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“You’ve explained nothing to me. Nothing. And this is not an issue that will go away if we ignore it hard enough. Weirdly timed ‘business’ calls I’m not allowed to overhear. Secret notes at every hotel that you destroy immediately after reading. Notes that talk about what you and some other woman ‘are’ to each other. How I can’t satisfy you the way she ‘does’—”
“You read the notes?” he demanded, his voice reaching that “boyfriend in trouble” pitch that only dogs can hear.
“I didn’t want to, but damn it, Gabriel, what else what I supposed to do? Just keep pretending that nothing was going on? Pardon me if the only logical conclusion I can come up with is that you’re cheating on me. If there are other less crazy options, please tell me. I would love to hear them.”
“I can’t believe you would think, after all we’ve been through, that I would want to be with someone else!”
“Which is something that someone who is cheating would say.”
“Stop!” he yelled. “Just stop it, Jane. I’ve told you, there are things going on right now that I can’t tell you about. It’s for your own good. I asked you to trust me, and you can’t stand to be happy, can you? You’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and when there are no problems, you invent them.”
“Well, that’s … painfully accurate. But let’s explore why I might look for problems, shall we? Since I’ve met you, I’ve died. An insane blond Realtor tried to frame me for murder so she could turn my family home into a tacky condo development. My sister is suing me because she’s decided that I don’t deserve any part of my family’s history. My grandmother has stopped speaking to me, a vampire, but she’s perfectly OK with being engaged-to-be-engaged to a ghoul. My tenth high school reunion is coming up, and I’m the only Undead American in my graduating class. Oh, and my suppliers believe I’m lonely enough to need porn.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows drew up at this, but I continued my tirade. “And despite all of that, the only thing that’s really knocked me on my ass is thinking that, yes, you’ve been with someone else. That you’ve touched someone else, told her you love her, despite all of your sire-childe, ‘I’m drawn to you because of your innocence and how good you smell, I’m going to love you forever’ bullshit. If there’s another explanation, I would love to hear it. Because what in the world could be worse that that? What could be so bad that you don’t think I could handle it?”
“Please, just trust me,” he said, clutching my face between his palms like a life preserver. “Trust that everything I do is to protect you. Trust that seeing you being threatened tears at me in a way that I can’t explain. Just trust me, Jane.”
“Threatened in what way? What the hell are you talking about?” I pried Gabriel’s hands away. “And why should I trust you? You’re jealous and secretive, and you have a tendency to kill people, somehow deluding yourself that it’s for my own good. I don’t want to trust you. I don’t care anymore, Gabriel. I just don’t care what you have to say. I wish you and her—at least, I hope it’s a her—my best.”
“Jane—”
“Shut up! I’ve given you a dozen chances to explain.” The more I spoke, the angrier I got, until I was shouting loudly enough to rattle the windows. “All you do is make excuses and tell me half of the truth. This is a textbook bad relationship. And you know what? I’m glad I am discovering this now, before I spent one hundred years of my life thinking that I was lucky to have you.”
“I hope all your books keep you warm at night!” he yelled, stomping toward the door.
“Hey, you’re room temperature at best, buddy. You never kept me that warm to begin with!” I shouted back, tossing a particularly weighty Tolkien volume at his retreating back.
Well, there went my “healthy, normal relationship” goal.
“Ow! What is wrong with you?” he roared, stalking back to me.
“You!” I yelled.
“So, hit me, but don’t bother with the books,” he demanded, grabbing my shoulders.
“You don’t get to touch me!” I slapped his hands away.
Dick emerged from the back room, his face thunderous as he told Gabriel, “Son, you’d better back off, now .”
Gabriel’s face softened, and his hands dropped to his sides. “Just let it out, so we can get through this.” He was almost begging now. He leaned his forehead against mine and pulled my hands gently into his. “This is what we do. So, let’s just fight and then fight some more until we get this out of our system and we can go back to normal again.”
“No,” I said, my own voice shaking as I backed away from him, toward my office. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore. And we are anything but normal. Just stay away from me, Gabriel.”
“But I love you.”
“I know you think so.” I nodded and stepped back behind the closed office door, waiting until I heard the front doorbell tell me that he’d walked out.
6
If a man is callous and fickle in life, being a vampire won’t suddenly make him sensitive to your needs.
— Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less
Destructive Relationships
There is nothing sadder than a vampire in her bathrobe, drinking Hershey’s Blood Additive Chocolate Syrup straight from the bottle and watching Fatal Attraction over and over again.
I hadn’t gotten so much as a call from Gabriel since the ugly scene at the shop. Even though I probably would have hung up on him if he had called, he could have at least made the gesture of letting me hang up on him. But it appeared that Gabriel had learned his lesson from the first time I stopped talking to him. Complete radio silence. Every once in a while, I thought I could sense his presence outside the house, but it seemed like wishful thinking on my part. I walked outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. But there was nothing, not even a trace of his scent on the breeze.
