CHAPTER 18 #2
“You’re mysterious! You have no digital footprint! You materialized out of nowhere not too many years ago! What was I supposed to think?”
“That I was a creature of the night with a ‘complicated relationship with sunlight,’ apparently.”
“Sage was the one who suggested vampire. I was leaning toward spy.”
“Sage.” His expression flickers. “Please, she can never know.”
“I know. We established that.” I sigh. “She’s going to be insufferable about predicting this, even if I can never confirm it.”
The next hour is a blur of bathroom floor, cool cloths, and Julian’s steady presence.
He doesn’t hover. Doesn’t fuss. Doesn’t ask if I’m okay every thirty seconds like some people would—like the act of checking in is more about their own anxiety than your wellbeing.
He’s just there. Refilling my water glass before I realize it’s empty.
Adjusting the cloth on my forehead when it warms. Offering quiet words when I need them, and silence when I don’t.
At some point, he disappears and returns with a small tray—crackers, ginger ale, a banana. Resort room service at midnight. I don’t ask how he managed it. Probably compelled someone with his vampire mind powers, or whatever.
“Do you have mind powers?” I ask, accepting the ginger ale. “Like, can you control people?”
“It’s more like powers of suggestion. Like being hypnotized. I’ve never used it on you, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Good. I’d be annoyed.”
“Noted.” His mouth curves. “Any other vampire questions while we’re here?”
“So many. But my brain is too fried to remember them right now.” I take a sip of ginger ale. “Garlic? Holy water? Crosses?”
“Myths. All myths. Perpetuated by vampires who thought it was funny to watch humans wave crucifixes at them.”
“Vampires have a sense of humor?”
“Some of us. The older ones get a bit dour.”
“Um, you’re like over two hundred and fifty years old.”
“I like to think I’ve retained my charm.”
I snort. “Modest, too.”
Eventually, the nausea fades enough that I can contemplate standing. Julian helps me to my feet, keeping one arm around my waist even after I’m stable.
“Bathroom floor isn’t the most comfortable,” I observe.
He watches me take another sip of ginger ale. “How do you feel?”
“Less like I’m dying. More like I was recently dead and I’m now being resurrected.” I manage a weak smile. “Progress.”
“Interesting choice of words.”
“Too on the nose?”
“A bit.” But he’s smiling.
He carries me to the bed. I’m too exhausted to protest, too wrung out to do anything but let him tuck me in. He finds my pajamas without asking—the soft cotton ones I packed for comfort, not seduction—and leaves them on the pillow, turning his back while I change.
“You could look,” I say, fumbling with the buttons. “You’re my boyfriend. And also a vampire. I assume you’ve seen things.”
“I have.” His voice is warm. “But you’re exhausted and sick, and the first time I see you isn’t going to be when you’re too tired to enjoy it.”
“Gentleman vampire.”
“I try.”
“I’m decent,” I mumble, collapsing back against the pillows. “Or as decent as I’m going to get tonight.”
He sits on the edge of the bed, and brushes my hair away from my face.
“You should sleep.”
“Stay with me?”
“Always.”
He stretches out beside me, on top of the covers. I understand now why he maintains that small barrier—not because he’s afraid of intimacy, but because the temperature difference would be hard to ignore all night. Cool skin against warm. Dead heart against beating one.
I curl up against him anyway, pressing my cheek against his chest. Against the place where his heart beats its slow, strange rhythm—one pulse every few seconds.
“Does it bother you?” he asks quietly. “The rhythm? How slow it is? Near silence?”
“I noticed it before.” I press my palm flat against his chest. “It doesn’t bother me. It’s just—different.”
“Different,” he repeats.
“Like dating someone who’s left-handed. Or who doesn’t like pizza.” I smile against his shirt. “A quirk. Not a deal-breaker.”
“Most people would consider the ‘near lack of heart beats’ slightly more significant than left-handedness.”
“I’m not most people.”
“No.” His arm tightens around me. “No, you’re really not.”
“Julian?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.” The words come out thick with exhaustion. “For staying. For taking care of me. For telling me the truth.”
“There’s nothing to thank me for.”
“There’s everything to thank you for.” I press closer, my ear against the slow pulse of his chest—that strange rhythm that should terrify me and somehow doesn’t. “You’re a good man, Julian Blackthorne. Even if technically you’re not a man at all.”
The silence stretches for a while. When he speaks, his voice is rough.
“I haven’t felt like a good man in a very long time.”
“Well, you are one. Take it from someone who dated a bad one for two years.” I yawn against him. “Preston would never have sat on a bathroom floor for me. He wouldn’t even hold my purse at the mall.”
“Preston is an idiot.”
“We’ve established that.” My eyes are heavy now. “Julian?”
“Yes?”
“Tomorrow. You promised to tell me about Damien. About Prague. About how to protect my family.”
His body goes still beneath me. “I remember.”
“I’m going to hold you to it. No more secrets, remember?”
“No more secrets.” His hand strokes my hair. “Tomorrow, I’ll tell you everything. All of it.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
I fall asleep with his hand in my hair and the silence where his heart should be pressed against my ear.
It’s strange, I think as consciousness fades. I should be terrified. Questioning everything would make sense. Instead, I just feel—safe. Like the truth, as impossible as it is, has finally set something free.
My last coherent thought before sleep takes me: Sage was right.
I’m never going to hear the end of it.