Page 56 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
Vincent wished he’d go back, reverse them all the way to the roof where the most important thing had been their mutual understanding and their hands on each other. “I live in a mausoleum. We already went over that.”
“Yeah, I know. I just thought there’d be like…” Wesley flung his hands out, bumping into Vincent’s chest by accident. “I don’t know.”
“A velvet-lined coffin?” Vincent snorted.
“A TV or a mini-fridge or a—abed.” Wesley shook his head. “God, Vincent. Is this why you look so grunge all the time?”
Vincent turned to stare at him. “You thought it was a fashion choice? Fuck.”
“Yes? You’re a vampire, how was I supposed to know what you were into.” Wes cringed. “That’s not fair, I’m sorry.” He breathed out, running his hands through his hair as he turned his face back towards the nook where Vincent stored his sleeping bag, even if Vincent was pretty sure his human eyes couldn’t see it without the nearby light of a phone. “But why didn’t you tell me? I would have done something! I have a house. I have an extra room, you could have moved in!”
“Thisis why I didn’t tell you,” Vincent whispered.
“Why?” His tone was miserable. “Because I’d want you to be safe and happy? Because I’d want to take care of you?”
“Yes!” Vincent shouted so loud that his voice echoed in the small, hard-edged space, and the crickets went quiet outside. In the silence he could hear the echoes of all his jealousy. He would have moved into Wesley’s house in a heartbeat; he would have stayed there forever if he’d been allowed. He dropped to the ground next to the man. “No. Not because you’d want to take care of me, but because maybe you wouldn’t. I didn’t want to know where I’d hit the limit to your kindness.”
“Vinny,” Wes muttered. He turned his head and leaned a little closer. His nose brushed Vincent’s forehead, and he lifted his lips to kiss there softly.
As he turned back, Vincent slipped his chin onto Wesley’s shoulder. His nose pressed against the man’s jaw, and he breathed in Wes with a small, tight inhale. The flood of the man’s scent calmed him. Wesley didn’t just smell like Wesley anymore. He smelled like home. “I could have trusted you,” Vincent whispered. “All this time, I could have just trusted you.”
He swore Wesley stiffened, but in the same moment his phone vibrated again. Vincent pulled it out of his pocket. The screen lit up, revealing a notification from the Griffon app and a few emails, their content all hidden. Wesley quickly scrolled aside the emails and unlocked the phone to open the messages from Kendall. A soft chortle left him.
“What?” Vincent grumbled.
Wes pointed to the picture beneath Kendall’s chaotic description of work drama. “That’s the werewolf meme I mentioned yesterday.”
Vincent squinted at it. “Do theyeatthe baby?”
“Metaphorically? The original was about feelings, I think.”
As Wesley lowered the phone, another email notification appeared. With the screen unlocked, the sender and subject highlighted itself at the top:Matthew Babcock. Vitalis-Barron Post-Interview Questions.
Babcock. The name took the breath out of Vincent, but this wasn’t entirely news to him. Wesley would have been in contact with Vitalis-Barron if he’d been trying to get into their research labs to prove his mother’s death. He’d known who Mr. Babcock was. It made sense that he’d been part of Wes’s interview process, and if Wes was still hunting for the truth of his mother’s murder then he wouldn’t want to give up that line of communication. That he hadn’t told Vincent this outright made a knot form in Vincent’s stomach, but maybe he had a good reason. Vincent hadn’t told him that he was living out of a four-year-old sleeping bag in a mausoleum. Some subjects were harder to breach than others. Maybe Vincent just needed all the facts.
As Wesley noticed the notification though, he hissed between his teeth and tried to swipe it away. His fingers fumbled shakily over the screen. The phone dropped.
Vincent caught it before it could hit the floor, but the email app thread had already opened sometime in the shuffle, popping up to the most recent reply.
Leaving Sunset Ridge Cemetery now. You coming or not?
Matthew
As Vincent’s fingertip rested on the screen, it jumped back up through highlights of the condensed thread.
Me: No blood bags. He feeds straight from humans…
Matthew Babcock: Not when we make it especially for them. He’s that feral then…
Me: Actually, scratch that. If I can get a blood bag from you, I’m pretty sure he’ll…
It clicked slowly, numbly, a little like being shot: the whole thing over and done with, the wound having already torn him open, but his brain was not quite able to register the pain. He scooted back from Wesley once, then again. And suddenly it felt like his chest had been ripped apart.
The odd passing out after drinking from Wesley’s blood bag, the vague memory of being in Wes’s car, even the way Wes had practically begged him to come back when Vincent was about to climb out the window that first night. Had the spicy ramen been a set up too, to make himneedthe blood bag in the first place? What about the drinks at the Fishnettery? Their endless texting? The moans and the kink play and the heart-to-heart—what of it had been real and what had beenthis.
Wesley had tried to give him to Vitalis-Barron.
It didn’t matter to Vincent why. It never mattered why to any human, not when it was a vampire they were targeting. Any reason was always good enough to fuck over a depraved and dangerous bloodsucker.
