“Anything I can do to help?”
“I need to call my mom.” Her voice isn’t sharp at all. If anything, it’s pleading, and that’s what breaks my heart the most. “She has to be worried sick about me, Kane,” she continues when I don’t immediately answer. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a search party out for me at this point. My mom, my dad, my sister Bonnie, they’re probably all losing their minds.”
I don’t tell her there’s no search party. Or that her face isn’t plastered across national news. I don’t tell her because we still don’t know why that’s the case. And the last fucking thing I want to do is make her assume something that’s not true—make her think her parents don’t care about her.
“I know you want to call your mom. I get it. I really do, Blair. But—”
“No,” she cuts me off. “No buts, Kane.” She gestures vaguely at the forest. “I can’t let them think I vanished. I can’t let them think I’ve been, like, left for dead or something. Can you imagine how horrible it has to be for them right now? They are probably worried sick.”
“I know.” I sigh and run a hand through my hair. “You’re right.”
“So, you’ll let me call her?”
My chest aches over what my answer has to be. “No. I’m sorry, but no.”
“You don’t get to say no,” she says quietly, but I can already see the sheen of tears behind her eyes. I can hear the shake in her voice.
“If you call them right now,” I explain, “you tell them where you are. Or you tell them enough that someone tracks it. Then this place isn’t safe anymore. Not just for you or for me, but all of us. For Kylie. For Rook. For Cal. I can’t put them in a bad situation they didn’t ask for.” I’ve sure as shit already done enough by bringing her here against her will.
“Seriously, Kane?” She laughs, and it sounds almost hysterical. “You think my parents are going to send someone here? You think they’re dangerous?”
I don’t answer fast enough, and a small gasp escapes her lungs. “You do. You think my parents are dangerous.”
“No.” I choose my words carefully. “I think they’re involved with people who are.”
“My father is not some criminal mastermind,” she snaps. “He sits on boards. He donates to hospitals.”
“And he walks inside elite vampire circles.”
She stiffens. “That’s different.”
“It isn’t, Blair.”
She shakes her head, stepping back like I physically pushed her. “You don’t know anything about my family.”
“I know enough.”
“Enough to what?” she fires back. “To decide I’m better off cut off from them? To decide I don’t get to hear my mother’s voice ever again?”
The word mother cracks on the way out because it’s the real wound. Her mom is at the surface of all her current turmoil.
“She raised me,” Blair continues, her voice trembling. “She prepared me my whole life. You don’t get to step in for mere days and act like you know better than the woman who birthed me. Sure, she wasn’t always the greatest at times, but what parent is? She’s consistent and only wants the best for me. That’s all she’s ever wanted. For me to have the best of everything.”
I keep my mouth shut. Mostly because I don’t know what to say. I don’t think I know Blair’s mother better than she knows her, but I know more about the elites than she does. She’s been told lie after lie, and the fairy-tale façade she has in her head doesn’t even come close to the reality.
Does her mother know the truth? I honestly don’t fucking know.
When I don’t say anything, my silence triggers her even more. Her eyes widen, filling with something raw. “You think my mother would hand me to monsters,” she says, and it’s not a question.
“I didn’t say that.” I run a hand through my hair. “I think she believes she’s doing what’s best.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
Her breathing turns ragged. “You won’t let me call them,” she says, more to herself than to me.
“I will, eventually, but not yet.”
