Vampire born, p.34
Vampire Born, page 34
“The truth? You want me to tell the police you’re a vampire?”
“It’s okay.” He placed his hands on my upper arms with the gentlest touch. “They’re from a special division of law enforcement in the state of New York—and several other places—that deal with cases like this. Cases where supernaturals have inadvertently revealed themselves to humans. These officers are specially trained. They know how to talk to these men to make them doubt what they saw, and in a worst-case scenario, if the human refuses to let it go, there are methods of hypnotism that can make people’s memories very hazy when it comes to certain details.”
“Okay, mind blown…again! The cops know about you people? And they change memories? Are you kidding me? That’s terrifying in and of itself.”
“They don’t change memories. They just make it difficult to recall specific aspects.”
“I can’t even…I don’t know what to say. I feel like my entire life has been a ruse. The entire existence of humans on the planet is a ruse.”
“You’re not exactly wrong.”
It was clear the police had arrived with lights flashing and sirens blaring, and Nick turned to go back inside Sage’s room.
“Wait,” I said, reaching to grab his arm. “How did you get here so quickly when she called you?”
He bit down on his lip and looked away from me like he was embarrassed.
“What?” I prodded. “Where were you?”
“I don’t like being away from the two of you. I’ve been staying in the van outside the house since you asked me to leave. I park up the street at the top of the hill and wait until you turn all the lights off, and then I coast it back down and pull it into the driveway for the night. I was still up on the hill when she called.”
“Hello?” came a female voice from downstairs. “Is anyone home?”
I glanced toward the stairs and back to Nick in a panic. “Are they inside the house?”
“We sort of don’t have a front door anymore. You had the deadbolt locked, and I needed to get inside as quickly as possible.”
“You busted down our door?”
“I gotta go.” He squeezed my hand and headed down the stairs as he called out, “I’m here. I’m the homeowner. I’m coming down the stairs, unarmed, hands in the air.”
I went into Sage’s room and lay down next to her on her bed, stroking her hair to calm us both. “You okay, Sugar Cakes?”
“Why did those men come here?”
“Desperate people make bad choices, baby. But you’re safe, okay? You don’t need to worry about them. Daddy and the police will take care of them, and Mommy will stay here with you.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
ARIA
Nick got out of Greg that he blamed me for Cazzie leaving. She had refused to reveal her whereabouts and wouldn’t let him see Billy, and when she told him she was filing for divorce, he’d decided to take out his frustration on me.
Given the choice between him venting his anger physically on me or Cazzie, I would have volunteered to go toe-to-toe with him on the mat. But instead, the coward had broken into my house and laid in wait for me, bringing his brother along to seal the deal.
Sequestered away from them in Sage’s room behind a closed door, I wasn’t privy to what the two men told the cops, but Nick assured me there would be no adverse ramifications to what they had seen.
By the time the questioning was done and the police had gone, Sage was fast asleep, and I was so exhausted I felt like I might collapse at any moment.
Despite all the uncertainty surrounding our relationship, I wanted nothing more than to curl up safe in my husband’s arms and sleep, knowing my daughter was safe as well.
Unfortunately, thanks to Nick busting into the house like the Kool-Aid man, our front door had been torn off its hinges, destroying the frame, and thanks to my encounter with Greg and his brother, the window overlooking the deck on the back side of the house was nothing but a gaping hole.
Not only did the two openings create a breezeway that let in the nighttime chill, but it made the already difficult prospect of feeling vulnerable in the house damned near impossible to bear.
I knew there was no way I’d be able to lie upstairs and sleep knowing anyone could walk right in.
Nick had offered to stay downstairs on guard duty since he didn’t need to sleep, but I selfishly didn’t want to be away from him at all.
“What if we bring Sage into our room and lock the door?” he asked, searching for a solution.
I shuddered with a shrug. “I guess I’m being ridiculous, but I really don’t want to stay here at all. It just doesn’t feel like…home.”
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into his chest. “I get it. I understand. I may have a solution, a place we could go, but I’m not sure how you’d feel about it.”
Tilting my head back to look up at him, I frowned. “If it’s your mom’s big ole spooky vampire castle, I’m sorry, but no. I don’t think I could sleep there even if none of this had happened tonight.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not mom’s place. Somewhere else. It would just be me, you, and Sage. It’s private and secure. Very secure.”
It could have been a roadside motel, and if it was safe and I had Nick and Sage with me, it would be perfect.
“How far is it?”
“Nyack. So, forty-five minutes, maybe?”
I considered going to Haley’s instead. Or Cricket’s. Or even Angie’s. But I didn’t want to wake them in the middle of the night, nor did I want to worry them. Or raise questions regarding what was going on with Nick and me.
Things weren’t back to normal, that was for sure, but I was willing to do what I had to do to get through the trauma of the night, and for me, that meant having my husband with me. I was willing to pretend we were okay for a while if it meant he could be by my side.
In a testament to how tired I was, I fell asleep as Nick drove us to his mystery location in Nyack, only waking when he stopped to punch the code in to open an elaborate gate.
“What is this place?” I rubbed sleep from my eyes and covered my yawn with my hand as I took in the manicured landscaping and curved drive.
“It’s my house, or it was. Before we met.”
“This? This was your house?” I asked, gasping at the sight of the contemporary three-story structure ahead of us, largely made of metal and glass with soft white spotlights reflecting off the windows to give the whole building a soft glow. “Wait. So, who lives here now? How can we stay here?”
“No one lives here. It belongs to the Gilde, the trust that manages all the properties my family owns. It can be problematic for an immortal to own real estate in their own name, since at some point, human record keepers would expect the owner to die or the property to change hands. Setting it up under a trust allows the ownership to be continuous without any individuals publicly named.”
“How much property does your family own?”
“Honestly? I have no idea.” He parked the car in the circle drive and shut off the ignition. “Let’s just say my parents have been building their real estate portfolio for quite some time.”
“But if no one lives here, has this place just been sitting empty since you left?”
“Pretty much, yes. It might occasionally have been loaned out to a family friend who was in the area, but I wouldn’t know since I was no longer involved.”
“So, all this time, you’ve known you had a whole different house just sitting here waiting for you?”
“It wasn’t waiting for me, Aria. I relinquished all my rights to any of my family’s holdings when I committed to a human life.”
“But you’re here now.”
He shrugged as he opened the driver’s door. “Look, I wasn’t sure how things were going to go, and I needed to have a place where Sage could be comfortable. You know, in case we…well, in case we weren’t parenting in the same household.”
His words pierced the pretend-it’s-all-fine bubble I’d been living in the past couple hours. He’d expected us to get divorced. He’d thought he’d have visitation with Sage. And he’d planned to bring her here to this mansion for it.
“So much for not wanting your parents’ wealth. You’ve really just jumped back into rolling with the dough, haven’t you? You’re visiting your mom. You’re flying around in the company jet. And now you’re making plans to live here on your own?”
“I already told you that my feelings about my family’s wealth haven’t changed, but I also told you I will use whatever resources I can get my hands on if it means it will help repair the damage I’ve done. Now, do you want to go inside and get some rest? Or is there some place else you’d rather us stay?”
Looking over my shoulder at Sage sleeping peacefully, her head tilted back and her mouth wide open in slumber, I resigned myself to swallowing my pride. It made no sense to drag her someplace else when there was a perfectly good place right in front of us. A literal mansion, no less.
“This is fine, I guess.” I opened the passenger door and then glared back at him. “But only for one night.”
Nick put his hands up in submission. “Whatever you say, Angel. I’ll get someone out to look at the door and the window tomorrow, and we’ll get it fixed as soon as possible. I’d like to get a security system installed as well, along with some cameras outside.”
He exhaled so heavily that it seemed the weight of the world was on his shoulders, and I wondered if vampires got tired even though they didn’t need sleep. He’d mentioned they needed to rest and recharge. Undoubtedly, the past few days had drained him too.
I stepped out of the car as he opened the rear sliding door to get Sage. I wanted to go back to pretending everything was fine. I didn’t want us to fight, and I didn’t want to bring more tension into an already stress-filled night.
On some level, I understood that he was doing his best to make things right, and it seemed ridiculous on my part to rebuff his efforts because he had access to money.
There were worse places we could be sleeping for the night.
I followed him as he carried a sleeping Sage up the wide front steps to place his finger on a security pad by the door. A mechanism whirred to life with a slide and a click, and then Nick opened the door.
We stepped inside a spacious foyer that stretched upward all the way to the ceiling of the third floor. A winding, spiral staircase dominated the space, and cased openings led to a living area on the left and a dining room on the right. Lights automatically illuminated the area as we entered, and I tried to hold my mouth shut as I took in my surroundings.
Nick had already headed up the stairs, Sage’s sleeping head lolling on his shoulder as she hung like dead weight in his arms.
“This was your house?” I asked again as I rushed to keep up with him. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t believe you lived here.”
We reached the landing on the second floor, and he headed down the hallway to the left.
“Nick, when we started dating, you lived in a little condo in Cornwall. How did you go from this to that?”
“I told you, when I severed ties with my family, I gave up all my rights to their properties and any other assets. I used nearly all my own resources to contract the shifter, and the remainder was put toward getting Blood for All up and running. So, when we started dating, I was basically starting out from scratch. The rent on that condo was reasonably affordable.”
“But you had this! Why would you give up this to live like that?”
He pushed open the second door on the left, and then he turned to face me. “To own my decisions. To live my own life. To be human. To be with you.”
I stared after him as he stepped inside the room, and when I followed him in, I didn’t even bother to keep my jaw from dropping.
The room was a young girl’s pink princess dream, complete with a twin bed encased inside a fancy, round carriage. The cotton-candy-colored gauze draped across the ceiling matched the gorgeous pink bedspread and curtain set. In the corner was a beautiful white desk and chair, perfectly sized for Sage, and against the wall at the foot of the bed was a large dollhouse, at least as tall as her if not taller.
“Okay, well, this doesn’t feel creepy at all,” I mumbled as Nick pulled back the covers and laid Sage on the bed before nestling them back around her. He then reached to press a round button on the bedside table, and twinkle lights danced across the ceiling underneath the pink gauze.
“What’s creepy about it?” Nick asked as he looked around the room.
“The fact that my daughter somehow has a whole bedroom nicer than any she’s ever had before in a mansion I’ve never set foot in. It’s strange and unsettling, and I don’t like it.”
He motioned toward the hallway, and I bent to kiss Sage’s forehead and tuck her in tighter. “I love you,” I whispered against her ear, and then I followed him into the hall.
“First of all, this wasn’t something I was trying to do behind your back,” he said. “I was terrified you were going to cut me off completely, and I threw myself into this project over the last couple of days to feel close to Sage and to give myself some kind of hope that maybe you’d let me see her from time to time.”
“You did all that yourself? Just in the last couple of days? When did you have the time?”
“You’d be surprised what you can accomplish when you don’t need to sleep or eat.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Aria, I’m sorry if it upset you. That wasn’t my intent. I just didn’t want to be one of those deadbeat dads who doesn’t have a dedicated space for my kid, so I made sure that if it came down to me only seeing her every other weekend or even less, at least she would know she was wanted and welcome, that she had a place here.”
On the one hand, I was touched by the depth of his emotion and the extent of his efforts on our daughter’s behalf. On the other hand, his actions served to remind me of how damaged our relationship was at present, and no amount of pretending would make that go away.
“I think she’ll love it,” I said finally. “She’ll be confused as all hell why she has a room in this strange house, but the room? That, she’ll adore.”
Frowning, he rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “We don’t have to tell her it’s her room. Not right now, anyway. We can say it’s a house we’re borrowing while ours is repaired. On some level, that’s true, right?”
“Is that how you make the deceit feel okay? As long as on some level it’s true?” The hurt in his eyes made me hurt, and I wished I could take back the words. “I’m sorry. I’m tired, and I’m frustrated, and I don’t know why I seem to be hellbent on picking a fight. I was thinking earlier that I wished we could just pretend everything’s okay, just for one night, and here you are, trying to be supportive and nice, and I’m being a stupid jerk.”
“You don’t have to apologize for what you’re feeling. You’re right. I justified what I was doing because I told myself if I wasn’t outright lying to you, then it wasn’t the same as a lie. That was wrong. It was deceitful, no matter what my intentions were. But I do have a question for you.”
“Okay.” I crossed my arms, certain he was about to put me on the defensive.
“Why did you tell Sage I was out of town?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“You told Sage I couldn’t be at the soccer tournament because I was out of town, which wasn’t true. Why did you tell her that?”
“Because I couldn’t tell her we’d split up. It would have devastated her, and without knowing how things were going to pan out, I didn’t want to upset her if I didn’t have to. Not to mention that I’m not about to tell her what you are.”
“So, what you’re saying is…and we didn’t split up, by the way. At least I don’t see it like that. I’d like to think we’re just working through some things. For now, at least. But anyway, you told Sage something that wasn’t true because you wanted to spare her heartache and grief over something she wouldn’t be able to understand, right?”
I narrowed my eyes as I realized what he’d done. “No. Don’t even do that. The situation is not the same at all. First of all, I’m not a child. Secondly, you never even gave me a chance to understand. You assumed what I would think and what I would feel, and because of that assumption, you withheld information and allowed me to fall in love with you, knowing all along that you were only presenting one version of the story.”
“If I’d told you right from the start…if I’d said when we first met, when we first started corresponding via email, before we even began to talk on the phone or otherwise…if I’d told you then what I was—what I’d been—would you have stuck around?”
“I don’t know, Nick. Probably not. But I deserved the opportunity to make that choice, and you took that away from me. I didn’t get the chance to decide if your background, your condition, was something I wanted to deal with. I didn’t get to determine if I wanted my daughter to have a vampire for a stepfather. I wasn’t given the time to do any kind of research or weigh my options ahead of time. Instead, you presented this fairy-tale version of who you wanted to be, and to some extent, I believe, who you thought I wanted you to be.”
“I am who I am. Other than my physical make-up, I’ve never lied to you or hidden things from you or changed what I thought or felt to impress you or make you feel for me.”
“Then, maybe we would have fallen in love anyway. Maybe we would have hit it off, and I would have decided it was worth the risk. But you never gave me the chance to decide. You didn’t have enough faith in me to believe that I could accept you as you are.”
He opened his mouth to say something, and then he closed it and shook his head.
“What?” I crossed my arms again. “Say it. Let’s not hold anything back now.”
“You’re saying I should have told you then, and I should have. No question! But even now, even when you’ve had six years to get to know me and five years as my wife, this still has completely rocked how you view me, how you see me, and whether you think we can be together. You know me. You know who I am and what I stand for and what kind of man I am in here!” He pounded his fist against his heart. “I didn’t change any of that when I hit my head in that damned accident and went back to being this cursed creature. You said you’d love me and be in my corner no matter what, but as soon as you found this out, that changed. Can you not understand why I would have hidden this in the beginning? Especially when I thought I’d put it behind me?”
