Chapter 8 #2
“Mother sent me for her vapes.” Bentley looked between us. “So, you two are fucking?” His mouth tilted into a smug grin. “Knew it. You were fast, Theo. Ditched Jay and you’re humping this one the next week.”
Theo narrowed his eyes, and was about to argue again, but if that happened, we’d be back to the angry cats.
I stepped out of the pool house, onto the patio. “Actually, we’re not. It’s not like that.”
“Sure.” Bentley’s smirk grew. “My brother invited the pool boy who’s easy on the eyes over for beers.” He cocked a hip and rolled his eyes. “Got a thing for the help, don’t you, brother? Maybe this one will live longer than your last pet.”
Theo raised his middle finger. “Run after mother, leech.”
“I will.” He tossed us a laugh as he left, and called, “I was just looking out for my beloved brother. Can’t have anyone else killing you.” He blew a kiss at Theo and strutted back out of sight down the side of the house.
Theo turned on his heel and marched toward me so fast I had to backpedal to get out of his way. He shoved by, went straight to the mini cooler, and pulled out a bottle of clear liquid that I assumed was alcohol or paint thinners. He twisted the top off and drank without stopping for air.
I hung back in the doorway, feeling like a spare part. What was I supposed to do now? Stay or go?
“They can’t know,” Theo wheezed, coming up for air.
“A Witherborne who passes out at the sight of blood? That’s not a thing I’ll survive.
Mother will kill me herself. She’ll kill the both of us, wipe the slate clean, and have two more children.
It’s what she’s always done, when her spawn disappoint her. ”
Oh . . . wow. My mom had been a mess, but at least she’d cared, when she’d been sane enough to remember who I was. “She’d do that?”
Theo laughed, as though the idea she wouldn’t resort to murdering her own children was amusing.
“Bentley already wants me dead, he’s been trying for years, but he’s transparent.
It’s Mother I’m afraid of.” He came over and leaned against the glass wall, taking a swig from the bottle every few seconds.
I waited, not sure what to say.
The seconds ticked by. He offered me the bottle. I shook my head. Still had to drive, and I definitely was not staying the night after being choked and threatened.
“Driving, remember.”
Theo sighed, frowned, and kicked at the patio slabs. “Sorry about my brother, and all the rest of it, I guess.”
Most families had their problems, very few were perfect, but to live with a brother who kept trying to murder you, and a mother you were terrified of? Made me grateful I’d been fostered.
“You think my family’s fucked up, don’t you?” he said.
“I mean . . . yeah.” I shrugged. “It kinda is.”
He snorted. “And you don’t even know the half of it.” He leaned back, so his shoulders touched the glass, and dropped his head back. Then he drank some more, like that—posed, gaze on the ceiling, drowning himself in alcohol.
I felt bad for him, I really did. Vampire or not, everyone deserved to feel loved. The people who didn’t know love deserved it the most.
He tilted his head my way, keeping it resting against the glass, and gave me that careless smirk. “Tell me some shit about your life so I don’t feel like a hot mess in front of you. You can’t be this perfect golden boy you show the world. I know you got secrets.”
He did this, switched the topic onto someone else when the conversation got uncomfortable.
He was good at it too. The tactic had probably served him well in public when he’d needed to avoid being too honest. I saw it for what it was—avoiding the painful stuff.
Look somewhere else, don’t look at me while I drown.
I smiled and looked around us, at the pool, the big house, the fancy room behind me, not really seeing any of it. “You don’t want to hear my drama.”
“Then tell me you’re not perfect, it’ll make me feel better.”
“Fine.” I leaned a shoulder against the door frame next to him. “So . . . there was a guy.”
“A guy, huh?” he teased, taking another drink.
“Yeah, a guy.” He’d be passed out again soon from the alcohol, and would probably forget all of this by morning anyway. “Despite the million red flags, I fell hard.”
“You like ’em bad?” he purred, teasing.
I ignored him and stared out the window at the serene play of light on the pool’s surface.
“He uh . . . Well, I found out he wasn’t who I thought he was.
By then, I was in too deep.” I didn’t want to look up and see Theo’s smirk.
“I did some things for him, should have known better. Things I regret.”
Theo fell quiet for a little while, his smile fading.
“Did karma get him?” he asked quietly.
I did that thing where you smile even though there’s nothing to smile about. “Ha, no. Karma came for me instead.”
I waited for the spiral, the one my therapist had drilled into me. “You made mistakes. Mistakes aren’t who you are. You did your time. The guilt’s allowed to be there, you just don’t have to hand it the wheel.” I’d written it on an index card. Read it at red lights. Some days I almost believed it.
“Fuck karma, then,” he said.
“Yeah,” I snorted.
“I’ll be your karma.”
His voice had dropped, going all low and slow, and a little trickle of something dark and dangerous traveled all the way down my spine to places that wanted to be touched. “I’ll be your karma.” I heard the tone behind it as “I’ll do bad things for you.”
I glanced over and saw the truth of the offer in his shrewd eyes. Was he offering to get revenge for me, and if he was, why was that so hot?
“Ah, no, I’m good.” I cleared my throat, trying to smooth the soreness Bentley’s hand had left me with. “It’s a bit late for that, honestly.”
He sighed and took a pull of straight vodka. “See, we have shit in common. We’re both idiot screwups.”
“Go, us,” I said dryly.
Theo laughed. I liked the sound of that laugh, when it was soft and real and not laced with sarcasm or showiness.
We both stayed there a while, him leaning back against the glass, me against the doorframe, looking at the pool and the orange-tinted stars silently pinpricking the sky above.
I needed to get home soon but didn’t much feel like leaving.
For all Theo’s outgoing sassiness, I was beginning to understand how his every day was a battle for survival.
“What happened while I was out?” Theo asked.
I told him about the two maintenance guys and my bluffing, which had him laughing.
“Shit, I am sorry, Owen.” He chuckled. “Just don’t leak blood around me in future, then I promise not to pass out at the worst times. But if you’re gonna start randomly bleeding, you gotta warn me.”
“I only had a problem with random bleeding because you shoved me in the pump shed.”
“Fair. You liked it, though . . .” His gaze caught mine, and whatever he saw on my face made his smile turn into a grin. “Don’t say you didn’t.”
“Maybe.” So he had noticed my reaction when stuffed into the shed with him.
Our laughter faded out naturally. The grumble of a plane’s engines rumbled in the distance, over the bay probably, then the quiet returned.
Crickets chirped, and the soft music played behind us.
It should have been awkward after everything that had just happened, but it felt right.
There wasn’t any pressure to talk, to pretend.
We were just there, side by side, sharing time and space without expectations.
“You know, I should uh . . . I should get going, I guess.”
“Yeah, okay. Alright,” he said, holding his empty bottle up to the light.
“You going to be okay?”
“I’m always okay, Owen.”
That was clearly a lie. “Not going to find another bottle and drink yourself unconscious?”
“That is a fabulous idea.”
“Theo . . .”
“Okay, fine. No. I will not do that.” He huffed. “I’ll do something boring. Something you’d do. Like read a book about fish or something.”
I smiled. “Good. You go do that. Miami bay has some interesting fish species. You should look them up. There’s a fish out there called a hogfish that can change color to match whatever it’s lying on, and it can sort of see with its skin, even with its eyes shut.
And we’ve got parrotfish that wrap themselves in a bubble of their own snot at night, like a sleeping bag, so predators can’t smell ’em.
Oh, and the bay’s full of these little gobies that pair up with shrimp.
The shrimp digs the burrow, and the goby stands guard ’cause the shrimp’s basically blind.
Roommates. Co-op living, but make it fish . . . And I need to stop talking.”
He frowned but smiled too. “’Course you’d know some random facts about fish. Is there anything you don’t know random facts about?”
“I don’t know,” I chuckled.
“Right.”
And it seemed, in that moment, it didn’t matter that he was a vampire heir and I was the pool boy. We were just two guys, hanging out. If felt good. Felt easy. Felt . . . right. But I really did need to leave before Bentley or their mother ruined it.
“Hey, so . . . despite everything that happened tonight and your brother trying to kill me, I had a good time.”
“That’s because your bar is real fuckin’ low, Owen.”
“Wow.” I laughed and pushed off the doorframe, heading out to the poolside.
“Next time, I’ll make it better,” Theo called after me. “No passing out. Promise.”
I waved without looking back. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“Yeah, you will.”
It wasn’t until I’d turned my car around in the driveway and headed to the gate that I realized I’d just agreed to a second date.