Page 47 of A Bloom in Winter

“But how did you know I was coming . . . here.”

“Where else would you go? I show up unannounced on your doorstep—”

“That is not my doorstep—”

“—and I bring baggage.” Apex shrugged. “There have been a lot of things in my own life that are with me whether I want them to be or not. Sometimes you need to go back, if only to know whether it was all real.”

“Of course I know it happened,” Callum snapped.

The vampire looked away. Looked back. “But memories become dreams after a while. We live with them in our minds, and the edges get blurred until you’re not as sure as you once were exactly what happened versus what your brain made up just to torture yourself more.” Apex cursed and crossed his arms over his chest. “And like . . . the shit really cripples you, traps you, sinks you, and you think, am I doing this to myself? Or . . . was it done to me. For real.”

Callum was dimly aware of his heart stopping.

“That’s why you came back here,” Apex concluded. “And that’s how I knew where you were.”

As a heavy silence stretched out, Callum went for a little walkabout, pacing back and forth.

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

Apex shrugged again. “You don’t need to say anything. The truth is what it is, whether we comment on it or not—”

Before Callum knew what he was doing, he was right in front of the other male. And as he looked into those glittering black eyes, they flared so big, it was a wonder they didn’t pop out and hit the floor.

Don’t do it, he told himself.Don’t—

His hand reached up and hovered beside the vampire’s face. And when his palm closed the distance of its own volition, and he felt the warmth and the subtle friction of beard growth, he thought about the division between memories and dreams.

“Have you ever come back here?” he whispered. “To see if things were real.”

Apex shook his head, and in doing so, caused a brushing touch to flare between the pair of them. “No, I haven’t.”

Callum dropped his hand. “Oh. Well, good for you. Glad you moved along—”

As he went to turn away, Apex grabbed his arm. “I think about you. Always.”

The words were spoken with such urgency, there was no pretending to have misheard them or misunderstood.

And then there was the pain on that hard face. A special kind of agony radiated out of those eyes and flattened that mouth, and as Callum regarded the emotion, he felt the strangest unlocking in the center of his chest.

He was not alone.

He hadn’t . . . been alone. In the suffering.

Callum swallowed through a tight throat. “You remember.”

The vampire nodded and answered hoarsely, “Everything.”

It had been the touch Apex had craved for so long, and the sensations did not disappoint. Though that palm had rested on his cheek for just a moment, he had felt it all through his body.

And now he knew a different kind of heat, as Callum lowered his head in shame and retreated internally. Even though the distance between them did not change, the male seemed to shrink where he stood—and that made Apex want to kill that fucking female all over again.

“It happened to me, too,” he heard himself rasp. “Every time I pushed that food between your lips . . . with every towel I passed over your skin . . . for every hour I sat beside you and worried you were dying, what was done to you happened to me . . . too.”

Apex’s vision got blurry and he wiped his tears harder than he had to. And then with him being able to see, he had to look away from the wolven, from those icy blue eyes.

“I’m sorry I left like I did.” Callum shook his head. “That night, thirty years ago. I couldn’t—I just didn’t have it in me to . . . say goodbye to you.”

“I understand.”

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