Authors: A. M. Hudson
“
Hoping to find something different to the last few hundred times you’ve read that?” I asked, leaning on the doorframe.
Jase sat up and tucked my suicide letter under his thigh. “I didn’t hear you come in. I’m sorry.”
“
Well, that’s because I didn’t knock first.” I pushed up from my lean and wandered into his room.
“
You don’t have to knock, Ara. You’re welcome in here any time.”
I smiled and sat down on the foot of the bed. “So, why are you still reading that letter?”
He drew it out from under his leg and flattened the page. “I’m trying to understand something.”
“
What?”
“
Why you said, and I quote, ‘I love you, Jase. I’ve loved you for so long and, in a different life, we would have been married, had a family, and lived together forever.’” He looked up from the letter. “How can you feel that and then, the minute you’re free from David, deny me the chance to be with you?”
“
Jase.” I sighed, flopping back on the bed. “I’m not free. I told you. I—”
“
You’re committing to him even if he doesn’t want you,” he said in a mock girl’s voice. “I know. I remember all too clearly. But why? I don’t understand why, after everything he’s done—the way he’s treated you, you can’t see that he’s not going to come ‘round, Ara.”
I thought about it for a second. “Forgiveness takes time.”
Jase laughed. “Ara, David and I are still fighting over who broke the bottle of Port in Uncle Arthur’s study sixty years ago.”
I laughed too.
“
He can hold a grudge for hundreds of years—especially against a girl he let into his heart. He’s feeling exposed and damaged in ways even
he
doesn’t understand and, Ara, if he was capable of forgiveness. . .”
“
It would be decades away. I know.”
Jase huffed, and I heard the drawer in his nightstand close, his shadow coming over my face a second later. I looked up into his smiling green eyes.
“
If he. . .” He juggled the words in the back of his throat. “He can be mean, Ara. If he wants you to hurt, you can be damn sure you’re going to hurt.”
“
I know,” I said positively. “I’ll be okay.”
“
Yes, but . . . eventually he’ll do or say something to hurt you beyond repair. And I don’t want this to happen, Ara, but I have no control over it. Just—” He sat back, and I rolled onto my side to watch him. “If the day ever comes where you decide you don’t want his forgiveness anymore, do you think you’d—”
“
I promise.” I reached across and cupped his hand.
“
Promise what?”
“
I promise I’ll marry you then.”
His face split into a wide, pearly grin. He looked up from our hands, making me smile too. “I will hold you to that promise.”
“
You won’t need to. If I believe things are truly over for David and I, I wouldn’t hesitate to marry you, Jase. And it’d take hell to stop me.”
“
Then—” He kissed my hand. “Until that day, I pray you fall out of love with him, but I hope it’s not for the cruelty he shows you. I don’t want you to suffer that way.”
I flopped onto my back and stared up at the ceiling, softly rubbing my belly. Then, quietly, without warning, the vampire beside me placed his hand over mine. It felt warm and safe and so comfortable I moved my own hand away and let him feel the baby inside me.
“
I’m gonna take care of her, Ara. She’ll never want for love a day in her life.”
“
So, you’d be willing to take on a kid that’s not yours?”
“
Ara, she is a part of you, and that makes her a part of me. As far as I’m concerned, she is of my own flesh and blood.”
I pouted, half smiling. “Sometimes, I wish she was yours.”
He leaned down and kissed my belly, hovering there for a few seconds after. “Me too.”
My gaze left his lips and the soft skin of my belly under them, and moved onto the side of his face. So much had happened between us. His face was one I used to fear and yet, now, it was the one I looked for when everything was falling apart. I slid my thumb down his cheekbone, thinking back to the day I confessed our affair—how I found him bruised and beaten in the cellblock. “Hey, Jase?”
“
Mm?”
“
Who hurt you the day David had you arrested?”
He looked up, his smile blending with a frown. “He didn’t tell you?”
“
Who didn’t tell me what?”
He laughed, sitting back. “Falcon.”
“
What?” I sat up. “
He
did it?”
“
Yeah.”
“
Why?”
“
He . . . he was pretty pissed off. As soon as David left you alone in your room, Falcon came down and made sure I paid dearly for every inch of flesh I ever touched on you.”
“
Oh, Jase.” I touched his hand. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”
“
It’s okay. I kinda deserved it.”
“
No, you didn’t. And why didn’t you tell me who did it?”
“
Aw, Ara, I wasn’t gonna do that,” he said simply. “You love Falcon. I didn’t wanna upset you.”
“
But I am upset. I can’t believe he’d—”
“
Really?” he said smugly. “You really can’t believe he’d do that?”
I bit my lip, huffing my hair off my brow. “I guess I can believe he’d beat you senseless. But it’s not like him to take the law into his own hands.”
“
He wasn’t really thinking then, Ara. You might say he was blind with rage.”
“
Wait.” I grabbed Jase’s forearm. “He’s not bound by the Curse of Lilith, is he? Like Blade was—”
“
No.” He shook his head, smiling. “He just cares about you and wanted to deck the guy who ruined your life.”
I relaxed a bit then. “Like a big brother?”
“
Exactly. Come here—” Jase reached out and tugged my sleeve until I crawled over and laid between his legs, my spine to his chest, his back leaned against the bedpost. “Don’t tell him you know. Just let him have this one, okay?”
“
Yeah, okay then.” I nodded. “I just can’t make sense of it, though.”
“
Of what?”
“
I really adore Falcon, but the Curse of Lilith is supposed to befall any man with a heartbeat who is unlucky enough to be cared for by me—”
“
Unless they’ve been in, or are, in true love with someone else.”
“
Yeah, but—”
“
Falcon’s been in love before,” he stated.
“
He has?”
Jase nodded once against the side of my face. “I read all of his thoughts—past and present—when he was laying in to me. He lost his fiancé, Felicity, a few years back.”
“
How?”
“
Car accident.”
“
Serious?”
“
Yeah. He called her over to help him sort out an argument with his sister, Annie. But she stormed off in a hurry before Felicity got there, didn’t even check the road before crossing it. She hit Felicity’s windshield and the car swerved into oncoming traffic. . .” His lips pursed into a thin line. “Felicity got just the smallest knock to the head, but she died in hospital shortly after Annie.”
The scene played out in my head, probably pictured all wrong, but the grief that came with it was unmistakeable. “What was their fight about?”
His closed lips angled up on the edges into a smile. “She’d been with a boy Falcon didn’t approve of and . . . she got pregnant.”
I closed my eyes for a second. “That’s just so tragic.”
He nodded. “So, go easy on him. In a lot of ways, what he did to me wasn’t just for you—it was for Annie, too.”
I angled my head and kissed the side of his jaw. “I’m sorry he did that.”
“
Well, you just made it all worth it.”
I laughed and lay my hands on his where he rested them over my belly.
***
Despite David hating his brother, thankfully, he hadn’t revoked his approval for the lab. Jase was ordering parts and pieces, and I was supposed to meet him in the field to demonstrate my new rock-blasting tricks at their best. But as I walked into the Great Hall, the round, shiny surface of a golden apple caught my eye, just sitting there on the dining table for anyone to find.
“
How did you get out here?” I asked the apple, walking over.
“
I put it there,” Eve said, flickering and waving suddenly in front of me like smoke.
“
Why, Eve? Someone might see it. What are you playing at?”
“
Needed to get your attention. You don’t see me so much anymore when I’m in the room.”
“
I don’t?”
She shook her small head.
“
Well, why did you need my attention?”
“
Because I wanted you to see something,” she whispered, then reached across and flicked the apple onto the floor. It hit with a mighty thud, leaving a small dent in the wood.
“
Really, Eve, was that necessary?” I bent down to pick it up, and two pairs of feet came charging into the room from under the stairway. I stayed put for a second, hoping they’d pass, otherwise it might look like I was hiding down here under the table, and I wasn’t about to show them the apple, either.
“
Emily. Just—” Blade ran after her, spinning her around in one swift, knightly move. “Please don’t walk away from me.”
“
What do you expect me to say, Blade?” she cried.
“
Don’t say anything,” he said, and that accent made me wish for a second that he was talking to me. “Em, just let me hold you. Let me—”
“
There’s nothing you can do to make this better. Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter what you feel for me. I’m damaged goods!”
“
Aw, Em.” He rolled his head to one side. “You’re not to me.”
“
How can you say that? How can you want me after what he just told you?”
His shoulders dropped and he looked down at the ground, then off to one side.
“
See?”
“
No. Em.” He grabbed her wrist. “You don’t understand. I’m not upset about that. I’m upset because I don’t know how to make you see that none of that matters to me.”
She stopped trying to pull away from him and just stood there. “You’re not . . . repulsed by me?”
Blade laughed. “You could sleep with
Arthur
and I wouldn’t be repulsed by you. It’s gonna take a lot more than sex with that creep to keep me from you. And, besides—” He braved another step closer. “You were human then, and it was a long time ago.”
“
Not for me, it wasn’t. It feels like only yesterday.” She hugged herself, looking at her feet.
Blade wrapped both arms around her, his shoulders tense for the first few breaths until it became clear Emily wouldn’t push him away. “I’m sorry he did that to you, Em,” he whispered into her hair. “But
he’s
the fool. Not you.”
And now I was very curious about what Em had told him.
“
Mike couldn’t look at me after,” she whimpered. “He said he still loved me but he just needed time to make sense of it all.”
I covered my mouth. That boy needed to read
Relationships, for Dummies.
“
I know that makes you feel like he doesn’t care about you, but they were friends—close friends. And he’s had to come to terms with this new David he’s seen rise as king, and then with all of this.” He squeezed her a bit tighter. “He doesn’t blame you. And he didn’t mean to tell me, either.”