Theo did. He'd seen it too many times in his too many years on this earth.
"I ended up in our coat closet, hiding from him one morning." She laughed, but it wasn't filled with mirth. "I was a child. I felt like one," she sobered, the memory playing in her mind. "Something happened in that closet and I can't explain it. But I got an invitation to a new life here. And then I started healing."
She let out a breath and connected with his eyes in the mirror.
"And now?" he asked softly.
"While I found healing and I grew out of the person I turned into to survive, I sometimes still struggle with the voices he gave me. And the ones my sister gave me growing up. And my mother."
She felt a gentle, lapping warmth inside of her, a comfort. And though he didn't say it with words, a promise.
"Now, be vulnerable with me," she prodded, a half smile pulling up her mouth.
She hadn't realized he had kept enough distance between them as she spoke to draw her out of her head, but as she smiled at him in the mirror and tilted her head just an inch his foot stepped forward until he was now more than just bracing her hips with his hands.
He wasn't pressed against her, but there was a warm touch of closeness that sent a wave of shock through her. A pleasant shock.
"Ask me," he commanded softly. "Anything."
She wanted to ask him about the Western romances tucked into his bookshelf, obviously read more than once. She wanted to know about the way he carried himself, how long it took to set his shoulders in a way that dared the world to confront him.
She wanted to ask him the worst things he'd ever seen and what he had to heal from to become so thoughtful and calm. What violence in his life had made him so gentle?
She wanted to know why he was here and why it felt like he'd been looking for her since he arrived.
But even as she had given him her shadows, she wasn't sure she was ready for his.
She had to gather her thoughts for a second as her body adjusted to feeling him against her.
"Garlic isn't an issue obviously, since I tasted it in the pot pie."
A nod.
"Sunlight doesn't bother you, but is that because you have an enchanted ring?"
A half smile. "No. Sunlight doesn't bother me. Though I prefer evening."
"Because of your vampire skin?"
"No. Because I like darkness and starlight. Not a vampire thing." His hands flexed and pulled her back against him pushing out a soft breath from her parted lips.
"Oh," she whispered as she felt her body melt just a little more.
"What else?" he asked, a whisper against the sensitive skin of her neck. She was reminded of that night in the woods when he caught her on Midsummer. Tonight the same reaction ricocheted through her.
"Do you have super hearing?"
"Yes," the word a strong caress and she closed her eyes as a heavy breath escaped her mouth.
"How did you save Bess? And Lady Macbeth?"
He paused, their eyes holding each other in the mirror.
"I bit her. Bess. I had to pull the dark magic used on her out of her system."
"And that wouldn't turn her?"
He shook his head. "To turn someone requires many bites over time. And I prefer consent before I take away someone's mortality."
