15. Fifteen
Fifteen
R yker was calling her.
Leslie hadn’t stopped crying for the last hour. Her head ached, and she’d gone through half a box of Kleenex. Her heart felt like a ratty old dishrag wrung out too many times, and every new twist hurt.
His face filled her phone screen. He wanted a video call.
She couldn’t talk to him.
Yes, she could. She knew what had to be said, and she could say it.
If he said, “I think you’ll really love city life if you’ll give it a chance,” she had to say no.
If he said, “I’ll move to Harmony Ridge for you,” she had to say no.
Leslie swiped to accept the call and let him see her face. Her too-pale, tearstained face and her eyes, which wouldn’t stop shifting from gray to indigo to gray again—a weird distress signal she’d noticed when she went to the bathroom for more Kleenex and caught sight of herself in the mirror.
Ryker hadn’t been crying, but his eyes were a flat blue, devoid of silver. His mouth was a thin-pressed line in his face. A crinkle formed between his eyes when he saw her.
“Will you hear me out?” he said.
She nodded. She could listen to him now. She wouldn’t let him sway her from what she knew was best for both of them.
“I have a plan—just bones right now, but we can flesh it out.”
Another nod. Here it was. He wanted her to move.
“The concept is simple. We split our time. Plenty of people do it when their jobs require it. Half the month, we live in Tennessee. Half the month, we’re in Virginia. And it can be flexible. If you’ve got a big art event coming up, maybe I’m there longer. If I’ve got a tough case, maybe you’re here longer. But generally speaking, we make sure we both have time in the place we love.”
At the words split our time , her brain nearly glitched out, but she forced herself to listen all the way through his pitch. His incredible, fairy-tale pitch.
“Two houses?” No one got to have two houses. That was a fantasy lived out by the wealthiest of the wealthy. Wasn’t it?
“We’ll have the financial means to keep both. We don’t have to sell one.”
“We—we don’t?”
“I never expected you to give up your home for me, Leslie. Never.”
She had to keep saying it to believe it. “I can keep my home…and keep you too?”
“I know what those mountains mean to you, what that town means to you. I’ve been thinking this through for weeks now. I just wasn’t sure when to bring it up.”
“I can keep my home.”
He brought his face closer to the screen, and a few sparks of silver surfaced in his eyes. “I promise you can.”
She bowed her head and cried while he stayed on the call with her. She cradled her phone and wished he was here so she could hold him and be held by him. She couldn’t stop crying. She didn’t have to choose between the home she loved and the man she loved. She’d never had to choose. At last she swiped her free palm over her cheeks and looked up, and he was still there, looking like he wanted to come through the phone to be with her.
“I felt like my chest was cracking open,” she whispered.
“Same.”
“I kept thinking of that question on the match test. ‘Would you be willing to seek a new job for a home in your dream location?’ And you didn’t say ‘no.’ You said, ‘of course not.’ So I knew I could never ask you to leave Virginia and the job you love.”
“You’re right.”
She nodded. Of course she was right—about this part anyway.
“Like you and your mountains, giving up my work would break me. It would turn me into somebody else.”
“Which would be horrible. You’ve got to be you.”
He nodded again. He looked tired, a little guarded, a little hopeful.
“I’m sorry I hung up,” she said. “My thoughts were stuck on this loop—‘I have to end this now, right now, before we care even more, before losing him hurts even worse.’ Those thoughts were looping over and over when I called you.”
“It’s okay. I got stuck on a loop too.”
“What was yours?”
Her beautiful, impressive vampire looked like a little boy when he ducked his head and turned away from the phone. He had waited for Leslie to be ready to talk; now she waited for him. After a long moment he faced her, and his face was all crinkled with whatever he was about to say. “You, uh, you know that test question I left blank? ‘I’m the sum of my accomplishments.’ That’s pretty much always my loop. So I went back to work and tried to…to be worth something.”
“Oh, Ryker. I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault. Really, Leslie, it’s not. It’s just me. My head’s messy sometimes.”
“How’s your head now?”
“A lot better. Clearer. What about yours?”
“So much better too.”
“So what do you think of my plan?” A tiny smile lifted one corner of his mouth and warmed his eyes. She wished she could hug him.
“Your plan is perfect. I just never thought… I never thought we could have everything.”
“Not literally everything.”
“To me it feels like everything, Ryker. I really mean that.”
He was quiet, thoughtful for a minute. They sat together across the miles, and the quiet wasn’t awkward or lonely. It was simple and content.
Then without a segue, Ryker said, “You’re wise.”
Leslie chuckled. He was sweet, but… “Hardly.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t minimize yourself. You’ve got real wisdom, Leslie.”
No one had ever told her that. Of all the times to tell her, now after she’d hung up the phone and cost him a self-doubt spiral… But she found herself smiling. He meant it.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” she said. “But thank you.”
“I hate that we’re six hundred miles apart right now.”
“Me too. But I’ll see you in less than a week, and I’ll see your city too.” She focused past him to his surroundings; he was in his study, sitting at his desk, the place he spent so much time on numbers and data and puzzle-solving. And justice. “Are you still working? Would you consider giving yourself a break?”
“When I hang up with you, I’m heading to a blood bar with friends who all ordered me to call you and make this right.”
“You’re not the one who messed it up. Sorry for the drama.”
“No. We needed to talk about it, so we could work it out. And I think it made me see some things…some overdue things. Can I make a request, though?”
She shrugged. “Don’t see why not.”
“Unless I turn into a real jerk, please don’t break up with me ever again.”
He said it with a little smirk, and she knew he was okay. “I think I can honor that request.”
They didn’t stay long on the phone. Didn’t need to tonight. They’d said deep things, new things, and anyway Ryker’s friends waited for him. When she hung up, she put her favorite Diana Krall record on the turntable and danced around the house.
She replayed their words to herself while she sang along with Diana. He had called her wise. “Don’t minimize yourself.”
It was true of more than this moment. Look what she’d accomplished by talking to Brent, refusing to minimize herself.
“We needed to talk about it, so we could work it out.”
There was one more piece of herself that needed working out. One more conversation she needed to have. She slowed her improvised dance steps, then stood still in the middle of her kitchen. Yes. She could do this too.
She called her mom.
“Hey, Les! What’s up?”
The words came out in a flood that had remained behind a dam in her heart for most of her life, inching higher drop by drop for years—now, since meeting Ryker, rising so much faster and overflowing the dam at last. “Mom, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, about all kinds of things lately but especially about us, about vampires, and I want to talk about us, our family, where we came from.”
It would be okay to ask. It had to be. She had waited to ask for her entire life. It had to be okay now, after so many years.
Except…Mom wasn’t breathing.
“Please,” Leslie said, “I really want to know. Why do we live here, isolated from our kind?”
“‘Our kind’? You sound like an anthropologist.”
No deflecting. She wouldn’t let Mom do it, not about this, not anymore. “Why did you choose Harmony Ridge when you moved away from—”
“No,” Mom said. Flat. Dull. The drop of the heavy curtain.
“Why? Why can’t we talk about it?”
“I have nothing to say.”
“But—”
“The topic is closed, Leslie.”
Leslie’s grip spasmed around the phone, but she relaxed in time not to crush it. “Mom, please.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
The call ended. Leslie trudged to her room and fell back onto her bed and stared at the ceiling for an hour, unable to convince herself to move. A slow, dull pain bloomed in the center of her chest. Stupid little girl, asking careless questions.