Page 57 of Road Trip with a Vampire

Peter: Oh yes. I see the towels right here.

Peter: Just put the sweatshirt outside your bedroom door when you come back.

I almost asked him why before I realized it was because it wouldn’t be appropriate anymore for me to see him shirtless, wearing only a towel. I pushed my fist into my mouth and let out a mental scream.

Zelda: I can do that!

Zelda: See you soon.

I made a cup of herbal tea and forced myself to drink it slowly while we waited for Peter’s clothes to finish drying. His eyes were on me as I moved about the kitchen, his gaze so heated I could feel it on me as acutely as any physical touch.

When I turned to face him, mug in hand, he was still watching me. He arranged his features into careful neutrality, crossing his legs at the ankle as modestly as my too-short towel would allow.

“So,” I began, tracing the lip of my mug with a fingertip.

“What have you been doing since we left Indiana?” I made myself focus on the steam rising from my mug, on the sting of the almost-too-hot-to-touch ceramic, rather than the way Peter still looked at me.

It was an awkward question for an awkward situation, with him sitting on my couch in the sweatshirt he’d only reluctantly accepted and one of my overly floral towels.

Still, though. I wanted to know.

He cleared his throat. “I went back to Boston for a while.”

“Boston?” I asked. “Is that where you lived before?”

He hesitated before answering. “The apartment I had stayed in most recently is there,” he said. The somewhat stilted way he said it suggested he didn’t think of that as being the same as living there. “I had to check on some things I’d left behind.”

“Like what?” It was bold, prying into his life like this. But sitting here with him was starting to make me feel a little unhinged, and the question just slipped out.

His shrug implied he didn’t mind either way. “My plants.”

“Your plants?” I asked, surprised. “You’d been gone awhile. Were they even still alive?”

His eyes shuttered. He shook his head. “I had to throw them away.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Or to the sorrowful look on his face as he said it.

He liked his plants , I thought.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, meaning it.

Another shrug. “It’s fine. It’s been a very long time since I’ve been in one spot long enough to keep anything alive.”

I had to dig my fingernails into my palm to remind myself not to do anything stupid, like reach out and give his hand a comforting squeeze. “So you live in Boston now?”

He tilted his head to the side, considering. “I’m not sure. After throwing away my plants, I spent some time in Chicago. I like it there.”

“What brought you to Chicago?” I sipped from my mug, watching him over its rim as he seemed to weigh how to answer my question.

When he finally spoke, he didn’t meet my eyes. “I needed advice on something.”

I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned so he could see out of my window. Sometime between his leaving the bathroom in a sweatshirt and a towel and my making my cup of tea, it had stopped raining. The sky had cleared just enough for a handful of stars to shine through.

He opened his mouth to say something. Whatever it was going to be, though, was cut off by my dryer buzzing. He looked at me for the length of two heartbeats, then stood from the couch.

“I’ll get dressed now and finish the roof.”

What? I shot to my feet. “You’re kidding, right?

” He didn’t seriously mean to go back out there while the roof was still wet, did he?

Besides—the forecast called for more rain that night.

Vampires couldn’t technically die from slipping off a roof and landing on the pavement below, but I assumed it could still injure them.

It would also almost certainly hurt like hell.

I decided all at once that I cared whether he got hurt. I cared a lot.

Especially if he got hurt because of me.

His jaw was set in a firm line. “I need to finish it.”

My hand shot out as if operating without instructions from me, my palm coming to rest above the place where his heart had once beat. My fingers curled into the fabric of his borrowed sweatshirt. I reveled in the softness of the fabric, and in Peter’s sharp intake of breath.

“It can wait until tomorrow,” I said, trying to channel the determination I’d seen on his face moments earlier.

His throat worked. “It can’t.”

“Why not?” I asked. His chest rose and fell unevenly, his breathing gone ragged. “The buckets will catch the leaks overnight. Everything that might get damaged has already been moved out of the way. Why you can’t just wait until—”

His hand covered mine, then gripped it tightly, the movement so fast I barely saw it. “I can’t wait, Zelda, because I have to do everything I can to prove I’m sorry.” His voice was gravel-rough, nearly breaking on the word sorry. “I need to do everything I can to get you back.”

His words punched the breath from my lungs, sent my thoughts scattering. Though if I were being honest, I’d already known—from the first text he’d sent about that ridiculous chicken hat—that he was trying to make things up to me. I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it—but I’d still known.

Here, in my apartment, with his eyes on mine and his calloused thumb tracing gentle patterns on the back of my hand, the time for pretending was over.

Our origins couldn’t have been more star-crossed if we’d been the main characters in one of my romance novels.

But now that I had some distance from what had happened, I had to wonder whether it even mattered.

Peter saw me. The real me. And he had never flinched. Yes, our beginnings had been rocky. But you couldn’t live forever without breaking some eggs. Or something like that. I supposed that was a mixed metaphor if there ever was one—but regardless, perhaps we were always meant to end up here.

I’d made a lot of mistakes in my lifetime. Being stubborn by continuing to push him away…

I wouldn’t make that mistake any longer.

“I hadn’t had a real home in so long,” Peter continued when I said nothing.

He was pleading now, pouring every ounce of his powers of persuasion into convincing me, not realizing that he already had.

“Not until I met you. Now that I know what it’s like to be with you, I don’t think I can go back to any sort of existence without you in it. ”

He closed his eyes and—tentatively—leaned forward until his forehead rested against mine. Our breaths mingled, and I closed my eyes to savor the warmth of this moment.

I could forgive him, I decided with the crystal clarity that only time, terrible cookies, and a little distance can provide.

“I want to earn back your trust,” Peter said, his voice just above a whisper. His words ghosted across my lips, cool and sweet. “If you just give me another chance, I will always take care of you.”

I almost told him that through words and deeds, he’d proven everything he needed to prove. That I’d missed him, too. That I was ready to move past how we’d started. His mouth was so close to mine, though. Kissing seemed a more efficient way to get the message across.

I tilted my chin a fraction and tightened my grip on his sweatshirt, tugging until his lips met mine.

His eyes flew open in surprise, his body going rigid for the briefest of moments before he understood what I was telling him and relaxed into the kiss.

Wasting no time, I wound my arms around his neck, pulling him so close I wasn’t sure where he ended and I began.

Peter kissed me back eagerly, like a man starved, as he wrapped one strong arm around me, then reached up with his free hand to gently, gently brush his knuckles against my cheek.

His hand was so cool against my heated skin, the touch so tender, it felt like my heart might break if he stopped.

“Zelda.” Peter let out a shaky exhale. Chuckled. “Gods. I—”

A rustle of fabric and the whoosh of something falling to the floor cut off the rest of whatever he’d been about to say. Suddenly, Peter looked like he wanted the earth to open up and swallow him whole. His eyes were wide, wild. Horrified.

He pointedly shifted his lower body away from me. “Zelda, I…I’m so sorry.”

I blinked up at him in confusion for another few moments before realization struck. Sure enough, when I looked down, I saw his cock, already halfway hard—and the flowery towel he’d had wrapped around his waist a minute ago puddled in a heap at his feet.

He must have let go of it when we started kissing. The laughter that bubbled up inside me was like the sun finally rising after the longest night of the year. I was delirious, giddy with it.

“Peter!” I gasped, breathless. I was laughing so hard I had to clutch my sides to keep from falling over. This was the most ridiculous make-up makeout in history. Somehow, it just made it more perfect. “Oh my gods .”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t think—” he began, then broke off, bemused when I couldn’t stop laughing.

“I didn’t stop to think that by cupping your face I’d stop cupping…

other things.” When that just made me laugh harder, his mouth slid sideways into the goofiest grin I’d ever seen.

“I hope you’re not laughing at…you know.

” He gestured to the lower half of his body.

“Gods no,” I said, still laughing. “Promise.”

His smile grew. “Good,” he said, a touch smug. And then, before I could say another word: “I love you so much, Zelda.”

My breath caught as my laughter floated away, his words like a clarion in the quiet room.

Speechless, I reached up with a shaking hand and cupped his cheek.

His eyes slipped closed as he leaned into my touch, his stubble scratching roughly against my palm.

The Peter I’d traveled with had been meticulous about shaving.

How bad had the past few weeks been for him?

For the first time I noticed the dark circles beneath his eyes, the crow’s-feet at the corners that hadn’t been there when we’d parted.