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Don’t come after me because I’m already gone,Cat’s goodbye letter had started off with.Those agents knew about vampires, and they were going to kill you. I’m dressing Switch in your jacket and telling them his body is yours, so they’ll think you’re dead now. You’ll be safe this way…
There had been more, but remembering it strained his ice to the breaking point. Annette gripped him tighter as some of his emotions forced their way through the cracks.
“What a wonderful girl she must have been, and how noble. She meant the best for you, Crispin, which is why she’d hate to see you like this, too.”
“Don’t presume to know her,” Bones said harshly.
Annette pulled away, tears still in her golden eyes. “I don’t, but I knowyou, and the man I see before me is not my Crispin. It’s a poor shell of him. You don’t wallow in squalor because you can’t be bothered to care of yourself, and youdon’tendlessly wait for someone who clearly doesn’t want you-”
“I said she wasforcedto leave me!”
Annette didn’t flinch at his whiplike tone. “Whatever she was forced to do then, she haschosento do since. At first, I’m certain they did monitor her every movement. But it’s been years, Crispin. Even before you left her that watch, if she truly wanted to contact you, she could have found a way. But she hasn’t, and her silenceisher message. It states her preferences quite clearly. You just haven’t wanted to hear it.”
Annette said aloud what every fruitless day of searching had whispered, and what every lonely night had screamed. Hearing it, his walls shattered, and pain gushed out. He didn’t want Annette to feel it, but he couldn’t make it stop, just like he’d been unable to stop his blood from gushing into Ian centuries ago.
A ragged sound ripped from him as Annette’s mouth was suddenly on his. Bones didn’t want her kiss, but he needed to feel something other than the agony breaking him apart.
…and everything I said about how much I loved you was the truth. You are my life, Bones, and now consider me dead because with the job I’m taking, I will be soon…
Dammit, he didn’t want to think about Catorthat bloody letter! She’d thrown him away, and he’d be a fool to waste another moment on someone who continually made it clear that she didn’t want him. Annette did, and holding her might only fill him with ashes, but ashes were a relief compared to the agony still simmering within him.
He forced his ice to cover him, freezing out Cat.
“Come to me, Crispin,” Annette said, reaching for him.
He did, and he focused on Annette with single-minded determination.
It failed. Her moans only hammered home how this wasn’t the voice he longed to hear, nor were her hands the ones he wanted gripping him. Soon, all his senses screamed in protest, until pain burned through his ice as if Cat’s memory were living fire.
…but I will love you forever, right down to my final breath, where your name will be my last word, I promise…
Bones tore himself away and leapt out of bed.
“What are you doing?” Annette asked with a gasp.
He hadn’t completed the act, and still, he felt more shame than he had when he was a whore back in the seventeen hundreds.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he pulled on his trousers and collected his effects.
“You’re leaving?” Annette said in disbelief.
He was. Annette had been right about one thing: sitting here wallowingwasn’thim. No more giving into the pity, pain, or despair. Yes, Cat might have moved on with her life, but he couldn’t until he heard from her lips that she didn’t want him anymore, and knew it was the truth instead of someone else making that decision for her.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, and left.
6
One month later, Randy MacGregor smiled as Bones approached. “Hey, Cris. You made it!”
Cris was the name Bones had given Randy since he didn’t want his own name bandied about in the wrong circles. Danny had learned the hard way that, sometimes, vampires were listening when you spoke even if you weren’t talking to one of them.
Bones snorted as he took the seat opposite Randy at the bar’s high-top table. “Come now, I don’t canceleverytime.”
“Fifty-fifty,” Randy said, but he was still smiling.
Randy’s affable nature was why Bones had struck up a friendship with the human after their initial chance encounter. Well, that and how Randy knew nothing about Cat, Bones’s search, or any other painful topics. To Randy, Bones was merely a friendly vampire, and that was enough for him due to his admitted fascination with “the unusual.”
For Bones, drinks and a chin wag with someone utterly unconnected to his real life was…relaxing. Besides, Randy reminded Bones of a younger version of his mate, Ted, with how both were computer prodigies. The only difference was that Randy made his living legally as a software programmer and designer, and Ted’s hacker skills were a bit less legal. Now, Bones and Randy were neighbors, too, of a sort. Randy lived in Richmond, and Bones had moved to Richmond last month. Cat was somewhere in Virginia. If he had to go door to door, he’d find her.
