My Blood Approves

Chapter 12

It was on the bus on the way to school that I decided to broach the subject.

There would be a finite amount of time, and then a full day of school after that to keep his thoughts from settling too long. Milo had his textbook open on his lap, doing some last minute cramming for a test he would undoubtedly pass.

Since I was trying to make everything seem perfectly normal, I had in my ear buds and the iPod played the Tears For Fears, but it was quiet enough where I could talk.

“Hey, Milo?” I tried to keep my voice as casual as possible, but I didn’t exactly know how I could keep it light and easy. How exactly did I go about inserting the supernatural into everyday conversation?

“Huh?” Milo grunted, his attention unwavering from the textbook.

“What do you think of… vampires?” I hesitated before the word, as if by saying it aloud to someone other than the family, it would make it real.

Thankfully, he didn’t notice.

“I don’t,” Milo answered flatly. He hadn’t even expressed the vaguest interest in this conversation, but I pressed on anyway. I hated not telling him things, and it was nearly impossible for me to carry around a secret this life changing.

“You don’t think maybe they’re real?” I pulled at the straps of my backpack and bit my lip, waiting for his response.

“No.” He looked at me like I was a total idiot, which is what I had kind of expected. “Do you think werewolves are real?”

“There’s no such thing as werewolves,” I replied promptly.

“Yeah, and there’s no such thing as vampires.” Milo shook his head and went back to studying.

“But you don’t think that, like, there’s even the possibility that they might exist?” I asked hopefully. He lifted his head, looking confused about why I would be talking about utter nonsense.

“Creatures that live on only blood and never age?” He shook his head again. “That’s not even biologically possible. And then they sleep in coffins?

That just seems unnecessary.”

“Well, maybe they don’t sleep in coffins,” I suggested, picking at a chipped piece of nail polish on my finger.

“That doesn’t make it any more plausible.” Then he looked over at me with narrowed eyes. “Okay. What’s this about? Did you stay up late watching The Lost Boys again?”

“No.” I ran a hand nervously through my hair, trying to think of how I could explain this away. “I just had a bad dream last night. That’s all.”

“You know, maybe if you didn’t stay out all hours of the night running around with Jack, you would be able to sleep like a normal person without any ridiculous dreams.” Milo had taken on parental heirs again, and I rolled my eyes when he went back to looking at his book.

“Right.” I decided that maybe hinting would be my best bet. “All hours of the night.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Milo grumbled, sounding irritated.

“Yep. I had vampire dreams cause I was out all night with a really attractive guy!” I was trying emphasize everything so he would get the point, and when he lifted his head again, I thought I’d finally gotten through to him.

“Wait. I thought you said you didn’t think Jack was attractive?” Milo asked curiously, and I sighed.

“Just forget it.” I laid my forehead against the cold glass window. He started to ask me about Mae’s cooking last night, but I just shook my head and turned up my iPod. As it turned out, I didn’t really feel like talking about vampires.

Jane made a point of telling me that I looked like hell and I hadn’t been acting like myself over lunch. She brought up Jack for the first time in days, but I didn’t feel like talking about him, so I said that I wasn’t feeling well and went to the bathroom. When I looked at my reflection in the mirror, it didn’t really seem to look like me. I was tired, pale, and I was losing weight. Since I spent most nights over to Jack’s and they never ate, it never really occurred to me to eat.

Maybe it would if I didn’t spend so much of the time with my stomach twisted in knots.

This was getting to be impossible. I didn’t know how much longer I could go on living this way. My normal human life felt like a total sham, and the vampire parts that had once felt fun and exciting were starting to just be painful. Everyone had been so nice to me and they all claimed that they cared about me, but then why were they hurting me so much? Again, I was reminded of the story of the ugly girl in the beautiful people village. Only this time, I related much more to how dried up and used she must’ve felt by the time they were done loving her.

After school, Milo proceeded to launch into a lecture about how I’m never home anymore and how Mom’s even starting to notice. At least he seemed to have forgotten entirely about the vampire conversation on the bus, which made me feel a little better. I didn’t think that anybody would really care if I told Milo. I just figured that he’d probably have me locked away in a psych ward and I’d never be able to see them again.

But then really, would that be so bad? My heart screamed painfully at the thought, and I realized that it most definitely would. Soon, very soon, this would all get straightened out. I wasn’t sure how exactly, but there were over six hundred years of experience amongst them. They had to be able to come up with something.

Good news. Peter and Ezra are on a business trip. Jack text messaged me, and Milo rolled his eyes.

“You know I really like him, but have you considered what this is doing to your school work?” Milo demanded. He was sitting at the kitchen table, working on some piece of homework, but I laid sprawled out on the couch half-asleep.

My lack of nightly sleep was starting to result in afternoon naps.

“Nope!” I retorted cheerily. Schoolwork didn’t really seem to matter anymore. It was starting to look like I’d probably marry into money, or maybe I’d just die. Either way, education didn’t seem that important.

Why is that good news? I messaged him back. Knowing that I wouldn’t see Peter hurt, but it was also a relief. There were only so many of his rebuffs that I could tolerate.

We can hang out and I can take the Lamborghini. Are you game?

Definitely! I’ll meet you outside! Hurry! I responded and jumped up from the couch.

Milo started in with a lecture about school and sleep, but I didn’t even pretend to listen. After the stress of the past weekend, I could really just go for a night of silly Jack fun. He always knew how to make me feel better.

I burst through the doors of the building just as the red car pulled up in front, and I had never timed it so perfectly before. We seemed to really be in sync, and I tried to ignore the fact that that thrilled me in some strange way.

Throwing open the car door, I leapt inside and smiled broadly at him. Jack laughed at my exuberance, and my heart swelled at the sound of it.

“You’re in a good mood today,” Jack grinned. We didn’t drive right away, and he just sat there for a minute looking at me. “What do you wanna do?”

“I don’t care! Just as long as we get there fast!” I declared, and his eyes glimmered.

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” He threw the car into gear and we sped off so quickly, I was pressed back tightly against the seat. Even though we’d just been in a car wreck, I still felt safe with him. After all, he had saved me from the crash, even if he had also been the cause of it.

“This weekend felt so long,” I muttered drearily.

“Tell me about it.” Jack was just as tired and frustrated as I was, and that was easy to forget. Generally, I considered him to be a culprit in all of this, but he was just as much a pawn as I was. We were trapped in an unyielding battle with biology.

“I just want everything to go back to normal.” I had expected him to agree with me, but he just laughed.

“I’m assuming you mean normal in that you were running around with your new vampire best friend,” he smiled. “Yeah. Cause that’s the baseline for normal.”

“Well, it feels more normal than all this business about my blood being meant for Peter,” I grumbled. “How is any part of me meant for anything? Who decided that?”

“I wish I knew.” His expression slacked for a second, but then he shook his head. “Look, let’s just not think about any of that. You look exhausted. Why don’t we just do something nice and relaxing this evening?”

“Like what?” I was exhausted, and truthfully, anything I would be up for doing had to require very little movement. The thought of spending the evening just curled up somewhere with Jack sounded positively wonderful, and thankfully, he was on the same wave-length.

“How about we just go back to my house and watch a movie? I have like a million. I’m sure there’s a couple in there you’d be up to watching.”

“That sounds fantastic,” I admitted. I had turned to face him and leaned my head against the seat. “How long are Ezra and Peter gone for?”

“I don’t know,” Jack shrugged. “Probably a week, I guess. Why?”

“What do they do? For business, I mean. How did they make all your money?” I had spent so much time talking about the preternatural that I never really had a chance to ask about the very practical things, like how they supported themselves.

“Ezra’s been working for, you know, hundreds of years doing various things, so he managed to build up quite the nest egg before I was even born.

Right now, they’re doing a lot of stocks and trading and stuff I don’t understand.

They own a couple companies over seas. Everything they do gets shifted and moved around every couple years, though, and I just never bothered to follow it.

They can’t stay with the same people for too long, or people’ll catch on that they haven’t changed.” He didn’t know very much about what they did, but it sounded very deliberate. He didn’t care very much for business, and he was very lucky that he was in a family that allowed plenty of leisure of time.

“Why don’t you have a job?” I wondered.

“Cause I don’t really need to work. Whenever I find something that interests me, I do it, but in the end, we have plenty of money. Ezra and Peter don’t even have to work. We live well below our means, and you’ve seen how we live. But Ezra thinks that since we’re going to live forever, we might as well be prepared for it,” he shrugged, then looked over at me. “Why? Does it bother you that I don’t work?”

“No, I’m just curious about all the machinations of your life.” We had reached his house, and he drove up into the driveway. Turning off the car, he grinned wickedly.

“Well, you know pretty much everything about my life.” He got out of the car, preparing to escape with that total fabrication of an answer.

“I know hardly anything about your life!” I scoffed, hurrying out after him.

“I’m a vampire and I drive too fast and I’m awesome on the Xbox.” He spread his arms expansively, as if that explained it all. “That’s all you really need to know about me.”

“I hardly think that’s true.” I raised an eyebrow at him, causing him to laugh, but he just shook his head and went into the house. Matilda was already waiting at the door for him. He just gave her a quick scratch and kept on walking, so she followed at his heels.

“Mae, I’m back!” Jack announced, going into the kitchen.

“I’m just doing some laundry!” Mae shouted from somewhere at the other end of the house.

“I hate it when you guys are mundane.” I wrinkled my nose. “Vampires are supposed to be big and powerful and sexy and dangerous.”

“And buy a new outfit everyday?” Jack sneered. He had finally crouched down so he could give Matilda the attention she was dying for, and I leaned back against the counter. “That doesn’t really seem practical.”

“Exactly! Vampires aren’t supposed to be practical! You’re supernatural beings with magical powers! You don’t do laundry or play video games! You jump off cliffs and have sex with really attractive women!”

“I get it,” Jack laughed. “I had this preconceived notion about what a vampire should be, but it was all based on glamorized Hollywood ideals. Nothing could be sexy and cool all the time, especially not something that’s immortal.

Do you know how exhausting and expensive it would be to wear designer gowns and crowned jewels everyday for six hundred years? And what would be the point? Who would I be trying to impress? I’m a damn vampire! I’m not gonna put on black eyeliner and grow my hair long just so some stupid humans think I’m sexy. They think I am anyway.” He winked exaggeratedly at me, so I laughed and started walking away.

“Where are these alleged millions of movies anyway?” I headed towards the living room, even though I hadn’t seen a single movie in there. I assumed they were hidden away in some magic closet, because it seemed like the kind of house with hidden doorways.

“Most of them are in my room, actually.” He stopped me at the stairs and nodded up to his room. “This might come as a surprise to you, but I’m the movie buff in the family. Well, Mae is a little bit, but she only likes things with Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant.” He rolled his eyes. “Sometimes, she really does act like she’s eighty-years-old.”

“I heard that!” Mae was walking towards us with a laundry basket overflowing with clothes, and she thrust them at Jack. “These are yours, by the way. You had a pair of tan Dickies that were covered in blood and I couldn’t get it out.”

“Oh, that must be from when I went to the club.” He started looking through the basket of clothes casually, but my eyes widened. It was one thing to know that he drank blood. It was a different thing entirely to know that his clothes had been ruined because he had drinking blood from a human being.

“Sometimes Jack goes down to the vampire club on Hennepin Ave.” Mae had noticed the shocked look on my face, so naturally, she reached out and pushed my hair back. “A lot of the girls down there are donors, but the ones that aren’t don’t mind. But sometimes when you hit an artery, things can get a little messy.”

“But if you hit an artery, don’t they die?” I must’ve continued looking freaked out, because Jack started getting frustrated. He shifted the basket to his other arm and shook his head.

“Our saliva has chemicals in it. Like mosquitoes and vampire bats have anesthetic in theirs. We have that, plus more to make the wound heal insanely fast. The marks are usually completely gone within an hour or two of the bite.”

He grew bored with the conversation, so he turned and started jogging up the stairs. “Come on, Alice, if you want a say in what we watch.”

“I’d go with him, or he’s liable to make you watch The Lost Boys,” Mae warned me.

“Hey, it’s a good movie!” Jack shouted, and I was inclined to agree. Just the same, I’d rather watch something a little less blood sucking. The whole point of the night was to not think about all the weird stuff going on.

I hurried up the stairs after him and fought the urge to go into Peter’s room. Even standing in the hall, I could smell that tangy, sweet aroma that Peter left behind, but I quickly pushed it out of mind before my heart would beat all funny and Jack would freak out on me. In order for this friendship to continue, I could not think about Peter.

“I’m just gonna put these away real quick,” Jack informed me when I came into his room. “I wouldn’t want my vampire image to be spoiled by wrinkled clothes.”

The door was open to his massive walk-in closet, and he had started hanging up some of his tee shirts. I walked over to peer inside, and I wasn’t surprised to find that his wardrobe consisted almost entirely of tee shirts, Dickies, and various shades of Converse.

“You have a billion dollars, and you have the wardrobe of a twelve-year old.”

“Yeah, well, I have the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old too, so-” He stuck his tongue out at me and then went back to hanging up his clothes.

“You showed me.” I rolled my eyes and went over to flop down on his over-stuffed bed. Naturally, it was completely unmade, but it had to be the most comfortable thing I had ever laid on. The sheets were probably Egyptian with a ten million thread count. Not that I knew what any of that meant, but I know it made things more comfortable for some reason. My sheets came from Target, though, and I slept just fine on them. “Oh my god! This bed is like a cloud!”

“I’m glad you like it.” He had finished hanging things up and flicked off the light in his closet before walking out into his room. “I would’ve made it if I’d known you’d be rolling around in it.”

“I’m not rolling around,” I muttered, but I sat up so I wouldn’t be tempted to.

Then I looked around his room. There were a few posters on his dark blue walls (one of which was a tour poster from the Cure playing at First Ave on July

12, 1984, and I wondered if he had actually been there). Underneath his massive flat screen TV, there was lots of gaming equipment strewn about a slick black entertainment center, but I didn’t see any movies.

“So did you just make up the stuff about the movies?”

“Oh, no, check this out.” Jack picked up a remote control off the entertainment center and hit a button. The entire wall to the left of the TV slid back, like a pocket door, and revealed a gigantic shelving unit overflowing with DVD’s. “That’s cool, right? This was Mae’s idea, because she said having all the movies out in the open was ‘tacky.’”

“But Peter has tons of books out in his room,” I said.

“Right?” Jack shook his head and walked over to inspect his movie collection. “Book are ‘sophisticated.’ Its what I get for living with people who were born before television. They just don’t understand this modern age.”

“Yeah, you have a rough life,” I mocked.

“Hey, my favorite pair of shorts just got thrown away!” He looked back at me, pretending to be heartbroken. “It’s been a pretty sad day all around.”

“About that…” I wanted to segue into asking him more questions about the club, even though I had already decided that I didn’t want to. He tensed up, but it was because he was afraid that I’d call him a monster or something.

“I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Jack explained quickly.

“Most vampires don’t kill people. It would make eating impossible. Even if you take a metropolitan area like the Cities, where there’s a collective population of over 3 million people, about a thousand of that is vampires. But if we killed every time we ate, the population of vampires in Minneapolis alone would kill at least a thousand people a week. We’d eat ourselves into starvation in less than a decade.”

“I didn’t think you’d killed her, but that’s good to know.” A shiver ran down my spine anyway. In order for a thousand vampires to eat, a thousand people had to be bitten each week. Even if some of them lived on blood banks, the way Jack and Mae mostly did, that was still impossible to fathom. “How could all those people be bitten? Why aren’t they talking about it?”

“Very few know they’re bitten.” He was obviously uncomfortable talking about this, but he went on. “We don’t go around blood raping them or anything.

They just think they’re on dates. Lots of vampires — not me — but lots have

‘girlfriends’ or ‘boyfriends,’ but really, it’s like… having a cow, so you don’t have to buy milk.”

“Oh my god!” I gasped, and instantly thought of Jane. She went home with all sorts of guys, and most of them were really attractive and kind of creepy.

She could easily have been a vampires cow, more than once. “But how do they not know?”

“Well, they just think…” He rubbed his forehead and sighed. “They just think that they’re with really good lovers. I mean, it feels really good. So if you incorporate it with sex, especially with drunk or high people, they have no clue.

And it doesn’t really hurt them. It’s not any worse then donating blood. You’re a little weak and woozy, but otherwise okay.”

“So that girl that you bit…” For some reason, I started feeling incredibly jealous. Just knowing that he was with a girl, that he’d fed on someone (which was both disgusting and scintillating) made my stomach twist. “Did you have sex with her?”

“No,” Jack said, but he turned away from me and looked ashamed. My heart sped up anxiously, and he tilted his head slightly, so I knew he heard it.

“But we did… stuff. The stuff doesn’t matter, though. I know guys say that, but for us it’s really true. It was just a way to get what I wanted.”

“Because for you, it’s not the sex. It’s the blood that’s intimate and… sexual.” When I said that, he realized he’d actually made things worse and grimaced. “So what’s it like?”

“It’s like drinking blood.” Rubbing his eyes, I could feel how nervous this made him. He wasn’t sure what I was getting at and just thinking about drinking her blood made him thirsty. On top of that, he could hear the quickening of my pulse. He was putting himself on thin ice, but I refused to let go. “It’s hard to explain. You’ll understand when you’re a vampire.”

“What is it like for her then? What’s it like for a human to be bitten?” I moved so I was sitting on my knees, tilting more towards him, and he was acutely aware of the heat resonating from my body. His hunger filled the room like a fog, permeating through me.

“I don’t know.” Swallowing hard, he glanced over at me, then almost instantly looked away.

“Did she enjoy it?”

The thought of her, some faceless girl, being with Jack and feeling any kind of pleasure sent a stabbing pain within me. Maybe that’s why I did what I was doing. I wanted to know, in some twisted way, but I also didn’t think it was fair that I was the only one feeling jealous and hurt.

“Yeah. I mean, I guess she did. I don’t know.” He ran a hand through his sandy hair and gave me a pained look. “What do you wanna know? What are you trying to find out?”

“What would I feel?” My voice had gone low and soft, sounding strangely seductive, especially for me. I don’t know if I’d done it on purpose really, or if it was just that I could feel everything that Jack felt, and it was playing with my mind. “If you bit me right now. Would it hurt?”

“For a second.” Licking his lips, he kept his eyes locked on me, and his breathing got heavier. “But then there’s the most wonderful sensation you’ve ever felt. It radiates from the bite like a warm heat and your heart speeds up so fast, it should hurt, but it doesn’t. Your senses go into a frenzy, but it all feels amazing…” He trailed off and swallowed hard.

“What would you feel?” I asked softly, and the corner of his mouth turned up just slightly.

“It’s like that, only better. We feel everything at such a heightened sense, it’s pure ecstasy. Nothing else can even compare.”

His eyes touched on the hunger that I had seen in Peter’s eyes when he wanted to bite me, and I knew thinking about Peter was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. Jack had a sharp intake of breath, and I knew he noticed the changes, the way my pulse got louder and faster, and some special scent that was supposed to drive him wild.

I’d been biting my lip, trying to control my own feelings of desire, and then I felt a sharp pain in my bottom lip. Honestly, I can’t say whether or not I did it on purpose, but Jack noticed instantly. His pupils dilated and he exhaled shakily. Unintentionally (or maybe intentionally), I had bitten my lip hard enough to draw blood. It wasn’t very much, but any amount would be enough to send Jack over the edge at this point.

He rushed towards me so quickly I didn’t see him move. His face just suddenly appeared directly in front of mine, his blue eyes staring straight into me. They were completely ravenous, but there was something more behind them then lust. There was a burning agony that came from his poorly repressed affection for me.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” he murmured in a voice so slow I could barely hear it over the pounding of blood in my ears. Defiantly and provocatively, I raised my chin in the air, revealing the smooth skin of my throat.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I was tempting him brutally, even though I knew that it could only lead to our demise. With his insatiable need filling me, it still seemed entirely worth it.

Closing his eyes, he leaned forward and very tenderly, he licked the fresh blood off my skin. Then he wrapped his mouth around my lip, drinking as much of my blood as he could, and he moaned softly. As soon as his lips touched mine, I fell into a state of delirium. A wonderful weakness spread through me, and I arched my back. An intense quivering started in my heart but radiated out all over me, so my whole body shuddered.

When he kissed me fully on the mouth, I thought I would explode. I could taste my blood on his tongue and the intense excitement that went along with it. His mouth felt hungry and needy, but there was nothing forceful or rough about it. His muscles trembled with restraint. I knew the things he wanted to do me, the things that I would gladly let him do, and I could feel how hard he had to fight that off.

Carefully, he pushed me back onto the bed, his lips never leaving mine, and he pressed me into the soft mattress. His body laid on me, and I felt his heart pound against mine. Burying my fingers in his hair, I tried to pull him to me. No matter how close he got, I knew he’d never be close enough. I wanted him underneath my skin, and when I breathed in deeply, I smelled that tangy perfect scent I associated with Peter.

I slid my hands under his shirt, desperate to feel as much of him as I could. To my surprise, his normal temperate skin burned hot under my fingers.

It felt amazing, so I dug my fingers into his flesh, and he moaned against my mouth. His hands found their way under my shirt, smoldering against the trembling skin of my belly.

He finally managed to pull his lips from mouth, and they traveled down to the perfectly exposed skin of my throat. When he pressed his lips against my veins, just feeling the pulse against his skin, I was almost writhing with pleasure.

There was a hunger so strong it was painful. I thrust my body against his, begging him to drink, and then suddenly, he growled and sprang from my arms.

“What?” I wailed, sitting back up on my knees. He was standing on the other side of the room, panting heavily and shaking horribly.

“He’s going to kill you.” Jack let out an unsteady breath, and his eyes were wild with passion. “I want to so bad, but he would kill you.”

“So?” It was hard to breathe, let alone speak, and I barely managed. “It would be worth it. I want you to, and I don’t care what the cost.”

“Yeah?” He looked unsure, then nodded. “Yeah. Me neither.”

I was at the edge of the bed, and he ran back over to me, wrapping his arms so tightly around me that I couldn’t breathe. Oxygen didn’t feel much like a necessity anymore. All that mattered was the way his lips felt pressed against mine. He kissed me so hard that my lip sprung fresh blood, and he moaned desperately. My fingers dug into his hair and I waited for him to bite me.

“You’re going to get yourselves killed!” Mae hissed, and I whipped my head over to see her standing in the doorway, glaring nervously at us. Jack had stopped kissing me, but I was reluctant to untangle myself from his arms.

“We didn’t do anything.” Jack still had his eyes on me and his voice was husky, so I knew he was still locked in a trance from the bloodlust.

“Yet,” Mae glowered.

“Yet,” Jack agreed, and brazenly, he kissed my throat again, right where my pulse still pounded heavily. My body slacked in his arms, but Mae rushed over, smacking Jack hard in the arm before he could do anything.

“Jack Allen Townsend!” Mae howled.

“Okay, okay!” He took a step back from me, causing me to collapse backwards on the bed, and held up his hands defensively, but Mae swatted him again. “You can stop now! I’m done!”

“You better be!” Mae obviously didn’t trust him because she stood directly in front of me, blocking his path to me. “You’re going to get her killed! Is that what you want?’

“You know that’s not what I want,” Jack groaned, but a guilty expression passed across his face. The heat of the moment was rapidly dissipating, and the realization of what he had almost done to me, to us, was taking over him.

“Then what the hell did you think you were doing?” Mae demanded. He scratched his temple and sighed.

“Being a vampire?” He kept his tone sarcastic, but I could feel how afraid he really was.

“You are such an idiot!” Mae turned away from him to inspect me for bite marks. When she saw the blood on my lips, she gasped and turned back to him.

“Did you do that to her? You drew blood?”

“No!” Jack insisted, his eyes wide. “She did that! She bit her lip!”

“Why would you do that?” Mae whirled on me, and I’d finally regained enough strength to sit up. “Do you have any idea what that does to him? He can barely control himself around any blood, and yours is even worse. Do you both have a death wish?”

“It was an accident,” I mumbled.

“You need to shower and use a lot of mouth wash.” Mae held her hand to her face, looking distressed but sounding matter-of-fact. “If he even hints at smelling Jack on your blood…” Her eyes welled with frightened tears, and she shook her head. Then she pointed to the bedroom door and snapped, “Go! Right now! Go downstairs and use my shower! The longer it sets in, the harder it will be to get out!”

“Sorry.” I scrambled out of Jack’s bed, which was easier said then done since my ankle had become tangled in a mass of blankets. “Sorry.” As I stumbled down the stairs, I heard Mae yelling at him.

“How can you be so careless with her life? With your own?” Mae admonished him. “She’s only a girl, Jack! What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t!” Jack lamented.

“I know how hard this is for you-”

“You have no idea how hard this is for me!” Jack growled fiercely, and I winced.

By kissing him, I had only made it harder. It was impossible for him to ever be with me, unless we wanted our life expectancy reduced down to a matter of hours. Still, that kiss had hinted at how amazing those hours would be, and maybe it would be worth it…

I shook the thought from my head and hurried into Mae’s bathroom.

Immediately, I opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out the Listerine. The alcohol burned my lip, but I used it until it went numb. When I put it back, I slammed the mirror shut and noticed my reflection for the first time. I had started crying, and I hadn’t even known it. That didn’t really seem so strange.

After all, I was sobbing because a vampire had just tasted my blood, and now we both might die because of it. Nothing really seemed that strange anymore, although everything had gotten increasingly painful.