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"Then why are you eating?"
"Um," I say and stumble. "I didn't want to make you mad again."
He shakes his head and throws down the towel.
"You think it doesn't make me mad to see you pushing your food around, pretending? You see, that's your problem, Eve," he says and sits back at the table across from me. "You're living a lie. Just be honest with yourself and everything will be a whole lot better. Try it sometime."
He watches as I wrap up my food and throw it in the trash. I go to the bathroom, splash water on my face and look in the mirror. My eyes are still red from crying. I have to pull it together. I return to sit back down at the table across from him. I keep my head down, not wanting to meet his gaze.
"I'm sorry about what happened," I start, wanting to explain. "I was so afraid you'd –"
He leans forward, interrupting me, his hand taking mine.
"Look, Eve. I'm not your therapist. I know," he says, shaking his head. "What that bastard did to you, what was it? Ten years ago? What he did to you was really sick and bad. But it's ten years and you're still cutting yourself while he's off probably still screwing up pretty little girls. You need to move on if it's keeping you from enjoying your life."
I look away from him. He really doesn't understand why I reacted that way. He doesn't understand that it isn't just that I feel damaged, that my memories of what happened resurface when I'm bored or afraid and cutting helps anesthetize me.
Cutting is what I do when my feelings overwhelm me. It helps me cope. I know he doesn't want to hear it so I sit there, mute. I can't even start to explain why except that for the past few weeks, he and Michel have been my life. Vampires. Monsters. Like the one who killed my mother. How sick does that make me?
After a while, I speak, defending myself.
"I'm doing pretty well. I've been accepted into the combined MD/PhD program, I have a scholarship to finish my B.Sc. I'll be one of the youngest graduates."
"I know your credentials. You're gifted. You're smart. With training, you'll be amazing. But yousuckat life. You live alone in your little cat apartment, have no lover, or at least, had none other than a screwed-up vampire priest. You cut yourself. Look," he says, impatience in his voice. "Eve, you have to understand one thing. We're at war.I'mat war."
I look up.
"Yes, at war. I'm in the middle of a battle right now, planning out my strategy, refining my tactics. I don't have time for this," he says and twirls his fingers, "this battle of wills thing that's going on between us. I didn't expect you to be so unmanageable. With most humans, we get to just compel you into compliance, but you're impossible."
"I can't help it. I don't know why I can't be compelled. I have to do what I think is right."
"Look," he leans back, his finger tracing a pattern in the fake laminate wood grain of the table. "I admit I've had a real big hard-on for you since we met, what with your fair hair and hazel-eyed dancer body, sweet little pussy, gifted Adept -thing- you got going on."
I look in his eyes to see if he's playing me again, but he seems serious.
"I was in love with her too, Eve. But this littlepas de deuxhas affected my performance and that's my fault. I've been sniffing around you like a dog after a bitch in heat, only you're not in heat, are you? Not yet," he says and leans forward, his elbows on the table, his arms crossed. He cricks his finger for me to come closer. "I have this policy of only being with women who are gagging for it. I know you're still mourning Michel. But I also know you find me attractive."
He nods and I feel heat rise to my cheeks.
"I thought, given a little encouragement, you'd be gagging for it as much as me, considering Michel's the first guy you’ve been with since that guy – whatshisname –Grant– back in your freshman year and he was less than adequate, wasn't he? Trying to get you to replicate all his favorite porn videos?"
Dammit! I hate how these brothers can just read my mind, find out things about me I don't want anyone to know.
"Your body needs it, but your mind's fighting it," he says. "And that doesn't work for me. Consider us back to business. No more of this little dance we've been doing, skirting around the issue. I thought," he says and pauses, licking his teeth. "I thought if I gave you a little encouragement, that if we could get here alone, that you'd come to your senses and realize what we could have, and I still think it might be possible. But I'm no therapist. I can't help you with this –problem- you have. You have to fix it yourself."
I can't help it. Tears spring to my eyes.
"Now, look atthat," he says, waving a hand at me. "Instead of taking my advice and admitting I'm right, you start to cry. It doesn't work on me, Eve. Seriously. I'm a hardened soldier, a vampire hunter. I'm used to eating sweet young things like you for breakfast."
"I'm sorry, I—"
"Don't," he says and grabs my hand, squeezing it – hard. Hard enough that it hurts. "Don't be sorry. Be angry. Believe me, anger is so much better than sorrow or pain. You got an issue –deal with it. It's getting in the way of you living your life. You know, we could have a sweet thing going on here between us. But we can't – not when dear old foster dad," he says and waves his hand, "what was his name?"
"Bob."
"Dear old foster dad Bob Hayden-"
"No, that was my real dad's last name," I say, barely able to remember my first foster dad without a shiver of revulsion. "His name was Robert John Thompson." I pull my hand away from him, saying it with as much disgust as I can muster.
