“It’s not your fault,” I promise, lifting my hand to comb back his tangled curls. I haven’t even realized I’ve used my scarred arm until he pulls it towards his lips and kisses a path down the words. It stopped bleeding back in the alleyway—due to my vampire healing—but the scar will remain. Even if Frankie can make something to erase it, it can’t rectify the pain inflicted on my very soul.
“I promise you, Violet, that no one will ever harm you again,” he murmurs as his lips touch the final “e” of “vampire.”
I want to tell him not to make promises he can’t keep. I want to reassure him that I’m stronger than he believes.
But I don’t say any of that. Instead, I nuzzle his neck with my nose and whisper, “Hold me.”
Maybe with Frankie by my side, the nightmares will be kept at bay.
CHAPTER 20
JACK
I peer through Hux’s—my—eyes as he moves swiftly through the grocery store. He’s humming beneath his breath as he pushes the metal cart down the various aisleways.
This is so stupid,I deadpan as my rather cheerful brother stops in front of a chocolate display. He begins to grab items at random, dumping them into his already overflowing cart.
“The Google says this is the key to a girl’s heart,” he replies out loud, garnering the attention of a couple standing nearby.
Last night, Hux discovered that Violet was going on a date with Frankie, and now, he’s insistent he needs to go on his own date with the blonde bombshell. He did extensive research on—what he likes to call—”the Google” on how to ask a girl out. The website suggested flowers and chocolates.
Thus, we now have over fifty-five boxes of chocolates and three-hundred flowers of all types and colors in our shopping cart.
Dude, that’s enough! I exclaim as he adds another box of chocolate to the cart.
“We never know when my precious treasure is going to experience her Great Period and require chocolate for survival,” he dismisses. “Unless you want me to start cutting up body parts…”
No! We talked about this. No body parts. No maiming. No murder in the name of love.
“A little murder in the name of love is okay,” Hux murmurs absently as he continues to pore over the shelves.
We talked about this…
“No murder,” he sighs disappointedly. When he spins on his heel, I see an older woman staring at us with wide eyes, one hand clutching her cross necklace and the other raised to defend herself.
Hux smiles disarmingly at her before nodding his head subserviently.
“The great and powerful Google told me that chocolate and flowers were the key to a woman’s heart. Would you agree?” he asks, his smoky accent curling around her. She backs away a step, looking rightfully shell-shocked, before turning on her heel and waddling away. “That was rude,” Hux tells me. “The Google told me that it’s polite to say thank you for starting a conversation.”
For the love of…
It’s Google, not “the Google,” I correct, mentally face-palming myself. And you can’t just talk to humans like you would a monster. They’re far more…delicate than us. They require easing into.
“Excuse me!” Hux waves his hand erratically in the air, capturing the attention of a heavily-tattooed, muscular human. The man saunters forward with his hands in his pockets and a curious expression on his face. “Do you, my new human friend, require easing into?”
Jesus, no.
“Excuse me?” The man quirks one eyebrow, the curiosity on his face dissipating to be replaced by a dark expression.
“You’re delicate,” Hux states matter-of-factly. “And you’ll require me easing into you.”
“You motherfucker!” the man hisses, taking a lumbering step forward. I quickly wrestle with Hux for control of his mind. Not because I’m scared for my brother, but because I don’t want to be arrested for first-degree murder this early in the school year.
Hux puts up a fight, but soon, I have him shoved in the passenger seat while I take the wheel.
“What the fuck did you say to me?” The stench of body odor and sweat saturates the air, so intensely that I can taste it.
“I’m sorry,” I apologize sincerely. “I thought you were my old buddy from college.” I rake my fingers over my scalp as I flash a sheepish smile. “You look exactly like him. It was an inside joke between us.”
The man continues to stare at me for a long moment, eyes hard, before he releases me with a disgruntled huff.
“Fag,” he seethes before continuing down the aisle.
Let me kill him,Hux asserts in my head. He’s a… What word did the Google say? A cumstain? He’s a cumstain.
Ignoring him, I push the cart to the checkout lane and quickly pay for the three hundred dollars’ worth of flowers and chocolates. My left eye is practically twitching when I procure my credit card and hand it to the older lady behind the register.
Only when we’re in the car, driving back to campus, do I dare speak out loud.
“You can’t keep doing this,” I tell Hux sternly.
Doing what? If he was here, I have no doubt he would be batting his eyelashes innocently.
“Hijacking my body,” I state firmly. “The last thing I remember is waking up in the morning…”
Hux is silent for a moment, too silent, before his timid voice reverberates in my head. You don’t remember us leaving the school?
“No.” I drum my fingers against the steering wheel. “I don’t remember anything.”
I have lived with Hux for the last few hundred years. For the majority of that time, I have taken control. The few times I allowed Hux free rein, I remained relegated in a tiny sliver of darkness in the recesses of our shared brain. I was still aware of my surroundings and time passing, but I couldn’t interact with anything or anyone. I wasn’t even capable of using my senses.
