Page 67
Chapter 17
Nothing.
No call. No text. No dropping by to say, “Hello, Alessandra. I just wanted to reaffirm that Saturday night was the most mind-blowing sex of my extremely long life.”
Alessandra turned around in her bed for the umpteenth time and buried her head in the pillow. Too warm. She flipped it over and tried again. There. Nice and cool and . . . uh! Get out of my head.
It was no use.
Most summers, her favorite part of having three months off was sleeping in. Alessandra loved the nights and despised the mornings. But thanks to a smoking hot vampire named Kenton, the idea of sleeping in was as preposterous as going another day with literally zero contact from him. Admittedly, she hadn’t reached out to him either, and it had only been one day, but still.
Going through the motions, she washed her face and brushed her teeth, refusing to get dressed just yet. If she couldn’t sleep, she could at least remain in her pajamas. She’d spent the day in them before, after all, much to Toni’s amusement. Alessandra had spent the morning after her night with Kenton researching everything she could find about vampires. Most of it, she’d quickly realized, was crap. Stories of pasty monsters hiding from the sunlight and rising from coffins to find their next drink of blood.
The fact that she knew it was crap because she’d met an actual, honest-to-God vampire still felt like nothing short of a miracle. But she couldn’t deny this alternate world, the one she’d just learned of a week ago, existed. It was a fact, as undeniable as the blue of the sky or the fact that Stone Haven residents liked to gossip.
The bigger question was how exactly she fit into that other world.
No, Alessandra, the bigger question is why hasn’t he called?
That she should worry about Kenton’s lack of communication more than the idea that there were creatures walking the earth capable of killing humans with one bite . . . and he was one of them . . . that was slightly problematic. And then there were her concerns about her family. Were her mother and brother in any danger? Her father hadn’t known anything about his family of origin, or so she thought, but Kenton and Lawrence had found her. Would they seek out her brother too? She still had so many questions. Too bad the source of her answers had gone totally MIA. It somehow felt wrong to go to Lawrence, not Kenton, for answers. But if he didn’t call soon—
“You look like crap.”
A cup of tea waited for her on the counter.
“Thanks.”
“You’re up early.”
Toni, an early riser, liked to relax before work, sipping her tea at the kitchen table or on the front porch without a care in the world. Alessandra preferred to fly out the door at the very last minute, eking out every last second of sleep possible.
“Yeah. I didn’t sleep well,” she said, grabbing the tea and sitting opposite Toni at the little kitchen table.
Until now, she’d told Toni everything. But for some reason, she’d kept Kenton’s latest revelation a secret.
“I take it Kenton never called?” Toni and Tyler had left for a hike yesterday morning, and Alessandra had retreated to her bedroom by the time they returned.
She heaved a huge sigh, pouring all her frustration into it. “No.”
“Jesus. What the hell happened, anyway?”
She sighed. “Just the most incredible sex of my life, followed by nothing. Nada. No call, zip. Not even—”
“OK, I’ve got the picture.” Toni leaned her elbows on the table. “You will tell me about the sex. But in the meantime, get your ass upstairs and change. This isn’t one of your pajama days. You’re coming to work with me.”
“Yeah. No.”
When Toni crossed her arms, it was never a good thing.
“So your master plan is to mope? Wait for something, anything, while you engage in an epic battle in your head over whether or not to just text him first? And here I thought you were done ‘playing games.’”
She thought about that for a minute.
“Yep. That’s the plan.”
Which actually went against the grain. Alessandra was not usually the type to mope. She made things happen. Set goals and achieved them. Did the things people told her not to do. Kicked ass and took names.
Until now.
