Page 44 of Bottoms Up
We worked forhoursto get the spacing and general moves for just one song, and I fell dramatically to the low stage in the warehouse. “Food. I need food!”
“Lasagna,” Will said, and he pulled his phone from his pocket to call a little Italian place not terribly far away. He also ordered breadsticks, salad, and extra cheese. I approved.
“It’ll be at the Beast Castle in twenty-five minutes. On your feet, Silver. We can go through it another three or four times before we head back.”
I stood, and Will said, “Get us started, Mikey.” My fingers automatically hit the right chord when Mikey’s sticks got us started, and we were back at it.
Honestly, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. You do it so many times, it’s automatic. You no longer have to think about it.
But most people have no idea how many times you have to freaking do something before the muscle memory kicks in and you can do it on autopilot.
We weren’t there yet — my fingers may’ve known the drill, but the rest of my body was still learning it.
About thirty minutes later, we all sat around the table in silence while we ate, and it was time to come clean about Julian. I’d decided to do this no matter the fact he was still a slave, and then everything had changed — but it was time.Past time.
“I know ya’ll have speculated about where I go, since I’m not at the Beast Castle as much as I used to be.”
“Your business,” Will said, “but yes. You’re important to us, so we’d like to be included in the parts of your life that aren’t necessarily our business.”
I took a breath. “I’ve been dating a vampire, and it was super complicated, but things have happened in the past couple of days that are either going to simplify things, or make them evenmorecomplicated.”
“I noticed, during the last couple of Girls’ Night Out excursions,” Hailey said, “you seemed closer to the Homewood crowd than the bikers.”
Her words landed hard, because she was right — and I hadn’t realized it, much less understood it was obvious. She wasn’t upset, though. No judgment, just observation.
I nodded. “Yeah. I’ve mostly lived there when I haven’t been here. I spentmaybetwenty days at my place last year.”
“I’m gonna guess Julian,” Micca said.
“Yes, and…crap, talk about a convoluted origin story.” I shook my head.
“Do you love him?” Davy asked.
Leave it to Davy to cut right to the root of things. I smiled at him, thankful for the question. “I do. Things got complicated in the last nine months, but the past couple of days have felt…” I shrugged. “It’s like the blanket of complication got unwound, or unwoven, or…”
I shook my head and met Will’s gaze. “Long story short, I need to go away with him for a couple of weeks, and I know the timing isn’t great, but it’s important.”
“Then we’ll figure it out,” Will said. “Even if that means we keep up with the choreography and put someone in your place, and then you have to learn it all when you get back. You’re fast to pick up on that kind of thing, and there’s no doubt you’ll work your ass off to get caught up when you return. If you say it’s important, we’ll figure it out.”
I blinked, caught off guard by how easy he made it sound. No guilt, no frustration, no guilt-tripping about how much they needed me.Just support. Like my life mattered as much as the show. I couldn’t speak past the lump in my throat, so I gave him a nod and a smile.
“We all want you to be happy,” Mikey said.
I knew Mikey had spent a lot of time at Homewood for a while, but he hadn’t in about a year, so I wasn’t sure what was up with that. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it, so I’d let it go. I mean, I hadn’t exactly been sharing, either.
“I want you to be happy, too,” I told him, voice more emotional than I meant it to be.
“I’m good.” He glanced at the oven clock and looked back to me. “Mitch is supposed to be here in about an hour. Tell us what you can, and we’ll get the next installment later if that isn’t enough time for your Julian’s origin story.”
My Julian.No questions, no interrogation about how smart it was to date a vampire. I’d said I loved him, and that was enough for them. I took a deep breath and got started. “Okay,so he’s like, hundreds of years old, and he was this big star of the opera back then,huge. He has a Wikipedia page, and he’s in dozens of books, hundreds of web pages, but his story actually starts ten years before that, when talent scouts went out into the countryside…”
I made it all the way through his history and was ready to tell them about when we met when Mitch drove through the gate, so I thought we’d stop talking and I’d pick it up later.
They knew he’d been a slave when we met, but they didn’t know his status had changed — but Micca figured it out.
“I’m guessing the last nine months have been about getting him ready for freedom, and the last three days have probably been about healing him after the fucked-up testing he had to go through, and then him getting used to his new power signature as a free vampire.”
I nodded. “Yes. A super-simplified version, but yeah.” She’d failed that test the first time and had to go through some kind of training before she could take it again, when she thankfully passed. Since the test is probably similar for shapeshifters and vampires, she’d know first-hand how fucked up it was.
