Page 50 of Love Bleeds

Chapter Eighteen

After dinner, Damian and I retreated to my bedroom. It was still weird to think of it as 'my' room. We'd been in this house for a couple of months now, but for most of that time, I'd merely been existing instead of living. I hadn't bothered to claim the space for myself. Tonight was the first time it felt like the safe haven it was supposed to be.

Because Damian was here with me.

Even if he wore a grim expression on his face as he followed me into the room.

"Are you sure you don't want any of the meat?" I asked as I closed the door behind us. "You know Remy always cooks too much. There'll be leftovers if you change your mind."

"I'm not all that interested in food right now."

I nodded, thinking about what Collin had said earlier. That Damian wasn't supposed to bite me. For some reason, the thought stirred both relief and disappointment in me. I hadn’t enjoyed Nicolai biting me, but I wouldn’t say no to Damian. There was a part of me that wanted it, even, to feel his teeth on my neck, to let him drink from me. Let him take what he needed, whatever he wanted.

But another part of me was scared.

I didn’t want to linger on that part.

"You didn't drink any of the blood on the table,” I said. “Is it because you don't want me to see you drink? Because I'm okay with that." Would the sight of my best friend gulp down blood disturb me a little? Sure, but I could deal.

One of the things I loved about Damian was that he never treated me like a baby. I didn't want that to change.

"It's not that," Damian assured me. He sat down on the edge of the bed, his hands in his lap. I lowered myself onto the mattress next to him, not quite close enough for our shoulders to touch, but there wasn't more than an inch of space between us. I couldn't help it; I wanted to be near him.

After all, he might just disappear again if I let him out of my sight.

"Your witch friend gave me a potion," Damian explained. "It'll hide me from my sire for as long as I don't drink any blood."

"Oh." I rubbed the mark on my wrist with my thumb, thinking. "How long can you go without?"

"The longest I’ve ever gone was a week, but..."

A week. It wasn't a lot of time, and it didn’t sound like an experience that Damian wanted to repeat. I could hardly blame him. "When was the last time you had blood?"

"At the bar the night I met Alice. That was... two nights ago."

He said that as if it was nothing. Didn’t he get hungry? I'd be hungry if I had to go two days without food, but it might be different for vampires. I hoped it was, anyway. "So at maximum we have about five days?" I summarized. Five days. It was basically nothing.

"I'm not going back to my sire," Damian said. "I'd rather starve to death."

He sounded so serious it scared me. "Please don't talk about dying. I can't.... I mean..." I wanted to say that I couldn't lose him a second time, but the words didn't make it past my lips. The thought was too terrible to be uttered out loud.

"I'm sorry." Damian wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer, erasing that tiny bit of distance between us until my body was pressed firmly against his side. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"I'm okay," I lied through the tightness in my throat. The lie had become omnipresent in my life. Something to say to make my siblings feel better, to make my friends stop asking. I'd become pretty good at saying it in a convincing tone of voice, sometimes even with a smile. Sometimes I even believed myself.

I didn't believe myself now.

Neither did Damian.

He kissed my temple and rubbed my shoulder. "It's okay not to be okay," he said. "We can't always be okay."

I nodded once, but didn't say anything. I didn't trust myself to. The truth was that I felt those words in my bones. There were so many things I was not okay with, but no one had ever given me permission to feel that way before. Everyone always wanted me to be better, be happy. I couldn't blame them for that. But it was exhausting.

"We can be not-okay together for a while," Damian promised.

"You're not okay either?"

He gave me a low chuckle. "I can't remember the love of my life and I need to drink blood to survive. What do you think?"