Since my heart wanted me to do more than sit: specifically run into the bedroom and strip off all my clothes, and my mind also wanted me to run, out the door and as far away from Ryder as I could get, I thought sitting in the living room was a nice compromise.
I turned, blindly picked one of the chairs, sat there on the edge, hands gripping my thighs.
I stared at my knees, at my hands that were white-knuckled. Because I couldn’t touch him. Because I shouldn’t touch him.
Just breathe.
I had a job to do. There was no time for my private life, not here, not with a murder suspect. And if he was innocent, then I needed to know how his blood ended up on Sven. I needed to know what he knew.
If he hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger, he might know who had. I needed a clear head so I could watch his reactions to my questions and read if he was telling the truth or a lie. With my heart pounding loud as a freight train, I wouldn’t be able to hear his answers unless he shouted them.
Pull it together, Delaney. Do the job.
The clink of ice in a glass brought my head up. Ryder stood in front of the couch to one side of me, holding a glass of water. There was another glass in his hand. Looked like, smelled like whisky.
“Thought we could both use a drink.”
Great. He’d left the room long enough to pour drinks and I hadn’t even noticed. Losing my concentration in front of a possible murderer was every kind of stupid.
He smiled softly. “If you’d rather, I have some rhubarb juice in the fridge.”
Just like that, he was my friend again. Ryder Bailey. The man I’d never stopped loving.
“Liar.” I took the water. Sipped. It was good, cold, and helped clear my head. “You hate rhubarb.”
He settled down on the couch, one arm spread across the back, the other propping the tumbler on his thigh. “No, really, it was given to me after the festival. Haven’t opened it, but the expiration date is something like two years from now. The juice that never dies. Vampire juice.”
I felt all the blood drain out of my face. “Why are you talking about vampires?” Even though my pulse was running too quickly, I was assessing his body language, and possible aggression levels.
Ryder and I were friends. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t take him down, cuff him, hell, tase him, if he made the wrong move.
“It was a joke? Apparently a bad joke. What do you have against vampires? Read too many teen books?”
He was smiling, but there was something false about it. Something about his smile that wasn’t my friend. Ryder had been gone for eight years. It was moments like this when I remembered there were parts of him I did not know. “Or maybe you’ve seen someone suspiciously vampire-like lately?”
He lifted his glass, swallowed the amber liquid, his gaze never leaving mine.
It was that motion, the bend of his arm to bring the glass to his lips that caught my eye. His long shirt sleeve was tailored, a little tight on his muscular arms. It was buttoned at the cuff, but there was a bulkiness under the material, at the bend of his elbow.
A bandage?
“I need you to unbutton your sleeve for me,” I said.
His head tipped to the side, as if he hadn’t quite heard me correctly. “What?”
“I need you to unbutton your sleeve.”
“You want me to get undressed?”
“No. Just the sleeve. The left sleeve.”
“Why?”
“There’s been some trouble in town. I need to see your left arm.”
He leaned forward and placed the glass on the coffee table in front of him. “What if I say no?”
“Are you going to?”
