Page 47 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends
THE QUIET
SUNNY’S PHONE
LOCKED
[The lock screen is a selfie of Sunny and Nellie together. Sunny is posing perfectly for the camera, pursed lips, and Nellie is smiling at Sunny.]
Instagram comments:
@amiahreads270: Girl where are u!!!
@kristen.baby.420: This is the longest she’s ever gone without posting lol
@themargotmyers: Hey don’t listen to all these haters! Take a mental health week! We don’t always need to be producing content!
A Facebook comment:
@Soon-Hee Kim: Can anyone get back to me about the dress code? I messaged Nellie but haven’t heard back.
After, Cole held one hand to the spot on his neck that Brennan had bitten. He said, “I’m tired. Let’s go home,” and those were the last words either of them spoke for a time.
Brennan wordlessly scooped up a wobbly Cole, carrying him on his back to campus. It was the least he could do.
The worst part was, he was still thirsty.
Brennan’s brain was a storm of overstimulated senses and guilty self-flagellation. Cole’s shivering breath in his ears and heartbeat against his back weren’t comforting anymore—they were like a time bomb, ticking down to zero before he or Brennan blew.
Twenty minutes passed before they were approaching Cole’s apartment, both soaked to the bone.
Brennan stopped a few buildings down to help Cole back to his feet, making sure he was steady before withdrawing completely.
The street was quiet and empty, just rain on the pavement and the glow of streetlights.
Cole made no move toward the house, hunched into himself, head down. Brennan said the only thing he could think to.
“I’m sorry.”
It felt so weak and small and empty next to all the self-hate Brennan was boiling in.
But the words worked like a switch, and Cole straightened up, unfurling, looking at Brennan for the first time since it happened. His face was carefully blank—or, trying to be, but not quite managing, his lower lip wavering.
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Cole said, trying for a smile. “I just need some sleep. Thanks for walking me home.”
It was the distant politeness Cole usually reserved for people being loud on the silent study floor of the library. It was a slap in the face, a thousand times worse than Cole being mad. This wasn’t petty library drama. He’d literally gone feral and sucked Cole’s blood.
“Uh, no,” Brennan said, “there’s a lot to apologize for. Why are you letting me off that easy?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Cole said on reflex, and maybe it wasn’t justified, but it pissed Brennan off. He wanted Cole to be upset. To yell, cry, throw shit, do anything besides hide behind a mask.
“It was, ” Brennan said. “I thought Travis was sketchy but I brought you there. I knew Dom was at the restaurant but I didn’t tell you.”
The pent-up energy and adrenaline made Brennan need to move, and he couldn’t keep looking at Cole’s face trying to act like nothing happened, so Brennan started pacing. The words raging in his head finally spilled out into the open:
“If I keep you out of things, you’re at risk of getting hurt. If I involve you, you get hurt,” Brennan said. “And now, you’re hurt. I drank so much of your blood you almost passed out. How is that anything but my fault?”
“You didn’t have a choice,” Cole said, and at least he didn’t sound like he was trying to convince himself this time.
“But you did.”
Suddenly Cole stopped Brennan in his pacing, turning him around with hands on his shoulders. Brennan was overwhelmed with the scent of Cole and blood. There were pinprick scars forming on Cole’s neck and once Brennan saw them, he couldn’t look away.
“And my choice, ” Cole said, slow and purposeful, “was to be there for you.”
“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 so disappointed.
“Everything I’ve done, I chose to do,” Cole said. He enunciated his words carefully, delivering them with force and finality. “ I chose that. Not my parents or Mari or fate. I chose 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.”
He went to close the door but Tony put out a hand to stop it, moving into the doorway.
“You know, this actually makes a lot of things make a lot more sense.”
“Great. Cool. Glad we could clear that up,” Brennan growled. “Now’s not a good time.”
Brennan tried again to close the door on Tony’s face, and this time, Tony let him.
Brennan opened a window and shoved a towel under the door to help with the garlic stench, then drank another pack of blood like it was nothing, against his better judgment.
His logical side was already scheming, rationing. They had a limited supply of blood now, with the harbor stunt, and with Sunny and Nellie out of commission, who knew when there would be more? How long could he make what he had last?
Brennan buried his head in his hands. The situation presented itself in a series of failures.
Travis was still at large.
Dom was still missing.
Cole hated him.
Nellie and Sunny were in danger.
He had no one to turn to.
He’d been so close to— something. He had Cole, he had a tentative grip on his vampirism, he had friends for the first time in ages. He should have known it would all come crashing down, and that it would all come down to this.
Him. Being a monster.
Brennan got up from the floor, crossed to his desk. He found his journal, a pen, and sat down.
His hands were shaking, and as he wiped tears from his eyes, he tried to organize the frantic spinning of his thoughts.
Vampire blood, he wrote. Triggers thirst frenzy.
The vampire ball, he wrote. March 1.
Turning, he wrote, mutual exchange of blood.
You’re a fuckup and Cole will never forgive you, he wrote.
Sunny and Nellie are gonna die, he wrote.
He clenched his hands into fists to still their tremors. He breathed in, out, in, out, like Dr. Morris used to tell him to. Then he uncurled his fingers and ripped the page from the notebook. He ripped it in half, and when that wasn’t satisfying, he ripped the pieces a few more times.
Then he started a new page.
He had a lot of work to do.