Theo stopped grinning. “You sound upset.”
“Do I?” I asked, unable to tell. I shrugged. “I’m just stating the facts.”
“You use your brain too much,” Theo teased. “And you don’t use your heart enough.”
“I use my heart all the time. It constantly pumps blood throughout my body.”
He rolled his eyes and laughed. “That’s not what I meant. I’m saying you don’t pay enough attention to your feelings.”
I crossed my arms and lowered my voice even though nobody was around. “A vampire is talking to me about feelings?”
Theo matched my volume. “Hey, vampires have feelings too. And I’m not just a vampire. I’m your friend.” He tilted his head and raised his voice to regular volume now. “Right?”
My friend.
The answer got lodged in my throat.Yes.That was what I wanted to say. That was definitely the answer. But for some reason, I found myself unable to get the word out.
Why?
And the longer I waited, the deeper Theo’s frown became.
“Yes,” I finally blurted out. “Yes, you’re my friend, Theo.”
“Good. I hope I still am,” he replied. But the brightness of his smile was gone now, leaving it a little hollow. “Anyway, I just wanted to check up on you. Well, actually, that’s not the real reason I came.”
I didn’t know why that hurt to hear. “Oh. Why did you come, then?”
“Pierce and Adriel wanted to know how the clinic was doing,” Theo explained. “Adriel was saying something about start-up costs and billing…” He shrugged. “Some kind of business mumbo-jumbo I didn’t understand.”
“The clinic is fine.” I smiled. “It’s great, actually. I don’t know if I ever got a chance to thank you all properly. Since I got, uh, fired from my old job, it’s really nice to have a place of my own now.”
Theo’s eyes widened. It struck me how beautiful the red of his irises were.
Then I promptly shook that thought off.What the hell am I thinking?
“You got fired?” he asked.
“Um. I mean, yeah. I didn’t show up for work for months, and Margaret crushed my phone so I couldn’t use it to contact the outside world, remember?”
Theo grimaced. “Right. I guess by the time I let you use my phone, it was already too late, huh?”
“Pretty much.” I shrugged. “It’s okay, though. Since this new clinic is run by the Tenebrae conglomerate, I basically can’t get fired. I think. Unless you guys start hating me or something.”
Theo’s brows furrowed. “No, we wouldn’t do that. Everyone really likes you, Max.”
Out of all the vampires, Theo was always the one referring to me by nicknames. At first I found it annoying, but lately, since leaving the mansion, I realized they’d kind of grown on me.
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate that.”
“Especially me,” Theo added, glancing down to the concrete beneath us. After a moment he looked up again, past my shoulder. He was always a bit hyperactive, but he seemed more on edge than usual. I chalked it up to him being excited to see me. “I miss hanging around your office.”
“And bothering my patients?” I teased.
He flashed his fangs again. “Considering all your patients were also my family members, yes.”
At every mention of the Tenebrae family, I found myself experiencing a strange pang in my chest. Something like longing or nostalgia. But they were Theo’s family. Not mine. I had to remind myself of that. I was a stranger. An outsider. They had no connection to me outside of a doctor-patient relationship. In the lives of the vampires, I was a passing blip.
Theo suddenly put his arm around my shoulders. It happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to register the action until my face turned red with shock.
