Page 55 of Absolution
“Then you fuck her up,” I told him. “Pillar, remember?”
He let out a long sigh. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough for that.”
“How about you worry about that when it happens? If it happens?”
The timer beeped and Seiran took the potatoes out and set them on the counter to cool, then added the steaks to a pan. “How do they like their steaks?”
I had no idea. “Luca? Con? How do you like your meat?” I called to them.
Seiran flushed bright pink, and I couldn’t help but chuckle when Luca called back. “Long and uncut.”
“Good thing I’m both,” I told Seiran who mock growled at me. “I mean your steak, dumbass.”
“Rare, soaking in its own juice,” Luca threw back.
“Is everything he says related to sex?” Seiran wanted to know.
“I’m pretty sure everything he does is sex,” I assured him. “’Cause really, who wouldn’t want to tap that?”
“He’s sort of boy band cute without the facial hair,” Seiran allowed.
“I heard that!” Luca sounded indignant. “And Con wants his steak medium well. Boy band…the fucking nerve of some people! I’m at least Adam Levine hot.”
“Not without tattoos,” Con said. “I’m Adam Levine hot.” And he kind of was. I agreed. Seiran nodded and cooked their steaks while they continued to argue.
“Epiphanies?” I asked Seiran once he’d removed both steaks from the stove to rest before adding his own. At least he was planning to eat.
“Still thinking.”
“You think too much.”
“We both do,” he said. Wasn’t that the truth. “Are you happier now? You’ve only been back a little while and you seem happier. More calm at least.”
“I have two hot guys in the living room waiting for me, why wouldn’t I be happy?” I was happier. Not so much because Luca and Con, though that was great, but because I was no longer looking at the world and waiting for it all to end. “I’m alive, Ronnie. You know that’s a good thing, right?”
“Is it?”
I remembered Luca’s comment about how Seiran spent more time worrying about life than living it, and how I didn’t want to be the same. “I want to live the life I have. Sometimes that’s going to suck. Sometimes bad things happen. But sometimes good things happen too.” I pointed to the living room and then to the babies. We both had good things, even if sometimes they confused and stressed us out. “You gotta choose how to live your life, Ronnie. Either spend every day wishing you could die, or live it until you do. I’m choosing to live.”
He went silent again, staring at his steak like it held the answers to all his questions. “Gabe said he’ll be up right after dark to take you hunting tonight.”
I frowned. “Why would I need to go hunting if I have Luca?” Wasn’t that the point of having acibo?
“I asked him the same thing. He said that yourcibowouldn’t always be available so you had to master hunting. He didn’t make it sound like you were just going to a club to convince some cute boy to let you close for a nibble.”
Was Gabe hunting hunting? Like stalking people and taking them by force? Was that why he was gone every night?
“Will you go with him?” Seiran asked. He took his steak off the fire and turned off the burner.
“And if I see something we both don’t want to know about him?”
“I don’t think he’s hurting anyone,” Seiran said softly.
“Just because there hasn’t been bodies, doesn’t mean he’s not hurting anyone.” Vampires didn’t need to kill to eat, but a vampire as old as Gabe probably knew how to hide bodies if he’d lost that much control.
“Gabe isn’t like that,” Seiran continued.
I wasn’t so sure.