“Oh, Jase.” I cocked my head, eyes of sympathy offering him wordless condolences.

“I was okay. But it didn’t make a whole lot of sense—for her to be in love with David. She didn’t really even like him that much.” He laughed when he looked at Emily, and even she managed a small smile. “I read her mind—saw all the times she just wanted to whack him with a baseball bat.”

“I knew it was wrong to feel that way,” Em added. “To hate someone so much but find yourself crying every night because they won’t ever love you. I mean, every time he looked at me, I’d wish he’d see that I was the one for him but, inside, if I really thought about it, there was nothing I actually liked about David.”

“When I realised this, I swept her hair back and, sure enough, she was Marked,” Jason said. “I could’ve given her the memory back. I could have made her aware that this obsession was purely a spirit bind, but it would’ve eventually killed her.”

“I’d been admitted into psychiatric care already,” Emily said, her voice shaking. “When I told you I’d seen a counsellor over losing Jason, I lied—”

“It was always about David.” I nodded to myself.

Jason slid over to wrap his arm around me. “She would’ve killed herself eventually. So, I immortalised her to break the bind.”

“And that's why you never told me the reason you bit her.” I looked up at him quickly. “That's why you avoided it.”

He nodded. “I always planned to tell you, though, Ara.”

“But you. . .” I eyed Emily’s neck. “You ripped her apart when you—”

“I had to make it look like an attack. She wasn’t conscious at the time. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Oh my God.” I covered my lips with the very tips of my fingers. “Jase, I hated you so much for turning her like that. I—”

“I know.” He took my hand away from my mouth and kissed it. “But I knew you’d learn the truth eventually. It was better for you to hate me at the time than David.”

“Why?”

“You were so fragile. You thought you needed him to survive, which—” He laughed, looking away for a second, “—turns out wasn’t just a psychological dependence, like I thought. It was physical.”

“Physical?”

“Yeah. You literally needed him to survive. Without his blood, Ara, you’d have gotten pretty sick.”

“Oh, right.” I rolled my eyes at myself. “So . . . does David know you remember, Em?”

She nodded. “The first memory that came back to me was . . . that night.”

“That night?”

“The night they had sex,” Jase said.

“But . . . you attacked him when you first woke as a vampire. Was that because of—”

“Yep.” She bit her lip. “I was kind of reliving it.”

I got up on my knees and crawled a bit closer to her. “Em? What did he do to you?”

She wiped the side of her wrist down her nose, her eyes sparkling with a coat of tears.

“Emily, did he rape you?”

“No,” she said, holding a very tight breath, her whole jaw quivering.

“Do you want me to tell her?” Jason asked softly.

She nodded, sniffling.

“Ara,” Jase said, “come here.”

I crawled over and snuggled into his waiting arm, then reached across and took Emily's hand; she was so tense, her small hand wet with tears, tight and almost unwilling to be against mine. Like I was the enemy. Or maybe she was afraid I’d hate her. But, right now, I only felt more love for that poor girl than I ever had before. “It’s okay, Em,” I said, shaking her hand a bit. “I'm not mad at you.”

She nodded against her knee, chewing her thumbnail.

“She knows that, Ara. But she just can’t bear to look you in the eye.”

I squeezed her hand again. “Why? I don’t understand why you’re so upset if you know I’m not mad with you.”

Jason began with a sigh. “She’s never talked about this with anyone.”

“Except Mike,” she said coldly. “And he hates me now.”

“Why?”

“I’m just. . .” She sobbed inaudibly. “He thinks I’m disgusting for letting it happen.”

Jason pulled her into his chest, too, giving her a long kiss on the head, tightening his hold around me at the same time. “You are not disgusting, Emily Pierce. And Mike has no right to blame you.”

“He blames her?” I nearly barfed the words out.

“He wouldn’t listen when I tried to explain. He just thinks I did it because I loved David.”

“Is that not the reason?” I asked innocently.

Her and Jase winced.

“It’s a long story, Ara, and I guess the event doesn’t really have a point of origin. It kind of all led to them having sex, but—”

“The event? I’m lost,” I said.

“Em had been given a hard time at school by a few of the jocks,” Jase explained. “There was this club…”

“We had no choice but to be in it,” Emily cried. “If you wanted to be a cheerleader, you had to run with the jocks.”

I nodded in understanding.

“They were about sixteen at the time,” Jase continued. “And a couple of girls started bragging about losing their virginity.”

“And, naturally, the boys wanted in.” Em half smiled, rolling her eyes.

“They came up with this lottery where they’d put girls’ names in a hat and draw them out.”

“And, what, you’d sleep with that guy?” I asked.

Emily nodded. “Everyone did it. We . . . if any of the girls were against it, they never said anything.”

“Why?”

“Because you’d be labelled a frigid outcast.”

My brows went high and I exhaled loudly. I remembered too well the lows you’d stoop to to fit in at school.

“One day, just after I first met David, my name was drawn,” Emily said.

“To be with David?” I asked, nodding to myself.

“No,” she said. “Brody, that big guy that always threw food.”

My lip turned. “Gross.”

She nodded, laughing once. “I went to the locker room at lunch, but Brody wasn’t there yet. So, I waited. And I was so scared I just wanted to leave.”

I pictured her there in the boys’ locker room, tugging her mini cheerleading skirt down her legs, shuffling her feet, checking the clock then the door. “Did he chicken out?”

“He brought friends,” Jason said.

I stiffened.

“They just wanted to watch—film it, you know?” Emily said, barely able to control her obvious upset. “I tried to back out, so they. . .”

“They pinned her down.”

I covered my mouth. “Was David one of those guys?”

She shook her head. “He was in the club, but he never drew from the hat.”

And I strangely felt relief.

“Anyway,” she said. “I screamed and tried to fight them off. But they were too strong for me. Then, next thing I know, Brody hits the locker and your dad’s there pinning him against it.”

“My dad?”

She nodded. “The boys scattered, and Mr Thompson wrapped me up in his jacket and took me to the office—called my mom.”

“Those boys got a two-week suspension,” Jase said, his eyes narrowing with fury. “And that was it. They weren’t even forced to make an apology.”

“Why?”

“They told the principal they were just kidding—an April Fool’s joke.”

“And she believed them?” I asked.

Emily nodded. “Just “boys being boys” was what they said. But—”

“But?”

“They looked at me like I was nothing,” Emily said. “I think they thought that, because my name had been drawn, I wanted it or something, you know?”

I could only drop my head against my fingertips, shocked but also not surprised.

“And that’s how David and I became friends.”

My forehead crinkled. “How?”

“He ran up to me the next day at school and said that what happened wasn’t fair. He said he’d make sure those guys never touched me again.”

“What did he do to them?”

Emily shrugged. “But they never touched me again.”

Jase’s eyes shrunk with a knowing smile.

“After that, we started hanging out more, you know. He and I, we . . . well, we just kind of got along really well.”

“You mean because you ignored all his dark ways?” I said.

“Yeah, kinda.” Her gaze went distant. “But, word had gotten out that I was frigid, and people started picking on me. Those jocks were the least of my problems then, and I was even kicked out of the cheerleading squad.”

“So, lemme get this straight.” I held my hand up. “You nearly get raped by a bunch of boys, and you end up the outcast?”

“Yup,” she said. “Until the night of Summer’s birthday party.”

“What happened then?”

“I walked into her house, and everyone just stared at me. But . . . I always went to Summer’s party. I just never even imagined I’d be uninvited, you know? She was my best friend at the time.”

I nodded, taking her hand again.

“One of the guys told me to get out, and David comes running up, grabs my hand and says, ‘She’s with me’. And that was it. That was the last time anyone ever picked on me. On Monday, at school, Summer came up and said I was back on the team.”

“So, they thought you were going out with him?”

“No. They knew he didn’t date anyone. But they knew he was ‘okay’ with me. So they kind of had to be too, but I knew they were all faking it.”

“And that’s why you were so quick to jump on all the new kids.” I nodded to myself, thinking back to our first day. “Because you didn’t have any real friends left?”

“Yeah, and . . . it kind of made me latch on to David in a lot of ways, too, since he was the only one who was genuinely nice to me. Well—” She brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “Sometimes.”

“And that’s how you ended up having sex?”

“No.” She looked at Jason and they both smiled. “David could be really horrible when he wanted. I mean, he was nice in the David-sort-of-way, but he’d make me feel stupid and worthless and, for some reason, that only made me want him more.”

I cringed along with her, knowing too well how easy it was to fall into that.

“Bad thing was, I didn’t care what he did to hurt my feelings because, on the days he was nice, it far outweighed all the horrid things he said.”