EIGHT
Zane and I wound up sitting on the couch while I just let it all out. I know it's pretty declassee or whatever to talk to guy B about guy A, but I couldn't help it right that moment. I was so upset. How dare he. How dare he just show up here unannounced and get that cold face thing going. I wasn't down for that.
Crap, I wished he had stayed. I wished, just a little, he had fought to stay.
Zane, surprisingly, wasn't upset.
"Go ahead," he said, "cry it all out."
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. I laid my head on the firm line of his chest and stretched my legs out. "This is not how I thought tonight was going to go."
"It's okay. There are other nights. Just let it all out."
So I did. I told him everything. Heck, I went all the way back to the very first moment that I had walked through the front door of my grandmother's house all the way up until this most recent sob session. I don't know why I did. All I really needed to tell him was that Wei was a jerk and I wasn't sleeping well. I think the only thing I left out was the unknown sender texts. They weren't all that important anyway.
"When was the last time you got a good night’s sleep?"
I laughed, and laughing through my tears caused me to hiccup. "I don't even know."
"Alright, new plan; we are staying in tonight."
He patted my hip and got up, going to my fridge to see what was there. The next thing I knew, he was pushing a glass of orange juice into my hands. I love orange juice. It's the elixir of life. I took a sip and felt a little better.
"You need a plan," he said evenly.
I nodded. "That's true."
"But you need a good meal and a good night’s sleep first."
"You think?"
"I know."
He pushed some things around my fridge. "When was the last time you went grocery shopping?"
"What's a couple weeks short of never?" I asked, taking another sip.
"Okay, finish your juice. Then, we are going shopping."
I raised my brow at him. "We got dressed up all cute so that we could go shopping?"
"You think I'm cute?"
I rolled my eyes. "You know you are cute."
"Do I?"
I sighed and took another long sip of my drink. "You aren't like Alan, who wears his attractiveness on his velvet sleeves for all to see, but no man wears a turtleneck and a silk vest on a first date unless he is very sure of everything beneath those clothes."
He laughed and shook his head. "It's a second date, but you aren't wrong. I know what I look like, what women think of me. But more than that, I want you to have a full fridge."
"Why?"
He hesitated. "Perhaps you forgot, but you just stated that you had picked me. Your health, all of it, means something to me."
I had, hadn't I? I waited to feel something about that. I should, right? I should feel nervous or relieved, or maybe a mesh of the two. I didn't. The only feeling that I felt was exhaustion.
"Oh."
He raised his brow, crossing his arms over his chest. "Oh? That's what you have to say? Oh?"
I ran a hand over my face. "I'm a terrible human being, but yes. That's all I've got right this moment. I don't think it's all sunk in yet."
"Did you mean it?" he asked.
My mouth clapped closed, and I thought about it. Had I meant it? Well, I had certainly meant it in the heat of the moment, when all I could think was that I was done with whatever was happening between Wei and myself. That I was done with the other guys and all of their melodrama. My only option was Zane, and he wasn't a bad option.
He was attractive, of course; all of the Sons of Vlad were. He seemed kind-hearted enough. And I liked the honesty that he had shown me so far.
"Yes," I said after a moment, "I did."
He set aside the few measly remnants of food that he had found in the fridge and reached over to me, taking my hands in his. He brought them up to his lips, kissing one set of knuckles and then the other.
"You will not regret this choice."
I hoped not. I was still of the mindset that making a child, no matter how the parents felt about each other, created a bond. In some people, that bond wasn't all that great, but in some, it could be the beginning of something good.
Oh god, I thought to myself, did he mean that I wouldn't regret it right away? Maybe he did. Oh boy. I was so not ready for that right this moment.
His grin was sudden and bright. "I'm not going to throw you over my shoulder and take you to the bedroom, Lorena." He gave my hands a gentle squeeze. "We can take this as slow as you need to."
I blushed hard enough to make my head feel a little light. "I wasn't thinking that. Okay," I amended, "I wasn't thinking that exactly. Actually, I was thinking about how you used your vampire mojo on me."
He dropped one hand and took my chin gently between two cool fingers, lifting until my gaze met his. His eyes were so golden. I'd always thought of them as hawk’s eyes, but now that I was looking, they were more like pieces of polished amber, with all the brightness of those precious stones. There was such depth there, such warmth and strength too.
"I will never make you do something you do not wish to do. I will only use that power on you to keep you from harm, as long as you, little necromancer, promise the same."
No, I said to myself, he was not a bad option at all.
I nodded, cleared my throat, and took a step back. The moment had too much heft to it, and what I didn't need more of right this moment was another reason to feel like the weight of the world was existing solely on my shoulders.
"Okay, I can promise you that." I answered, shoving my hands in the barely existent pockets of my slacks. "So, you said something about the grocery store?"
He nodded. "You need to take care of yourself, Lorena. You need to eat well, sleep well, and relax. Yes," he said, holding up a single hand when I opened my mouth to argue, "I know that your work and your studies matter to you, but that does not mean that you can ignore the basics of caring for yourself. I will step in if your actions cause you harm."
There was something about the way he phrased those words that left a sour taste in my mouth, but I was too tired to really analyze why.
"Okay."
We, and by “we” I mean I, pulled on some cold weather jackets. There wasn't any snow on the ground yet, but the sky was the particular shade of gray that promised it. The ground was frozen beneath my boots. If it did snow, it would stick.
We climbed into my car and drove the half a dozen miles to the grocery store in silence. Sometimes, silence was a bad thing, a heavy, sour silence that said that people were mad or uncomfortable. Then there was the lighter silence of comfort. This silence was somewhere in between. I wanted to talk to him, ask him questions, but I didn't know what to ask.
So, being me, I decided to go for broke and ask the most awkward thing I could ask. "How did my sister get you to the compound since she isn't a necromancer?"
He didn't blush. I don't think that vampires could blush. But there was a tightening to his cheeks that told me that he was embarrassed by the question.
"I don't mean to pry, but it's been hanging on my mind for a while."
He swallowed. "I...we..."
I hadn't known Zane for very long, but hearing him stumble over his words had me glancing over at him.
"Zane?"
"She offered me a taste of her blood."
I blinked. "Really?"
He ran his hands across his knees. "Every vampire has a weakness to a certain kind of blood. Something that tastes a little better to us. I do not know what it is for the others, but for me...for me, mages have the sweetest flavor."
"Oh," I said, swallowing. "She used her neck as bait."
He was quiet enough that I knew there was more to the story that he wasn't telling me.
"Spill it," I said, navigating into a space in the parking lot. "What happened?"
"Lorena, I-"
I shook my head. "Listen, I just promised that you and I are going to end up making a life together; I think that's a fairly big deal. The least that you can offer in return is honesty."
He sighed. "I had tasted from her several times. We had been..."
A thought hit me. A really terrible thought. One of those thoughts that, once it happened, did not just disappear. "Oh...Oh, Zane. Say it isn't so."
"We had been intimate. I thought, perhaps, that we were lovers."
"You slept with my sister?"
It bothered me. I knew it shouldn't. He hadn't known me when he'd been nibbling on her. There was no logic in me mentally flinching away because of it. Yet there I was, trying really hard not to imagine Zane sinking his fangs into Connie's freckled shoulder.
"You asked for honesty."
I turned the key in the ignition, and for a minute, we sat in my car in complete silence.
"Did you...care about her?" I asked.
He hesitated for a moment. "I did."
Ugh. Why did I have to ask for honesty? Honesty sucked. It was full of hard truths and harder facts. I didn't like it. Give me a pretty lie any day. Wonder Woman would be really disappointed with me.
I leaned forward and pressed my forehead to the top of the steering wheel. "Ugh."
"Should I apologize?"
"Do you feel bad about it?"
He shook his head. "I feel bad that the knowledge hurts you."
Fair enough. I sighed and shook my head. "Well, not going to lie, it bugs me. But you've got two things working in your favor."
He eyed me. "Oh?"
"The first is that we got this out before anything really happened between us. If you'd told me after, I'd be a lot more upset."
"And the second," he asked when I went quiet.
I slapped my fingers over the seat belt. "The second thing going for you is that killer Superman smile you've got going on."
The grin he flashed me was worthy of the Man of Steel himself.
"That's the one." I opened my door and slid out of the car. "Come on, let's go make me a responsible adult."
Being with Zane wasn't hard, even with the knowledge of him drinking on my half-sister's neck. We wandered through all the aisles of the grocery supercenter and stocked up as if the apocalypse was coming. We didn't talk about anymore hard topics for the most part. But somewhere around the frozen food section, I had to ask.
"Do you still care about her?"
He hooked his thumbs in the loops of his slacks. The shining buckle at his belt shimmered. "It's hard to care about someone who tried to bleed you dry."
"That's not a ‘no.’"
He blew out a deep breath. "Honesty?"
I hesitated. "Yeah, honesty."
"When a being, any being, who lives a long time grows to care for a person, it is very hard for them to stop."
Damn. He still liked my sister. Gross. I couldn't have any fuzzy feelings for a guy, vampire or otherwise, who was into my sister. So, what if they weren't dating anymore? At least, I assumed they weren't dating. There were a lot of ways to say that a relationship was over; attempting to completely exsanguinate someone was definitely on that list.
"Okay. I appreciate your honesty."
"But you don't like what I said," he asked as I piled a bunch of frozen pizzas into the cart. He eyed them but smartly didn't say anything.
"No, I don't. But...well...it's better than you saying it's over when it isn't. How long?"
He gave me a look. "How long what?"
"How long were you and her a thing?"
He thought it over. I wondered how long was too long or not long enough. "A year."
I knitted my brows. "Wait, she's only known for like...three months. Not even."
He nodded, and it was then that I saw the raw pain in his eyes. "I know."
Shoot. There was love there, real love, and real pain. It was going to take him a long time to get over that. Did it take vampires longer to get over their feelings? I would have to assume so. Wei flashed into my mind, and his confusion of feelings. Double shoot.
When we drove back home, the silence was heavy and sour.