Page 91 of Fanged Embrace
River noticed the change—seemed to suddenly register what she’d just said, and her head shot up abruptly, desperate urgency flashing in her eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—” Her arms tightened around my thigh, like she expected me to bolt. “You don’t have to answer that.”
I was definitely considering it. Considered running for the door. Because this was too much. Her love was too much. And I was undeserving. Her words detonated inside my chest, sent shrapnel flying in all directions. A thousand warnings flared in my head.
Don’t let her in. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
Don’t drag her down with you.
My throat worked but I couldn’t manage any words. I couldn’t say it back. I couldn’t cross that final line. She deserved better than that. She deserved better than me.
I forced myself to look at her, and came close to crumbling at the panic in her eyes. I wanted to run but that wasimpossible, River’s grip was too tight and I had nowhere else to go. So I chose the next best option.
I shimmied down until we were nose to nose, and buried my face in her neck. River’s arms climbed my body, pulled me close, and I hid in her hair. I hid from the fragile confession, hid from the pleading, desperate look in her eyes. It was cowardly, but it was all I could do.
I had to protect her. I had to keep my distance.
I had to hide from the words I could never allow myself to speak.
45
River
I was such an idiot. A fool really. A lovesick fool who should never have confessed her feelings like that.
Laurie’s stiff-backed silence replayed in my mind on a torturous loop while I drove aimlessly through Manhattan’s pre-dawn grid. Traffic lights flashed on empty avenues slick with rain, and Laurie’s pained expression burned behind my eyes.
My hands choked the steering wheel and I took a corner with tires screeching.
I’d left her sleeping back home, in my bed, guarded by the Leyore vampires keeping watch outside. It stressed me out, stepping away from her for even a moment, but I needed to clear my head. And by ‘clear my head’ I meant kick myself repeatedly for being so goddamnstupid.
Confessing had felt right in the moment—an ache too big to keep caged—but the terror in her eyes afterward snapped me right back to reality. I’d handed her another weight she hadnever asked to carry. I handed her my heart even though she’d reminded me, time and time again, that she was not able to handle it.
I slammed a palm on the steering wheel, then gripped it tight again when the motion sent the convertible skidding.
Stupid. I was so very stupid.
When asphalt gave way to the tree-lined curves of Riverside Park, I pulled over and killed the engine. Dawn’s first light brushed the Hudson, streaking the faint ripples with purple and gold. A few parents already occupied the playground, coffee cups clutched in mittened fists while toddlers tottered down slides that dripped from yesterday’s rainfall.
I watched a little girl chase soap bubbles, squealing in delight when they burst in front of her nose. The sight punched a hole in my chest.
Every morning Laurie had to wake to a world that reminded her of what she lost. Street strollers rolling by, toddlers tottering alongside their mothers down the walkway, infants wailing in apartments three floors up. Constant reminders rubbing salt in an unhealed wound.
No wonder she kept her fists up—always.
I shoved my hands in my coat pockets, standing like a phantom at the edge of the park and stewing in a misery I brought on myself. My power hummed at the base of my skull, restless without Laurie’s aura around to mingle with my own.
I’d spent so many hours soothing her nightmares, tempering her spiking emotions; it still wasn’t enough. Not when her heart-breaking past plagued her every waking moment and put her future in jeopardy.
If I could only reach deeper. Push my powers further…
Memories of my grandmother floated through my head, unbidden but not entirely unwelcomed. She had been a powerful vampire, existing centuries ago, but her many yearsalive had not made her unkind. Her stories drifted back to me on the chill wind, and I followed the thought trail—if only to distract myself from the current impossible predicament.
She had powers too, similar to my own. But she’d been able to do more than soothe; she could take—lift the thorns from a mind that willingly surrendered them and mist them away.
It wasn’t like Hunter’s powers; it left no gaps in memory. The subject was not rendered to a blank slate—they were left as a person, feeling lighter than they did before. She could turn memories of the past to faint fog, and clear a way for a brighter future.
It was an ability so rare that my family treated it like a personal mythos. My mother had believed I could do it too, but I’d never dared to try. It was too daunting, entering a head like that. It was too much responsibility, too much pressure, to hold something as delicate as a mind in my hands and trust myself not to break it.
But if Icoulddo it, if I could try—and if Laurie would let me… then, maybe that was the answer.
