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I shake my head. “Why? I’m not. You just saved my life and I saved yours and…” I trail off with a shy shrug but force myself to finish what I’ve started. I’ve already said it once, I might as well say it again. “And I love you. I meant that. I know it’s fast and maybe a little crazy, but this feels right. You know it does.”
“Of course, it does,” he says, easing my anxiety for a beat before he brings it flooding back again. “But how much of that is real and how much is because I’ve tasted you…we might never know. That’s how it is with a vampire and a fated mate. The more I feed on you, the more addicted I’ll become to your blood above all others and the deeper you’ll fall under my control.”
I snort, but then realize he’s not joking and assure him, “I’m not under your control, Darcy. I think I proved that by coming to save you after you’d told me several times to run the other way.”
His sad-clown face remains firmly fixed as he says, “Perhaps,” making it clear he still thinks Darcy knows best.
It’s infuriating. After the nightmare of the past day, all I want is to burrow deeper into his arms and stay there until morning. But darkness is falling even more quickly now. Soon the last of the faint glow of dusk will be gone and Darcy and I will be alone in the dark on the beach—easy pickings for Janet or one of the campground people who drugged us.
Right. We still need to get to the bottom of that.
Janet’s jealous meltdown is refreshingly predictable compared to the bonkers-ness of whatever those people are up to.
I’m about to suggest we get our asses back to town to sort shit out—and fight about how stubborn and annoying he is later—when a voice calls out from high above us.
We tip our heads back at the same time to see Colin waving a hand and shouting, “Are you both all right? Are you hurt?”
We’re fine, Darcy says in a telepathic voice I can hear echoing through my head. But Janet is up there and she’s off her fucking rocker. She tried to kill us both.
Colin doesn’t say anything else, not aloud anyway, but he must have sent a private message to his brother because a beat later Darcy’s shoulders sag with relief.
“They have her,” he says, dropping his face into his hands, muffling his next words. “At least one thing has gone right on this goddess forsaken day.”
“More than one,” I tell him with forced cheer as I clap him on the back. “I’m also immune to your magical, fated mate vampire charm or whatever. And to prove it, I’m going to fuck right off back to town and my sister and see you later.”
I stand, ignoring the wobbly feeling in my knees and the pain the thought of leaving him here sends bleeding through my chest.
But I can’t stand to look at that doomed expression on his face a second longer. I’m the one who’s been anti marriage my whole life. I’m the one who had to watch my mother burn through potential partners like matches trying to light wet kindling. If anyone should feel trapped by the way the stars have aligned for the two of us, it should be me.
But I don’t feel that way. I would say I feel…lucky, blessed even, if it weren’t for the fact that the man I’ve fallen in love with looks like he considers being bound to me a fate nearly as upsetting as getting thrown off a cliff.
“Wait, Blaire.” He reaches for my hand, but he must still be shaken from our near-death experience because he’s not nearly as speedy as usual.
I easily dodge his fingers and back farther down the beach, calling to be heard over the sound of the crashing waves, “You can come visit me in seven days. Or however long it takes for you to get it through that thick head of yours that I’m choosing you, Darcy. Not the stars, not your fangs—me. And I have my shit a hell of a lot more together than you’re giving me credit for.”
“Blaire, please,” he says, still with those damned puppy dog eyes. “This isn’t a personal attack. I didn’t say those things to hurt you. I said them because they’re true.”
“My mother always said truth has two sides,” I say, aching for Mom in a way I haven’t since the early days after she disappeared, when I still had hope that she’d pop up alive and well and continue to turn my world upside down with her chaos on a regular basis.
I don’t miss the chaos, but I miss her pearls of wisdom, the honey cake I was too lazy to learn how to make while I still had time, and the way she held me every time some stupid boy broke my heart.
She’d snatch me up tight and pet my hair while I cried, assuring me that there was a match out there waiting for me who would make all the pain worth it. I’d meet this incredible guy, the jagged shards of my heart would be pieced back together, and I’d end up thanking the goddess for every day I spent waiting and wondering if I would ever find the person who knew how to love me just right.
“So maybe you should try to look at the other side before you throw this away,” I say, fighting to keep the tears pressing at the backs of my eyes under control. “I might not be perfect, Darcy, but I’m pretty great. And I love you. And that makes you one damned lucky man. When you get that, come see me. Maybe I’ll still be single.”
I turn and walk away, resisting the urge to run as tears begin streaming quietly down my cold cheeks.
I won’t run from him. I won’t let him see how much he’s hurt me, more than Janet and those people who drugged me and every man that’s come before him combined.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Blaire
Two months later…
Annie and Sophie cock their heads from the door to the kitchen, the dubious expressions on their faces so similar I can’t believe I didn’t realize they were twins the first time I saw them sitting side-by-side on our front porch.
“Trust me,” I say. “Kitty and I are besties now. It’s totally safe.”
