Chapter 14
After work, I’m staring up at the Ballerina Clown sculpture when Nick’s voice startles me.
“Paying your respects to the patron saint of Venice?”
I turn and see him walking toward me from a little way up the block.
“Patron saint of Venice?” I ask.
He stops a couple of yards from me and points up at the sculpture. “I like to imagine it’s watching over us,” he says. “One misfit looking out for all the other misfits who live in Venice Beach.”
“You’re not a misfit,” I tell him. “Aren’t you the guy who gets along with everyone?”
“Not everyone ,” he says with a pointed look at me.
I grin. “Is that why you’re standing so far away?” I ask.
He grins back. “I thought I’d keep my distance until we decide on a game plan for tonight.”
“I was thinking about that,” I say. In fact, I was pondering it the whole drive over. My mind kept going back to the marked difference between my knee-jerk, must-slay reaction to Quentin versus my more conflicted reaction to Nick. “And I think I have an idea.”
“Do tell.”
“I’m thinking I need to get to know you better,” I say. “As a person.”
“Just one problem with that,” he says. “I’m not a person anymore. I’m a vampire.”
“See, that’s what my slayer thinks,” I say. “That’s why she wants to kill you. But here’s what I’m thinking… If she gets the message that there’s more to you than just the fangs and the…uh…blood drinking, it’ll be harder for her to just blindly hate you and easier for me to control her. And if I can get control of her around you, I’m thinking it’ll be easier for me to control her slayer butt around other vampires too.” I sweep my arms out in front of me as if I’m indicating the proposal I’ve just laid out. “So what do you think?”
“Sounds like you want to play truth or dare without the dare part,” says Nick.
“Oh please,” I say. “You’re a vampire and I’m a slayer. The dare part is understood. The dare part is playing the game at all.” I cross my arms and give him a challenging look. “What do you say we take a little walk and have a little talk?”
***
Nick keeps his hands in his pockets, and I do the same. We maintain about a foot of space between us as we stroll together, side by side, toward the beach. My slayer is quiet but vigilant.
“So what do you want to know?” asks Nick.
At first, I don’t know what to say. I’m not used to being the one asking the questions. With my parents, with casting directors, and sometimes even with my friends, I always seem to be the one who gets quizzed. The swing in the power dynamic feels strange but also… nice .
Since I don’t really have a specific agenda, I decide to start with the basics. “Where did you grow up?” I ask.
“Pretty much all over Los Angeles,” says Nick.
“Your family moved around a lot?” I ask.
He hesitates. “Actually, I moved families a lot.”
I knit my brows, a little puzzled. “Because your parents were divorced?” I ask. “Remarried?”
He hesitates again. “Dead,” he says. “They died in a car crash on the 101 when I was seven.”
“Oh my God!” I stop walking, and so does he. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay,” he says with a shake of his head. “You didn’t know.”
“But I shouldn’t have pried like that. I should have asked you something less personal,” I say. “Like your favorite color. Or your favorite food. Or your favorite band—”
“You think my favorite band isn’t personal?” he teases.
I hate that after I’ve stupidly dredged up what’s probably one of his worst memories ever, he feels like he needs to make me feel better.
I also really kind of like that about him.
“I’m so sorry, Nick,” I say. Because honestly, I don’t know what else to say.
“It’s fine,” he says. “I mean, it’s not fine, obviously. It’ll never be fine. But it happened almost twenty years ago. And I survived DCFS—”
“DCFS?” I ask.
“Department of Children and Family Services.”
I take this in for a moment and look at him. Or maybe it’s more like I see him. For the first time since I’ve known him, I really see him.
“How?” I ask softly.
“How what?” he asks.
“How did you survive DCFS?”
He looks back at me, and it’s like he sees me too.
Maybe he always has.
He smiles a little sadly. “I guess I learned how to get along with everyone.”
***
We walk on in silence until we reach the beach. A few steps in, my platform sandals start to wobble and sink into the soft sand.
“Hold on a sec,” I tell Nick.
I lift a foot to remove my shoe, but I begin to teeter. Quicker than my eyes can track the movement, Nick’s hand is on my arm, steadying me. I feel his ice-cold touch through the sheer material of my blouse. It somehow warms me to the core.
Slowly, I peer up into his eyes. “Thanks.”
He looks down at me. “No problem.”
And suddenly, it’s like my senses are just as amplified as his. I notice everything. His smile, his killer dimples. The pungent scent of the ocean air mixed with the musky scent of his cologne. The light, reassuring pressure of his hand still grasping my arm.
Unfortunately, my slayer is superattentive now too, alerted by the unexpected contact. Why can’t she just mind her own goddamn business? Why can’t she leave me—leave us —alone?
The piercing in Nick’s eyebrow is catching the moonlight again, shining like a star. It makes me want to make a wish about Nick and me. A wish that, considering our natures—considering that we are supernatural freaking enemies programmed to annihilate each other—can’t possibly come true.
But I go ahead and wish it anyway.
***
“I went to the Musicians Institute, here in LA,” says Nick.
Playing the getting-to-know-you game again, we’re sitting together on the beach, watching the waves roll in as moonbeams reflect off the water. I dig my fingers and toes absently into the cold, damp sand.
“I inherited a little money on my eighteenth birthday,” he continues. “Not a lot, but enough to cover the tuition.”
I turn to him with an admiring smile. “So you’re self-made,” I say.
“Carrie,” he says with a teasing grin back, “no vampire is self -made.”
At the mention of the V word, my slayer pricks up her ears. I should probably change the subject, but what Nick has just said piques my curiosity too. Mentally tightening my reins on my alter ego, I ask, “But you wanted to be made, right? You wanted to become a vampire?”
“I did.”
“Can I ask… why ?”
Nick hesitates.
“Or is that too personal?” I ask quickly, not wanting to repeat my earlier mistake.
“No, it’s just…a lot,” he says.
He turns and looks out over the ocean. Then he picks up a shell and tosses it into the waves, thinking. Having apparently reached a decision, he turns back to me.
“You have to understand,” he says, “I don’t remember my parents much. And growing up, being shuffled around from one foster home to another, I never really felt like I belonged anywhere. But when I met Quentin and Zach and we started playing together, we just, I don’t know… clicked . I felt like I was part of more than just a band. I felt like I was part of a family. So when they let me in on their secret? And they offered to punch my immortality card? I mean, I know it seems like it should have been this huge decision. But for me, it was a total no-brainer. When they offered me eternal belonging? Hell, I couldn’t say yes fast enough.”
It all makes sense. After everything he’s told me—and after seeing the way Quentin looked out for him at the bar earlier tonight—it all tracks. All except for one little thing.
“So why risk it?” I ask, repeating the same question I asked a couple of nights ago. My eyes search his. “Why put your eternal belonging on the line just to help me?”
Nick’s gaze doesn’t waver from mine. “You know why,” he says in a voice that makes my breath hitch and my belly do flips.
All at once, I do know why. Maybe I’ve known all along.
I’m not sure if he makes the first move or if I do. But there’s one moment when I’m sitting here on the beach not kissing Nick, and then there’s the next moment, when everything changes.
Nick’s mouth presses against mine. Rationally, I know his icy lips should be cooling me down, not heating me up, but right now, there is no reason. There is only burning. And needing. And aching.
I deepen the kiss, or maybe he does? Not that it matters. All that matters is what his tongue is doing, what his fingers are doing as they thread through my hair, and oh God, what it’s all doing to me!
My toes curl involuntarily, squishing wet sand between them. I lift my hand to touch Nick’s face, and the damp granules sticking to my fingertips feel rough against his surprisingly soft, smooth skin.
It’s like a movie kiss, or rather it’s like you imagine a movie kiss would be if it were actually happening to you. It’s like when the music swells, the focus gets a little fuzzy, the action starts to unfold in slow motion, and you get totally swept up and away. There’s an unreality to what’s going on between Nick and me, yet it’s more real than anything else ever has been. Certainly, it’s more real than any other kiss ever has been.
Obviously, this is not my first kiss. But honestly? It might as well be. I’ve never felt this way before, and right now, I can’t fathom feeling this way with anyone else ever again. It’s as if I’m unravelling, going mad in the best possible way, losing all control—
Wait.
Losing all control?
Suddenly, I’m aware of my slayer. She is subdued but not passive. Definitely not passive. And with a jolt, I realize that she’s watching us, biding her time. Like a calculating understudy, she’s waiting hungrily for her chance to step in and take over.
I break the kiss and shove Nick away from me.
“No,” I say, breathless. “You have to stop.”
Nick looks at me, also breathing heavily. His expression is all confusion. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought you wanted this.”
“I did,” I say quickly. “I do . But you almost made me lose control.”
Nick grins. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
I shake my head slowly, sadly. “No,” I say. “Not when you’re a vampire and I’ve got a ruthless vampire slayer waiting in the wings.”