“And hunt him. Make him your prey.”
Tai’s head snapped up, his eyes flashing with something like panic. “How do you know that?”
“Come on, dude, I’m a bartender. I hear a lot of stories from a lot of vampires. You think I’ve never met a bloodfiend before tonight?”
“Bloodfiends are statistically one in a thousand. You can’t know another bloodfiend.”
“Well, I do, and he’s a relic to boot.”
“But how? How can he be in here and not—? Claire, I’ve tried. I drove thirty miles to a blood bar where no one would know me, and the second I walked in, I knew I couldn’t handle it. Too many open drinks, and yeah, it helps that they’re all chilled, but chilled isn’t enough for me to… That’s when I knew I had to withdraw from the business plans.”
He hadn’t simply written her off. He’d tested himself. He’d tried to stay involved. “Maybe adjusting takes decades, Tai. Maybe by the time you’re a few centuries old, you’ll be comfortable in a setting like this too.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Did you react outwardly to the human in the gym? Is that what Ryker saw?”
“We’d been working out pretty hard, so I knew I’d need to slake before I left. And then this guy walked in, and…my fangs descended, and I wanted… The only thing I could think of to protect him was to freeze. I didn’t let myself move an inch until he was gone.”
He’d done the same in the car when the cop approached them. “I guess that looked pretty alarming to Ryker without context.”
“Yeah, he was ready to go find a staff member and ask for help. The minute the doors shut and the human was outside, I darted to the vending machines. No way Ryker would take a non-answer, and I realized I owed him the truth. So I told him.”
“And he said…?” This felt like one of the most vital pieces of the story. If Ryker had needed time to accept Tai’s condition, it would’ve been one more brick in the wall of his belief that he was broken. That his friend stuck beside himdespitewho Tai was at the core, rather thanbecauseof who Tai was.
“He said…” Tai scrubbed a hand down his face. When he spoke again, he’d raised the pitch of his voice closer to Ryker’s low tenor, and even his inflection sounded rather like his bestfriend’s. “‘Wow, man, that’s got to suck. I don’t think I’ve ever met a bloodfiend before, so if I ever miss something you need, just take me to task and I’ll know better next time.’”
Dear, wonderful Ryker. Claire wanted to hug him.
Before she had to ask, as if a dam inside him had been razed and a whole river of words released, Tai said, “He was comfortable with Leslie so fast, I think maybe from the day he met her. He didn’t mean to tell her about me. He said it was one of those ‘I have a friend who…’ and then a few conversations later, he said something else and Leslie, the sharp listener that she is, was like, ‘Wait—Tai‘s your friend who…?’”
Claire found herself smiling as she shook her head. “That is so unsurprisingly Ryker and Leslie.”
“Right?” Tai’s low chuckle sent a shiver down Claire’s back, and her body suddenly noticed her closeness to him, the toned muscles of his back where her hand still rested. “I was mad when he first confessed. I knew how much she already meant to him, and I wanted to be…” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I wanted friendship. With her. But if my best friend’s partner kicked me out of his life, then… I had to go quietly. I was waiting for her to do it, and then Ryker told me she’d just asked a few questions, trying to understand something she had no experience with. But no judgment, he said. Not from Leslie.”
“She’s not the judgmental type.”
“Once I got to meet her, I told him it was okay. He could answer her questions.”
“Why didn’t you answer them?”
“We were still getting to know each other. She hadn’t asked about it in front of me, and I… Claire, talking about this is…saying this stuff out loud. It’s not easy.”
She hadn’t considered the toll her interrogation might take. She’d been so focused on getting answers, correcting her internal concept of Tai Kristiansen—director of fundraising,charmer, speaker, socialite, musician. Not a liar, not a fake, not an unaffected machine with metallic eyes, but instead…a bloodfiend. She had focused on the need to reframe him, to see him clearly at last, but maybe she could have been gentler about it.
Okay, no maybe about it. Tai knewgentlewasn’t her style, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t try occasionally, when the topic was fraught.
“Did you ever talk to Leslie about it?”
“Once. She came to me right after they got engaged, and she said she didn’t expect me to go there if it was too hard for me, but that if I ever wanted to, she was here to listen.”
Shoot. Maybe Claire should have taken that approach.
“Hey,” he said with a nudge, shoulder to shoulder. “I don’t need you to be Leslie.”
“Get out of my head.” She nudged him back.
He gave her favorite version of his chuckle, the low, warm, slow one that reminded her of dripping honey. “You’re not so hard to read when your guard’s down.”
