And the realization hits before I open my eyes, sinking deep into my chest like a weight I didn’t know I’d been carrying. Theair is warm and familiar, laced with rosemary and onions and something sweet I can’t quite place.
I sit up too fast, heart slamming against my chest while the quilt covering my body slips down my waist. And instantly, my vision is filled with the sights and memories of the place I called home for most of my life.
Gammy’s house.
My eyes dart around my old childhood bedroom, taking inventory of pink walls and floral curtains and the old oak dresser with the chipped corner I used to stub my toe on as a kid.
“How…?” I whisper, and when I look toward the window, I find Rook sitting in the chair I used to curl up in when I was a teenage girl sneak-reading my grandmother’s Harlequin romance novels.
He has a notepad and pen in his hand as he scribbles furiously at an inhuman speed. When he notices my open eyes, he freezes completely.
“How…how did we get here?” I ask. Last thing I knew, I’d fallen asleep in the hotel bed, my legs intertwined with his much larger ones after making love for the first time.
His smirk is smooth and cocky as he raises a shoulder. “There are a lot of things I’m capable of that are going to come as a shock to you at first. Some of them you learned yesterday. Some of them you learned this morning.”
“And what?” I snort. “You couldn’t, say, do the kidnapping this way, with your super sleuth-y voodoo vampire magic? Slide in while I was asleep on the couch, have us avoid the whole violentbattle with three ominous men in my driveway, and wake me up with a coffee or something?”
He chuckles, and butterflies dance in my chest at the sound. It’sbeautifuland so intrinsically satisfying. To be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.
“A fair point, and a far better plan than I executed myself,” he admits with a smile. “But you have to understand, before you were mine, I knew you weresupposedto be. Fighting against it robbed me of every ounce of my finesse.”
“And whydidyou fight it?” I ask then, my voice soft. “If we’re so meant to be, why didn’t you just…flirt? Let it happen?”
Standing slowly, he sets his pad and pen to the side and walks to the bed to lean over me with his hands at my waist. His eyes are calm, but his lips are tight as he touches them to mine. “Get dressed,” he says cryptically instead of answering. “Some of this…is better heard from someone else.”
“Someone else? Someone else who?”
The question is barely out of my mouth before he’s out of the room, flashed down the hall in a blurred cloud of speed.
Annoyed and intrigued at once, I climb out of the bed, throw on the blue and yellow striped matching sweats he’s laid out at the foot of it, and make quick work of peeing and brushing my teeth before heading down the hall.
When I get to the kitchen, my grandmother and Rook are both sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for me. Even knowing we’re at her house, and that it makes sense for her to be here, the sightof the two of them sitting there so casually comes as a complete shock.
But the second Gammy sees me, she’s on her feet.
“Oh, baby.”
She crosses the room in two steps and pulls me into her arms, holding me so tight my breath catches. Her shoulders tremble, and when she presses her face into my hair, I feel the dampness of tears.
“I was so scared,” she whispers. “I tried to call you yesterday and this morning. You never answered. And I thought—”
“I’m here,” I murmur, clinging back just as hard. “I’m okay.”
She pulls back, cupping my face with both hands like she needs to see me whole to believe it.
Only then does her gaze slide to Rook. Something complicated crosses her expression—relief first, then fear, then something like resignation.
“So, Rook,” she says softly. “You think it’s time we tell her?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rook replies.
“Wait…you know Rook?” I ask, looking between them, still trying to catch up.
“Not until a few hours ago, sweetheart, no. But I’ve known of him—and ofhis kind—for quite some time.”
“Vampires,” I say on a whisper, and it’s so tragically comical, even Rook has to hide his smile.
My grandmother, though, she laughs outright.
