Page 124 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends

“It shouldn’t be. Not if it gets you hurt.”

“We’ve gone over this before. I knew you were a vampire from day one,” Cole said. “I knew what I could be getting into.”

“You knew what you could be getting into?” Brennan scoffed. “I didn’t have a clue, so how could you?”

Brennan ducked out from Cole’s grip, pacing again, scrubbing a hand down his face.

“What happened to figuring it out together?” Cole’s voice was small. “What happened to letting me help?”

“It’s just—it’s too much.”

“For me? Or for you?” Cole finally sounded pissed, which gave Brennan vindication for about three seconds before it turned to dread.

“Both,” Brennan said. “I don’t know how to do this. Existing, being a vampire, being a human, being a boyfriend! I thought I could do it but I can’t. You deserve better.”

Cole deserved better than Brennan. That was the one thing Brennan knew to be true this whole time.

Cole was silent long enough that Brennan stopped in his tracks and faced Cole from a few feet away. It was only then, when Brennan looked him in the eyes, that Cole spoke.

“You know,” said Cole. “You were the one person who didn’t tell me how to feel all the fucking time.”

Brennan flinched. He’d seen Cole angry, sad, exhausted, turned on, scared—but he’d never seen him sodisappointed.

“Everything I’ve done, I chose to do,” Cole said. He enunciated his words carefully, delivering them with force and finality. “Ichose that. Not my parents or Mari or fate.Ichose to give because I wanted to.”

Brennan shook his head. “I didn’t ask you to.”

“That’s the whole fucking point, Brennan!”

Brennan didn’t know what he was supposed to say.

Apparently, Cole didn’t have anything else to add, either. They sat in the wake of that for no more than a minute before Cole nodded once and shifted half toward his place, his profile to Brennan.

Cole said, “I’m sorry, I’m just tired.”

Then he turned and headed toward his apartment. Brennan felt sick, and he felt stuck to the spot, unable to follow even if he thought he would be welcome.

He watched Cole take the stairs up to the door. He watched him fumble with the lock. He watched him disappear behind the door. Cole never looked back.

The burning smell of garlic emanated from his apartment as he barged into the room, desperate for the blood in his freezer stash.

“Hey man, I thought you’d be gone longer, how was the dinner?” Tony said, looking up from his video game, a bowl of pasta next to him smelling so strongly of garlic that Brennan briefly contemplated chucking it out the window.

Brennan shot him a dark look and beelined to his bedroom. He was soaking wet from the rain and still had blood on his lips.

“Whoa, that bad?” Tony was saying, but Brennan had already disappeared into his room.

He dropped to his knees in front of the closet, unlocked the freezer, and felt a wave of relief that his stash was exactly as he’d left it. He didn’t have the energy to count them. He grabbed one, threw it in the microwave, and then bit into the plastic with his fangs, draining the whole thing in seconds.

It didn’t even take the edge off. He felt blood drip down his chin.

Good.

“Um” came Tony’s voice from far closer than it should have. Brennan hadn’t heard him coming, everything so muted and overwhelming at the same time. He whirled around and Tony was in the bedroom’s doorway. “Did you just drink blood?”

Brennan couldn’t help it. He laughed. Tony finding out was so low on his radar of things he gave a shit about right then.

“Yep,” Brennan said. “Old news. Talk to Mari about it, I’m not taking questions right now.”