Waiting for her to hang herself with her words, maybe.
Or save herself, somehow.
“He didn’t want to listen. I didn’t know how tomakehim listen. I can’t convince someone to be different; I don’t even know if I should or if I want to,” she said, while those soft eyes of Beck’s held her hand. Helped her work a way through it, even when she couldn’t see one at all. “He did something for me that he thinks is bad, but it wasn’t. I don’t even think it’s bad in the way he imagined or wanted me to believe. He said he left me in the bar but…”
And suddenly he was actually doing it.
One hand over hers.
“I feel like maybe you should say this to him,” he said, gentle, gentle. She almost didn’t protest, it was that good. In the end, though, she had to. Maybe he could come up with a solution.
“He’s not returning my calls, Beck. He’s not returning my messages and emails. And I can’t climb his fence again, I just can’t, I can’t. I only managed to do it the first time because I told myself he’s awful. I don’t know how to force it on him when I know he’s good.”
“You go home, then.”
“But I need to—”
“I’ll speak to him. I’ll sort things. Everything is going to be all right,” he said.
And instead of saying no, she turned her hand and squeezed his back.
Twenty-One
The first thing she did when she got home was do her best to take care of herself a little better. She took off her makeup instead of falling asleep with it on. Made herself something to drink without caffeine so she wouldn’t be up all night. Then she decided she was going to have a good long bath.
She went into her bedroom to strip down, feeling notbetter, exactly.
But maybe not as bad about everything.Maybe I could accept Beck’s help or reach out to Caleb or something, just something, she thought as she went to lift her jumper over her head.
She was about a third of the way through when she heard the throat clear.
From the direction of the window. That wasfive fucking stories up.
Honestly she almost threw a chair, blindly, in the direction of the vampire that simply had to have flown up her apartment building. It was actually in her hands, when she realized. There was nothing toothy waiting to tear open her neck out there.
It was Caleb Miller.
Caleb fucking Miller, just straddling her windowsill somehow. One booted foot trying not to dirty the bedsheets just below it, the other still probably hovering over a fifty-foot drop. Or maybe not fifty feet, exactly. Maybe forty. Maybe a hundred. She had no real idea when it came to measurements.
All she knew was that it was alot.
Too much. An incredibly scary amount.
But even more scary than this was the fact that he had done it. A man so responsible that he paid other people’s tips, and checked the tires on other people’s cars, and could name all the road safety signs in countries he never even wanted to go to. A man who took a tent on a road trip, just in case something happened. Even though nothing ever happened with him.
Yeah, but it did, though, didn’t it, her brain muttered.
And then of course she was thinking ofwhyhe had panicked like that.He only does completely wild things when he’s emotionally compromised somehow, she realized. Then suddenly her heart was beating hard in an entirely different way. And it got worse when she started going over everything he must have done to even get to London. It had only been a few days, after all.
He had to have flown. He had to have flown, and then done this.
Maybe this part at least is because of Beck, she thought. But he wouldn’t even give her that much. “So before you ask,” he said. “This was supposed to just be a reconnaissance mission to check you actually lived here. Because I forgot to bring your address with me, or even clothesor toothpaste or my travel insurance, and also I think maybe I’ve left my front door open because I don’t have my keys, but anyway, long story short, I had to recall it from the memory of contact details in a notebook I left behind. And it didn’t seem right, because it’s not even near a bookstore or a movie theater. Nearest one of either of them is about seventeen blocks away, Daisy, what the fuck.”
At which point she sort of thought she might pass out standing up.
All she could think was:He left his fucking front door open.
And as soon as she did, it felt like she could hear romantic music in her head. Something big and operatic. Something that filled her up, from her socked feet to the roots of her hair. She had to swallow the immediateI love youthat swelled with it, just to get out something sensible.
