“I’d never risk someone I love.”
“What if she wanted the risk? What if she bit first, to show her trust?”
“Then I’d have to fight it.”
Well, that was plain absurd. Between eternals, the second vampire responded to the bite of the first with a yearning to bite back, and it had nothing to do with being a bloodfiend. Claire shook her head and tried to figure out why his certainty made her want to throw something.
“Look, wejustfigured out we’ve been into each other for three years. We have to get to know each other again. So I’m not suggesting we’re eternals.” Why was she hedging? Enough. “But if the man I wanted to spend the next nine-hundred-plus years with denied me that bond, I wouldn’t just let it go. You don’t get to make that decision for—for whomever you fall in love with.”
“For myself, I do.”
“Becoming bloodbound is mutual, Tai.”
“It’s mutual for normal people.”
“Stop talking like you’re some sort of blight on the world.”
Tai sprang to his feet and landed ten feet away from her. Was he going to run? Claire leaped from the tree to his side. His body quivered like a tuning fork. His eyes flashed.
“You saw it.” His baritone was all smoke now, no honey. “You saw what I am, but that’s all you did, Claire. And you can’t stay with me through it if you won’t acknowledge what it is. If you won’t believe me when I try to tell you.”
Claire held herself still. She wanted to go to him, but she had to hear him first. Really hear him. Why was she so determined to contradict his self-judgment? He was right; she had never felt it within her own body. She had only seen it for the first time this week. She had only heard him describe it, heard Peter describe it.
And that was it, the thing she kept tripping on.
Their descriptions were entirely different.
She closed the distance between them, took his hands in hers and pulled them down from his face. “I’m sorry, Tai. I believe you.”
His dark brows crinkled. Skepticism? Fair enough.
“Will you hear me out on something?” she said.
He nodded, but the caution didn’t lift from his posture. Well, that was her fault.
“I think it could help you to talk to the bloodfiend I know. I know he’d want to talk to you, if I told him about you.”
Tai’s brows lowered even farther. “There’s no cure.”
“I know that. But there are coping skills, methods of managing it.” When he opened his mouth to argue, Claire lifted her hand. “I’ve heard him talk about all of it, Tai. It’s not my place to tell his story, and anyway, you can argue me down any time, because you’re right—I’ve never been through it. But he has lived with this for more than two centuries. You could tell him all of it, the things you can’t say to me.”
Slowly Tai’s eyes lit. “I… Maybe I could. Talk to him.”
“Is it okay with you if I ask him?”
For a long moment, he looked past her, down the quiet neighborhood street, toward the glaring orange rays of sun that now slanted across the grass. Then he met her eyes. “Yeah. You can do that.” He ran his palm over his face. “I didn’t mean to wreck the mood. That’s twice in one week.”
“No,” she said. She took both his hands and held onto them. “Thursday night was hard on you, and it’s still close to the surface.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s understandable. And I’m here for it.”
He didn’t kiss her this time. Instead he gathered her into his arms and held onto her, and she held onto him. For a moment, something trembled inside her, threatened to break into tears to mirror the sobbing that had filled her eleventh birthday. Before she could figure out why, the past pain was eclipsed by the flash of an image before her eyes—Tai, head in his hands, weeping. But the image didn’t hurt to see. Somehow it came with the knowledge that this was what he needed. This was a turning point, a healing point. And then the future-sight showed her something else. Tai sitting at her bar, entirely at ease. They had to happen in order, but theywouldhappen.
She wanted to tell him, but he wouldn’t believe her today. She would believe it for him until he could believe in himself. And with this new certainty her old tears swallowed themselves and were quiet again.
Sixteen
