Page 39 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends

Cole cut him off with a stern look and a sharp finger pointed at his face. “I wouldn’t change anything about you, Brennan. Or how we met, or all the drama since then.”

“Right, you’re into the vampire thing.”

Cole didn’t give in to the joke and kept that stern look.

“Hey, look at me.”

Brennan looked at Cole, really looked at him. The barely there freckles on his nose. The curve of his lips.

“I like you. Not because you’re a vampire. Not in spite of it. I just like you. Got it?”

The open expression on Cole’s face said he meant it.

It knocked the wind out of him, the force of that knowledge, that maybe this thing he and Cole had was bigger than all those obstacles.

Vampires, venomous saliva, depression, angst—they didn’t seem so insurmountable with the brightness of Cole’s smile.

With the fact that Cole seemed to trust and believe in him even when Brennan himself didn’t, just like he’d somehow found Brennan’s venting the night they’d first met to be kind and thoughtful instead of unhinged and lost.

“I don’t know that it’ll ever make sense to me,” Brennan said, swallowing hard around something thick in his throat. “But yeah, I got it.”

Cole almost made him believe he was good.

That he wouldn’t do harm, that he didn’t have it in him.

He wanted to tell Cole that he made him feel like the bravest version of himself.

That being with Cole brought all his good parts forward and he liked it.

That Cole was probably the most good, human person Brennan had ever known, and he didn’t know if he’d have gotten through half the craziness of the last semester without him.

What came out instead was “And, I mean, you know I like you, too, right? Does that even need repeating?”

He wanted to dramatically facepalm. His brain-to-mouth connection was unapologetically broken.

Cole’s hand that wasn’t entwined with Brennan’s settled at the nape of Brennan’s neck. “I know,” he said. He didn’t need to tug Brennan down, because he was already moving to meet him. Against his lips, Cole said, “But I could bear to hear it.”

So Brennan kissed him, and told him, quite a few times and in quite a few ways.

brENNAN’S PHONE

Brennan

Hey, wait.

What happens when I’m done with Breaking Dawn?

Cole

Lol. There’s a spin-off book, and the first book from Edward’s perspective, and we’ll obviously have to watch the movies.

And there’s always The Vampire Diaries, Vampire Academy— we can move on to werewolves, if you want!

But I have endless recs to give you, as long as you’ll have them, and you can keep sending me poetry. I think it’s a pretty neat little arrangement.

Brennan

It is pretty neat

Sometimes they were so in sync it was scary.

Like when they met up at the library, and Brennan had picked up coffee from the bougie place Cole liked.

Except, when he arrived at their meeting spot—a corner in the third-floor stacks with a table that was rarely occupied—Cole was waiting with two coffees from the less-bougie place Brennan liked.

That happened twice before they decided to implement a turn-taking system.

And then there were the quiet moments. Like Cole’s head in Brennan’s lap as he read a book for class while Brennan scrolled on his phone on his latest Wikipedia odyssey.

They were in Cole’s room, curtains open wide to let the deceptively bright sun in, warming up the room despite the ice outside.

A record played, softly, because Cole couldn’t deal with complete silence.

Across the bed, his foot tapped absently to the beat.

Brennan had one hand resting in Cole’s curls, idly twisting strands around his fingers.

“You’re comfortable,” Cole said at one point, leaning into the touch like a cat.

He was right. Brennan was comfortable. They were comfortable. Something bright and light was expanding in Brennan’s chest and he was a bit worried he might want this comfort for the rest of his life. Which, of course, was hard when the rest of his life was supposed to be forever.

He looked down at Cole, the shadow his lashes cast on his cheek, eyes scanning left and right across the page. After a minute, Cole caught him staring, but didn’t say anything. Just smiled and went back to reading.

Brennan tried to memorize the feeling, the corporeality of Cole’s weight in his lap, hair around his fingers, heart beating a rhythm that Brennan could hear loud and clear if ever he let himself listen.

You’re comfortable, Cole had said.

“You are, too,” Brennan whispered.

It was snowing the day Cole left to go home for winter break, finished with his finals a few days ahead of schedule.

Brennan approached Cole and Mari’s place to say goodbye for the break, and he had a brown-paper-wrapped book in his backpack to give to Cole.

In the distance, Cole emerged from the brownstone with two hefty suitcases, struggling through the doorway and down the porch steps.

With no one else around on the street, Brennan was free to nearly teleport to Cole’s side with vampire speed, easily scooping the bags from Cole and carrying them down to the sidewalk.

“Well, thanks,” Cole said, wearing a bashful smile and a beanie pulled over his curls.

“Knew you kept me around for something,” Brennan said.

Cole punched him in the arm, then collapsed into his chest, wrapping his arms around Brennan’s middle like he was a giant, lanky teddy bear. Brennan’s brain broke down a little over how soft Cole was, how lucky Brennan was, and took a beat to catch up and get his arms around Cole’s shoulders.

“I don’t want to go home,” Cole said, voice muffled against Brennan’s chest.

Brennan couldn’t say he felt differently. He dreaded facing his mom as much as he knew Cole dreaded dealing with his own parents. Brennan smoothed a hand down Cole’s back.

“It’s just a few weeks,” Brennan said.

Cole nodded, face still buried, and Brennan held him as long as Cole would let him.

Eventually, Cole pulled away from the hug.

“My Uber’s gonna be here any minute now, and I wanted to—hold on—”

He started digging through one of the bags, opening the suitcase carelessly into the snow, and finally presented a well-loved green paperback.

Brennan bit back a grin. “Oh god,” he said. “We’re nerds.”

“I think we already knew that, babe,” Cole said. “But, why?”

Brennan conjured his own package to pass to Cole.

“We both got each other books.”

Cole laughed.

“Well, obviously,” he said, and thrust his book out so Brennan could trade the package for it.

The little book was dog-eared, sticky notes protruding from all directions. Fablehaven by Brandon Mull.

“Thought you might want a break from all the vampire stuff, at least over break,” Cole said.

“I appreciate that.”

A car crackled over ice as it slowed to a stop next to them, and Cole cursed.

“Shit, I should—”

“Yeah,” Brennan said, waving him off. “Don’t worry, open mine on your own, we’ll talk later.”

“Yeah. I’ll text you.”

“Good. I’ll call you.”

“Good.”

“Okay.”

Cole’s eyes were locked on Brennan, swaying into his space like an invitation, and Brennan wouldn’t deny him anything.

The driver honked at them.

Cole’s laugh was bright and flustered. He dropped down from where he’d pushed up onto his toes and covered his face.

They separated after a long moment and Brennan loaded Cole’s bags into the car while Cole charmed the driver with small talk through the window. Brennan shut the car’s trunk with a slam and Cole darted over for a last fast, tight hug.

“See you, then,” Brennan said.

“Yeah,” Cole said. “See you.”

With the driver waiting, there was nothing else to do but let him go. Cole got into the passenger seat instead of the back, a choice made only by socialites and murderers, but Brennan knew by the time they got to Boston Logan, Cole would have befriended the driver and uncovered his life story.

There was a rush of affection, of that’s my person that made Brennan’s stomach drop. Cole gave one last little wave, then closed the door behind him, and the car drove off.

He knew this was where he had been headed all this time, but it was still terrifying. To be who he was, and to be in love with Cole.

On the inside of the front cover of Fablehaven, Cole had written:

B—

Remember being a kid when anything felt possible? We discovered new worlds in every book we read and magic was all around us. This book is like that. Childish wonder. Feeling like the world is at your fingertips.

Needless to say, that’s how you make me feel.

I’ll text you from Tennessee?

Yours,

Cole

A few hours later, Cole sent Brennan a photo. The book Brennan had given him, splayed out on what appeared to be an airplane tray. A hand held open the pages to where a sticky note was tucked like a bookmark, a string of lines highlighted.

The caption said, “accidentally read the whole book on the .”

Brennan didn’t need to look at the picture to know what the book read:

The poem—

Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow

flat on the wall.

The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.

You had not expected this,

the bedroom gone white, the astronomical light

pummeling you in a stream of fists.

You raised your hand to your face as if

to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light

streamed straight to the bone,

as if you were the small room closed in glass

with every speck of dust illuminated.

The light is no mystery,

the mystery is that there is something to keep the light

from passing through.

And below it, a note. Brennan had annotations throughout the book, but this was the one meant for Cole:

Yeah, I know, you’re probably laughing because this is that gay poet Tumblr loves, but don’t dismiss it! The gays love him for a reason. His words are rambling and panicky, desperate and jarring. It’s how my brain feels half the time. And then you get to this poem, and it’s different. Softer.