17. Seventeen
Seventeen
I t was so nice in here.
Leslie ought to come up with a better word, but nice just fit. Her skin felt caressed by the indoor humidity and warmth. The scent of the bar’s primary beverage wasn’t too strong, despite many patrons sipping from glasses of deep red that only a human might mistake for wine. Leslie’s body felt somehow at home as she tried—and failed—to stop staring at the vampires who moved around the bar with the liquid grace they held back around humans. Their voices were a sweet soundtrack, so resonant and full, yet never loud. If she tried, of course she could tune in to individual conversations, but thanks to common etiquette and long habit she could allow them to slip past her thoughts without registering the words.
She forced herself to stop gawking like a kid at Disneyland and focused instead on Claire Vanderlaan. The woman was calmly impressive in a way Leslie couldn’t quite put her finger on. Claire’s chin-length hair was thick, lustrous, and the color of coffee grounds. Her eyes were a blend of blue and purple several shades darker than Leslie’s own. Her sleeveless dove-gray top revealed toned arms and a tattoo on the inside of her bicep. She hadn’t yet extended her arm enough for a full view of the ink, and Leslie couldn’t make out what the image was.
“So, Claire, how long have you and Ryker known each other?”
“About four years,” Claire said.
“And do you know Tai, too?”
Claire’s eyes went pure metallic. “Unfortunately yes.”
“Oh. Um.” Instinct pushed Leslie a step back from the counter, though she couldn’t have said why. “Bad blood?”
Claire laughed. “I see what you did there.”
Her own laugh sounded hollow in comparison despite being equally sincere. She hadn’t managed to unmute yet. “No pun intended. And you don’t have to tell me.”
“I’m more than happy to tell you. Tai Kristiansen is arrogant, rude, fake… I could go on, but I won’t, because you’re dating his best friend, and Ryker and I have agreed to disagree about Tai.”
What on earth…? Ryker’s fangs had retracted by now, and he was biting his lip as if to keep himself quiet.
Before Leslie could choose her next words, Claire’s eyes lost their metallic sheen and returned to pure periwinkle. “Look, forget Tai. He’s not worth a conversation. Ryker, on the other hand, is a great friend of mine. I look forward to getting to know you better, Leslie.”
After a bit more small talk, Ryker offered to show her around. He led Leslie to the far side of the bar, where a row of cozy booths lined the wall, complete with transparent partitions.
“Check it out.” Ryker motioned Leslie behind the partition.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “If you can see through them, what’s the point?”
“Have a seat and it’ll make sense.”
She slid into the booth, and Ryker slid in across from her. When he tugged the partition shut, the view from inside was still clear, unobstructed. But the sounds…the ambient noises, low conversations at the bar…
“Sound-absorbing,” she whispered.
“Yep.”
“We can talk about anything in here. Vampire hearing can’t eavesdrop.”
“I told you, blood bars are designed for us. This is another way we can be ourselves here.”
“Wow.” A public place where she could slip into a booth and never overhear conversations that were none of her business. A public place where, surrounded by vampires, her own conversation could still be private. “I’ve never even thought about the possibility of having a place like this.”
“That’s why I wanted you to experience it.”
“Can I ask you from in here…about Tai and Claire? Just say no if I’m overstepping.”
He glanced toward the bar, where Claire poured glasses for three women wearing skirt suits and heels. “Claire doesn’t have all the information, and Tai won’t tell her the truth, so…” He shrugged. “Impasse.”
“And you’re stuck in the middle.”
“I tried playing peacemaker once, and I almost lost them both. Claire threatened to withhold all beverages next time I came to Slake It Off. Tai hissed at me for days.”
“But what happened? Or can’t you tell me?”
He was quiet so long, Leslie opened her mouth to retract the question. Before she could, he said, “I’ve never wanted to tell someone everything before. Every last thought in my head, every story that’s ever happened to me or to anyone I care about. You… It’s like…” He shook his head, a furrow forming between his brows. “When I’m with you, it’s like I’ve never been so happy before, but…calmly happy.” He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “That sounded a lot less stupid in my head.”
Leslie leaned across the table and grasped his hands. A shiver of delight ran up her arms as his strong fingers curved around hers, as his thumb stroked the back of her hand. “Not stupid. Not at all. It’s perfect. I’m calmly happy with you too.”
His chuckle held a low, easy melody. “We’re such an edgy pair.”
“Well, this artsy country girl finds edgy completely overrated.”
His grip tightened on her hands, and in a single moment, as if with a single thought, Ryker drew her toward himself as Leslie moved toward him. She propelled herself up and across the table and neatly onto his lap. Ryker’s arms encased her, lean and strong, and Leslie pressed her palms against his fitted Henley shirt, against the muscled planes of his chest. Their lips crashed together, and their kiss told the story of who they were to one another. Everything inside her seemed to surge with icy sparks. They drew apart, mindful of the public setting, and she turned her face into Ryker’s neck.
“Do you feel that?” she whispered.
“Feel what?”
“Us. Me and you. All we’ve had so far is weekend dates, calls, and texts. Oh, and a dramatic two-hour breakup. But it doesn’t matter that we’re so new together. I still feel…I feel us.”
He tilted his head back to study her. He framed her face in his hands, and his thumbs traced her cheekbones. His voice grew hushed. “What do we feel like?”
“Icicles dancing. And electric showers. And…and alive. We feel so alive, Ryker.”
He wrapped a lock of her hair around his finger, absently twining and untwining. It was his go-to whenever they were close—while they watched a movie on her couch, while they perched at the top of a tree and talked until the sun came up.
“Alive,” he said. “Yeah. I feel that with you too.”
He’d never suggested that he sometimes saw some future version of them in his mind—a thing that had now happened three times to Leslie. She wanted to ask if he’d ever glimpsed them this way, but something held her back.
Ryker continued to play with her hair in the unconscious yet earnest way that made her feel treasured. After a moment, he said, “It’s…um…probably too early to say everything in my head.”
“Together forever,” Leslie said.
His eyebrows shot up. His fingers tightened in her hair. “I haven’t wanted to move too fast and put you off.”
“So far, so good.”
“Hm, good point. So…yes. Together forever. That’s what’s in my head.”
“Centuries together,” Leslie said.
The idea was so thrilling, she could have danced on the tabletop. She pressed a palm to his chest, and his heart gave a hard beat against her hand. His face was crinkled with emotion.
She cupped his jaw in one hand and whispered, “Tell me, Ryker. Whatever it is.”
“You. It’s you. Patient with me from that second night, when you saw my fear of falling. Patient with me when I forget to slake and force us on a detour because I can’t pay attention to two things at the same time.” He gave a brittle laugh. “Heck, you’re even patient when I fight bedtime like an actual toddler.”
She’d sensed this raw place in him before, more than once during their long-distance hours of conversation. Someone had convinced him that basic kindness was remarkable, that a woman who was falling in love with him might not bear with him in his difficult moments. She pressed a soft kiss to the stubble on his jaw, the proof of how hard he’d been working on the case that had kept him stymied for a week.
“I seem to remember,” she said, “that when I broke up with you and hung up instead of listening, you were patient with me too.”
“That was different.”
“No, it wasn’t. That’s the whole point, Ryker. It wasn’t different. It’s all the same. It’s us being who we are for each other. Look, we do need to take some time with this. We’ve been together barely two months.”
He nodded. “I didn’t mean to imply—”
“Hush,” she said with a finger against his lips. Her dear man went perfectly still. “What I’m trying to tell you is… We need to be reasonable about the timeframe, but not because I don’t know yet what I want.”
His lips parted against her finger. His blue eyes glittered, continued to grow brighter as she continued to speak.
“Laurence Ryker Gould Maddox, you’re who I want. I’m not falling in love with you. I’m already there. I fell for you the weekend you showed up in my life unannounced and called yourself my backup husband.”
“Leslie.”
His heartbeats were strong against her cheek, almost too strong for a vampire. And they were fast. She counted five of them in ten seconds.
“Shh,” she said. “Ryker, listen. I’m with you. I’m for you. I’m not going anywhere. And I love you.”
He pressed his face into her hair and took a deep, human-sounding breath. Passersby studiously ignored them.
At last Ryker lifted his head. His smile was pinched with self-consciousness. “So…that was quite a tangent.”
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“And I love you.”
He kissed her, but they kept this one brief, their emotions too strong for more—at least while they sat in full view of the bar.
“I should…” She nodded across the table. “Retreat?”
“I guess.”
Leslie crossed to the far side of the booth and immediately hated the absence of his arms around her. But it was for the best for now.
“Claire and Tai,” he said. “Your original question.”
“If it’s okay to tell me.”
“She’s not only a bartender here. She’s half-owner, and Tai was supposed to be the other half. For a while they were trying to figure out what to do with this space. Claire bought the building for a song, but she needed a business partner. Tai’s extremely well-off thanks to an inheritance he hates to talk about, and he was looking for a local business he could invest in. They hadn’t known each other long when this all started, but they both knew me.”
Ouch. “And they both trust you.”
“Yeah.” Ryker leaned back in the booth and tilted his head toward the draped ceiling. “So… Claire had talked about something more mainstream in the beginning. But then—it was pretty abrupt, actually—she said no, she’d changed her mind about running a ‘vanilla-friendly business.’”
He winced as he said the words, despite his air-quotes clarification. Leslie glanced toward the bar. Now Claire was serving a man wearing bike shorts and a bright-yellow athletic tee.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “Her best friend is human, but she uses ‘vanilla’?” Shortened generations back from plain vanilla human , it wasn’t a slur like werewolf , but it wasn’t a flattering term either. Absolutely no way Leslie would ever use it to refer to Hannah.
“That’s Claire in a nutshell,” Ryker said. Now he was studying her too from across the bar. If she sensed their gazes through the partition, she gave no sign of it. “She can be tough. I’m pretty sure there are things about her I don’t know. But anyway, she changed course overnight. Announced she was opening a blood bar. She already had the name for it.”
“And Tai couldn’t be part of her plans anymore.”
“He honored the monetary contract. But no, he couldn’t join her onsite. Couldn’t help her build a menu. Claire has over a dozen third-party vendors who purchase blood from voluntary human donors. Tai couldn’t even represent the company at their business sites.”
Leslie shook her head. Of course Claire would feel betrayed. “I’m sorry for both of them.”
“I pushed Tai for months to tell her the truth, but he still won’t do it. I told Claire that Tai had his reasons, and if she knew what they were she’d understand. But of course if you don’t know, it sounds like I’m taking his side over hers.”
“Her descriptors were really specific. Arrogant, rude, and fake?”
“Ah, yeah.” Ryker grimaced. “He always tries to look like nothing affects him, and sometimes what comes across is that he’s…above being bothered.”
She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know Tai or Claire, but she felt so invested in a truce between them, maybe because of Ryker’s eyes as he told the story. “Maybe they’ll settle it someday.”
“I wish they would. Sometimes for my sake as well as theirs.” His laugh held a rusty sadness. “But mostly for theirs. Claire was pretty crushed. And of course refusing to explain himself…Tai made it worse. He kept saying, ‘she’s getting her money, Ryker,’ and I kept saying, ‘it’s not about the money, man.’”
Even if Tai dealt with embarrassment over his struggle, to burn a bridge with a friend in order to keep his secret… It seemed ridiculous. “I hope he tells her at some point.”
“It’s been three years. I’m not holding my breath.” Ryker stretched his legs under the table, and one of his feet bumped hers. “Ready to meet the parents?”
“You know, I was nervous on the plane, but now that I’m here…” Leslie pushed open the partition. “I’m looking forward to stories about Baby Ryker.”
He rolled his eyes. “Let’s do this then.”