by Jessica Sims
He followed me as I walked away. “Do you . . . do you want to talk about it?”
Another hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat. “No, I don’t want to talk about it. I just . . . ” I sighed, staring at my blank walls. I suddenly felt exhausted. “I want to take a freaking nap.”
“Fatal . . . insomnia,” Josh repeated. “And that means you can’t sleep?”
I pushed forward, suddenly desperate to show him what it meant to not sleep. To have someone else get it. I opened my closet door. Hundreds of boxes were crammed in there, neatly stacked on shelves that I’d built to hold them all. “I do puzzles when I can’t sleep. I’ve done every single one of these,” I told him. “Some, even twice.”
He said nothing, simply looked at the puzzles, then back to me.
“And here,” I said, racing across the apartment to my small bathroom. I went to the counter and threw open the medicine cabinet. I grabbed boxes of over-the-counter sleep aids, prescription bottles, and shoved them all at him. “I tried taking all of these. None of them work. Nothing works. I close my eyes, but I can’t sleep. Maybe ten minutes, if I’m lucky, but after that, nothing. My brain can’t shut off, and I’m so tired that I could just collapse. Except when I collapse, I still can’t sleep.”
He remained silent, his eyes dark as he watched me.
“Do you know what it’s like?” My hands clenched into fists as my frustration and helplessness built inside me. I wanted to scream, but I forced my voice to be calm. “Imagine being hungry all the time, yet you can’t eat. You just can’t. For no good reason at all. I go through that every single fucking night. And it’s going to kill me.
“There are four stages of the disease. When I was eighteen, my mother stopped sleeping. Then she started getting panic attacks, kind of like I’m having right now,” I said, feeling my pulse flutter wildly in my chest.
“Marie—”
“I need to get all of this out while I can.” I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm a little. “It starts with the inability to sleep. Next you have panic attacks. Then paranoia. Then, you start to hallucinate. The insomnia continues to get worse, and toward the end you become completely out of your mind from the lack of sleep. And then you die. It’s horrible, Josh. Absolutely horrible. My mother . . . she was beautiful. French-Canadian. Long, dark, curly hair and the happiest smile. I miss her every day,” I said softly.
“What about a doctor?”
I shook my head. “They can’t help. I’ve tried pills of every kind. I’ve tried therapy. Hypnosis. I’ve seen specialists. They all want to run tests on me, and if they discover the cause, then the experimental treatments will begin. I’ll spend the next six months being monitored and drugged and poked and prodded, and none of it will do a bit of good, because no one knows how to fix it. I’m better off spending those six months actually doing something about my disease.”
“And this is why you want a vampire,” he said quietly.
I nodded. “I thought of it a few weeks ago. That I could get someone to turn me. Sara said that diseases skate right off shifters. And vampires, well, they’re already undead. I have all these resources in the agency, right? So why not use them?”
He reached for my hands and tugged them into his own. “Why not a shifter, then? I can change you.”
“No, you can’t,” I said quietly. “You’re Beau’s brother. He’s trying to hold the Alliance together with the force of his will alone. Everyone’s freaking out over that tiger clan incident. They exiled that tiger couple, and exile is permanent. For a shifter, I imagine it’s close to death. You’re so close to your family—I won’t have you living in exile just to turn me. Not when there’s a perfectly good vampire around—they don’t have to follow all of the Alliance rules.”
“But vampires don’t turn just whoever they want and then walk away. There’s commitment involved.”
“I know. I just have to take that chance. Maybe I’ll be lucky and find a nice vampire to spend eternity with.”
Josh gave me a flat, emotionless look. “So I’m off the table because I can’t turn you. But I’m perfectly fine for a one-night stand?”
I bit my lip. “I shouldn’t want to sleep with you, but I do.”
“Damn, Marie,” he said, yanking his cap off and raking his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what to say.”
I twisted my fingers. “I know it’s complicated.”
He gave a short, bitter laugh. “Yeah, I’ll say. Call me crazy, but it doesn’t sit quite right with me to sleep with you and then turn you over to the next vampire in the hopes that he’s the one for you.”
It didn’t sound right to me, either, but I didn’t know what else to do. “You said yourself that you weren’t big on commitment. I’m the ultimate in noncommitment relationships.”
“That is not a selling point.”
“You could always wait until I’m turned,” I said softly. “Maybe we could always give . . . you and me . . . a try after I’m turned.”
He shook his head. “Marie, if a vampire turns you, he’s going to want you to be his blood partner. That’s a mate for life. It’s taken very seriously. If you get turned, you’re off-limits. Jesus,” he swore. “This is a hell of a plan.”
So I could have hot Josh and an early tombstone, or I could have a cold vampire and eternity. “I’m not changing my mind,” I said quietly. “Not when I’m this close to getting someone to turn me.”
Not when I was hallucinating at least once a day now. My disease was accelerating at a rapid pace.
He stared at me for so long that I felt uncomfortable. “Marie . . . I need time to think about all of this. I don’t know that I can keep helping you. I just . . . I don’t know.”
I was guessing that the one-night stand was off the table now, too. I felt a flash of bitterness at that, but I wasn’t surprised. Finding out that someone was dying totally changed the dynamic. It was hard to nail and bail on a dying girl, after all.
“I’m telling you this because you’re my friend, Josh,” I said. “Not because I want more than you’ve already given me.”
He put his hands on my shoulders and kissed my forehead. And then sighed. “I have to go. I need some time to think about all of this.”
I didn’t try to stop him. Either he’d see things my way, or I’d lost a friend. I didn’t have options this late in the game, and if he didn’t understand that, then I was better off without him.
Strange how that wasn’t sitting so well in my gut, though.
• • •
Josh didn’t call me that day. I knew it was hard for him to absorb all at once. I’d been living with it for ten years, and it was still hard for me.
But I was exhausted, mentally and physically. It was as if telling Josh had sucked all the energy out of my body. Normally I held it together pretty well, but by the time I got to work that evening, I was running on empty. I’d doubled my daily vitamins and sucked down an espresso on the way to the office, but I still felt tired as hell.
Which was why it took a moment for it to register when I sat down and noticed that Savannah Russell sat at Ryder’s desk, and Ellis Russell sat at Sara’s. I stared at them, frowned, and checked the calendar on my computer. I had the right day.
Oh, no. A sick feeling landed in the pit of my stomach. I rubbed my eyes. Was this a hallucination? Oh, God. It seemed so real. Anxiety fluttered through me, and I felt my jaw clenching in the onset of a panic attack. This was bad—
“There you are,” Sara said cheerfully, sticking her head out of Bathsheba’s small office. “Come here for a second.”
I walked carefully to the small office at the back. I was surprised to see Ryder inside, sitting across from Bathsheba.
“Good, everyone’s here now,” Bath said with a smile.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Girl’s night out. It’s time for a little team bonding. How do you feel about heading out to a bar and getting our drink on?”
I he
sitated. I was exhausted, and with the cocktail of (rather useless) medications I was taking, I wasn’t supposed to really drink. “Who’s going to man the phones?”
Sara laughed. “Jeez, you are totally a zombie before you get a few cups of coffee in you. Didn’t you see Ellis and Savannah out there?”
So they were real? Oh, thank God. My knees felt weak with relief. I put on a big smile. “So where are we going?”
• • •
I stared at the tight, gleaming butt cheeks ten feet away and turned to glare at Ryder. “Who thought a strip bar was a good idea?”
Ryder sipped a margarita and pointed at Bathsheba. Bathsheba turned bright red and pointed at Sara.
I turned to my left. Grinning and shaking her ass to the thumping music, small, innocent Sara waved a five at a nearby dancer.
I stared at my watered-down hurricane. “I think I need to have what she’s having.”
“I think we all do,” Ryder said with a grin.
The wild, thumping beat made my eardrums want to explode. A new guy danced out onstage, dressed as a cowboy. Naturally. He wore a sparkling silver vest with lots of fringe and pants that I was sure were about two minutes away from being flung into someone’s face. Women crowded all around us in the club, shoving forward to look at the dancers, laughing and drinking.
“I thought it’d be fun to get out and unwind,” Bathsheba yelled as he began to dance. “I didn’t get a bachelorette party, and Sara thought this would be a good substitute. I never see you guys anymore, now that Beau and I got married.”
I was pretty sure it was more due to everyone’s life going to hell all at the same time, what with my disease, Sara’s coming out as a werewolf, and Ryder’s secret transformation into . . . whatever Ryder was.
“I think the timing has just been off for everyone,” I told Bath.
She looked relieved, and I immediately felt bad. I’d been a bridesmaid in her wedding a few weeks ago; I’d even caught the damned bouquet. Before she’d gotten married we’d chatted regularly, and while I wasn’t exactly the most open of friends, I considered her one.
It seemed like I’d been shutting everyone out lately.
“Heeeere,” Sara slurred, and shoved a five into my hand. “You’re supposed to be enjoying the dancers, silly. Go and enjoy that one.”
As if he could smell the money, the dancer ripped his pants off and grinned in my direction. Tabarnak. I got up, folded the money neatly in half, and patiently waited amongst the shoving women until he wiggled his G-string in my direction. I tucked it in, then retreated to my seat.
Ryder high-fived me.
“Why aren’t you up there shoving money into his pants?” I asked.
“Because I like to watch,” she told me with a feminine leer.
Sara wobbled past me and slapped a few ones into her sister’s hand. “Your turn!”
“Oh, I don’t know—” Bath began.
Sara rolled her eyes and tugged on her sister’s arm. “No take-backs.”
I watched in amusement as Sara dragged Bathsheba, protesting all the way, to the stage. As Sara bounced and danced to the beat, Bath stood as stiff as a totem pole. She quickly shoved her money at the dancer, then dragged her sister away.
Our boss wasn’t half the fun-loving drunk that her sister was.
Bath deposited Sara in the chair next to me. “I’m heading to the bar to get more drinks. Watch her for me, or she’s going to run out of money.”
Sure enough, Sara had pulled out her wallet and was digging out a few more dollars.
Ryder just grinned. “That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?”
Yeah, but Sara had an enormous, rather possessive boyfriend. I placed a hand over Sara’s, stopping her.
Sara snarled at me, wolflike.
“Save it for the next dancer,” I told her. “I heard he’s really hot.” I hadn’t heard any such thing, but she was too tipsy to figure that out.
She nodded, leaving her money on the table and sucking the last bit of alcohol out of her glass.
“Well, this was unexpected,” Ryder told me, leaning in to yell in my ear as the bass line thumped again. “Seems like alcohol makes one sister a wild woman and the other one even more of a prude.”
“I heard that,” Sara said on the other side of me.
Ryder just grinned and got up to tuck a dollar into the overflowing G-string of the man gyrating onstage.
I watched him dance, mentally comparing his body to Joshua’s. The man onstage was a big, muscled slab of meat. Josh was muscular, but he was leaner. He had big shoulders but didn’t carry his weight like a bodybuilder. The dancer turned, flexing rock-hard buns, and Sara whooped at the display.
Those were indeed tight buns. I wondered how tight Josh’s ass was in comparison. The man onstage was tanned a rather dark orange, which was unattractive. He was also greased up, and his long hair was pulled into a slicked-down ponytail. It made me appreciate Josh’s clean, if short, hair.
The dancer rocked his hips, thrusting repeatedly, and the crowd went wild. My fantasizing of Josh took an abruptly dirty turn and I shook my head to clear it, reaching for my almost-untouched drink.
“Sooo,” Sara said, leaning over my shoulder.
I glanced over at her.
She nodded at my drink. “You gonna drink that?”
“I was,” I said in a dry voice, but I handed it to her anyhow. “You’re having fun.”
She shrugged, taking my straw in hand and raising it to her mouth. Then she sniffed and gave me a perplexed look. Before I could ask, she leaned in and sniffed me. “Why do you smell like Josh?”
A hot, humiliated blush crossed my face. Thank goodness the strip club was dark. “I’m pretty sure I don’t.”
“I may be drunk, Marie Bellavance,” she said with a wag of her finger at me, “but my nose isn’t. And it definitely smells a horny were-cougar on you.”
How was that possible? I raised my shirt to my nose and sniffed it. I didn’t smell anything.
Sara smacked my shoulder. “Not your clothes, dummy. You. Your skin. You normally smell like a medicine cabinet. Now you smell like a medicine cabinet and Beau’s brother.” And she waggled her eyebrows at me. “So gimme the dirt.”
I didn’t know which part made me more mortified—the fact that I smelled like a medicine cabinet, or the fact that she’d picked up on my strange situation with Josh. It wasn’t even friends with benefits. All we’d done was argue with each other and share a few kisses.
A few really hot, really wet kisses.
“It’s nothing,” I told her. “No dirt.”
Her eyebrows shot up, and she grabbed my drink. “You going to love him and leave him?”
“Something like that.”
“Ooo,” Sara said with a grin. “High five.” She raised her hand in the air and completely missed mine.
“Yeah, I think I’ll take that back now,” I told her, pulling my drink out of her hand.
She leaned over my chair, throwing her arm around my shoulders and eyeing the drink. I had the sneaking suspicion that if I looked away, she’d grab it again. “Can I give you a word of advice?”
“Oh, please do.” Nothing better than advice from drunk people.
“Josh is a nice guy. Really nice. Big soft spot for women.” She poked at my breastbone as if to demonstrate where that soft spot might be. “But he’s not what you’d call a ‘commitment’ kind of guy.”
She made drunken air quotes just as Ryder sat down again, hands empty of money.
“I know he’s not,” I told her. “But thank you.”
She nodded sagely, then brightened at the sight of Ryder’s half-full cup. “You going to drink that?”
“Get your own,” Ryder said, holding her cup protectively.
Bath returned from the bar with new drinks and began to pass them out. As she did, I glanced up at the stage. A new man had danced out, and my heart skipped a beat at the baseball cap he wore. A moment later, I relaxed, seeing the ba
seball uniform he wore and the tattoos going up his arm. Not Josh. Not even close.
You going to love him and leave him?
That was what I was going to do, wasn’t it? Have sex with him and then turn around and seek a vampire to turn me? And if the vampire wanted a blood mate, I wouldn’t say no.
So what did that make me? I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a player. And Josh wasn’t sure if he wanted to be played, judging by the lack of a return phone call.
Why did everything have to be so damn complicated?
One of the dancers sauntered past, wearing a wreath of bills around his waist and not much else. Sara whistled sharply, drawing his attention, and pulled out a twenty. “Lap dance!”
“Oh, no,” Bath said.
But Sara eyed us and then pointed at Ryder, who also shook her head, eyes widening.
The dancer zoomed to Ryder’s side and began to gyrate, shaking his pelvis. Bath looked mortified. Sara bounced up and down with giddy excitement.
Ryder looked . . . terrified? Confident, self-possessed Ryder?
The dancer grabbed her hand and placed it on his pectoral, shining with baby oil. And he gave Ryder a lascivious look, grinding up against her.
She shot to her feet and bolted for the ladies’ room.
The dancer staggered backward, almost knocked over by her hasty exit, and Bathsheba looked shocked.
“What’s with her?” Sara asked.
The terrified look on Ryder’s face was so unlike her. And then I thought of the . . . thing . . . that I’d seen Ryder turn into. I plucked the twenty out of Sara’s hand and stuck it in the dancer’s G-string. “She probably drank too much and had to throw up,” I told them, and pulled out another twenty from my pocket. “How about you give me a lap dance next?” I said to the dancer.
Sara whooped in response, and the dancer grabbed my free hand, rubbing it on his oiled stomach.
Ryder totally owed me for this.
• • •
We left the club a few hours later, flat broke and way past tipsy. Well, the other three were tipsy. I’d sipped the same drink all night, letting Sara chug the rest of mine. Alcohol never sat well with the anti-anxiety medication I was on to suppress the panic attacks.