Page 41 of Road Trip with a Vampire
Peter started coughing into his hand. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
“Want to go to the rodeo with me and check out the hot cowboy?” I asked Peter innocently.
If he’d looked annoyed before, he looked murderous now. “No.”
Sharon laughed. “Aww, hon, that’s no fair, teasing your boyfriend like that.” She clapped me on the shoulder, though I barely registered it over the way the wordboyfriendrang in my head like a bell.
“He’s not my—” I spluttered, but she was already walking away from us, chuckling to herself.
When I turned back to face Peter, my face was on fire.
“That’s…well, I guess that may happen a lot on this trip,” I mumbled, just for something to say.
Peter was meticulously rearranging all the ketchup packets in the dispenser at our table. “Um. What’s going to happen a lot?” His voice remained unnaturally calm, like we’d just been discussing the weather.
I swallowed. “What the waitress said,” I clarified. “People—waitresses, hotel staff, people at rest stops—they may assume we’re a couple.”
He paused his ketchup packet ministrations but still didn’t look at me. “Oh.”
“It makes sense, I suppose. Two people traveling together and all that. I’d likely jump to the same conclusion if I saw us sitting here.” I was babbling at that point—an old nervous habit I’d never been able to break—but I couldn’t stop. “But we’renottogether,” I added emphatically. “I mean, yes—technically, we are traveling together. But we’re nottogethertogether. So it doesn’t matter what they assume.” I swallowed, pausing for breath. “Right?”
“Right,” Peter said. And then: “Zelda?”
I swallowed. “Yeah?” I asked, nervously.
One corner of Peter’s mouth lifted in a small smile. “You’ll break that gods-awful mug if you keep squeezing it like that.”
I looked down at my hand, and—sure enough—I was gripping the mug’s handle so hard my knuckles had gone white.
“Oh,” I said, feeling like an idiot. “I…hadn’t noticed.”
Before I could order my hand to relax, Peter covered it with one of his own. Our hands were such a study in contrasts, just like us—hot and cool, small and large. A shiver went through meas he gently pried my hand from the mug—then, without warning, twined his fingers through mine.
“It would have been no great loss ifthathad broken,” Peter said, eyeing the mug and the cartoon chicken it bore with barely concealed disdain. We were still holding hands. One of us needed to let go. Neither of us did. My heart was racing so hard, surely he could hear it from across the table. “But if it broke, you could cut your hand and hurt yourself.”
His voice was so warm, his dark brown eyes full of what looked like genuine concern.
All around us, people talked animatedly and ate their dinners. At some point the animatronic chickens started up again, clucking a frankly criminal cover ofBaby One More Timeto the cheers and groans of the rest of the room. But I lost track of everything but the press of Peter’s palm against mine and the heated look on his face I would have given anything to parse.
Then, as suddenly as he’d taken my hand, Peter yanked his back like my touch had scalded him. Breaking the spell.
“We…should get going,” he said stiffly, not meeting my eye. Vampires couldn’t blush—but if they could, I wondered if he’d be doing it now.
Icertainly was.
“Agreed,” I said. I fumbled for my bag with shaking hands, unwilling to look too closely at what had just happened.
I didn’t want to think about what I might find if I did.
Ten
Two months earlier
Peter liked Chicago. It wasurban, which made finding his next meal easy, but much less congested than New York.
(He’d never understood why people liked New York. It was too overrun with other vampires, and the aggression humans there felt towards one another negatively impacted their flavor.)
Unexpectedly, Chicago’s sun was proving an issue. Peter’s murky human memories of the place featured frigid winters and overcast skies. But then, he didn’t think he’d ever visited in the summer. No matter. With sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat, he could make do until nightfall.
