Page 54 of The Vampire and the Barista

“Second marriage. My mum left when I was three. Apparently, she just packed her bags one day and walked out, never to return. Not that I blame her, living with my dad couldn’t have been easy.”

“She never tried to contact you?”

Jamie shook his head. “As far as I know, no. I could have tried looking for her when I was older, but I figured she wanted nothing to do with me, so I left things alone.”

“When did your dad remarry?”

“When I was fourteen. Una never liked me, she tolerated me, and basically ignored me. Especially when dad abused me. The verbal abuse was bad enough, but his punches hurt. Thankfully, he never hit me in the face.

About nine months after they married, Karl was born, and less than a year later, Kitty came along. Thankfully, they doted on the babies, and Dad didn’t try to hurt them.

“That was lucky.”

Jamie nodded. “Yeah, I did, however, check them every day to make sure I couldn’t see any bruises. I got a part-time job as soon as I could to start earning money. I knew I needed to move out, and after college, I got into university, studied hard and got my degrees. I was going to stay and do my master's, but Una started drinking heavily, and I knew I had to get Karl and Kitty out of the house and somewhere safe. I couldn’t find a decent job, so I took the job at the library coffee shop, and the rest is history.”

“I’m glad they had you in their life,” Ivan said gently.

“Me too. They are the best, and I couldn’t love them more.”

“They feel the same way about you.”

“Yeah, I’m lucky,” he paused. “So vampire hunters are real?”

Ivan nodded. “They are. There are actually two types of vampire hunters. Vampires who hunt out-of-control vampires, like my grandmother and vampire hunters who want to kill any vampire they come across.”

“That’s scary.”

“I honestly don’t think about them. I’ve not encountered any for nearly a century, I don’t think the others have either.”

“Thank goodness.”

Ivan suddenly grinned.

“What?”

Ivan moved, and Jamie found himself under his mate. “How about we make sure I can’t snore for a while.”

Jamie put a hand around Ivan’s neck, gently pulling him down. “Yes, why don’t we?”

Jamie groaned as the alarm went off. He was laying over Ivan, leaning an arm over to the phone, shutting the alarm off, before snuggling on Ivan again.

Ivan wrapped his arms around him, pulling Jamie tighter against his chest.

“We’re visiting the asylum today,” Ivan commented.

“We are,” Jamie agreed.

“We need to be careful.”

“We will be,” Jamie assured him. “We need to get Karl and Kitty up.”

“Come on then, shower time.”