Mike simply stood taller, dropping both hands to his sides.
The movement of my rocking world felt like a hot room—a sauna left on high with the door closed—making my cheeks tingle, my lips numb, until it dissolved with a rush of cold.
Mike’s frown loosened, and a quick jolt of panic flashed in his eyes as the sound rang out around me…
* * *
…coming back in like heavy breathing and a loud heart. My eyes inched open to a stream of daylight, firm arms holding me down.
No, wait, not holding me down; holding me.
Looking around, I aimed my eyes to the yellow wall beside my bed—to my photos and the rainbows shining through my crystals. But as I focused properly, my heart sunk, and the dream of my dad’s house, of Mike and David, slipped away to bright white walls and the strong embrace of my best friend.
“Mike?”
“I called work for you. You passed out,” he said in a stern, emotionless tone. “You’re not eating, are you?”
“What? Why would you say that?” I sat up from his chest and looked down when I felt the brush of sheets on my bare skin. “You undressed me?”
“You had coffee all over your clothes. I only took your shoes and jeans off. And your shirt.” He shrugged, but the normal glint of mischief in his eyes was gone.
“You’re mad at me,” I stated, sitting up properly.
“Yes.” He looked away.
“I don’t like it when you’re mad with me.”
“Ara, are you starving yourself because you miss him?” he asked, anger gripping his usually gentle tone.
“I’m not starving myself, Mike. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Bullshit, Ara,” his voice got frighteningly louder. “Look at you. I saw you there earlier, standing in that sheet.” He pointed to my dresser. “And I thought that was bad enough; your shoulders, your spine. You look sickly, girl. But this”—he drew the sheet away from my waist and showed my hipbones—“don’t tell me you’re not starving yourself, because if you were eating, you wouldn’t look like that.”
“Wait, are you mad at me for being skinny, or because of what happened with Eric?”
He went to speak, exhaling like a raged bull instead. “Let’s just address one issue at a time.”
I shrunk sizably. “Gulp.”
He held stern for a second then let a little smile slip. “Don’t try to be cute with me, Ara. It’s not funny. This is serious.”
“I don’t want to be in trouble, Mike. I hate it when you look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“That.” I pointed to his face. “Like you want to smack my butt and put me in my room.”
He laughed aloud. “I do want to. But only because I care about you, baby. I don’t want to see you do stupid things. But this Eric business, and this”—he motioned to my thin self; I covered my waist with the sheet—“that’s two strikes.”
My chin rolled to my chest in defeat. “I’m not starving myself, Mike. And… I just never really look in the mirror that much anymore. I mean, I knew my clothes were loose, but… by the time I actually saw how bad it was, I… well, I’ve been eating a lot of extra fatty foods to fix it.”
“That won’t fix it, baby. You need to add extra protein and good fats. Otherwise, you’ll just cause a heart attack or something, and…” His voice quivered. “I can’t lose you again.”
“I’m sorry, Mike. I know you think I’m stupid—”
“Baby. You’re not stupid.” He pulled my arm until I laid my face on his Thor chest. “And I don’t think that of you. But I am worried. Really worried.” He went quiet for a long while, then added, “You’re not throwing up, are you?”
“God, no.” I laughed the words out. “It’s not like that. Like I said, this was an accident. It just kind of happened, like, overnight.”
“People don’t get emaciated overnight.”
“I’m not emaciated.” I slapped his chest.
“Well you’re not far off.”
“I know. But you’ll help me put weight back on, won’t you?” I said with a sweet grin.
“Will you accept my help?”
I nodded.
He exhaled, chest sinking. “So, if I cook for you every day, you’ll eat it?”
“I always do.”
“Okay. Now,”—he pressed his thumb to the underside of my wrist and waited until I looked up at his eyes—“we need to talk about this.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I snatched my hand away defensively and sat on the edge of the bed, closing the lines of communication with my turned back. I didn’t want to dredge up the past. No one ever pointed out the scar on my wrist—the one Jason left when he attacked me—and for Mike to do it so boldly, I felt naked.
“I don’t care.” He gently tugged a strand of my hair. “There are some dark secrets that need a little airing around here, Ara. And clearly, you need to talk.”
“Why did you look at Eric’s arm?” I asked, spinning around. “When you shook his hand? Why did you do that?”
“I know what he is.”
I folded my arms defiantly. “Oh yeah, then what is he?”
“Ara, stop it. The fact that you asked why I looked at his arm means you obviously know that I know.”
“How do you know?”
“I have my sources,” he said, and sat taller, moving the pillow into the bed’s curve behind his back. “Just tell me one thing.”
“What?”
“Where is your goddamn brain? What if he’d bitten you? What if he’d put you in a coma again? What the hell were you thinking sharing blood with him like that, and in the damn kitchen, of all places?”
I bit my lip.
“Does David know that guy’s hanging around you?”
“How would he know? He’s gone, Mike. He fled as soon as justice failed for him,” I said spitefully.
“Justice?” He blinked a few times, narrowing his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“Eric was at the hearing. David had J”—I snatched my words back in, redefining them before sending them back out into the world again—“a man tried for my attempted murder, but he lost the case.”
“What? Whoa, whoa, wait. Hang on. So, they found the guy?”
Clearly, he didn’t know as much as I’d just assumed he did. “Um, yeah, I guess so.”
“And how does Eric know David?”
“He was in the same…” Did I say group, Set, or organization? I wasn’t sure how much Mike knew. “The same circle.”
Mike ran his hand through his hair. “So… is… did David send him here to check up on you?”
“God, no,” I said, exhaling the tension. “Like I said, David left—”
“Left what? The Set?” His eyes popped.
“So you know about the Sets?”
“Yes.” He sat up and forward a little. “But what do you mean about David leaving? Tell me he wasn’t stupid enough to defect?”
I nodded. “Eric said he did.”
“Bloody idiot,” Mike said under his breath, bringing a fist to his lips.
“Yeah, apparently he’s in a bit of trouble if he comes back.”
“Oh.” Mike’s brows almost touched the sky. “I don’t doubt that. So this Eric guy knows where he is?”
“No,” I said quietly, folding my arms. “No one does. And Eric says the fact that David didn’t take me with him means he never really cared about me.”
“Eric said that, huh?”
“Mm-hm.”
“So…” He pressed the bend of his thumb to his front teeth, his eyes deep pools of thought. “Your obsession is with guys that can kill you, then?”
“What!” My eyes darted to the window as if day might shed some light on his meaning. “Mike, what are you talking about?”
“I’m just trying to figure out what the hell a smart girl like you is doing hanging out with complete, not to mention, dangerous jerk like that guy.”
“He
’s a nice guy.”
“He forced you to drink his blood.”
“He didn’t force me. I wanted it.”
“No.” He sat taller. “I heard you say it. Your exact words were: How could you do that to me? He forced you, Ara. Don’t try to cover for him.”
“You just don’t get it.”
“Oh, I get it. Ara. I bloody get it. What would you say if I’d forced, I don’t know, heroine down your throat?”
“Blood is different.”
“How?”
“Because it doesn’t do any harm.”
“That’s the addiction talking, Ara.”
“Well, that’s just the problem, Mike. It is addictive. David and I shared blood once and, since then, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. I feel”—I looked at my arms—“I actually feel better now than I have in a long time. I don’t feel tired. Agitated. Moody. I don’t feel weighed down by the world. I feel like I could actually get up and go into work and deal with the day and not want to cry. Don’t you know how good it is for me to feel that way, for once? God.” I laid back on the bed. “Half the time I feel like the walking dead.”
“And… you think that’s because David gave you his blood?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure if it’s just that I’m still recovering from near death, or possibly depressed, which makes you feel like you’re tired, or if it’s because of the addiction, but after having Eric’s blood… I feel good.”
“Did David’s blood make you feel that way—feel good?”
“Yes. For, like, ages after.”
“So… is he an addiction then?”
“Who?”
“Eric. David. Both of them. Are you addicted to the danger they pose, or the blood—is that why you’re hanging around them?”
“I’m…” Wow. He had this totally wrong. I sat up again. “I hung around David because I loved him, Mike. Before I ever had his blood or even knew he was a vampire.”
He scoffed. “Right. And that love had nothing to do with his supernatural lure.”
“It didn’t, okay. Or maybe it did. Who cares? But Eric has the same lure, and I don’t love him.”
“But you want to sleep with him.”
“No. I don’t. I mean. Okay, maybe a little. But what’s wrong with that? How many girls did you sleep with before you found the right—I mean…” Damn it. I looked down because there was nothing to else to say.
“Yeah, nice one, Ara.” He folded his arms, shaking his head.
“But I’m right, Mike. There’s nothing wrong with me wanting to sleep with Eric. I’m a grown, single woman.”
“I know.” He raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I guess it’s just, you being a girl, I kind of expect you not to have any… primal urges.”
My eyes narrowed. “Sexist, much?”
“I know. But I don’t want to think of you having urges or needing to… quell them.”
I touched his arm. “I’m trying not to quell them with Eric.”
“Sure. Right. And I was born yesterday.”
“I’m serious, Mike.”
“Okay, let’s just pretend you are serious. What’s stopping you from ‘quelling’ with Eric?”
“Well, I don’t have a death wish, for one, and also I don’t want to end up sleeping with a hundred random guys just trying to find a way to fill the hole David left.”
“Hole, huh?”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
Mike reached across and stole my hand. “You really do still love him?”
I toyed with his thick fingertips. “Yeah.”
“Then… I just don’t get why you’re dating Eric.”
“Okay, first of all, I’m not dating Eric. We’re friends. That’s it. And that’s mainly only because he can keep an eye out for David for me. He’s—”
“So that’s it.” Mike’s breath of relief hit the ceiling as he rolled his head back. “You keep him around to get inside info on David?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Duh.”
“Thank God.” He brought his chin back down. “I was worried for a bit there, you know. I really thought you couldn’t like a guy unless he could kill you.”
“Mike? That’s a horrid thing to say.”
“Sorry.” He shrugged unapologetically. “But I was about two-seconds away from threatening you myself just to see if you’d love me for it.”
“And what then? What would you have done if I’d fallen lovingly back into your arms?”
“Have you admitted into hospital.”
I stole my hand back. So I was right all along. If Mike knew I’d been depressed—knew the extent of it—he would do all the wrong things in the pursuit of trying to do what’s right for me.
“Sorry, baby, but it’s my job to look out for you. You’re”—he pinched my hip—“dead skinny, miserable, tired all the time. I’m not blind and I’m not dumb. I know damn well you’re hanging on the edge, girl, and I’m worried.”
“Don’t be worried, Mike.”
“I am, though, even more so now because Eric’s blood just happens to make you feel good. So, what now? I’m going to have to contend with a best friend who has a drug addiction?”
“It’s not a drug, Mike. It’s something I can control.”
“So says everyone who has ever been addicted, Ara.” His voice rose. “You need to wean yourself off it. You need to say no.”
I sat back. He was right. I didn’t want to believe him, and the drug in me was tossing his words aside, practically on the phone to Eric right now asking him to come back, but the common-sense part of me took a breath and a moment to let just a little of his advice sink in. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Okay. I’ll try not to have his blood.”
“Just try?”
“He’s…” I smiled to myself. “He’s very persuasive.”
“Then you need to stay away from him.”
“You know I won’t, Mike. I like him.”
“And what would David say if he found out?”
I smiled again. Maybe he’d be mad enough to come back and steal me away. “Let him get mad,” I said dismissively.
“Why, so he’ll come back and punch Eric, then run off into the sunset with you?”
I slapped his arm. “Stop reading my mind.”
He laughed, cupping the back of my neck as he pulled me down against his chest. “I can’t. You’re too easy to read.”
“Yeah, well, nothing’s changed, Mike.” I sat up. “You might know all my secrets now, but I’m staying friends with Eric, and if I want his blood, and it’s on offer, I…” I rolled my cheek to my shoulder. “I’ll probably end up taking it.”
“Fine then,” he challenged, eyes shrinking.
“Fine then what?”
“Fine then, we just need to find David and bring him back.”
My eyes shot from a vacant stare up to meet his. “How?”
“I’m a cop, Ara.” He scoffed. “And David, though he may be a vampire, is also only human. Everyone leaves a trail.”
My smile widened. “And you’d do that… for me? You’d find him?”
“Ara, I’d cut my heart out for you,” he said, making a fist over it. “You know that.”
I looked away instantly as the smirk he always wore faded to a teary-eyed frown. “That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?”
“It’s the way I feel.”
“Well, I don’t want you to feel that way, Mike.”
“Then kill me.”
“Now who’s being sadistic?” I said playfully.
He smiled.
“God.” I breathed out a massive sigh. “I’m so glad you know about David and Eric. You don’t know how many layers of isolation and worry you’ve taken off my shoulders.”
He touched my shoulder. “Always happy to share the load.”
“So…” I removed his hand and held it in my lap, giving it a squeeze to thank him. “When did you figure it out—what David and
Eric were?”
“I didn’t. Not really.”
I frowned at him. “Did you lead me into telling you?”
“No. David told me.”
“What? When?”
“While you were dying.”
“You talked to him then?”
“Course. Me and him… we had our moments, but we became pretty close, you know.”
I squeezed my hands together, trying not to cry. “How much did he tell you?”
“Everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yeah, he…” He sat forward on the edge of the bed, wincing, as if his memories hurt. “He told me everything. All about himself, his kind, the Set… you.”
“Me?”
“Told me everything you two had been through, everything you told him. Ara—” With a firm rub of his face he said, “When I heard some of those stories, some of the things you talked to him about, heard what you’d had to deal with for losing him because you didn’t want to be a killer, I… I cried. I was so heartbroken for you, baby.” His voice trembled. “It only made me love you so much more, you know, for how much strength you had to let something like that go and not let it taint your core beliefs. And I just wish I could have told you that before our wedding; wish I could have told you that I understood everything.”
My eyes were locked to his face. I couldn’t look away, afraid I’d cry.
“You were never alone, Ara. I had you. I had your back. I always have.”
“I know.”
“No, you know that now. You didn’t know that then. But that’s why I came back. Because I knew you weren’t just a normal messed-up girl with cold feet; I knew you’d gotten yourself mixed up in things you couldn’t run from or fight, and I knew you’d need me. And…” He lowered his head, pressing his thumbs together in his lap. “I think… if I’d told you I knew about him, if you didn’t feel so alone, you might have married me.”
I realized then, as I looked at his face—his downturned mouth, his sad eyes—that he blamed himself for me walking out on him. And I did have to wonder if things would’ve been different if I’d had someone to bounce all my confusion off.
“Mike, I left because I can’t lose hope that David will come back. I’ll die. I love him more than life itself. But if I was married, even if he came back, I could never have left you.”
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 79