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In the space of a human heartbeat, Jacqueline was in his face. “You will never be over me, Ryker. Not ever.”

He lifted her under the elbows, ignored her glare, and set her down a full arm’s length away from him. When he let her go and said nothing else, she stared disbelieving, maybe panicked. He turned toward his car, his back to her, and that seemed to break something inside her.

“You’re pathetic,” she yelled. “A coward. You play dead like a little vampire baby who wants its mama.”

“I sure do.” He got into his car and shut the door. As he turned the key, she kept shouting.

“I told every man I was with while we were together—you know what I told them? That you were boring and pathetic. That you play dead like a needy baby!”

“Okay.”

“It wasn’t three men, Ryker. It was so many more than three.”

“Okay.”

He put the car in drive and allowed it to creep toward her, crossing his fingers that she wouldn’t leap on the car and kick his windows in with sheer strength and high heels. Maybe she didn’t want to mess up her wardrobe, or maybe she was too stunned.When his bumper was a foot from her shins, she stepped aside. He held in the sigh of relief that she would be able to hear.

“Don’t you want to know how many more it was?”

In the flash of his headlights in her eyes, the last unknown piece of Jacqueline lay bare and flat. This was the way to beat her. This had always been the way. All he’d ever had to do was stop caring what she thought of him—a true full stop. Without that, she had no hold on him; and finally, after two years, she wasn’t the only one who knew it.

“Bye, Jacqueline. Have a nice life.”

He drove away, and she didn’t shout after him, because she could have said anything,anythingand he’d have kept driving.

Finally they both knew it.

Twenty-Eight

She couldn’t sit in her car all day. After all, Dad and Mom knew by scent and sound that she and Ryker were out here, parked in the driveway. Yet Leslie couldn’t seem to move beyond sorting and re-sorting her handwritten notes. Yes, the notes were mostly unnecessary. Ryker had everything printed, highlighted, and organized in a file folder. But Leslie had needed to see the same facts in her own handwriting.

She looked up from the pages in her hands and stared at the house she’d grown up in, the house she returned to for Sunday dinners—now usually with Ryker. The modest Cape Cod sported pale-gray siding and blue shutters on the gable windows. When she was little, those shutters had been green, but Dad and Mom had decided on a change about five years ago. In her earliest memory, she was taking a tumble down the hill in the backyard, and then Dad was scooping her up and holding her while Mom kissed her skinned knee. She had been safe here.

Always safe. Sometimes confused.

“We don’t have to do this.”

Ryker’s voice punctured her paralysis. He’d said the words half a dozen times between the minute Leslie had picked him up at the airport and…now. Right now. Sitting in her car, endlessly re-sorting her needless notes.

“I tried asking,” she said. “I tried ignoring. Now it’s time to try rocking the boat.”

“Okay. If it helps, I’m with you all the way.”

“Oh, it does. Thanks for doing this with me.”

He nodded, but she knew no thanks was needed for this. When she’d asked him to be present at the confrontation, his relief had been obvious. He wanted to be here for her…because he loved her. That fact still tasted new and sweet.

Unlike the facts on the papers in her hands, which tasted new and bitter.

“I’m ready,” Leslie said and opened her car door.

Ryker got out too, and they walked up to the front door together. Her mom opened the door as they reached it, typical vampire hearing and timing. She wished this thought didn’t also taste bitter. Maybe after today, it wouldn’t have to.

“Hi, Les! Ryker, nice to see you again.”

“Thanks, Debra. It’s good to see you too.”

Mom motioned them in ahead of her. “Paul’s in the den working one of his jigsaw puzzles. I told him you two had something to discuss with us.”