Page 8 of The Stars and the Stage
“That I betrayed your trust and your love in the most painful way possible,” Maddox spoke from behind them, stepping slowly into the backstage space. In his regal outfit, he still looked like a prince, but he sounded like Diego’s Maddy. “I was stupid and selfish and cruel. But I never meant—” He shook his head. “I told my mother you’d tried to bite me because I was too ashamed to admit that it was my own damned fault I came home sobbing and bleeding. I’d never imagined she’d take it to the police.”
Just hearing the words spoken out loud was like reliving the moment from a distance, the flash of the cop car lights, the banging on Diego’s door. Their parents’ combined horror over learning of their vampirism and the assault allegations in one go had stalled the officers long enough for Diego to sneak out the window. But as bad as that had been, it was the trying to return later that night that had hit them worse. The realization that everyone knew, and they were all, like Maddox, too afraid of Diego’s new fangs to listen to anything they had to say.
“Oh god,” Valentine whispered, horror clear on his face. “Maybe we should have kicked him out?”
“You think?” Diego snapped, but they shoved their hand through their hair, ripping off the silver circlet. They could not stop watching Maddox—his remorseful expression, the humility of his stance, his determined patience as he stood there—and hearing his apology repeating in their head. “Or no. I mean, fuck.”
“I’m sorry I sprung this on you.” Serina sounded so damned motherly as she said it. “If his presence here is too painful for you, then he’ll leave, no questions. But I have reason to believe he’s a good man, or I would never have let him on the premises, and he’s far from the only person in this building with a past they regret. We are in the business of handing out second chances, not denying them.”
That made Diego feel worse, somehow. While Serina was—at least mostly—human, as a single Black lesbian who openly hired vampires, it had taken her an inexplicable number of tears and labor to reach the place she had, yet never did she let that detract from the care she showed for every person who passed through her doors. People who no one else thought deserved it. But most of those were vampires, acting the way they did because society had given them no other choice. They were not Maddox.
Serina must have understood Diego’s hesitation because she lifted one brow at Maddox. “What doyouhave to say for yourself?”
Maddox looked back at her in such a way that made Diego wonder just what they’d spoken of that night he’d arrived backstage—what had possibly made her recommend he come back for this—but then his attention fixed back on Diego, intense and impossible. “Only that, again, I’m sorry. And that what I’ve done has no bearing on who I am now... or it does,” he amended. “It made me someone who bleeds freely because I know there’s a young vampire out there somewhere accused of an act they are not to blame for, with no one willing to stand up for them.”
“Maddy…” His name slipped from Diego’s lips without their consent, and they felt instantly ashamed of the crack in their voice.
Not that Maddox hadn’t seen them weep before, hadn’t held them while their cramps threatened to make them pass out or praised their compassion when an injustice on the news broke them into angry sobs. But that final time they’d come to him in tears, he’d pulled out pliers and ruined their life with a lie. And now he’d come back to bleed freely. To bleed forthem.
Diego dragged in a breath. Fuck Serina, fuck Valentine, andyet. “Can I have a minute with him? Alone.”
“You can use my office,” Serina offered.
They walked there in silence, Valentine awkwardly following at a distance, his sword still at his hip. Diego had to smile at him and make a shooing motion to finally get across the point that they’d be safe.Theywere the predator, after all. The sun was hours from rising, and Maddox clearly had no holy silver on him, though from what they’d seen of this new him, Diego found they couldn’t imagine him going through the effort to find and purchase such a rare and harmful metal in the first place.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Diego spun on him. “Why are you here?”
He looked just as conflicted as Diego felt. “In LA or at the club?”
“In this room,” Diego shouted, “staring at me like that!”
“Because I miss you!” Finally, he shouted back, but where Diego’s emotions were all scalding heat, his were warmth and deep desire. “I could never discover where you’d gone after you left San Salud, and I—I figured you preferred that. But then I saw your fangs on a Celestial Club poster at one of the vampire-accepting speakeasies—”
“That was just the lower half of my face,” Diego protested. Serina had purposefully cut out enough that the wrong people couldn’t identify them. Yet here Maddox was.
“With the tiny mole beneath your lips and that crooked third tooth on the left?” He didn’t even glance down as he said it, his gaze fixed on their eyes. “You think I don’t still know every line of your mouth, Diego?”
They had to stop from lifting a hand to their own lips. A little shudder ran through them, not entirely unpleasant.
“As soon as I realized that you worked here,” he continued, “that I’d finally found you again after so long—I knew I needed to apologize.”
“And you did that. So why did you come back tonight? Why have youstayed?”
“Because I want us to have another chance.”
Another chance, after ten years? Even after all Diego had witnessed, it felt impossible. “I’ve changed, Maddy, I’m a different person now.”
“And you think I haven’t changed, too?” Maddox stepped toward them—had he always been this tall?—and they could see the gleam along his lower lids as he clutched a hand over his heart. “Every cell in my body has died since I knew you. There’s not an inch of me that you’ve touched anymore. I am, entirely, a new being. And yet I still love you.”
I still love you. Diego’s chest hurt, as though their heart could bleed from emotional wounds alone. They wanted to snap back that it didn’t matter, becausetheyno longer lovedhim. They’d moved on. He should too. But it would be a lie. They could not possibly feel this much pain and anger and longing if they didn’t still have feelings for him.
Indifference, not hate, was the opposite of love, and Diego was anything but indifferent towards Maddox.
“Oh, fuck you.” They gave his chest a little push, their vampiric strength held easily in check after so many years adjusting to it.
He smiled, barely wobbling, and caught their hand. “Well, I see you haven’t changedthatmuch.”
Diego nearly yanked back out of spite, but Maddox let them go before they could. The moment they lost contact, something in them wanted it back—wanted to touch every one of his new cells, discover the way each felt all over again. Instead they snorted, giving their fingers a little shake. “Ihavetouched a few inches of you now.”
