Page 44

Ten minutes later, I led him through the alleys behind Main Street, avoiding the coven’s wards and everyone likely to report us. It should have felt romantic. Mostly it felt like we were fleeing a poorly planned bank robbery.

“Where are we going?”

“On a date.”

Logan stopped so abruptly the curse nearly sent him into a trash can. “A date date?”

“No, Logan. A dental appointment. Of course a date date.”

“I should have worn better pants.”

“I’ve seen your better pants. You made the correct choice.”

I took him to the abandoned drive-in on the very edge of town. The screen was cracked, weeds grew through the asphalt, and an enormous plastic vampire leaned over the concession stand with one fang missing.

“Finally,” Logan said. “Positive representation.”

I snorted and spread a blanket on the hood of an old station wagon. With a flick of my fingers, the dead projector rattled awake. Black-and-white monsters lurched across the screen while paper bags of popcorn appeared between us.

“You did all this?”

“Don’t sound impressed. It encourages me.”

The movie was terrible. The vampire hissed at houseplants. The heroine screamed every time a curtain moved. I supplied increasingly obscene commentary until Logan laughed hard enough to slide off the hood.

I caught his wrist before he hit the pavement.

I helped him back onto the hood and, for once, didn’t release him immediately.

“Tell me something true,” I said.

“I hate jazz.”

“Something important.”

His gaze dropped to where my hand remained wrapped around his wrist. “I haven’t spoken to my family since the accident. I don’t even know what they were told. Maybe they think I died. Maybe they think I disappeared.” His mouth twisted. “Either possibility is easier than explaining that I sort of died, then got dumped in Texas and developed a complicated relationship with gravity.”

My grip softened, and I let my thumb move across his knuckles. “Do you miss them?”

“Every day.”

I waited for the joke he normally used to bury anything that hurt.

It never came.

“My father left when I was six,” I said. “Mother tells people duty called him away. What she means is that he chose having a soul over staying married to her.”

“Smart man.”

“Terrible father.”

“Both can be true.”

I leaned against his shoulder. The mate bond quieted. It wasn’t gone, merely content. It felt less like fate dragging us together and more like a choice we were making.

Logan told me more about the life he’d lost. His job as a software developer. His apartment in the city. The cat who had died the year before he was turned. His family, and the questions he couldn’t answer: whether they believed he was dead or were still waiting for him to come home.

He told me about Vivienne, the vampire who had made him and abandoned him three nights later with barely enough instruction to survive. He told me about arriving in Arrhythmia overwhelmed, hungry, and grieving, then lashing out at the elegant woman who’d offered to help.