Page 27 of Vampires of Eden

“Raph, we have to?—”

“No. If it’s your choice to go through with this insane plan, I’m with you until the end. You know that. But let’s not pretend like we’re cool with it. We are not and you deserve much, much better than this.”

A familiar melodic buzzing emanates from Raphael’s hip. Shifting my gaze down, I grimace. “Why thefuckdo you have my phone?”

He looks at me, sweetly batting his heavy ginger lashes the way he always does when he knows he’s out of line. Guilty as a fox. “Well…”

“Raphael—” He slips out of the bench and stands, moving away before I can strangle him. “Did you read my messages? How many times do I?—”

“I know, alright?” Nervously, he slips his fingers through the short length of his coppery hair, but uses his other hand to remove my phone from his pocket. “But you’ve been a sneaky little rabbit lately and you won’t tell me where you’re going—then you came back yesterday utterly depressed and you still wouldn’t talk to me. So, I needed to know why.”

He pauses and looks at me with his doe eyes. “I mean, honestly? This is your fault. Look at what you make me do.”

“Oh, you can go fuck yourself.” Unbelievable. “Boundaries, Raph.”

He waves a hand and leans on the piano with his elbows. Focusing, he punches the security code into my phone. The light illuminates his freckled face in the dim banquet hall.

“Yes, right, going forward, boundaries,” he says. “But also going forward,communication. Who is ‘Kathryn’ and why are you ignoring her messages? Why is she pleading that you come back to the house? What house, Lexie? Why don’t I know any of this?”

I can’t believe this creature. One minute he’s making me laugh, the next, I want to send him flying across the room with a roundhouse kick.

Lifting a hand to the back of my neck, I massage and close my eyes. “Kathryn owns the safe house that Oliver escaped to.”

Raphael brightens. “Ah, the safe house for ranked vamps. I remember. Why are you going there?”

“Because they need help renovating the house and I wanted to try something different. I don’t know… I-I desperately wanted a change of environment.” I intentionally leave out the fact that Oliver told me to do this. Knowing how Raphael feels about Ollie, that single bit of information will make this conversation a thousand times worse.

“Fine, but why hide this from me?” Raphael asks. “It’s better if I know things, so I can cover for you.”

“Yeah, ideally. But sometimes you buckle under pressure and tell my mom shit that I would rather you didn’t.”

Raphael straightens. “Your mother can be a very intimidating vampire.”

“Exactly. I didn’t want you to slip up and tell her about this.” Sighing, I open my eyes and drop my hand. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s over. I’m not going back.”

No change of environment for me.

Deeper into the abyss I go.

“Why?” Raphael asks, lifting my phone again to read my messages with the same ease that he’d use to read his own. “Kathryn says, ‘Daniel won’t be here next time, I promise.’ Daniel? Is this the same Daniel that’s living with cousin Leelee at the vineyard? First-gen, piano Daniel? Daniel Lim?”

Why does he need to say his fucking name so many times? My face is fixed like something smells bad. “Yes.”

“The one you used to have a huge crush on?”

Every muscle in my body tenses and my eyes go wide. “I-I didnothave a crush on him.”

I absolutely had a crush on him.

Back then, my dreams were consumed with him in this fourteen-year-old fever-pitch, raging hormones, waking up sweating and panting kind of way.

But I’m not admitting that out loud.

Ever.

Raphael laughs. “Yes, you absolutely did! You started learning the piano because of him. You learned theSonata Pathétiquebecause of him and you’d blab on and on about how incredible he was to anyone and everyone in the house that would listen!”

“No, I was fourteen and I just thought he was cool—there’s a difference.”