Page 31 of To Love a Vampire
He loves me?
“I have to go,” he says abruptly.
“Asher, wait.”
I reach out to him, my fingers slipping through the cool air, but he’s gone before the words even leave my lips. Quietness and confusion are all that surrounds me.
* * *
“So wait, wait, wait,” Luca says, repeating herself for probably the third time now as I recall one of the most embarrassing moments of my life to her.
Again.
“So just to be clear, the super sexy hybrid, throws you against a tree, kisses you – which, by the way, I’m going to need a bit more detail on – bites you, confesses his love for you and you do what?”
“Nothing, I-”
“Nothing, right. Yeah, good choice.” Her nose wrinkles as she nods enthusiastically at me.
She takes a large bite of a red apple. The crisp crunching sound lingers in the air around us. We sit at a dinner table, just the two of us. People mill around us laughing and eating and enjoying the cool evening weather.
Asher didn’t visit me last night. I slept alone in a fit of nightmares that attacked my mind, waking long before the sun rose in an attempt to escape them.
“Can we talk about something else now?” I ask in a defensive tone, raising my eyebrows and my voice all at once.
“I don’t know, I don’t think anything else will be as entertaining as this,” she says, dripping sarcasm into every word.
She’s right, my humiliation and his anguish won’t fade anytime soon.
Why did I freeze up? Why didn’t I say anything?Anything. Because anything would have been better than saying nothing to him.
God, his face. I never want to see his face like that ever again. Because of me.
I push my plate away from me, folding my arms on the wooden table, wishing I could throw my head down and pout like a child. But I can’t, and Luca won’t let me.
“But, just so we’re clear, after he said I love you—”
I lean my head back, staring up at the dark, starry sky and wishing they would fade away into the sun, and that it, too, would crawl back over the sky and I could travel back to last night. If I could have just said how I felt.
If I only knew how I felt.
Fifteen
A Touchy Breed
Amid all ofmy jumbled thoughts and awful bad timing, Raske has decided to go ahead with his plan to bring peace with a mortal and mystic union.
“The four of you will go to the camp and mingle with your people, Fallon. You still have friends there, yes?” Lord Raske asks as he addresses Luca, Kaino, Declan and myself.
I nod, thinking of all the people my mother helped at the camp over the years. She was a doctor. The local clinic was only allowed to see the dying. The sick had to fend for themselves and often sought out my mother’s help.
My stomach turns just thinking about how many of them have died without a physician.
“Good, walk around with Kaino and Luca, make yourselves seen. Explain. Explain our community. Explain where you’ve been and how free and wonderful it all is—how happy you are.”
How happy I am.My thoughts drift to Asher and his confession as well as my twisting and disorganized feelings. I nod anyway, agreeing to my supposed happiness. From the corner of my eye, I see Gabriel followed by Asher walk into the tent. They stand back, talking quietly among themselves as we finish up our meeting.
“Declan, you’re to stay unseen. You’re an outstanding warrior but your presence in the human community just won’t work in our favor.”
