Page 38

Kai

For three blissful seconds when I wake up everything feels okay. Rolling over, I can feel the weight of a body behind me. It’s so nice, I don’t even mind that my skin is a little gritty and gross from the club. Usually I shower before going to bed if I wear glitter.

Stretching, my fingers brush the cool skin of the body lying next to me. It’s smooth and hairless. Which is… not right. Confused, my hands brush the skin again. The hard abdominal muscles are familiar, but wrong. Nikolo .

Panic rising, my eyes snap open and I bolt upright, falling to the floor in my scrambling retreat from my best friend. Why the fuck is he in my bed? Tugging at my hair I stare at Nikolo, lying in my bed in only his briefs, hyper aware of my similar state.

“For the love of the Gods, we didn’t do anything, you idiot.” Nikolo grumbles, cracking an eyelid to send a withering glare.

He’s right, I slowly and painfully piece it together. We didn’t do anything. After he dragged my ass to the cab and hauled me home I asked him to stay with me.

Because I was heartbroken.

Because of Finn.

Fuck .

Releasing my hair, I collapse back on to the bed and curl up into a ball, a fresh wake of heartache washing over me.

This is fucking awful.

“I’m sorry, Kai.” Nikolo wraps himself around my back, his forehead resting in the crook of my neck. We lie like that until it gets too uncomfortable. The position and the silence.

“I need to shower,” I mumble. Not that I really want to. It just feels like the right thing to say.

“Okay.” Nikolo rubs my arm once more and rolls off me. Except I don’t move. It’s just too hard. “I’ll make you some blood. Get cleaned up.”

I grunt, but lay there for far too long before I manage to drag myself out of bed. The shower is cool, verging on uncomfortably cold and I don’t even put my hair oil in—just leave it to air dry while I slide on some baggy sweats and an oversized tee I didn’t even know I owned.

“Maddy will be here in a minute. I texted her when we got home last night.” Nikolo raises an appraising eyebrow, looking me over carefully, and hands me my mug. “Did you want to start now or wait?”

I stare into the mug, like it might have the answers to how all this got so fucked up. All it has is a little ring of bubbles around the rim.

“Come on, come sit down and tell Daddy Nikolo all about it.”

“Godsdamn it, Nikki, I already feel like shit, don’t make me vomit before I’ve had any blood.” Laughing bitterly through my grimace, I follow him to the couch, taking a healthy sip of the blood on the way.

Settling in on opposite sides of the couch I tuck a cushion into my lap.

“So what happened?” He asks eventually, looking at me with brotherly affection.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Maddy? Where’s my phone?” I ask when I realise I haven’t seen it .

“I hid it. You’ll get it back when we’ve talked.” Nikolo’s smile wrinkles his nose. He pats my leg affectionately when I let out an indignant squawking sound.

“What? Fuck that! Give it back—”

He’s saved by the doorbell. Patting my leg again, he winks and gets up, ignoring my outrage to get the door.

Maddy looks different outside work hours. The tight fitting black and teetering heels are traded for light blue jeans and a white tee shirt. Living as long as she has, I guess she’s learnt not to commit too hard to any aesthetic choices.

I should probably be embarrassed to let my boss see me in my pathetic state, even if she is my maker. But I’ve long accepted my faults and I accept the pitying cluck of her tongue and the way she bundles me up on the couch so she can wrap me up in a hug.

“What happened, my darling?” She asks quietly, brushing a kiss into my hair.

Nikolo settles in by my feet, patting my calf affectionately and, despite the way he completely destroyed me last night, I can’t help but worry about Finn and who is comforting him this evening.

“Finn.” It’s hard to form the words. I look to Nikolo for help, but he just smiles tightly.

I have to do this myself, apparently. Fuck.

“Last night, we went to Hearts Gate. A group of us. I thought everything was fine. Then he went to the bar and these guys started dancing with me and when he came back… he bolted. And then I followed him and he said—he said—”

I can’t actually say it. My throat closes over painfully and I can’t even swallow. It feels like I’m choking.

“ Shhh .” Maddy strokes my arm, resting her cheek on my head. “I understand. Just take a moment. ”

“I don’t know what to do. I can’t—” I can’t finish the sentence. Because saying, “I can’t live without him” feels dramatic, considering what our relationship has been.

But it’s also true.

“Sometimes I forget how young you lot are,” Maddy says eventually. “There is still so much for you to learn. I don’t know your Finn well, Kai, but you need to have a little faith in him. From what you’ve spoken about, he has not had an easy time of it since his transition.”

“And now he’s all alone,” I mumble against her shoulder, earning myself a painful squeeze on the ankle from Nikolo.

“Is he though? Is he truly? Are you truly so foolish to let one small argument take him away from you forever? Maybe you should have a little more faith in yourself , Kai.”

“But he said—” I sound like a child arguing with her, but I can’t help it. I feel like a child.

“Kai, do you or do you not work at a bar?” Maddy snaps, not unkindly. It’s the first crack in Maddy’s cool, calm demeanour. I ignore Nikki and his snickering at the other end of the couch.

“Uh, yeah, Maddy. What are you getting at?”

“Great Gods of Old and New, save me from these vampire children. None of you would have survived the first frosts back in my day.” Maddy groans, pinching the bridge of her nose.

A sharp look in Nikki’s direction cuts off his snickers.

He almost looks contrite. “And in all your many hours at Bloody Temptations, how many drunken outbursts have you witnessed? Gods, Kai, how many drunken outbursts have you caused ? Being a vampire doesn’t somehow make him immune to being a drunken fool. ”

“So, you’re saying he was just drunk? That he wasn’t breaking up with me?” Dangerous rays of hope poke through my despair .

“No.” Oh. Well, fuck. “What I’m saying is perhaps talk to him before you go throwing yourself off the nearest tower in your bridal gown.”

“Well, considering they haven’t even had the relationship talk, you don’t want him getting ahead of himself, Maddy.”

“What do you mean?” Maddy’s voice is deadly as she looks at my traitorous best friend. I swear to the fucking Gods, I thought my days of my siblings dobbing me in to mum were behind me. But here is Nikki, reminding me of the good old days.

“They’ve never talked about it. At all. Finn is obviously too scared to dare bring up the topic, not to mention he’s as apparently as insecure as Kai is vain, and Kai’s too obliviously caught up in his own feels to have thought about it.”

Wow. The betrayals run deep .

I gape at Nikki, catching the hint of his smirk before it’s hidden behind his mug.

“Be careful of throwing stones in glass houses, Nikolo, lest you break something.”

Oh, well, hello there. I may feel like my heart has been ripped out and shredded to bits, but only death—the real and permanent type—would be able to kill my interest in whatever Maddy’s hinting at right now.

I sit up from Maddy’s shoulder, trying to blend into the background so they continue. Nikki looks deeply concerned that she will. What the fuck has my supposed best friend been hiding from me? First he threw me under the bus, now he’s keeping secrets. What even is this friendship anyway?

Maddy stares him down in that completely still way that she has—it’s disturbing as shit—until Nikki holds his hands up in defeat.

“Yep, sorry. I’ll shut my mouth. ”

“Uh, yeah, no. What’s this glass house then?” I ask, scrubbing at my face with the sleeve of my jumper. Nikki looks petrified for a moment, looking more like a little boy than I’ve ever seen him. It’s strange. He’s always been so cool and unaffected. What dirt does Maddy have on him?

“I have no idea. It was just general advice,” Maddy purrs, leaning towards Nikki, resting her chin on her hand. She’s looking at him like a predator preparing for the kill.

I can kinda see why beings are scared of us to be honest.

Nikki splutters—splutters! He never splutters. But he does now, until he pulls his arms and legs up protectively, glaring at us both.

“This is ridiculous. We’re not here for me . We’re here because Kai’s a dickhead who doesn’t know how to communicate in a relationship and his boyfriend almost got us banned from Hearts Gate.”

With that entirely hurtful, if accurate, analysis of the situation the attention diverts back to me. Usually I really enjoy that. But tonight? Tonight it sucks.

“What do I do, Maddy?” I whine, dramatically falling back into my maker. “I know what he said was fucked up, but Godsdammit, I just want to make him feel better. He was hurting so bad. I hate that he’s out there hurting somewhere. It’s killing me.”

Maddy gently strokes my arm while I whine, letting me get it all out.

Then she pats me more firmly before finally shoving me off her.

Kind of roughly too. And I’m forced to sit up under my own strength.

I’m not quite ready for that yet though, so I pull up the hood on my jumper and slide down until I’m slumped down with my ass half off the cushion.

I even pull the strings on the hood to close it up, just to really indulge in my self pity .

Maddy’s mug thunks on the coffee table. She claps once and moves next to me, pulling her knee up on the couch so she’s facing Nikki and me—and so I can’t move in for another hug.