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I f bones could talk, Tiffany’s would have groaned and said, ‘That. Was Amazing.’

She stretched and twisted herself out of the tangle of bed linens, grinning like a fool as she mentally replayed the night she’d shared with Damon. She inhaled deeply, the scent of his skin filling her nose. He lay on his stomach next to her, mouth cracked open and arms spread, one over his head, the other dangling off the side of the mattress as he slept. She listened to the sound of his breathing, and watched his chest rise and fall.

Her fingers itched to run over the tattoos across his shoulders, the dark black ink contrasting with his lightly tanned skin. Watching him sleep, seeing him so totally relaxed, sent her heart racing faster. He was so sexy, so perfect. She bit her lower lip and fought to restrain herself from waking him, from pushing herself against him, kissing him deeply and seeing if

what she’d heard about a man’s sex drive first thing in the morning was true.

Before she could stop herself, she brushed the smooth skin of his face with her thumb. The sharp, chiseled lines of his cheekbones and face stunned her. Even while he slept, he was breathtaking, beautiful in his intensity. But when he was awake, nothing gripped her more than the icy blue depths of his eyes. They pierced through her, wild and ferocious. Like a Siberian tiger, both hypnotic and terrifying.

Still dead to the world, he responded with a low grumble, leaning into her touch, then settled into sound sleep again. She smiled. Being with him for a second time had been so different from the first. When she’d given him her virginity, the pain had been minimal, and he had impressed her with how quickly he’d assuaged her fears. But the second time had blown her away with how familiar it had been in its intimacy. This time she’d known who he was.

Had understood the tenderness behind each touch. This man she’d dreamed of for years.

Rolling to her side of the bed again, she stared up at the ceiling. For someone so distant, so calculating and sometimes downright cold when he was fighting, Damon’s capacity for tenderness had touched her, revealing the man behind the mask, the man she’d come to know through letters. There was no doubt in her mind that he cared for her. The same feelings coursed through her whenever they touched.

Whether he knew that or not, she wasn’t certain.

She clenched her jaw. Anger built inside her as she thought of how stupid she’d been. How could she have been such an idiot? She should have known that the man she knew, her B, wouldn’t intentionally have left Mark for dead. Damon still blamed himself, but after nearly losing him in the same way, she didn’t blame him anymore.

Not when she’d made the same mistake so easily.

Her mind wandered to all the letters she’d never answered.

How deeply had she hurt him?

Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she stood and padded across the room to her desk. She slid the bottom drawer open and dug underneath the piles of school papers until she found what she was looking for. She pulled out the large stack of envelopes—not a single one opened. Months. It’d been months since she’d ghosted him.

She set the letters down, then quickly cleaned herself up and got dressed, then pulled on his black leather jacket. Finally, she grabbed the letters, walked through to the living room and stepped out onto the fire escape.

The cold winter air stung her cheeks, but she sat down on the top step, her favorite quiet place. She glanced at the sky. Not a single star in sight thanks to the overwhelming lights of the city. She exhaled a long breath.

She had to know. Had to know what she’d been missing.

Exactly how she’d hurt him.

After removing the rubber band holding the letters together, she shuffled through them, reading the dates. One letter each day for over a month. A large lump caught in her throat. Her breath swirled around her face as she held the last letter Damon had ever sent her.

Tucking the rest of the pile under one knee, she opened the envelope. The paper made only a small ripping noise as it tore, but in her ears the sound was amplified.

Her hands trembled as she removed the single piece of paper, and pain filled her heart at the sight of Damon’s familiar handwriting. She paused. For a moment she almost released the paper into the wind. It would be so much easier not to know.

But she had to.

Hands still trembling, she unfolded the letter and slowly read the scrawled words.

Dear Tiffany,

I have so much to say, but little time to say it as I start to search for Mark’s killer. I doubt you will even read this letter, since there’s been no response to the others I’ve sent for the last month. But I have to write this in the hopes that maybe someday you’ll open this envelope.

No matter how much you may hate me, no matter how much you may wish me dead, you will always hold a place in this cold heart of mine. I never intended to care for you, but I do. We both know I do, and for that I have no regrets.

Losing Mark, and now you, has driven me to the brink of insanity, and the pain is more than I think I can bear. You know how difficult it is for me to admit this to you, but I’m not okay.

I can never be okay.

Nothing I can say or do will ever express to you how sorry I am. I’ll bear the guilt of what I’ve done for the rest of my life.

This isn’t something I can just get off my chest, and as much of a relief as it would be for all the pain of what’s happened to be taken away, I don’t deserve any relief. It’s the one thing I have left of you. I wish there were something I could confess to you that would turn this around, something that would make this better. I wish I knew the perfect lie.

Tiff, I’m begging you.

Tell me what it is you want to hear and I’ll make sure you hear it. I’d say and do anything to have you back in my life again. I’ve got no family to fall back on, and my heart is so rooted in our friendship that even if I did, it would never be enough without you in my life.

It’s amazing how we got this far, how a one-line letter could turn into these feelings I have for you. Maybe it’s meant to be this way, because Lord knows I don’t deserve a woman like you in my life.

We both know what three words I want to say. It’s always been on the tip of my pen, waiting for me to write it. But I’m too much of a coward.

You know how I feel, and if I could just say it to you in person just one time...I could die knowing I’d had something meaningful in my life.

Yours always,

B

With still shaking hands, Tiffany attempted to refold the letter, but it was no use. Tears blurred her vision and spilled over onto the paper. She trembled at the thought of what she had to do.

He has to know.

Damon sat straight up in bed, heart racing as he gasped for air in the aftermath of the dream. His pulse beat in a heated rhythm, and he clutched the sheets in his hands. His eyes darted around the room. Tiffany. Where was Tiffany?

He launched himself from the bed and threw on his jeans. Rushing into the living room, he spotted a hunched-over figure on the fire escape. He ran back into the bedroom and threw on his shirt and boots before he strode to the living room window.

In his dream, Tiffany had changed her mind and decided that she did blame him for Mark’s death. She’d said she’d been wrong to forgive him.

He wrenched open the window and climbed onto the fire escape. A blowing northern wind hit his arms like hundreds of small needles pricking his skin. Damn, it was cold outside. Tiffany was sitting on the top step, completely still.

“Tiff?” he said.

When she didn’t respond, he walked up behind her. His heart stopped as he saw what she held in her hands. His letters. He brought his hand to his mouth and lightly bit his thumb so a string of profanities wouldn’t fall from his lips. One letter lay open on her lap, and it was the letter, his final letter.

The letter that told her he loved her.

Shit.

He opened his mouth several times to speak but couldn’t find any words.

He was still too much of a coward. Every time he tried to find the right thing to say, his mouth went dry and the words dissipated. What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he tell her? For fuck’s sake, he knew exactly why. Because admitting he loved her would make him vulnerable. Though he’d often refused to admit it to himself, he’d been in love with her for years.

They both knew it. She already held his heart.

But if he said he loved her, he would be defenseless and exposed.

She would have even more power to hurt him than she did now, and damn if that wasn’t the scariest thing he could ever imagine, that vulnerability. It flew in the face of everything he’d been trained for. Of all he’d been taught to be.

Tiffany patted the spot next to her, motioning for him to sit. He sat down, resting his elbows on his knees, completely unable to speak. The pain in his chest overwhelmed him. Everything inside him wanted to grab her, tell her that he loved her and kiss her senseless, but he…just couldn’t do it. What kind of life could he offer her when it really came down to it?

The same fate Mark had come to?

If not now, eventually…

She let out a long sigh. “I don’t think I need to tell you that I was wrong to shut you out like I did. I think you already know it.”

Damon’s stomach churned. Suddenly nothing else mattered but the words that had just left her lips. The cold weather ceased to chill him, and the wind stopped burning his cheeks. She wasn’t saying what he thought she was...was she?

“Here.” She pushed an overstuffed, unstamped envelope toward him.

“What is this?” he choked out.

She bit her lower lip and stared straight ahead, refusing to meet his eyes. “The letters I wrote you. I never sent them.”

He watched her in disbelief. She’d written to him?

She turned toward him. Tears streamed down her face, staining her porcelain cheeks. Her voice cracked as she spoke. “You need to know—I need you to know—that I never stopped loving you, not for one second.”

Damon tangled his fingers into her hair and encircled her waist with his arm. He pulled her into him so fast that he barely realized what he was doing before his lips crashed against hers. He kissed her deep, their tongues swirling against each other. The feel of her body pressed against him, coupled with the words she’d just spoken, sent his heart racing into overdrive.

Slowly he released her hair but never stopped cradling her head. His lips brushed against hers as he spoke. “I never stopped dreaming of you,” he whispered.

A single warm tear slid onto his cheek, falling from her face as he kissed her again. He scooped her into his arms and carried her into the warmth of the apartment toward the bedroom.

If he couldn’t say he loved her, he could at least try his damnedest to show her in whatever way he could.

Damon couldn’t have been more content as Tiffany lay against him, her head nestled into the crook of his arm. His eyes ran over her naked form. She was so damn beautiful.

Angels couldn’t compare.

He allowed his head to sink into the softness of the pillow. Closing his eyes, like an idiot he pinched himself, but when he opened his lids again he was lying in the same exact spot. Was this really happening? Was this what lay in his future? His nights spent protecting the innocent, with Tiffany there to lie in his arms when he arrived home at the crack of dawn?

It may not be forever. For either of them.

But it was enough.

It had to be.

After they’d returned to the bedroom, he’d tucked her letters inside the pocket of his jacket. He was still in a state of disbelief. She’d written him letters. He couldn’t decide whether he was looking forward to reading them...or dreading it.

A sharp buzz sounded from the bedside table as his cell phone vibrated. Tiffany stirred, blinking lazily as her eyes opened. The phone continued to buzz.

He looked at the caller ID. Shit. Headquarters calling never meant flowers and rainbows.

He snatched the phone from the table. “Hello?”

Chris’s voice on the other end of the line sounded desperate. “Have you seen it already?”

Tiffany met his eyes, listening to Chris, whose voice was loud enough to carry.

“Seen what?” Damon asked.

Chris swore. “You’d better get to the nearest computer.”

Without hesitation, Tiffany darted to her desk, where her too-old laptop sat closed and asleep. She opened the screen and hit the power button.

“What’s going on, Chris?” Damon asked. He switched the phone to speaker.

Chris spoke at light speed, his nerves clearly getting the better of him. “There’s a viral video. You need to see it before HQ gets it taken down. Search for ‘zombie apocalypse Rochester.’”

Damon gestured to Tiffany. She typed in the search terms and hit enter.

Damon shook his head, trying to wrap his mind around what seemed to be happening. “Please tell me this isn’t what it sounds like.” His stomach twisted. He could hear Chris’s fingers flying across his keyboard in the background.

“If by ‘what it sounds like’ you mean dumbass teenagers getting video footage of the bloodsucker who’s orchestrating your virus transitioning a dead guy into an infected vamp, then, yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like.”

Adrenaline shot through Damon’s veins. “What are you talking about, Chris? We killed Caius last night.”

“We? Who’s we?” Chris rasped. “And whoever you killed last night clearly wasn’t the right vampire.”

Damon’s eyes widened. “Never mind who—”

“Found it.” Tiffany beckoned Damon. She clicked play.

The rustling sound of movement near an unsteady camera echoed from the speakers. The shaky video pointed down a dimly lit alleyway. A hooded man with his back to the camera stood over an unmoving form, a disgusting gulping sound carrying through the video.

Damon’s heart raced.

After nearly a minute of continuous feeding, the figure pulled away.

“Fuck!” Damon roared.

The camera showed what was clearly a freshly dead corpse. Fang marks marred the victim’s throat, plain as day.

“Holy—” The whispering of a teenage boy’s voice was cut off as, judging by the sounds, one of his friends clapped a hand over his mouth.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Teens and their freaking phones.

A trickle of blood ran from the man’s neck before the shadowed figure hunched over the body again. Reaching into his pocket, the faceless vamp removed a small syringe.

Tiffany mumbled under her breath. “Oh, shit.”

The shrouded figure lifted the arm of the corpse and injected the serum into the deadened vein. When it finished, the figure stood and stepped away, looming over the body. The corpse twitched, jerking to life. The dead man’s eyes snapped open. The irises glowed a pulsing red as the hooded figure disappeared into the night.

One of the teenage boys swore. The newly turned leech’s head snapped in their direction. It opened its mouth and bared its fangs. A loud hiss ripped from its throat, and with unnatural, jerky movements it scrambled into a crouched position, ready to pounce.

“Fuck! Run!” one of the boys yelled. The video blurred and jerked as footsteps pounded the ground. Seconds later the video cut abruptly to black.

Chris cleared his throat. “We are in some deep shit here, which means…”

Damon nodded. “I know.”

The Sergeant was going to call.