Page 36 of Road Trip with a Vampire

Peter opened his mouth to speak, but I elbowed him in the ribs as discreetly as I could to keep him quiet.

“Yep!” I chirped. “Six months next week. In fact”—I gave Peter a syrupy-sweet smile—“we’re here tonight to celebrate our anniversary.”

Gods, I would have to do so much explaining later.

Jonathan smiled a little at that. “Um. Congratulations, I guess?”

“Thanks,” I said, beaming. I rested my palm on Peter’s chest, above where his heart had once beat. He went as rigid as a tree trunk at my touch. “We’re very happy.”

“Uh, right,” Jonathan said, clearly uncomfortable now.

“Listen, I’m sorry about earlier. It’s just that you”—he jerked his head towards Peter—“are the spitting image of this guy who was here about six months ago. But that guy wouldn’t have a girlfriend.

” He snorted. “Or even set foot in a place like this if he weren’t being paid to do it. Total shithead.”

Suddenly the crappy music and the noisy kids from the birthday party all fell away.

Jonathan had interacted with Peter before he’d lost his memory. He was someone who could answer questions about his past.

“Oh?” I asked, sliding my hand a little farther up Peter’s chest. Hopefully Jonathan couldn’t hear how hard my heart was pounding. What was Peter thinking right now? I didn’t dare look at his face. “Why wouldn’t he have a girlfriend?”

“Too busy traveling, I’d imagine.” He turned his back on us for a moment and returned with two pairs of bowling shoes. He pushed them across the counter towards us. “And like I said—a total dick. Given what he does for a living, I can’t imagine anyone would even want to date him.”

Peter slowly slid our shoes from the counter with one hand. “This person…he traveled a lot?”

The man shrugged. “I think so. But he was only here once. I didn’t ask questions.”

“Why was he here?” I asked.

But now that Jonathan had been reassured that Peter was not, in fact, the asshole he’d thought he was, he’d lost interest in talking with us. He turned his attention back to his phone.

“Nothing good,” he said without looking up. “Lane eight’s ready. Have a nice, uh…anniversary celebration or whatever.”

“You, too,” I said absently. Then cringed when I realized what I’d said.

I took Peter’s hand and quickly guided him towards our lane. He seemed shell-shocked, not even protesting when I sat him down in one of its cracked plastic chairs.

“You okay?” I asked, pitching my voice low.

“No,” he admitted. “This is the second place from my journal where someone took one look at me and panicked.” He stared at the floor.

“I remember that Jonathan guy from the last time I was here. I didn’t at first, but after he started talking about that mystery asshole who’d visited six months ago, some things came back to me.

Someone paid me a lot of money to crack a safe they keep in the back office and steal what was inside.

” He closed his eyes and slumped back in his seat.

“Zelda, I’m telling you. I don’t think the person I used to be was someone you’d want to know. ”

I took our shoes from him and set them on the floor. “You are someone I want to know,” I insisted.

“You don’t know that.”

“I know enough,” I said. “Whoever you used to be, you don’t have to be that person anymore if you don’t want to be. All I care about is who you are now, with me. Besides, I’m in no place to judge, am I?”

He shook his head. “It’s not the same thing.

” I couldn’t have disagreed more. Who hadn’t engaged in a little safecracking and burglary at one point or another?

It wasn’t like he’d just remembered killing someone.

Or that he’d remembered endangering an entire rec center full of people with his wanton use of magic like I had.

But Peter didn’t seem to be in a place to hear this, so I didn’t push.

He looked over his shoulder, back in the direction of the shoe counter. “Maybe we should ask him more questions.”

All my instincts told me that would lead to nothing good. “Forget him,” I suggested. “You and I have a bet, remember? You owe me an hour of bowling.”

Peter stared at me. “You still want to do that?”

“Yes,” I said. “You have fun, I win. You don’t have fun, I lose.” I leaned in closer. “But we both know I’m going to win.”

That earned me a reluctant smile. “What if Shoe Guy realizes I am, in fact, the person he thought I was?”

I looked back at the counter. Another employee had joined Jonathan, and they were both staring at his phone with rapt attention.

“I think he’s forgotten about us.” An idea struck me. “But let’s act extra couple-y while we’re here. Just in case.”

Peter stared at me. “Extra couple-y?”

I hesitated. Had I crossed a line with this ruse? Yes, we’d spent the prior evening engaged in sex acts that would make a sailor blush, but maybe posing as a couple was too much for him.

We hadn’t talked about what last night had meant. Maybe it hadn’t meant as much to him as it had to me.

“Is it okay that I lied about being your girlfriend?” I asked, suddenly unsure. “I know it’s a lot, but telling that guy we were dating threw him off the trail.”

“It’s fine,” Peter said, his voice strange. “You’re my girlfriend. Got it. And I’ll pretend to be your…”

“Boyfriend.

A beat. “Boyfriend,” he repeated, as if it were the first time he’d ever said the word aloud. He looked down at my hand and, after a moment, took it in his. “So if we’re…um, pretending to be a couple, should we do things like this?”

Before I could say anything, Peter brought my hand to his mouth and pressed a lingering kiss to my palm.

His lips were so soft, his breath preternaturally cool as he kissed my hand again and then again.

I’d been kissed countless times over the years in countless different ways.

I’d had platonic kisses, intimate kisses on parts of my body I didn’t have names for, and everything in between.

These simple kisses from Peter in this dingy bowling alley, though, were enough to make my heart skip a beat.

“Or this?” Peter’s eyes never left my face as he gently scraped his front teeth against the fleshy place where my thumb met my palm.

He didn’t use his vampire canines; had he done that, I’d have burst into flames then and there.

Even still, the world contracted to the heated, possessive way he was looking at me and the place where his mouth touched my skin.

Slowly Peter lowered our linked hands until they rested on his upper thigh. “How am I doing?” His voice was as rough as sandpaper.

Distantly I heard the crash of pins and loud cheering from the birthday party a few lanes away. I couldn’t have been paid to care.

“How…how are you doing?” I breathed, confused.

“At pretending to be your boyfriend ,” he clarified.

Oh.

“You’re doing a bang-up job,” I assured him.

The asshole had the audacity to smirk. “Good,” he said. Then he leaned in and pressed a kiss so featherlight to the corner of my mouth, it took all my restraint not to tug him to me by the collar and kiss him properly.

“You’re being a tease,” I complained.

“I’m not,” he said. “If you leave with me right now, I’ll pick up again where we left off as soon as we get to the car.”

I swallowed, unable to look at anything but him. “But…our bet.”

He sighed. “Fuck the bet. This place is disgusting. The music is giving me heart palpitations.”

I rolled my eyes. “Your heart doesn’t beat.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

And I’d thought Reggie was a drama queen. “Do you really not want to risk losing the bet? Are you that worried you’ll have to get up on a chair and announce how brilliant I am?”

“It’s not that,” he said. “I’m happy to tell the world that you are the smartest, bravest, sexiest person I know.” His throat worked. “Because it’s true. And I’m not even your real boyfriend . If getting up on that barstool is your price for leaving now, I’ll pay it.”

It was the most impassioned speech I’d ever heard him give.

And I didn’t think I’d imagined the hint of bitterness in his voice when he’d said not even your real boyfriend .

My stomach was awash in butterflies, my interest in showing off all the skills I’d picked up as the four-time reigning champion of the 1950s ladies’ bowling circuit forgotten.

“You’d really humiliate yourself in front of a bunch of strangers just to get me into bed?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Gods, I wanted this. Him.

In the end, I was the one who led him out of the alley by the hand. But not before he obliged me by standing up on that barstool.

I supposed we both won.