Page 62 of Newly Undead in Dark River

I blinked. Then I blinked a few more times. They bought me a house? People didn’t do that. I mean, I couldn’t accept it, right? As if he sensed my upcoming protest, Walker pushed me toward the front door. “Okay, so maybe we bought us a house if it makes you feel better. Just you’ll live here. And your name is on the deed. And you own it. Consider it like a clubhouse or something.”

“Yeah, except instead of riding cool Harley’s, we ride you,” Brody teased. Freaking jerk. Sexy freaking jerk.

He said all this as he pushed me through the door. When I stepped in, the place was empty and filled with boxes. I assumed boxes of my stuff.

“We only painted the outside. We left all the hard work to you. I googled how to style the inside of a house, and they started talking about occasional tables. What the fuck is an occasional table? If you only use it little enough to call it that, what the hell is the point of having it?” Judge was grumbling under his breath. “What goes in here is completely up to you. This is your home now, Raine. You can decorate it however you want, paint it hot pink if that’s what your heart desires. Let in whoever you want. Or no one at all.”

I spun around the room, my eyes impossibly wide. “So this is mine?” I asked, waiting for them to yell, just kidding, and kick me out.

Brody hugged me. “Well, your’s and Tex’s. I figured you wouldn’t want him too far away. But he can stay with Judge if you want your privacy.”

His thoughtfulness made my eyes fill with tears. I wanted Tex with me, a safety blanket for us both. We still had so much to overcome, to worry about.

I looked at them, and a tear rolled down my cheek. “Are you going to cry again? Please don’t cry again,” Brody groaned. “I can’t handle your tears. They’re like my kryptonite or something.”

I squeezed him tight. “Happy tears don’t count.” I shifted back and looked at them all. My eyes stuck on Walker. “Are you sure about this?”

I wasn’t talking about the house, and we both knew it. I wanted to know if he wanted to dive into this craziness with me.

He reached out and pulled me away from a grumbling Brody. “Raine. Would you do me the honor of going on a date with me?”

“Absolutely.”

Brody just headed toward the closest box. “About damn time.”

For the sevenmillionth time since I’d been turned, I thanked the powers that be that I could no longer get fat. In front of me was a new creation made by Burt, aka my Deep-fried Overlord. He’d conjured deep-fried Oreos to tempt me back into the world, and who was I to turn down that kind of offer?

I sat in a booth, squished between Walker and Brody, Tex, and Judge across from me, and I felt perfectly content once more. Sure, there were eyes on me, and whispers that weren’t soft enough for my vampire ears, plus Brody had already growled at a couple of nosy gossips, but generally speaking, life had gone on.

Walker wrinkled his nose at my plate of deep-fried cookie goodness. “That is disgusting. You are going to make yourself sick.” He sounded as bemused as he was disgusted.

I leaned across and pressed a deep-fried oreo against Tex’s lips. “Tex understands. He knows the glory that is the oreo.”

Tex obligingly opened his lips, taking the whole cookie into his mouth, and then sucking on my fingers. I sucked in a breath as heat shot to my belly. Behind me, someone let out a distinctly feminine sigh.

Yeah, sister. I feel that.

“Nope, I’m with Walker. That’s an abomination,” Tex said, poking his tongue out. I kicked his shin under the table.

“Quiet. You’ll hurt Burt’s feelings, and then he won’t make me the double-fried apple pies he was talking about earlier.”

Brody laughed, nuzzling my hair before leaning around to snag a bit of the cookie in my hand, the damn sneak. “You guys don’t know what you’re missing. Delicious.”

The bell over the door tinkled, that dreaded fucking bell, but instead of silence, there was a sudden cacophony of whispered shock. I turned in my seat to see the grinning face of X.

He pulled up a chair and sat at the end of our booth. “Hello, Love. What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” He grinned and took one of my Oreos. He bit down and gagged. “What the hell is that?”

I grinned. “Don’t mind the taste, Love, just close your eyes, swallow, and think of Mother England,” I teased, and he laughed, a few oreo crumbs flying across the table and onto Judge’s plate, making the man in question grimace.

He flicked it off his plate and toward back toward the grinning Englishman. “What are you doing here, X?”

X stole a piece of Judge’s toast, and Judge rolled his eyes. “You say that like you didn’t miss me, Judgey Wudgey. Livin’ it up in the new love nest yet?”

He waggled his eyebrows at me, and I blushed even as I gave him the finger. “Careful, Sweetheart, or I might construe that as an invitation. I’m still waiting for the harem application form to come in the mail.”

Brody might have mumbled something about waiting until hell froze over, but X just shook it off. “Nah, I mean it. It’s good to see you up and about, not curled in a ball in your bed. That shit with your maker was nasty business. But between you and me, you’re better off. Having a bad maker…” He hesitated, the roguish cheek draining from his eyes for a second. “Well, let’s say it isn’t a good thing now, is it?”

Everyone was silent for a moment as the weight of the past few months pressed down on us. But it was lessening. Soon, it would be a fading memory. There would only be happiness from this point on, I was determined.

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