Quite possibly ever again.
Tears fall. I can’t stop them. I don’t even want to. All my emotions are too big to contain.
After a couple of hours, Sammy leaves. It was so good of him to wait for so long. I’m devastated that I couldn’t find the courage to go to him. And now he is gone. The opportunity is lost forever.
His absence burns.
My tears turn to sobs and I cry all alone in the bottom of my pool.
Chapter twenty-six
Sammy
The sound of the ringtone is making me grind my teeth. Why won’t Lello pick up? I’ve called him so many times, it has to have placed me in the officially unhinged category. Rationally, I know he must have his phone on silent. Or he has lost it again. But I have to keep trying. It’s like a compulsion at this point.
Blue is upset and all alone at the bottom of the pool, and I can’t stand it. That evil motherfucking demon, Gray, is refusing to go down there. Sprouting some bollocks about privacy. I nearly decked the little shit. So it’s a good thing Mal took him away.
But it means Lello is my only hope. And he is not answering his phone.
Goddammit.
Maybe I can hold my breath and get down there? Gah! No, that’s the worst idea ever. If something goes wrong and Blue has to save me, we’ll be back to square one and while part of me is deeply and insidiously attracted to that idea. I could never do that to Blue. He has made his decision perfectly clear. He doesn’t want me to be his mate.
“Hello?” Lello’s voice is all crackly and distorted.
“Why the fuck haven’t you been answering your phone?” I yell.
“I was swimming at the lake. What’s wrong?”
I inhale sharply. “Have you seen the group chat?”
The line goes quiet for a moment. I think Lello is checking his screen.
“No,” he says a few moments later. “Don’t have any Wi-Fi out here.”
The background noise is deafening. It sounds like he is in a car. He probably only just came within cellphone range.
“Long story short,” I say. “Blue is upset and at the bottom of the pool and Gray is being a dickhead and I…” I can’t finish the sentence. I can’t. I can’t say I’m no longer Blue’s mate out loud.
“Okay, we are on our way back. Won’t be long.”
The line goes dead. I let out a little growl and throw my phone onto my bed. Then I flop down after it.
My door opens and Ned walks in. He is holding a bottle of whiskey in one hand and two glasses in the other.
I sit up. “I should…”
What? What should I do? Go lurk helplessly by the pool again? That’s stupid as well as pointless.
“You’ve done everything you can, leave it to Lello,” says Ned.
A heavy sigh escapes me, and I rub my hands over my face. The sound of whiskey being poured into a glass echoes around the room. I look up at the vampire and he hands me a glass.
“Thanks,” I mutter as I take it and down it in one.
Shit. That was good stuff. I should have savored it more. It probably cost a bomb.
“You’re a good friend,” says Ned, as he makes himself at home and sits on the end of my bed with me.
