Skye
“Don’t move.”
I suck in a sob and blink back tears. Alex crouches in front of me, his hands on my upper arms to steady me. I’m still kneeling when his apartment comes into full focus. I never gave it much thought when I woke up here in a drug-induced haze, but it’s a masculine, nearly identical layout to mine. He’s not fussy about his decor. Small knick-knacks rest on shelves, with more books than I have rocks, which is a feat, but that’s it.
His scent is everywhere–clean and reassuring–familiar and… comforting. More comforting than I deserve.
Strands of my hair stick to my tear-dampened cheeks. My eyes feel heavy and sore from crying. I stare at the space between us, at the shards of sharp glass reflecting the light of the aurora spilling through the windows and the soft amber haze of a floor lamp in the corner of the room, but then the glass darkens, turning inky and sticky with an oozing crimson liquid my mind doesn’t immediately comprehend.
“I’m going to pick you up,” Alex says cautiously, tucking two fingers under my cheek to force me to look up directly into his eyes.
“I can walk to the door. I don’t know why I–”
“You’re bleeding. You dropped onto your knees directly into a pile of glass.”
I nod because it’s all I can do. My throat is thick, and my lungs contract. I hold back a whimper of embarrassment, guilt, and a myriad of other tangled emotions fighting for dominance. Alex’s hand ghosts down my arm before dropping to grip the curve of my waist, and all the while, he keeps his eyes on mine, steadying me. Maybe steadying himself, too.
“I’m sorry,” I mouth, but he shakes his head. His eyes don’t darken with bloodlust. His grip isn’t overly tight when he hooks his arm around me and swiftly hauls me upright.
“Wrap your legs around my waist.”
Bright pain slices through my knee the second I move my right leg into position. My sharp inhale is broken by a hiss, then fresh tears spill down my face. A small shard of glass is lodged just below my knee, glimmering in the lamplight, then the light in the snug hallway off his kitchen, but Alex doesn’t say a word. He silently opens the door to his bedroom on the first floor and carefully deposits me on the edge of his bed.
“My mattress isn’t nearly as expensive as yours,” he says somewhat wryly. Then, he kneels again to inspect the wound.
I roll my head back and look up at the ceiling in a half-assed attempt to dry my tears. “You’re right. It’s not.”
“Perks of being a princess.”
Princess. Grandpa Isaac calls me that. Called me that. My stomach pitches, tightening so much that a small, desperate sound is forced from my throat. Despair clouds my senses so sharply that I shudder with more sobs that just won’t stop.
Alex ignores it, which is the only reason I’m not totally falling to pieces.
“I’m going to pull it out. It’s not deep.”
“Okay,” I squeak, my leg jerking up reflexively, but his hand on my calf prevents me from kneeing him in the face when he yanks the glass from my leg. He examines the shard for a second before rising and tossing it in a wastebasket near the door. Then, he grabs a shirt from a stack of clothing folded on top of his dresser and presses it on the wound. But he looks around like he’s missing something, and I notice the sharp line of thought furrowing his brow, his body rigid with tension.
“I’m sorry. I know you have a thing about blood.”
His eyes meet mine so quickly that I jump a little. “I think we’ve established the real reason.”
“Do you have a bandage? I can just wrap it up and leave.”
He looks down at my jeans with a sigh. They’re soaked with blood from the knee down. I glance down once, then cringe and fix my gaze on the ceiling again.
“You need to take these off.”
“Okay.” I reach for the button, but my hands shake. My fingers are damp and slippery from repeatedly wiping my tears away, so I fumble. I don’t look down when he sighs heavily, and his fingers grip mine. He moves my hand out of the way and undresses me.
It’s innocent. At least, it should be, given the circumstances. I sliced myself open in front of a vampire, who’s now whispering quiet reassurances about his totally innocent intentions as he slides my jeans off and down my legs, one of which is smeared with blood that won’t stop coming.
He rises, takes one look at the jeans, tosses them in the trash can with the glass that maimed me, and leaves.
That’s probably it. He’s going to pace his living room while fighting his totally rational vampiric tendencies. I’m going to be the reason he goes absolutely insane with bloodlust and–
Alex returns to the room with a first aid kit and a fresh glass of water. For me.
“This isn’t going to feel good.” He kneels, handing me the water and setting the first aid kit on my thigh.
I huff a laugh that goes against everything I’m currently feeling. “Why would a vampire have a first aid kit?”
“It came with the place. I’m sure you have one, too, likely tucked in the cabinet in your bathroom. You should check. They come in handy, I’m sure.”
He digs through the kit, thumbing through different-sized bandages and setting a roll of gauze and antibacterial ointment on the bed beside my leg.
“I heal quickly.” I force myself to swallow past the knot in my throat.
“You’re also a bleeder, more so than others,” he replies, like it’s a totally casual thing to say.
I risk a glance down at him and catch his gaze. His eyes are the darkest blue I’ve ever seen–nearly black. I tremble but turn my spine to steel despite the liquid heat starting to snake down my back and into the pit of my stomach. This is the closest we’ve been since the library before everything went to hell.
“Unfortunately, budgetary constraints prevent the administration from giving their poorly paid tenured faculty access to healing drafts unless we go to the clinic.” He presses a length of thick gauze to my leg and looks back up at me. “But I’m guessing that’s the last place you want to go right now.”
Tears fill my eyes again before I rein myself back in. I chew the inside of my cheek, refusing to look at him again. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“Okay. Don’t.” There’s a level of warmth in his voice that instantly brings me out of my head and into the library. His hand steadies my leg, but his touch winds through me, causing my heart rate to quicken. I ignore it because I have to. I can’t think about… everything that happened, the things I accused him of, what I said and did. What he said, which was true.
What I’ve done. Tonight. Minutes ago, and the unraveling happening while I just ran.
He spends several minutes doctoring the wound and then moves on to wiping away every trace of blood. I barely move. I keep my mind locked on the present, refusing to go over what happened, but it’s impossible. Just the thought of my great-grandparents causes fresh waves of tears to boil to the surface, and by the time Alex is done, my face is glazed, and my eyes are most definitely bloodshot, but he doesn’t say a thing about it.
He’s watching me closely, though. While I bleed blood through the bandage he just wrapped around my leg, he bleeds an aura of thick, unshakeable, but silent, concern. He rises, looks me over, those eyes so blue it’s like looking into the deepest, most turbulent depths of the ocean, and reaches for me, cupping my cheek.
When he brushes my tears away with his thumb, I cave.
The silent whimpers turn to a rush of choking sobs I desperately try to bite back, but it’s useless. I’m a mess. A blubbering, uncontrollable mess.
He remains there, sitting next to me on the bed, his thumb stroking my cheek while I come completely undone at the seams.
“What happened?”
He could ask me a million different questions–like how I not only disappeared into mist under his line of sight but reappeared less than an hour later in his condo. He could ask why I came here, of all places, but I don’t have an answer to that other than I wasn’t in control.
He smooths his hand down my arm to my wrist, which is bare, the missing weight of my bracelet another reminder of what I’ve done.
“I killed someone,” I whisper, and his eyes meet mine again and hold.
“Was it justified?”
Was it? Can I honestly say I did the right thing?
“Yeah,” I whisper after a moment, and he nods like this is just another conversation that normal, rational people have.
“It wasn’t your first time, was it?”
I shake my head. I don’t know how he can tell. He just nods. His eyes are so soft, so warm as he wipes my tears away, then he lifts me up and scoots me over onto his pillow. He turns off the light on his way out of the room, taking the wastebasket with him. I curl into myself, my tears less of a torrent and more a dripping faucet as they soak into his sheets, and watch his shadow break up the light spilling from the hallway. I listen to the scrape of glass and the swish of a broom. My eyes grow heavy, but my mind won’t stop. I should get up. I should leave. I’m in a sweater and my underwear, but I can walk to my condo. It’s only across the hall. No one would see.
“Do you want to talk about it?” The mattress sags when he sits on the edge, his hand a solid weight against my hip.
I curl into the touch, nuzzling his pillow to dry my tears, and shake my head.
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” He cuts me off.
“I think I do.” I finally look at him. “You know I do.”
“Everything you said to me in my office was correct. You were right. You can’t apologize for that.”
“I–”
He leans down and presses a kiss to my temple, lingering there for several seconds, his lips just brushing my skin, my hair. I close my eyes, letting the sensation ripple through me, wondering again why something that feels so right also feels so wrong.
“You scared me,” he admits in a whisper. “When you disappeared like that. I knew something was wrong. You left your phone behind. It’s on a charger and has been buzzing every three minutes.”
“I should have told you what I could do.”
“It wasn’t that. I’ve learned to expect the unexpected with you. It was your face. You looked–” He cuts himself off when I start to tremble again and rises enough to look down at me, smoothing his hand down my thigh. He reaches further down and fists a blanket he draped over the corner of the bed and pulls it over my bare legs. The sudden absence of his touch leaves me shockingly cold. “That look on your face made me want to do very bad things to whoever you were talking to on the phone.”
“My dad.” I take a breath, and it’s much needed. My lungs allow an extra pinch of air, and my mind begins to clear, my thoughts untangling.
“Maybe not, then.”
I laugh, and he smiles, pleased, I think, to hear that sound instead of the constant whimpering.
“Whatever happened is over now. It’s late.”
“I should go home.”
“I’d like you to stay.” There’s a command in his voice that cuts through the steady, gentle hum I’m used to. “Please.”
“The fact I’m bleeding isn’t bothering you?”
“It’ll bother me a lot more knowing you're hurt and out of my sight.”
“You have no reason to be this nice to me, not after what I said to you.”
“You meant what you said, and you were right,” he reiterates, but he pulls the blanket up to my shoulders, expertly tucking me in. He leans down one last time to press his next words into my hair, and if I were able to bend, I'd be on my knees again. “So did I.”