Page 50 of Road Trip with a Vampire
He nodded. Bit his bottom lip. “Would it be okay if I slept in here after all?” Peter wouldn’t look at me as he fidgeted with the bottom hem of his T-shirt.
My heart rate kicked up. “Yes,” I croaked, voice breaking on the single word. I winced and cleared my throat. Tried again. “I mean…yes.Yes.Of course.”
“It’s colder outside than I’d anticipated,” he explained. His gaze flicked to mine, darted away again. “Only in the twenties.”
I sucked in a breath through my teeth. “Thatiscold.”
“I have a higher cold tolerance than most people, of course, but…” He dragged a hand through his damp hair. “Even I have my limits.”
That didn’t surprise me. I’d heard stories, of course, of vampires technicallysurvivingtemperatures that would turn even the hardiest of humans into Popsicles. But those stories also suggested the vampires were never quite the same afterwards. And I knew from my extensive time with vampires that they could become slow and lethargic quickly in temperatures much below freezing.
It probably had something to do with the way the bloodflowed in their bodies. Or rather, the way it didn’t flow. I didn’t know; I wasn’t a scientist. Regardless—if Peter wanted to sleep here tonight, I was not about to turn him out.
I glanced at the space beside me on the bed. It was a queen-size mattress, big enough for two people to sleep without touching. In theory, anyway. It had a dip in the middle, likely from too many years of use, and that was dangerous.
What if gravity took over while we slept, and we rolled towards each other in the night? I didn’t know what I would do if I woke up in the morning with my face pressed into that glorious chest.
But Peter seemed uninterested in sharing the bed. Something that could have been relief but felt more like disappointment washed through me when he grabbed the pillow I wasn’t using and tossed it to the floor.
“You can have the sheets and the blanket. I’ll take the bedspread,” he said. “It’s thick enough, it should protect me from whatever horrors lurk in the carpet.” Before I could object and tell him this arrangement wasn’t fair to him, he was gathering up the bedspread and creating a makeshift pallet for himself on the floor, as far away from the bed as he could get it.
This was for the best, I told myself. It would be beyond weird for us to sleep together, even if all we did was sleep. We could, of course, have created some sort of pillow barrier between us—but those things never seemed to work as intended in romance novels.
“Good night, Zelda,” he said softly from his spot on the floor.
I was exhausted but it still took a very long time for me to fall asleep.
It was probably the coffee I’d had at dinner.
I had finally drifted offwhen I was roughly awoken by Peter’s terrified shouting.
I sat bolt upright in bed in a panic, reflexes on high alert. I looked towards Peter, who lay on the floor, head thrashing back and forth on his pillow.
He was having a nightmare.
I threw off my covers and went to him. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut as he shouted and thrashed, and I knelt over him, gripping both of his shoulders in my hands. His body’s chill bled through the thin cotton of his T-shirt, his shoulders solid as granite beneath my touch.
“Peter,” I said, my voice low and urgent. “Peter.It’s me. Zelda. You’re having a bad dream. Wake up.”
He gave no sign that he heard me. He continued thrashing, shouting garbled words I couldn’t make out. I shook him again, harder this time.
After another terrifying few seconds, in which I considered filling a glass with cold water from the bathroom sink and throwing it in his face, he opened his eyes.
The raw fear, the vulnerability, I saw in them stole my breath.
“Zelda?” The sound of his ragged breathing filled the room.
“I’m here,” I said. “It was just a dream.” My hands still rested on his shoulders, but I made no move to snatch them back. On instinct, I began to run them gently along his upper arms in soothing motions. He held himself as still as a statue.
“A dream,” Peter repeated, sounding dazed. He stared up at me as though I were the only safe thing in this world.
“Yes.” I hesitated, not sure if offering comfort was a good ideaor would even be welcomed. But I’d woken up from terrible nightmares many times myself. They could be dreadful when you were all alone. I knew what comfort from another person could do, what it could mean in moments like this. Even if the one offering it was a virtual stranger.
I sat back, putting some distance between us. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Peter blew out a long breath, then sat up, scrubbing his hands over his face. Whatever his nightmare had been, he was fully awake now. “I don’t remember much.” A long pause. “I think it might have been a memory. It felt too real to have just been a dream.”
My eyes widened. “That’s good news. Right?” Without thinking, I reached out to touch his shoulder again. His eyes widened a little when my hand made contact, but he didn’t pull away. “Your memories are returning.”
