Page 125 of Road Trip with a Vampire
He liked his plants, I thought.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, meaning it.
Another shrug. “It’s fine. It’s been a very long time since I’ve been in one spot long enough to keep anything alive.”
I had to dig my fingernails into my palm to remind myself not to do anything stupid, like reach out and give his hand a comforting squeeze. “So you live in Boston now?”
He tilted his head to the side, considering. “I’m not sure. After throwing away my plants, I spent some time in Chicago. I like it there.”
“What brought you to Chicago?” I sipped from my mug, watching him over its rim as he seemed to weigh how to answer my question.
When he finally spoke, he didn’t meet my eyes. “I needed advice on something.”
I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned so he could see out of my window. Sometime between his leaving the bathroom in a sweatshirt and a towel and my making my cup of tea, it had stopped raining. The sky had cleared just enough for a handful of stars to shine through.
He opened his mouth to say something. Whatever it was goingto be, though, was cut off by my dryer buzzing. He looked at me for the length of two heartbeats, then stood from the couch.
“I’ll get dressed now and finish the roof.”
What?I shot to my feet. “You’re kidding, right?” He didn’t seriously mean to go back out there while the roof was still wet, did he? Besides—the forecast called for more rain that night. Vampires couldn’t technically die from slipping off a roof and landing on the pavement below, but I assumed it could still injure them. It would also almost certainly hurt like hell.
I decided all at once that I cared whether he got hurt. I cared a lot.
Especially if he got hurt because of me.
His jaw was set in a firm line. “I need to finish it.”
My hand shot out as if operating without instructions from me, my palm coming to rest above the place where his heart had once beat. My fingers curled into the fabric of his borrowed sweatshirt. I reveled in the softness of the fabric, and in Peter’s sharp intake of breath.
“It can wait until tomorrow,” I said, trying to channel the determination I’d seen on his face moments earlier.
His throat worked. “It can’t.”
“Why not?” I asked. His chest rose and fell unevenly, his breathing gone ragged. “The buckets will catch the leaks overnight. Everything that might get damaged has already been moved out of the way. Why you can’t just wait until—”
His hand covered mine, then gripped it tightly, the movement so fast I barely saw it. “I can’t wait, Zelda, because I have to do everything I can to prove I’m sorry.” His voice was gravel-rough, nearly breaking on the wordsorry.“I need to do everything I can to get you back.”
His words punched the breath from my lungs, sent mythoughts scattering. Though if I were being honest, I’d already known—from the first text he’d sent about that ridiculous chicken hat—that he was trying to make things up to me. I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it—but I’d still known.
Here, in my apartment, with his eyes on mine and his calloused thumb tracing gentle patterns on the back of my hand, the time for pretending was over. Our origins couldn’t have been more star-crossed if we’d been the main characters in one of my romance novels. But now that I had some distance from what had happened, I had to wonder whether it even mattered.
Petersawme. The real me. And he had never flinched. Yes, our beginnings had been rocky. But you couldn’t live forever without breaking some eggs. Or something like that. I supposed that was a mixed metaphor if there ever was one—but regardless, perhaps we were always meant to end up here.
I’d made a lot of mistakes in my lifetime. Being stubborn by continuing to push him away…
I wouldn’t make that mistake any longer.
“I hadn’t had a real home in so long,” Peter continued when I said nothing. He was pleading now, pouring every ounce of his powers of persuasion into convincing me, not realizing that he already had. “Not until I met you. Now that I know what it’s like to be with you, I don’t think I can go back to any sort of existence without you in it.”
He closed his eyes and—tentatively—leaned forward until his forehead rested against mine. Our breaths mingled, and I closed my eyes to savor the warmth of this moment.
I could forgive him, I decided with the crystal clarity that only time, terrible cookies, and a little distance can provide.
“I want to earn back your trust,” Peter said, his voice just above a whisper. His words ghosted across my lips, cool andsweet. “If you just give me another chance, I will always take care of you.”
I almost told him that through words and deeds, he’d proven everything he needed to prove. That I’d missed him, too. That I was ready to move past how we’d started. His mouth wassoclose to mine, though. Kissing seemed a more efficient way to get the message across.
I tilted my chin a fraction and tightened my grip on his sweatshirt, tugging until his lips met mine. His eyes flew open in surprise, his body going rigid for the briefest of moments before he understood what I was telling him and relaxed into the kiss. Wasting no time, I wound my arms around his neck, pulling him so close I wasn’t sure where he ended and I began. Peter kissed me back eagerly, like a man starved, as he wrapped one strong arm around me, then reached up with his free hand to gently, gently brush his knuckles against my cheek.
