21. Twenty-One
Twenty-One
“ T here’s one vampire perk that’s not talked about enough,” Leslie said as they sprang from one handhold to another on their way up the gym’s rock wall, “and that’s not having to shower after a workout.”
Ryker chuckled and vaulted his body upward to the next handhold, which was only a narrow slit in the wall. He held on with the tips of his fingers and enjoyed exercising his strength. “Except it is talked about.”
“What? Who talks about it? I remember precisely one discussion about it when I was a kid, and that was mostly my mom letting me know that if I showered as often as the human kids did, my skin and hair would start to feel like sandpaper.”
“How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
When he was thirteen, his parents had been passing on vampire history via oral tradition. He shook his head. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
He didn’t want to hurt her, though. Maybe he shouldn’t ask. A few seconds later they both reached the top and landed lightly on their feet, side by side.
“I win!” Leslie raised her fists toward the vaulted ceiling, and her eyes glinted with opal tones. “By less than a second, but still.”
The dream from last night—the dream he’d tried to remember when he woke in the middle of the night shaking—slammed back into Ryker like a blow to his chest. Leslie standing at the top of the rock wall, Ryker gazing up at her from the floor, cheering her success. And from behind her, from nowhere, Jacqueline stepping up to shove her off the wall, and Ryker screaming as the woman he loved fell like a human, didn’t catch herself at all, didn’t land on her feet, simply fell and fell and fell—
“Ryker.” Her hand was on his shoulder, squeezing hard. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Haven’t you climbed this wall countless times?”
“Yeah. It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Leslie took hold of both his hands, stepped in close, and wrapped her arms around him. “No. You’re not. Take a breath.”
He wanted to resist, but maybe that was stupid. He drew a deep breath, let it out, then did it again. He felt like a puny human, but Leslie was right. Breathing helped ease the sharpness of his increased heartbeat.
“There. Good,” she said when his pulse had gotten back down to thirty beats. She let him go, stepped back, and now they stood facing each other on a thin ledge twenty feet in the air. “What now? You obviously need to get down from here, but if you can’t jump or rappel…”
“It’s not the height, Leslie, really.”
“Then…what?”
He sighed. He sat on the ledge and dangled his feet, leaving plenty of room for other gym members to stand and enjoy reaching the top. Leslie sat beside him and bumped her shoe against his.
“Spill it,” she said.
“My ex is in town, and last night I dreamed she pushed you off here and you…” His throat tightened, and the last word came out rough. “Fell.”
Leslie’s eyebrows arched, and her lips parted. She stared at him for a long moment, then shook her head. “Sorry, would you repeat that, but from the beginning?”
“My ex is—”
“Nope, that’s not the beginning.”
He shoved a hand through his hair. He was steady now. The freak-out had lasted only a few seconds, but it had exposed him. Stupid dream.
For a little while they sat quietly. At the moment they were the only ones up here, and looking down from a manageable height felt sort of calming.
When he was ready, he said, “Her name’s Jacqueline Hargrave.”
“Is she a lawyer? With a name like that, she ought to be. Or a writer maybe. Historical mysteries.”
“She’s in finance,” he said.
“Is that how you met?”
He nodded. “Her company contracted my firm—well, my firm at the time. She was newly promoted, on her way to becoming the first female CFO in her company’s history. We hit it off, and I asked to take her to dinner.”
Ryker watched Leslie’s face for the micro-expressions vampires never missed. She wasn’t angry with him, at least not yet. But she was worried, and he was the cause.
“I wanted your first visit, meeting my parents and all… I didn’t want Jacqueline to be part of this. I was going to tell you about her after.”
“That’s fair,” she said. “But clearly she’s not a normal ex, so…shouldn’t you have already told me? Before I came this weekend?”
He’d known that the whole time, had no excuse. He dropped his chin to his chest. “Yeah. But that’s…not how it feels.”
Leslie laced her fingers through his and tugged his hand into her lap. “How does it feel?”
He shrugged again. “We parted badly.”
“How long ago?”
“Two years ago.”
She blinked. “You said you quit dating two years ago. She’s the last person you dated before me?”
“Yeah.”
“How long were you together?”
“Ten months.”
Her slow nod gave nothing away. Her face had smoothed out as she pondered, grown harder to read. “I’d like to hear about her, Ryker.”
“But I’m over her.”
She poked a finger at his chest. “You dreamed about her last night.”
“I had a nightmare about her.”
“Which means she’s still in your head somewhere.”
“No. Not anymore.” Until she showed up on his porch, he hadn’t thought of Jacqueline in months. “There’s no part of me that misses her, not a single part of me. Please believe me.”
“Oh, Ryker.” She leaned into him and rested her head on his shoulder. “You don’t have to defend yourself because you had a bad dream.”
Was that what he was doing? He twined the end of her ponytail around his finger.
“We need to talk about this,” Leslie said. “It’s past time. We can do it here, or we can go somewhere private if you want.”
“Slake It Off?”
“Perfect.”
They stood together, and as he bent his knees to leap to the ground, Leslie took his hand. She gave it a squeeze, and then they jumped. They landed lightly on the floor a few feet out from the wall. Leslie kept hold of his hand as they left the gym and headed to his car. The blood bar was only a few miles from the gym, and they didn’t talk on the way over.
When Ryker had parked, Leslie took his hand again. “Ready to talk?”
He looked out the windshield, through the plate-glass window of Slake It Off. Behind the bar, Claire darted around pouring drinks. The line was longer than usual. But the crowd size inside didn’t matter for his and Leslie’s purpose here.
“I’ve wanted you to know about…her. I just haven’t wanted to put it into words again.”
“Again?”
“Let’s see. First there was Tai. He knows the most; he was my first phone call after it all blew up. Then there was Dad and Mom, then a few close friends including Claire. You’d think by now it would be easy to talk about.”
She gave his hand a slight tug. “Let’s go inside. Settle in. Maybe by then you’ll have the words you need.”
Not likely. But he nodded again and let her lead him inside to one of the booths. Leslie was right. It was past time for her to know…everything.