“But I didn’t mean to,” I told her, glancing up at her through my tears. “I didn’t want to.”
“Think about that, then,” said Kane then, her face softening. “Isn’t that wonderful? Most people don’t want to hurt each other. They just do, because being human is messy. But very, very few people want to hurt. It’s just a byproduct of life.”
Kane held me tightly and wiped away my tears, and though pain lanced through me, though I felt awful for what I’d done, I stayed in the circle of her arms, and I could feel her love radiating out to me, too, just as much as Tommie’s heartache.
And I gripped her arm and held her close, too.
The consequences were being paid.
And still, still, I had Kane.
Love roared through me, moving with the pain.
---
“I’m assuming that Tommie brought Gwen back to the Sullivan Hotel with her,” Kane told me when she’d finished dressing, adjusting the tie’s perfect knot at her throat with her long fingers. She drew her satin hair back over her shoulders and brought it up into the high ponytail at the top of her head, threading an elastic through it. She was watching herself in her floor-length mirror on the inside door of her closet, and I was watching her from my position, seated on the bed. It afforded me the best view…and what a view it was.
But when Kane mentioned Gwen, I straightened, rising from the bed. She flicked her gaze to me and turned, shutting the closet door behind her. “And I’m assuming that you’ll want to see her,” she told me, one brow raised.
“Immediately.” I cleared my throat and smoothed down the front of the unfamiliar skirt that rose out around my hips (it was a very fluffy, vintage-inspired skirt). The outfit that I’d worn yesterday was crumpled on the floor in a somewhat untidy heap. The clothes had blood on them from Gwen, and that wasn’t something I thought I should be parading through an entire house full of vampires (how had Tommie done it? I supposed she’d come in through the back, and had just been quiet), so Kane had gone to Dolly’s rooms and gotten me a dress and undergarments, promising up and down that, even though Dolly wasn’t currently in her rooms, she wouldn’t mind in the least if I borrowed a few clothes.
What Kane hadn’t gotten me was shoes, because she assumed that I’d wear the ones from yesterday. Which I obviously could—there wasn’t anything terribly wrong with them, and they didn’t have blood on them, not like my skirt and blouse. But I glanced down at my flats that I’d worn the day before, when Gwen and I had gone to town on what was meant to be such an innocuous errand. Going grocery shopping for the Sullivan Hotel. It was so horrific, the memory of the van accident when we were driving back home, the memory of Gwen bleeding on me, my best friend bleeding, and then being hunted, just like me.
The flats I’d worn the day before, incidentally, were covered in mud from the adventurous trek we’d had to take through the woods and along the cliff face, trying to avoid the vampires who were actively hunting us.
The vampires who had tried, last night, to kill us.
But, hey, at least the shoes weren’t stained with blood.
“Good. Then you need to go visit your friend,” said Kane, adjusting the sleeves of her suit jacket. “And I…I have business to attend to,” she said, her nostrils flaring as she breathed out heavily, clenching her jaw. “I need to get to the bottom of who sent those vampires after you. Who wants you dead. And they will be…dealt with.”
The way she said dealt with was a little bit terrifying. Her voice became so cold suddenly, emotionless and still…as if ice had come to life and had actually spoken. I glanced sidelong at Kane, and she flicked her gaze to me again, immediately softening. “They tried to hurt you,” she told me, reaching out and brushing the pad of her thumb alone my jawline. It was such a soft, sensual touch, and I closed my eyes, breathing out as my entire body awoke again from that simple caress. “Whoever sent them… They will pay.”
I breathed out, and I nodded as Kane took her hand from me, turning and adjusting her suit jacket down her front. “Try to stay in Gwen’s room until I send Branna for you, all right?” she asked me. She glanced back at me, brows raised, but I was already frowning.
“Why?” I asked, but Kane shook her head.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think being in the Sullivan Hotel is safe for you right now. They sent two vampires to kill you on our property. You’re not safe, and I need to know that you are safe. Just for today,” she said softly, stepping closer to me, my front against hers, the skirt of the dress billowing out around her suit pants as we pressed together.
“You’re being overprotective,” I told her, my mouth turning up at the corners as I wrapped my arms around her. “And I’m going to tell you the truth: I’m not a damsel in distress.” I wrapped her suit lapels in my fingers and drew her down to me for a kiss. I paused when she was close enough to touch to me, close enough to kiss, and I looked up into her dazzling blue eyes. “I’m safe here. It’s the Sullivan Hotel. No one would dare hurt me here. And I can take care of myself.”
That’s not something I would have said even a handful of days ago, that I could take care of myself, and that’s certainly not something I believed about myself a few months ago, when I felt so fragile that I wondered if Anna’s death had removed my desire to live, the very thing that keeps one alive, from my heart. Now…now, it was different.
I had dealt with my pain.
I had dealt with losing my lover to a drunk driver, and I had dealt with all of the grief that brings, the aftermath, the scars on my heart that I knew, by now, would never truly heal. I had dealt with falling for Kane, then the rejection that happened afterward. Melody’s return. I had dealt with that deep, abiding pain of wanting something so, so desperately and being completely unable to get it, no matter how badly I ached.
There was new pain to deal with, new pain that I had caused Tommie, and that would be worked through, as well. And I knew that I’d be sorry about it my whole life. But that pain, too, had shaped the woman who was standing here right now, gripping a vampire’s lapels and drawing her down for the kiss she wanted with her whole heart.
I did want that kiss, and I took it, and Kane gave it gladly, wrapping her arms even tighter about my middle and drawing me to her so that there wasn’t a breath of space between us. Her ice-cold mouth was delicious against me; I delighted in it, in her taste and touch, in her tongue.
When I kissed her this morning, there was a languorous about it. The passion was still there, and was rising in me again as I kissed her, but these were kisses that discovered things about Kane, and about myself when kissing her. These were kisses that needed to be slow and sensual, soft and caressing, to learn everything we could about one another. I kissed her, hardly believing this was real. I wanted to pinch myself, I was so happy.
When we both came up for air, Kane looked down at me with a small, sideways smile, but her eyes still bore concern that my kiss could not erase. “Would you humor me?” she asked me then, her voice low, urgent, as she gazed down into my eyes and gripped me softly, spreading her fingers at my waist now and tracing her hands up and down my curves. “Would you wait in Gwen’s room for Branna?”
I took a deep breath, and I felt her touch on me, and it felt so good. She felt so good, and I loved her so deeply. She didn’t ask too much, I knew, especially considering last night. But I was already growing and changing, becoming someone a little bit different from the night before as I stood there in my own shoes and the borrowed dress, pressed tightly to Kane.
“I can take care of myself,” I repeated gently, even though I was highly aware that this didn’t have any historic precedent for her to believe me. Even though Kane had saved me multiple times, and I was so grateful for her saving me each time, and I loved her, loved her fiercely, the truth of the matter was that I didn’t want to have to be saved. I wanted to be able to save myself.
And there was no time like the present to learn.
And, really, there was no safer pl
ace than the Sullivan Hotel to learn it in.
But relationships are about give and take, and they are most certainly about compromise. And when Kane gazed at me with that poignant expression one last time, pain filling her eyes…I relented.
“Okay,” I told her, taking a deep breath. “I’ll wait for Branna. But poor Branna… She probably has better things to do with her day than baby-sit a human.”
Kane chuckled at that, a beautiful, velvety sound that wrapped me up in its warmth. “We will get to the bottom of this sooner, rather than later,” Kane promised me, pressing a soft kiss to my forehead, her lips so chill that she made me shiver against her. “I will find out who is behind those hired assassins, and I will make them pay…all before tonight.”
“What’s tonight?” I asked her playfully, reaching up and placing my arms around her neck, drawing her down to me once more.
“It’s the dance,” she whispered, before she kissed me again.
The dance. That’s right; Gwen had told me about it. A dance that the entire town was invited to—vampires and humans mingling together.
What could possibly go wrong?
Kane backed away, and a small smile turned her mouth up at the corners again. I hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing Kane smile often before now, but I was beginning to realize that whenever she smiled at me, my love for her grew even more: bigger, brighter, truer.
God, she looked so beautiful when she smiled. Devastatingly so. The layers of sadness that always seemed to exist around Kane Sullivan melted away in those moments, revealing the woman beneath all of it. The woman she had once been, and the woman she was changing into again.
“Go to Gwen,” she told me, brushing a kiss to each cheek and squeezing my shoulders as she stepped back. “Talk with her, make sure she is well, and before you know it, I will send Branna along, and then you can go get breakfast. Unless you want to go to the kitchens first with me now?”
“Gwen’s much more important than a little hunger,” I told her, slipping on my muddy shoes. I didn’t even have time to wipe them off or wash them; I was too anxious to see Gwen and make absolutely sure she was all right.
Kane ushered me to Gwen’s door, through the floors and corridors of the Sullivan Hotel. Gwen’s rooms were right next to mine, so I’d be able to duck in for a quick change of clothes soon, anyway. I stood up on my tiptoes to kiss Kane goodbye, and I locked eyes with her for a long moment.
“You be safe, okay?” I asked her, my brow furrowed as I smoothed her lapels down, smoothed the shoulders of her suit jacket, my fingers lingering. “Just…be careful.”
“Always,” she promised me, her voice low as she brushed her lips against my forehead one last time, and then she was clicking back down the corridor, her shoes resounding smartly off the tiled floor. My eyes lingered on that beautiful, white-blonde ponytail that swayed over her shoulders until she disappeared around the corner.
I cleared my throat, then, and I turned back to Gwen’s room, and I knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” croaked Gwen from inside. She sounded testy, which made me happy. A testy Gwen meant that she was probably mostly okay.
I hoped.
“It’s me, Gwen,” I told her, my voice low as I leaned close to the door. “Can I come in?”
“Yes,” she snapped, and I frowned a little as I turned the doorknob…but it was locked.
“Just a minute,” I heard, and then I heard, too, a shuffle, and a click as she unlocked the door. And then the sound of wood scraping against wood, like she was moving a piece of furniture in her room.
When Gwen opened that door to me, she opened it just a tiny bit, and she peered out through the crack suspiciously, with one eye. It was a very narrowed, unhappy eye, and when she made certain that it was definitely me standing there, she yanked the door open the whole way, took one step out, grabbed my arm and all but pulled me into the room after her, before throwing the door closed again and locking it immediately.
And then she took one of the chairs from her little table next to her kitchenette, and she tucked the back of the chair beneath the doorknob, effectively barricading the door.
When Gwen turned to look back at me, yes, she looked pale from her loss of blood.
But she also looked like she’d just seen a ghost.
“Are you okay?” she asked me, stepping forward and gripping my shoulders tightly before turning even paler when she saw the healing wounds on my neck. “Oh, my God,” she muttered, taking a step back then, staring at me as if I’d become a different person. She picked up one of the heavy silver candlesticks from the little table beside the door, and she actually brandished it at me. “Are you one of them?” she hissed.
One of them.
A vampire.
I stared at my best friend, still holding the candlestick like a club. I guess the cat was out of the bag now. How did she know that that’s what had hunted us last night? But it didn’t matter. She needed to know the truth, and I probably shouldn’t have kept the truth from her in the first place.
“I’m not anything but me, Gwen,” I told her quietly, putting up my hands in a “I surrender” sort of pose. “Are you…are you all right?”
Gwen snorted, and in that moment, she looked and acted exactly like my best friend—not a lady holding a candlestick as if she was going to beat me up with it. “No,” she said then, the testiness coming through her voice loud and clear. “I’m not all right. I had to get stitches in my belly, and I remember some pretty weird shit from last night, Rose.”
I lifted my brows and stared at her. “Do you know?” I asked then.
“Know that we’re living in a house full of fucking vampires? Yeah. I know,” she muttered, and she set the candlestick back down on the table heavily. “Please tell me you’re not one of them,” she said, and the words came out sounding weary. “Because, seriously, I don’t think I could take it. And my box of wooden stakes hasn’t arrived from Amazon Prime yet,” she quipped. Though her voice was tired when she said it, her eyes flashed with that familiar fire.
“I’m not a vampire,” I promised her, my voice gentle, and then Gwen nodded once, did a little uncharacteristic, nervous laugh, and walked quickly over to me. She gripped me so tightly in a hug that I felt all of the air squeezed out of my lungs.
“I didn’t think you were,” she said, sniffing as she pillowed her chin on my shoulder, “but I don’t know. It’s been a really weird twenty-four hours, Rose. So, you know, I just wanted to make sure.”
“Anyway, even if I was a vampire, I think silver is effective against werewolves, not vampires,” I joked, jerking my thumb to the candlestick and taking a step back. I held Gwen out at arm's length and took in her appearance. God, she looked positively ragged. “What do you remember from last night?” I asked her seriously.
“Oh, you know…someone running Moochie off the side of the road,” Gwen said, pronouncing her van’s name as if she were mourning a good friend. And she might be; I didn’t really get to pay much attention to the damage that van had sustained in the accident, but I was kind of wondering if Moochie could be resurrected from that level of death. “I remember…” Gwen frowned a little, shaking her head. “Not much. But I remember there being people with sharp teeth attacking the both of us, and when I asked Tommie about it, she said they were all vampires. So...”
“Tommie told you that?” I asked, my brows up.
“Yeah. She said that since you and she were an item now, it was important that I knew the truth,” said Gwen, crossing her arms in front of her. Now it was her turn to raise her brows. “So…did you know they were vampires?”
I bit my lip, and then I nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t think it’d be good to tell you. There are treaties in place,” I said, lifting my hand before Gwen could start yelling at me, “so I thought you’d be safe, and I thought it’d be better if you didn’t know, so you wouldn’t worry.”
“Worry,” Gwen repeated the two syllables as if they were some kind of
joke. “Rose, those vampires last night almost killed the both of us. Like, actual, one hundred percent murder. We’d be dead right now if Tommie and Kane hadn’t come along to save our asses.”
I shifted my weight on my feet and crossed my own arms, feeling a touch uncomfortable. “Yeah. It was really wonderful of the both of them,” I told her, and then Gwen regarded me curiously.
“Something happened,” she said, and she lifted her arms in the air, shaking her head. “Rose, I love you, but you can tell me all about it while you help me finish packing.” And then she stepped to the side, and I could see what her body had been hiding this whole time. On top of her bed’s coverlet, there was an open suitcase.
Gwen was packing her clothes.
“You’re leaving?” I asked her, because I wasn’t entirely sure (and a large part of me couldn’t believe it), but Gwen’s guilty look when she glanced my way again confirmed it. “Gwen, you can’t go,” I told her, rushing over to her bed and standing in front of the suitcase, holding out my arms, as if that could stop her. Gwen glanced at me and sighed, biting her lip.
“We live in a house full of vampires. Don’t you have any self-preservation in you at all? Like, not even a little?” asked Gwen plaintively. “I mean, seriously, two of those asshole vampires almost killed you last night, and you want to remain in a house absolutely infested with them?”
“You don’t… You don’t understand,” I said, thinking as quickly as I could. “They’re not all like that. Kane and Tommie and the rest of them, they’re not—”
“Look, I know you have feelings for Tommie,” Gwen said, too quickly for me to interject, “and that’s all nice and good. But if you have feelings for this one, you can have feelings for someone else. There are definitely other ladies out there who aren’t vampires, women who would actually be good for you—”
“Kane’s good for me,” I told her, and Gwen stopped speaking to stare at me, her mouth actually falling open.
Trusting Eternity (The Sullivan Vampires, Volume 2 Page 16