room and I greet her with a smile and she returns me with a big smile along with an unexpected hug which kinds of throws me back a little but I’m flattered she’s comfortable that our friendship is on that level.

When she pulls away from our hug I see a tall lanky man standing closely behind her, protectively wrapping his not as heavily tattooed arms around her waist as he stares at me closely with the same black colour eyes as the rest of them and I can’t help but feel rather intimidated by his deadly stare.

“This is Jordan. Hannah’s mate.” Oliver tells me and I’m quickly baffled.
Hannah has a mate? Since when? I saw her a few days ago and she didn’t mention anything about finding her mate. You would think she or Oliver would have told me about him seeing as we’re all supposed to be connected and be one but I guess that’s another downside to being a little fragile human and not apart of the vampire cult. Will they always see me as a pathetic fragile human? I’m a lot tougher what they make me out to be.

I cling to Oliver’s side and hold his hand tighter, a little nervous of meeting this new unknown vampire. As if Oliver could sense my nerves he reveals some unknown facts about him to try to make me feel more comfortable.

“Jordan has the same birthmark as us and his talents have similarities to Hannah’s and mine. He’s a soul reader.”
“What’s that?” I question softly to Oliver but I was answered by Jordan himself.
“By simply touching your soul I can read everything about you.”

My breath hitches in my throat and I bury myself into Oliver’s side even deeper. Something about this vampire being able to read my soul kind of gave me the creeps…

“We believe Jordan may be able to help with your headaches, he might be able to find out what’s causing them. I can’t read your thoughts, but Hannah can see your future, so it only makes sense to try if Jordan can read your soul. The four of us are all connected to each other in some way.”

I felt uneasy with the idea; I hardly know anything about this guy and even though we’re supposed to be connected, I felt nothing. They all expected me to willing allow him to read my soul… what did that even mean? Find out all of my darkest deepest secrets? I didn’t have many but I didn’t feel comfortable with some stranger knowing what they were anyway.

“Love, it's okay, Jordan isn’t going to hurt you.” Oliver says, making me to look up at him to meet his gaze and that’s when I realise how tightly I was holding on to his hand. Maybe I was reading too much into this… I know for a fact Oliver wouldn’t let anybody hurt me and he seemed to trust Jordan and if he says he’s going to help get rid of my headaches then I guess I am in the best hands.

I nod and step away from Oliver’s side and timidly take a few steps forward so I was standing in front of Jordan, not really knowing what to do with myself from then on.

“Just relax Josh, this won’t take no longer than about three seconds.” Jordan says and I just nod and try my best to relax myself and let Jordan do his thing.

The room fell silent, that you could literally hear a pin drop and I guess that just added to my nerves. Jordan raises his right hand and I embarrassingly flinch away from it, scared that he was going to hurt me. I look anxiously behind me at Oliver, to make sure that what Jordan was doing was the right thing and I see Oliver already staring back at me, sending me a reassuring smile as he nods, so I turn back to Jordan taking one deep breath and nodding for him to continue whatever he started before I stopped it. Come on Josh, you can do this, he isn’t going to hurt you.

He places his hand firmly in the middle of my chest and by now I was in a fit of nerves and there was no doubt that Jordan could feel my pathetic human heart pounding inside of my chest beneath his palm, wanting to explode out of it and into his hand. But just like he said, within seconds it was over and he removes his hand from my chest and smiles faintly at me. Did it work? Did he manage to read my soul? Does he know everything about me now? I stood awkwardly in front of him waiting for him to put me out of my misery and reveal the answers we’ve all been waiting for. After what felt like forever, he finally speaks, his voice breaking through the silent room.

“You’ve always been sad, haven’t you?”
I frown, somewhat confused by his words. Sad? I don’t ever recall constantly being sad. My life was so different before I moved here; my life has always been full of fun, laughter, mischief and I was always surrounded by family and friends. The only time I would say I’ve been sad in my life is when I was forced to move down here and live with my mum and away from everyone and everything I’ve grown to know but that’s only been recently.

“Just like Oliver. No wonder you two were drawn to each other, you were destined to be mates.”

I look back up to Jordan, meeting his gaze after what he’s just revealed. Oliver’s sad too? I frown at the thought, Oliver never came across to me as being sad nor did I ever want him to be. I look back at him to find him staring straight at Jordan with dark eyes which were unreadable to me, most probably having some weird silent vampire conversation with everyone else in the room but me. My eyes flicker back to Jordan, too puzzled to worry about Oliver at this moment, the more important thing going on here was how none of this made any sense to me.

“Wait a minute. What’s going on?” I demand, looking back and forth between Jordan and Oliver to get them to focus on me and what I had to say.
“I’m not sad- well, not until recently but whatever. What’s wrong with me, what did you see inside my soul?” I insist at Jordan, placing my hand on my chest and griping tightly at the material of my jumper, as the unknown settles in.
“You don’t remember ever being sad do you?” he questions, tilting his head to the side staring at me which kind of confuses me more. Why does he keep going on about me being sad?
“No…”
And right then, he stares at me as if he was looking right into my soul and I was afraid of what unknown secrets he was going to unravel. I bite down on my bottom lip nervously and wait impatiently for him to give me answers.

“About twelve years ago, something happened to you. And you took apart the memories inside your head to forget the horrible incident what happened. But not only did you erase the memory from your mind but you also erased everything in your life before and after that. As you’ve got older and experienced anything which seemed to frighten you or made you sad, you erased them.”
“What do you mean erased them?” I question, knitting my eyebrows together in uncertainty.
“You erased your own memories." He confirmed.

My mouth drops open as I stare aimlessly at him in disbelief. Did he just say I erased my own memories? There’s absolutely no way I could do such a thing… could I?

I’ve heard more than my fair share of bizarre unrealistic vampire stories from Oliver and Hannah but this one in particular just sounded insane and very odd. How can I erase my own memories? That’s just not likely at all… maybe from when I drowned when I was younger, my mind mentally blocked out everything what happened back then but that’s normal, when a human suffers from something traumatising the mind can so easily shut it down and I’m sure Ian would agree with me. That’s obviously what mine has done, I wouldn’t go as far as saying I’ve erased all of my memories even the ones I remember growing up… see, it sounds weird and it’s not possible anyway because I remember my life before I moved here, its this place which has been playing with my head ever since I moved here in the summer.

Jordan speaks again noticing my uncertainty.
“The process has been affecting you. The headaches, the nose bleeds, the blackouts and the dreams. It’s because your body is trying to remember who you are or once were.”
“Once were?” I whisper, confused yet again by his answer.
“The life you’ve lived isn’t your real life Josh, for the last twelve years you’ve been living a lie.”
“Yeah right, no one knows my life better than me.” I scoff, he was actually sounding ridiculous now.
“Of course. But what would you say all the sudden memories are?” my face falls when I hear his question, I didn’t know what they were and why I was having them but the more I started thinking about it and all of Jordan’s assumptions started sinking in, I started to feel like I didn’t know myself at all…

When I first remembered Oliver, the night I had that strange dream and I woke up and saw it replay all again in my mind, I thought I was going crazy but my mum confirmed that part of it was true… then maybe it was all real. Because I didn’t remember Oliver until that night and now I’m slowly remembering him more and more… but why would I shut him out? Why would I erase Oliver from my mind? We’re supposed to be together so why would I erase him from my mind.

“Oliver’s soul tells me that you don’t remember anything about him until you met three months ago. But your soul tells me otherwise.” Jordan begins pacing around the room as he starts to reveal more of our unknown souls.
“Cut to the chase Jordan.” Oliver orders, making Jordan stop pacing around the room and appearing right in front of me once again making me flinch at his sudden appearance.

He comes extremely close to me so our noses were almost touching and examines me with his large black eyes; I started to get anxious, my palms began to sweat from nerves because I was so afraid of what he was seeing inside my soul which I had no knowledge of. He was just staring at me what seemed like forever as if I was from another planet or something but really he’s the fictional character here not me.

“You are a remarkable human being, never in all my years have I come across someone like you. Not only have you erased your own memories but you’ve somehow managed to erase Oliver’s memories too.” I gasp at his statement.
“That’s impossible!” Oliver says rather harshly, making me jump at his raised voice.
Jordan tears his eyes away from me and glances over at Oliver who was behind me.
“Oliver, your soul and your mind reads that when Josh was five years old he disappeared and you never saw him again until three months ago. But that’s not entirely true. When Josh and his family moved away, you searched for him and you found him not long after, you watched him and even interacted with him for many years as he grew up.”
“I have no record of finding him or watching him for the last twelve years Jordan, I think that’s important information that I wouldn’t so likely forget.” Oliver hisses, now stepping in front of me so he could confront Jordan of all this crazy talk.

“It’s because he took your memories from you.”
“He’s only human, it’s impossible for him to have a talent in his mortal form. Let alone have the power to have any sort of control or affect on an immortal.”
“Don’t under estimate him Oliver, Josh has proven to be very special and somehow has found a way to tap into his talents and use them unwillingly.”

Jordan’s words lingered in the air and silence then fell upon us once again and every vampire in the room all suddenly turned and gaped at me with their large black eyes which made me feel extremely nervous and insecure.
I wrap my arms around myself and took a couple of steps back so I was beside the big window. I didn’t want to be centre of attention anymore, it was making me feel uneasy and Oliver just seemed like he was getting angrier with the situation. If was as if he was disgusted that I could do such a thing in my weak human body, I don’t want him to be angry with me it’s not like I know what I’m even doing with this vampire talent thingy, I’m not sure if I even want it.

“How is that even possible?” Oliver speaks breaking the silence, looking at me with a frown as if he’s never seen me before and that hurt. I hated him looking at me like this and if it was because of this power I’m seemed to magically have I didn’t want anything to do with it. I wanted him to look at me with the mad lust he always had in his beautiful eyes when he looked at me.

“A sad soul can be capable of many things. Unexpected and great things.” Jordan says and I’m fed up of hearing him say I’m sad because I’m not. I have no idea why my soul has told him I’m sad when my past clearly wasn’t.
“Why do you keep saying I have a sad soul?” I insist, dropping my arms from around me and stepping towards Jordan really annoyed, I needed to know what he meant by all this.
“Because I see your true soul, Josh. Not the soul you’ve chosen to see.” He says and I freeze.
What’s that’s suppose to mean? Would someone just give me a bloody straight answer! This was so frustrating and not helping with the headaches at all as all the information I’ve got from today has gave me a pounding headache. I cover my face with my hands annoyed and irritated with the whole situation and I don’t see how Jordan has manage to help me at all, he’s made me feel worse to be honest because now I feel like I don’t even know who I am and Oliver seems like he doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore and I can’t bare to feel like this.

A gentle hand is placed on my shoulder and I pull my hands away from my face to see who has come to comfort me. My eyes meet with a pale pixie looking face who gives me a sweet reassuring smile which I smile faintly back in return. Hannah always went out of her way to comfort me and to make sure I was alright and this time was no different. She looked at me like she always has, this sudden knowledge about my soul hasn’t seem to phase her in the slightest like it has done to her brother and I really appreciate her for not judging me for this unknown talent.

“You’ve been remembering haven’t you?” she gives my shoulder a light squeeze and a smile to encourage me to speak about what’s been happening to me and my mind wonders off to the recent dreams.
“My dreams?” I whisper so quietly I doubt she heard me.
“They’re not dreams Josh, they’re memories. Your memories.” She tells me.
“But why am I suddenly remembering them now?” I say, glancing back at her for answers but she isn’t the one to answer me.

“I’m assuming it’s because you’ve bonded with Oliver. Being separated for many years have made you forget the memories you’ve shared with him and left them untouched. Now you both have been reunited and the bond has been made, so I believe the memories in your head have reawakened. They’re trying to come back to you which probably explain the tremendous headaches.” Jordan says approaching me and Hannah by the window, but it still didn’t make sense to me.

“But what even is this power, how do I even use it?” I say frustratingly, holding out my arms gesturing as if the vampire powers were running through my veins.
“You need to learn how to control it. When you do the headaches and blackouts will eventually stop and you will know how to let the memories back into your mind as well as everyone else’s memories you’ve taken from them too.”

Everyone else’s memories too?! I’ve taken more than my own and Oliver’s memories away? How have I even managed to do that, I was only a child when it all started I had know idea what I was even doing, I still don’t. Fuck, what is going on?!
I let out a heavy sigh and cross my arms against my chest and turn away from everyone, closing my eyes wanting this whole situation to just go away.
This was all too much to take in right now and I didn’t know what to think of it all and what to do with it and all the thinking was only making my headache worsen and that’s the one thing I wanted to avoid. Another nose bleed and blackout is the last thing I need right now when I’m in a room full of vampires.

“Can someone take me home please?” I sob quietly to myself hoping no one noticed the crack in my voice as I tried to hold back my tears. I’ve finally had enough and I felt so abnormal and insecure right now I just wanted to be on my own.

A pair of arms snake their way around my waist and pull me close to a hard cold body, the action causing me to gasp and fling my eyes wide open and whip my head back to see who it was and I’m met with the person I adore the most.

“That’s fine love, we can discuss it some more when you’re ready.” Oliver whispers, kissing my shoulder and I’m shocked to see how his mood has suddenly changed. Just seconds ago he seemed like he wanted nothing to do with me. Grateful of his sudden mood change I place my hand over his which was placed on top of my stomach and nod back in reply to him. He tightens his hold around me and we disappear.