“I don’t want to talk about that,” Sam said sharply, eyes wide. She shook her head slowly. “I’m not doing that with you right now. Sorry.”
I shrugged, trying to force the anger to subside so I could think properly again. If these were emotions, I wanted a refund.
“You’ll find my feelings aren’t easily hurt.”
A joke, of course. Up until I met Eli, I hadn’t realized I could have feelings about anything at all. Though perhaps it was no longer true—as evidenced by the anger that still wouldn’t quite leave me. Maybe, after so long without emotions, my newfound ones would be extra tender and easily hurt. Or worse—they’d explode out of me at inopportune moments.
That was a chilling thought.
“Anyway. I promised myself I’d never turn into our dad. That I’d never be like him. But here I am, screwing Eli’s life up, just like he did.” She sniffed, voice growing thicker and ragged again. “And now I’m drunk, on the kitchen floor, crying over a bottle of wine I dropped, and oversharing with my neighbor—who is also my brother’s boyfriend. After he just broke into my house without warning.”
I went silent, trying to make myself say the words that would let me smoothly exit this kitchen and return to the strange little slice of domestic bliss I was carving out with Eli. But I found myself hesitating—not quite wanting to leave her alone.
Perhaps the earlier version of me would have looked at the logic of the situation and realized it was smarter to fix the sister. After all, her drinking problem was a rather wild variable that could be controlled. It would’ve been easy to catch her eye, shove with a bit of power, and tell her not to drink alcohol anymore. Problem solved. And more time spent with a happier version of Eli.
But that wasn’t what went through my mind.
Instead, I remembered the photograph I’d seen hanging on the wall—Sam and Eli standing in front of a roller coaster. Both of them younger and—I had thought—innocent.
But that hadn’t been true, had it?
Their father had done terrible harm to both of them. He was still hurting them, even now. Her pain was almost certainly whatdrove her to drink. And her situation made Eli feel helpless and afraid. Even now, Sam was suffering.
If her emotions were anything like that flash of anger I’d felt—unstoppable, uncontrollable, impossible to deny—then I understood perfectly well. What she felt was far bigger than her ability to say no to it. The previous version of me would’ve left the pain right where it was. After all, it wouldn’t have been my problem.
“What if there was something you could do to change things?” I asked, deciding then and there that if she would allow it, I’d do everything in my power to help her.
“What, like rehab?”
I shook my head. “No, definitely not rehab.”
“Then what? I’ve tried therapy a couple of times. It’s never really—”
“I’m a vampire,” I said softly. The words fell between us like dead weight.
Sam stared at me, eyes widening. A moment later, outrage twisted her expression. “You should leave.”
“What?”
Of all the reactions I’d expected, that hadn’t been one of them.
“I tell you all of this shit—this deep, dark, personal shit—and you tell me you’re a vampire? Let me guess: your mom is a witch and your cousin is Bigfoot?” She grimaced, shaking her head. “I’m such an idiot, to think I could trust you. I mean, who the fuck even are you? You arrive without warning and mess with Eli’s head and—”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
Sam flinched. But then her eyes narrowed in challenge. “Prove it.”
I bared my teeth and dropped my fangs.
“Those could be fake,” she said immediately, gaze glued to my canines. But a flicker of unease crossed her face. “They make retractable fangs that look really realistic.”
“My goodness, this was much easier a hundred years ago,” I muttered, reaching for a long, jagged shard of wine glass.
“Cole, wait—” Sam started.
She broke off when I drew the broken glass across my palm. I winced at the flash of pain. Thick, dark blood welled up in the wound.
“Maybe you have a medical condition,” she said faintly, going even paler. Her gaze darted between the wrong color of my blood and the fangs still on full display.
