“Sure am.” I pried him off, smiling at his exuberance. “Do you think Mom’ll mind?”
“I don’t know why she would!” Milo looked like he was going to explode.
He had truly believed that I wasn’t coming back, and for awhile, so had I. “She’s at work right now, but I’m sure she won’t care.”
“I hope not.” I knew I had some penance to do with her, and I wasn’t looking forward to that. Or getting up for school the next morning, especially since I had spent the last few nights on a vampire sleeping schedule, which was quite contrary to a school one.
“Why did you come back?” Milo asked curiously.
“I figured that somebody had to be here to help take care of you.” I reached out and ruffled his hair, and he pulled away, just like I thought he would.
“I’m not a little kid.” He smoothed out his hair, but I hadn’t even really messed it up. “And besides that, I spend more time taking care of you than you do me.”
“That is true.” Milo had never really needed anyone to do anything for him. He just kind of wanted somebody to be there, and I could at least manage that.
“On the subject of which, I should probably whip us up some supper.”
Hurriedly, he went over to the fridge, talking amicably about the ridiculously extravagant meal he had planned for us tonight. Leaning against the kitchen counter, watching him as he worked, I knew that I made the right choice in staying with him.
Chapter 17
When I went to school the next day, Jane looked rather pleased to see me. I’d been standing at my locker, struggling to place my books inside, when she walked past me, smiling in her overly seductive way, and murmured, “Good to have you back, Alice.” Admittedly, it’d only been three days since I’d last been to school, but it had much longer than that since I hung out with her, and I’d barely been active in my own life. At school and at home, I’d been a zombie.
Anytime I wasn’t around my new mysterious vampire friends, I felt like I’d been living a lie, so I mustered just enough energy to get through it.
There was no separation in the two lives, though. They were all part of me and what I was doing. I went to high school, hung out my brother, gossiped with Jane, and in my free time, I hung out with vampires. Nothing about me had really changed, and even as mind boggling as the events of the last month had been, I was still just plain old Alice Bonham, and that’s the way it was going to stay. For a few more years at least.
So when Jane walked past me, I scurried to get my books together, and then bolted after her. She must’ve really missed me, because she actually stopped to wait for me when I called her name. After a few friendly jabs about being missing in action lately, I filled her in as best I could about what had been happening my life lately, conveniently leaving out the stuff about vampires.
At home, I let Milo help me with the Calculus homework, which really seemed completely unnecessary. I would make it my life’s mission to never, ever find a use for that particular information. Milo made something delicious with salmon for supper and enlightened me on his progress (or the lack thereof) with his new crush, Troy. All in all, my life felt like it had hit some kind of stride, and maybe I really could get comfortable with all of this.
Jack text messaged me, saying he’d be over in twenty minutes to pick me up. I got ready, and Milo warned me that I had to be up early for school, and I promised I’d be back before one. That still seemed too late for him, and in reality, six hours of sleep did not sound like enough to me, but I had to find a balance in all of this.
While outside waiting for Jack to pick me up, something startled me. I was waiting outside for Jack. No matter how fast I rushed through getting ready, he was invariably waiting for me outside, or at best, we arrived in front of my building at the same time. But I had been waiting for so long, that I’d actually gotten a little chill and had to pull my sweater around me. I dug out my phone to text him just as a silver Audi slid up in front of me, and my heart twirled nervously.
Even through the dark glass of the car window, I could see Peter’s green eyes burning at me. That incessant pull that had been slowly fading the last few days returned with a vengeance. My body started to shake, but not because I was cold. My heart had started beating in that way that drove Jack mad, and I wondered if Peter felt the same way. Slowly, I opened the car door and got inside, and prepared myself to find out.
“When did you get back?” I asked quietly.
Instead of answering me, Peter just squealed away from the curb, keeping his eyes locked on the road in front of us. His jaw tensed tightly. The car was completely full of the intoxicating smell of him, and for some reason, my mouth actually started to salivate. We had never been in such close quarters before, and it felt like a bad idea. Or a really good one, depending on how I looked at it.
Even as close as I was to him, my heart was tugging on me to move closer, to reach out and brush my hand against his flawless skin, so I clasped my hands together securely.
“I just got back.” He took so long to answer me that I almost forgot what the question was.
The silence felt thick and overwhelming, but I couldn’t think of anything to fill it with. My head was swimming, and I felt the hunger for him rolling over me like a fog. It was burning and frantic, like a rush of adrenaline, only much more intoxicating. By the time we’d get to his house, I’d be delirious with him.
“We need to talk,” Peter murmured huskily, allowing his haunting gaze to settle on me for a moment.
“I know.”
In my mind, I’d been imagining the conversation with him over and over again. Although since I’d kissed Jack, I’d been envisioning it with me rejecting him, instead of persuading him into being with me. Once I was with him, filled with his lust, I couldn’t imagine not being with Peter. Every part of me screamed that I really had been made for him, no matter what my heart insisted when he wasn’t around.
Despite his proclamation that a discussion needed to occur, he said nothing for the remainder of the car ride. I couldn’t even take my eyes off of him, and I barely noticed his lack of attention towards me. The days away from him had made me forget how absolutely breathtaking he was. It would be all too easy to spend the rest of my life just looking at him When we got to his house, the tiniest part of me that wasn’t completely enamored with him felt trepidation at seeing Jack. I had no idea how he would react, but fortunately, he wasn’t around. I imagined that he was off somewhere, but since Peter eclipsed everything for me, I couldn’t feel him anxiously hiding nearby. Mae and Ezra were in the living room, but I barely noticed the tentative way they eyed us up as we walked up the stairs to his room. Peter still hadn’t said anything to me, but I followed one step behind him, like he was leading me on a string.
“I don’t know what they’ve been telling you while I was gone,” Peter told me finally. I had sat down on the edge of his bed, and he stood on the other side of his room, his arms crossed firmly over his chest and refusing to look at me.
“But this cannot work.”
“What?”
I tried to play innocent, but there was already a welling despair inside me.
It seemed ridiculous since I had survived all this time just fine without him.
There had been a constant dull ache inside me, but it was nothing that I couldn’t live with. But when I was with him, the thought of not being with him felt like a fate worse than death.
“It’s not the same as it was before,” he explained quietly. “The way I feel about you, its not right. It’s purely … physical. My body insists that its you, but the rest of me…” He shook his head. “I don’t think I should be around you anymore.”
“Are you banning me from the house?” Being without him, being without everyone, that would be horrendous. I had just come to terms with what was happening, and he was going to take everything away from me.
“I just think that this is an impossible situation.” He looked over at me, his eyes betraying the hurt and want he had for me. “I can’t be with you, and Jack can’t be with you. He’s tried to hide his feelings about you from me, but there is some kind of cross contamination that I can’t get a grasp on. Neither of us can be with you, so having you around would be torture.”
“That isn’t fair!” I jumped to my feet, and already hot tears were slicing down my cheeks. There was a
