Midnight Secrets

by Rita Stradling

  “You two can back off,” Justin said. “January and I are alone together all the time, and she’s never wanted someone to get between us before.”

  Was he jealous? This boy was making my head spin. One minute he was having me sneak out of his pool house so no one would see us together, and the next he was talking about me like I was his girlfriend. The Baldwin brothers looked between Justin and me with quizzical expressions, probably wondering at the familiar way Justin was talking about me while I’d acted like I barely knew him.

  I shrugged. “Sure, fine. Is there a problem or something?”

  He lifted his brows. “Yeah, there’s a problem. I’ll tell you in the truck.”

  Damn it, fine.

  As I crossed the distance, Lucas stepped in my path, giving me a look and nod back toward Justin. “You good, April?”

  I patted him on the shoulder, gave him a smile, and said, “We’re good, Walt. Owe you big time, and I’ll be pushing for you to collect on that.”

  I appreciated that he asked if I was okay, and I appreciated it even more when he respected my judgment enough to nod and step away. “It’s no problem. See you around five tomorrow, if that works.”

  I told him that it did, and, with a misguided butterfly celebration fluttering all the way into my chest, I climbed into Justin’s truck. The space smelled like sandalwood and lemon, both clean and masculine. He had left the engine running, and as soon as I settled into his supple leather seats, cold air hit my skin. I hadn’t even noticed that a fine layer of sweat had coated my face and neck until the AC cooled me.

  The driver seat door opened, and Justin climbed in, threw the vehicle into gear, and drove away, all without looking over or acknowledging my existence.

  Deciding to remedy this, I turned on the dome light, crossed my arms, and glared. “Well, the Baldwin brothers are going to have questions about us.”

  “Let them. I could care less about what Lucas and Zack think of us.” He nodded. “What I do care about is why you're so hostile.”

  Narrowing my eyelids at him, I turned in my seat. “Seriously? You want to talk about hostile? You poured a beer on my head and almost drowned me.”

  He gave me an exasperated glare. “The pool thing was a massive fuck up. If you’re going to be hanging out by the pool, you need to know how to swim —”

  “Seriously, that’s what you consider an apology?”

  “And . . . I already explained the beer. I’m not going to do it again. You’re just being petty, tallying up stupid shit against me because you want to feel justified in pushing me out of your life.”

  I sputtered. “Are you kidding me right now? You’re something else, Justin. I seem to remember you trying to kick me off your property?”

  He glowered over, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “It’s obviously too late for that.”

  “Look, I didn’t mean to insinuate myself into your life with your friends and family — it just happened. I get it. You’re ashamed that . . .” I gestured between us, “You’ve been spending all this time with me. I don’t know. Maybe you’re afraid that I’m a danger to the people you care about. I’m not. This — us — will never spill over into your real life. I’m getting the bagged blood thing together. We will actually break this off for good.”

  “Something that neither of us truly want,” he said, rolling his eyes. “And, you know it.”

  Crap.

  “Fine. I’ll admit it. But it’s what we need.”

  “Because I’m toxic.”

  “Justin . . . you’re not toxic. That was a horrible thing to say. All that I meant is that we fell into an unhealthy dynamic.” I lifted hands in surrender. “I plan to be self-sufficient and then do everything in my power to make sure your family and friends don’t make any kind of connection between us. You have made it clear that’s what you want when it comes to those guys, and, yeah, it hurts my pride, but overall, it’s for the best. All that said, the fact that my grandmother works for your parents, and that I’m considering going for a scholarship to your school isn’t your business. I’m not doing it to be in your life. It might seem that way, but that’s not what this is about.”

  “For a smart person, January, you are always determined to get everything backassward. We need to talk.” With a screech, he pulled off the main road toward an industrial complex, and beyond that, agricultural fields spread out.

  “So, you’re kidnapping me?” I asked dryly.

  “Of course not.” His hand grabbed the gear shift. “We can talk in the pool house, but the steam trick is only going to work so many times.”

  An image of Justin pinning me to the wall as my legs wrapped around his waist flashed through my mind, and I shook my head. “As long as you’re not trying to rid yourself of me for good or something, we can head into your freaky industrial complex.”

  He gave me an apprehensive look, his hand still on the gearshift. “Are you joking, or do you really not trust me?”

  As shitty and awful as the fact was, I trusted Justin over almost any other person. He was the only one who knew what I was. In that way, he was the person I was closest to in this world. And, he was a complete, unashamed, asshole. That’s why it took something out of me to admit, “I trust you. I was just giving you a hard time.”

  Justin nodded and pulled up to a security fence with a giant sign that read: Roberts Family Millworks. Rolling down his window, he typed a code into the keypad. We drove past the security fence and off to the side of the road behind a high oleander hedge. “This isn’t the best spot. It will do for now, though, until I find a better place.” He turned fully to me. “You can sit beside me or climb on my lap to feed, and if some homeless person finds his way in here or something and sees us, it’ll just look like we’re making out. That’s the only risk I can think of, really. No cameras hit this spot, and the fence is alarmed. We’ll see any headlights coming.”

  “Oh.” I looked around us, seeing that he was right. A system of industrial lights illuminated the three metallic buildings and fence, but this spot was tucked away between several bushes. I was also shocked that this was what he brought me out here to talk about. I’d been all geared up for a fight, but he was just showing me a spot he scouted so I could feed off him. “Would I walk here to meet you?”

  “What?” He shook his head. “I’ll drive you. I was thinking Tuesday late night and Saturday mornings.”

  “I can do Tuesdays, but Saturday mornings are the only times I can visit my mom. She’s allowed visits as part of her program. My mom is being a total bitch and refusing to admit my grandmother again. And, now we don’t have the van, so I’m going to take the bus, which will probably eat up my morning and afternoon.”

  “No, that works. I’ll take you to visit your mom, and then we can come here.”

  The idea made tears form in my eyes, tears of relief, which was so far from what I should be feeling. Justin was probably textbook the worst person to rely on for emotional support, but if he was there, I wouldn’t have to go alone, and I also wouldn’t have to explain my emotions to him. He would just get it. Knowing better than to let my tears fall, I blinked rapidly and said, “Sure, if you don’t mind.”

  A rare spark of humor lit in his golden eyes. “You want to test it out?”

  I thought I knew what he was referring to, but I wanted to be sure, so I asked, “Test what out?”

  “This spot. See if it works.”

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  “We won’t know until we try.” He lifted his brows in a challenge.

  Well, shit. Justin and I were toxic for each other. I knew that. I was doing everything in my power to quit him for good. And yet, even knowing that he was a black hole of emotion that, come tomorrow, I’d be struggling to drag myself back out of, I kicked off my sandals and climbed along Justin’s bench seat.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  When Justin’s hands went to my hips and guided me to straddle his lap, I climbed onto him, sitting on his knees. In this position
, my sundress exposed most of my legs, and I situated the light-blue material, so it at least covered my underwear. Just as I thought about how exposed I felt, my dress strap slid over my shoulder, and I didn’t want to pull it up. My breaths came heavier as my gaze slid down to Justin’s lips and then up to his eyes.

  The glint of mischief in Justin’s eyes changed into something softer for a moment, but the tender look vanished as quickly as it came.

  “I drank from you twice yesterday morning.” Reaching up to his shoulders, I leaned in and whispered, “Am I supposed to bite you again, or is this just a rehearsal?”

  “I told you . . .” His eyes blazed into mine and hands slid over the material on my hips, wrapping around my back, “I want to talk to you.”

  “Like this?” The last thing I wanted to do was talk. My whole body thrummed to close the distance and press into him. I yearned to taste his mouth for the first time and finally know what his lips felt like.

  He nodded. “January, I’m going to ask you — beg you — to turn down the Roberts Foundation Scholarship.”

  “Damn it, Justin! You are so manipulative.” The asshole had me panting on his lap, even though I knew better, and just so he could tell me not to accept the scholarship?

  I began to crawl away when his hands squeezed on my hips.

  “January, please just stay here and talk to me. I’m not trying to piss you off or manipulate you. I’m trying to help you — to protect you from . . .” he made an exasperated sound that was so genuine, I froze and settled back onto his legs.

  “Protect me from what? Because from where I’m sitting it really seems like you just don’t want your housekeeper’s granddaughter at your fancy academy, just like you don’t want your friends to know I exist.” When he didn’t answer right away, I asked, “Why do you care if they give the scholarship to me or someone else? What difference does it make to you?”

  “It makes a huge difference.”

  “Okay.” I drew out the word. “Why?”

  “My mother . . .” he worked his jaw back and forth, “she gets these ideas while she’s drinking — they’re not even rational most of the time — and then in the light of day, she wakes up having promised someone something, and then she’ll stick to it just to prove that she was rational when she first committed to it. She offered you that scholarship, thinking — I don’t know what she was thinking — maybe that you and I would start a relationship and then I’d stop being such a fuck up. She called you Cinderella, meaning she probably saw a beautiful poor girl moving into our house, got the idea that she’s trapped in some fucking romance novel and decided to make her drunken fantasy play out.”

  “So, you’re saying that I’m taking advantage of your parents?”

  “No,” he growled, leaning in toward me. “What I’m saying is that tonight, my mom will get drunk again, and if you’re not there, playing into some stupid fantasy she’s having, she might come up with something else. Some fantasy that I’ll fall for a Manhattan heiress, and then she’ll convince my father that he should give the scholarship to some girl from New York. He’ll grumble about it for about a minute, and then he’ll go along with whatever she says because he owes everything to her family, his job, wealth, social-status, everything, and all he cares about is keeping her happy. If making her happy hurts you in the process, well that’s just too bad.” His words had such a wealth of resentment in them; it was clear that they had to have been stewing for a very long time.

  I had seen just a glimmer of that in the Roberts’ dynamic last night, and it must have been what made me wary. “So, this isn’t about you trying to keep me away?”

  His hands tugged me closer to him. “Does this seem like I’m trying to keep you away from me?”

  “Uh, yeah, about every other minute,” I said.

  His nostrils flared. “Look who’s talking there.”

  He might have a point, not that I was going to acknowledge that.

  “So, the only reason you don’t want me to go for the scholarship is that you’re afraid I’ll be hurt if your parents yank it out from under me?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” A very unwelcome pulse of hurt thrummed in my chest. Why did I expect the emotional black hole to be trying to protect me? At this point, any pain was my own damn fault for being vulnerable to him. I knew better.

  “You can’t go to Blackburn Academy, January. You said you trusted me, so please, just do it. I can’t tell you anything more than that.” He sounded so adamant that I hesitated in climbing off him.

  “You need to give me some sort of an explanation because I trust you not to kill me, but I definitely don’t trust you to give a shit about my happiness or whether I get into a decent university.”

  “I can’t give you any explanation.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  He just gave me an exasperated stare.

  I wrapped my hands around Justin’s shoulders and leaned in a little. “Your father said that in Blackburn Academy I would learn secrets that I would have to take to the grave. Your mother claimed to be a psychic and made a huge deal out of my birth date and day. You were delivering blood to vampires when I first met you. Is Blackburn some sort of . . . school for vampires and psychics and people with powers or something?”

  “Please.” his hands went to my waist and squeezed. “You just have to trust me.”

  The suggestion about Blackburn had felt so silly coming out of my mouth, especially the part about his mother actually being a psychic, but his lack of denial that there was something supernatural about the secretive academy sat heavy in the space. Justin was the only person I knew who was aware of vampires. He’d made it a stipulation of me feeding off of him that I never asked him about it. I had avoided questioning this because, in our relationship, I was taking, and he was giving. Asking more felt wrong. But . . . was there a whole vampire and psychic and who knows what else school out there that I didn’t know about?

  “If it is something like that, it would be just plain wrong to keep me from Blackburn. You’re definitely not convincing me away, by the way.” I climbed off his lap, crawled down the bench seat, and clicked my seatbelt into place. “Are you a psychic, too?”

  “January,” he growled.

  “Werewolf? Zombie? Demon?”

  “This is going to kill me. You’re going to kill me.”

  “If I was going to kill you, I’d have done it a long time ago. Okay, just one more, do you know of a creature that has a mouthful of fangs, leathery skin, and long, pointed ears? It kind of looks like a hideous meld of human and bat?”

  Justin’s eyelids widened and lips parted. From his expression, he did. His voice dropped all inflection, but his eyes blazed as he asked, “Did you see a creature like that?”

  “What is it?”

  He made an exasperated groan. “Please stop asking. You know that I can’t tell you.”

  “Why?”

  “Can’t tell you.”

  “Okay, fine,” I growled. “At least tell me this, are there more than vampires out there? You can just nod or shake your head.”

  “January, focus,” The words were a demand, and I could see the terror in his eyes. “Did you see a creature like that? When and where?”

  “I thought maybe I saw something in the alley tonight, but it was only for a fraction of a second. From your reaction, I’m getting the feeling that I didn’t imagine the creature she turned into. She fled down the road.”

  He sighed, and the stark fear in his expression drained away. “You were really fucking lucky. That van is a menace. Hopefully, it’s junkyard scrap metal.”

  Was he fucking kidding?

  “Justin,” I growled, “Tell me what I saw. I’m part of this world, okay? Whether you like it or not. It’s not okay to gatekeep me from the supernatural community. It’s not right.”

  “I’m not keeping you out to be cruel.” He pushed his palms into his forehead. “I just want to keep y
ou safe, and you’re making it really fucking difficult.”

  “But you openly admit that you are keeping me out? Yeah. All right. This place works for feedings, and we talked. We should go. My grandmother will get home any minute, and she’ll wonder where I am.”

  Justin glowered, but I refused to acknowledge him. After a few seconds, he shifted into gear, and we headed for the main road.

  “January, you can’t go to Blackburn,” he repeated.

  “Mm-hmm.” I turned to him. “Why don’t you just go ask your mother and father? I’m sure they’ll yank it out from under me as soon as you suggest it.”

  His hands tightened on the wheel, and a muscle ticked in his jaw.

  “Wait. You did suggest it, didn’t you, and they turned you down.” A pulse of hurt hit me in the chest, and I leaned back into the seat.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “So, then you came to me.” I nodded. “Even before you pretty much said that Blackburn Academy is a supernatural school. I knew that it might be my only chance to get into a good university. After everything went to hell last year and this summer, I didn’t even apply. Your parents are offering me something that will turn around my entire life, and I’m going to go for it.”

  His lips pursed. “And I’m going to stop you.”

  “What are you going to do? Cast a spell on me to make all of my pencils break?” I paused. “Wait — are you a wizard?”

  “A wizard? No.” One of his dark brows lifted and that glint entered his eyes. “But, January, I’ll stop you. I can be very creative.”

  The way he said creative through a wicked smile sounded a bit dirty, especially as I’d so recently been straddling his lap, but I pushed that from my mind and focused on his words. Leaning in so close my lips almost brushed over his ear, I whispered, “You know you’re just convincing me to try even harder for it, right?”

  He glanced over. “You can try as hard as you want. I’m going to stop you.”

  “Oh, little rich boy, you have no idea who you’re challenging.”