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Reyna walked through the hospital. It was strange to be on this side of the Visage building. She and her brothers had never had enough money to go to the hospital in the warehouses. When she got sick, she had to sweat it out in their cramped apartment with acetaminophen and hope. Now the sterile environment, packed with sick people who had lost hope and turned to the vampire hospital to keep them alive, surrounded her.

As soon as they made it inside, Beckham had vanished with barely enough instructions for her to figure out how to find Everett. The receptionist directed her down the hall to a nurse. The next nurse pointed her down another hallway. After a few more twists and turns, she finally found Everett tucked up in a hospital bed with an IV attached to his arm.

The IV made her shudder, but at least he was alive.

He didn’t look pale and sickly like when she had last seen him. A white bandage was stark against his neck, and she imagined the horrifying puncture wounds underneath. They were both so lucky Beckham had found them.

She knocked on the open door lightly.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“Reyna.” His face split into a smile. “It’s so good to see you alive.”

“I could say the same for you. Can I come in?”

“Of course you can.” He patted the bed.

She walked across the small room and plopped down into a chair next to the bed. She felt sick to her stomach that they even had to be here. Of course they were tremendously lucky to be alive, but that didn’t assuage the ache in the pit of her stomach. Life shouldn’t be like this. The dark shouldn’t hold these fears. Even back home, where it was supposedly more dangerous, she had never feared something like this happening.

After an awkward moment, Reyna broke the silence. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have ever put us in that position.”

“No one knew the vampire was going to be there,” Everett reminded her.

“That’s true, but I didn’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Luckily, I’m safe now. All thanks to you.”

“Well, thanks to Beckham,” she told him. “He saved us both.”

“Wow,” Everett said. Surprise was written on his face. “A vampire saving humans. I’d never have guessed. What was he even doing there, anyway?”

“He was following me, I guess. I have a tendency to find danger, or danger has a tendency to find me.”

“Maybe you should have warned me about that ahead of time,” Everett said, but he was smiling.

She breathed out a sigh of relief that their friendship didn’t seem irrevocably broken after the traumatic experience from last night. Even though Everett had seemed interested in her and she didn’t feel the same, that didn’t mean she wanted him to die. Nor did she want to lose her only friend thus far.

Just as she was about to say as much, all of his friends bustled into the room. Mara was at the head of the pack. She rushed over to Everett, looking stricken. Her face was puffy and her eyes red as if she had been crying much of the night. Maybe she had been.

Reyna felt a pang of guilt. She had been locked away in Beckham’s apartment, sharing a kiss with him, while her friend was at the hospital getting a blood transfusion. His real friends had waited around for him to wake up. She tried to rid herself of the guilt, but it was difficult.

“Hey, guys,” Everett said with a smile.

“Oh, Everett,” Mara cried. She wrapped her arms around his waist and gave him a big hug. He laughed at her and patted her twice on the shoulder.

“I’m okay, Mara.”

“What the hell happened to you? We thought you guys split.” She gave Reyna an accusatory look.

Reyna had a feeling this was more about the fact that she’d thought Everett and Reyna left together than to find out the details. It was pretty obvious that she liked him. It was strange that Mara was threatened by her. She had never been that woman before, and honestly she shouldn’t be now. She liked Everett as a friend, but that was it. Her heart was careening in a completely opposite direction. A direction she shouldn’t even be considering.

“Yeah. Are you all right?” Brianna asked, nudging Coop forward into the room.

It was starting to get very crowded. Reyna felt conscious of the fact that she was seated close to Everett.

“We’re both okay. We were attacked by a rogue vampire,” Everett explained.

Mara gasped. Her hands flew to her mouth. Everyone else looked stricken at the prospect.

“He fed from me. Drew enough blood that I passed out, and if I hadn’t been immediately transported to a hospital, I would have died.”

Reyna nodded solemnly. “He came after me next. Threw me against the dumpster, and I suffered a head injury, but uh…another vampire came and saved us.”

“What?” Brianna asked, confused.

“Another vamp?” Tucker asked. “A bloodsucker fending off his own kind?”

“Yeah,” she said softly.

Mara narrowed her eyes. “What the hell, Everett? Why would a vamp interfere?”

Reyna blushed and kept her eyes firmly fixed on the sheet. Everett remained silent. It would be hard to lie about this one. Lying about where she worked had been easy, but this was something else entirely. Vampires didn’t act like this without motive.

“Oh my God,” Mara cried. “You work for them, for Visage!”

Reyna cringed at the accusation in Mara’s voice. She wanted to speak up and tell her all the things that she and Everett had been speaking about only yesterday. How stigmatizing the work only hurt the people who were in it and how she had made her choice knowing full well what was going on, and feeling bad for people who did this job didn’t help anything. But instead she just sat there.

Everett shook his head. “Mara, that’s enough.”

“Visage shouldn’t even exist,” Mara said. “I’m sorry, Reyna, but you shouldn’t be working within the system. You should be trying to take it down.”

Brianna sighed. “We want to help these people, not turn them away, Mara.”

Tucker and Coop were looking anywhere but at Reyna, caught in the crossfire.

“She’s the one who lied to our faces.”

“That was me, actually,” Everett said. “And you can’t blame her even if she did.”

Reyna squared her shoulders. She couldn’t sit back and let them voice this vitriol to her. “I’m still human. You could act like you have an ounce of humanity.”

“You’re giving up your humanity to them every time you let them drink from you,” Mara accused.

“Guys, stop it,” Everett yelled, silencing them all. “Leave Reyna alone.”

“How can you defend her?” Mara demanded. “She lets a vampire suck her blood for money. The only thing worse is a fucking vampire.”

“That vampire saved my life,” Everett reminded them. “Maybe not all of them are bad.”

“One exception isn’t enough to undo generations of atrocities,” Mara cried fiercely.

“But it seems enough to condemn them,” Beckham said as he walked into the room.

The silence was deafening. Everyone turned and stared at his immense bulk in the doorway. The power radiating off of him was full of intensity. Tucker, Coop, and Brianna scurried to the far side of the room and huddled together. Mara stared back at Beckham defiantly, but she wasn’t immune to his power. When he turned his eyes directly on her, Reyna could tell that it was the last place she wanted to be.

“What exactly is going on here?” he asked, his voice booming.

No one said a word.

“That’s what I thought.”

His eyes finally found Reyna’s across the room, and she breathed a sigh of relief that he was here. She never would have thought that she would be so happy that he was near her. But she had felt not only degraded by Everett’s friends but also cornered like a mouse in a trap. These were the kind of people who started lynch mobs, and she didn’t want to get caught by the pitchfork.

“Let’s go, Reyna.”

She ducked her chin to her chest and hastened out of the room. She didn’t care what they said after she left. She didn’t want to stay there another minute. Not even Everett said anything at her departure.

They exited the hospital in silence. His driver was waiting for them at the guest entrance, and she slid easily into the darkened interior. Her tight skirt rode up her legs when she sat down. She was pulling the material down to attempt to cover herself up as Beckham got into the car. He took one look at her, the fact that ninety percent of her legs were clearly visible, and extracted his phone from his suit pocket.

As soon as the door shut behind them, the car headed back into the city. She could feel irritation radiating off of him. She didn’t know if it was because of the conversation he’d walked in on or something else.

“Where did you go?” she asked. Her eyes were locked on him tapping endlessly at that damn phone. Her own phone was tucked away in her purse, unused as usual.

Beckham didn’t say a word.

She sighed. Was he back to silence?

“I can’t believe what Everett’s friends were saying,” she whispered. She slumped back in her seat, wondering if she could get a reaction from him. The only thing he had noticed was her exposed legs, but she wasn’t about to stoop to taking her clothes off for him to pay attention. “Does everyone think like they do?”

Not one word. He didn’t even raise his head to acknowledge that she was talking. She thought about throwing her hand in between him and the damn phone, but she was worried about the consequences of her actions.

“Are you going to keep ignoring me?”

He closed his eyes for a second before responding. “Prejudices run deep between our people. No one thinks kindly of anyone, because no one is kind to anyone else. One act will change no one’s opinion. You should ignore what people think of you. You are the only one who knows whether or not it is true.”

Reyna stared at him for a long time after that. It was very insightful, coming from a vampire who had saved a human’s life. It proved over and over again that Beckham was not the bad person he wanted everyone, including her, to believe.

“You know it’s been a week and a half, Becks.”

“Have you been here irritating me for only that long? You make it seem like a lifetime, Little One.”

“I obviously can’t hang out with those people who hate me anymore. I can’t stay locked in your apartment. I need to do something. Anything,” she breathed.

Beckham huffed. “Then use the credit card and go shopping. Buy a mountain of clothes to fill your closet. Make friends with other employees, who’ll understand what you are doing and won’t judge you for it. Just do something that befits your new station in life.”

“My new station?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes, Reyna. I’m not sure what part of this you’re missing. You have more money than your wildest dreams could ever have imagined. Use some of it.”

Thinking of herself as wealthy, because she happened to work for Beckham and live in his penthouse, made her feel ludicrous. The only benefit of living with him was that the compensation she did receive for the job she wasn’t performing was funneled right back to her brothers. At least them receiving the money made it all worth it.

“And you want me to go shopping on the black credit card? The unlimited credit card?”

“It’s unlimited for a reason,” he said dryly.

“You know I have more clothes than I could ever want in my closet and absolutely nothing comfortable to wear.”

“What do you want from me, Reyna?”

Well, that was a loaded question if she had ever heard one. The list of things she wanted from him that she couldn’t possibly utter grew daily. Her gaze unconsciously dropped down to his lips and then slipped back up into those endlessly dark eyes. He clenched his jaw.

Yeah. Out of the question.

“I need to do something. Maybe get a job?”

“You have a job already.”

Reyna laughed in his face. “Right now I’m getting paid to sit around in your penthouse and deal with your attitude and preoccupation with your phone. That’s not a job. I can’t live cooped up with nothing to do. I’m restless.”

“Everyone else would die for this opportunity. Why must you be so difficult?”

“I’m obviously not everyone else.”

“Obviously.”

She sighed and felt the space between them heavily. “I didn’t bargain for never leaving or doing anything or seeing my brothers.”

Beckham shook his head incredulously. “Do you not understand the danger? Did last night reveal nothing to you?”

She lifted her chin. He was talking about the attack, but all she could think was the feel of his lips on hers. As she fell asleep last night, she had replayed that moment over and over again in her mind. She had been even more restless afterward. One taste was not enough. Could never be enough.

“Last night simply showed me what I already knew. Some people are good, and some are bad. Some vampires are bad, and some…” Reyna reached out and touched his hand across the car. “Some are good.”

Beckham pulled his hand back as if he’d been burned. “That’s where you’re wrong. Everyone is bad. You just don’t know it yet.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“The good isn’t out there, Reyna. Everyone is corrupt. Everyone is broken.”

“I’m not,” she whispered.

“Oh, Little One, this world will kill the goodness left within your beating heart.”

“But it will not break me.”

“No,” he agreed. He leaned his head into her hair and drew a deep breath. “I will do that.”