"Can I talk to you Syn?" Adrian asked shoving his hands firmly in his pockets.
I looked around the room and nodded, still unable to talk over the growing lump. Adam and Larissa had remained silent, waiting to finally get the explanation from him as I had been. I stood nervously already reading his expression, we'd been that close.
"Alone?" He asked the others.
I turned to ask the others to leave but Adrian stopped me.
"Outside Fancy Face, the walls have ears," he said smoothly as his eyes looked at the walls as if they would object.
"Okay," I said looking down at my still bare feet, "Let me grab something for my feet." I bent down turning the flip flops over and dug my feet into them.
As we moved down the hallway, Adrian commented on their relationship. "Knew they'd end up together," he said with a grin.
"Did you now." I mumbled sarcastically, trying to stop my hands from fisting up as I figured out what to do with them, I settled on crossing them over my chest as I stood awkwardly in my pink sweat pants that said Sassy Girl across my butt. The shirt I was wearing wasn’t much better. It was the White Zombie one I'd gotten at the concert we had gone as a group to a few years ago, that said Living Dead Girl across the breast area.
"They hate me," he said silently.
"What do you expect Adrian? You ditched us, not the other way around," I said through clenched teeth.
"Ryder said we could talk by the pool, but I think I'd rather walk the grounds," he said as we made our way down the stairs. It was awkward to be walking next to someone you had spent years wishing you could have one last conversation with, one last kiss.
I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to say and it all seemed so different now. I was a different person than I'd been before meeting Ryder. If this had happened before I'd met him I would have thrown my arms around Adrian without caring what had happened, or why. Don’t get me wrong, I'd still be pissed, but I missed him and it was a relief to know I hadn't gotten him killed.
We ended up walking a trail that started from the driveway and walked through thick greenery. Neither of us said anything at first as if we were afraid to. I know I was. He wasn’t the same guy he'd been. "What's it like?" I finally asked letting the curiosity get the better of me.
"Being dead?" He asked with a sexy smirk.
"Yeah," I quickly looked away as something crunched a few feet away from us.
"It's not as bad as I thought it would be. I don’t care for the having to feed part, but mix it with sex and it's amazing," he replied still smiling as he placed his hands back in the pockets of his jeans.
He'd been having sex and I'd been Miss-Do-It-Myself. Great! I waited for the jealousy to come, but it was muted when it did. I rubbed my arms feeling the cool air flow over them as my eyes scanned the area wondering if we had been tailed.
"I didn’t have a choice Fancy Face. The Vampire who did this to me, well he handed me a picture of you. Said he would turn you if I didn’t change. Vlad was worried we'd be sent after him, so he sent his version of a hit squad out that night. I did what I had to keep you and the others safe. You didn’t know it Syn, but they were inches from you that night. Showed me where you were and then showed me the vamp standing beside you. We were so cocky back then, reckless," he smiled as I turned to look at him.
"So you went with them? We were strong Adrian, we could have fought them!" I was pissed, "That should have been my decision to make Adrian and you took it without asking us. We'd have fought for you!"
"And died Fancy Face, you would have died. That wasn’t something I could have lived with—ever."
"And what if we had won? Then you would still be alive," I blanched and continued, "Or more than you are right now anyways. Dammit Adrian, I buried you!" I was shaking with anger, rage and guilt.
"Baby I couldn’t take that chance," his eyes searched my face as he closed the distance between us and curled me against him in a tight embrace, "You were my life Syn, I couldn’t chance it because I knew you would fight them and I knew you'd die. It was a choice, me for you. I took it and yes, maybe I should've had more faith in you, but at the time I was given a choice and I made it."
He was cold, his body was more muscled than it had been, but where it had once been warm, it was cold and his scent had changed. He smelled of earth and his cologne he had always worn made me smile. I listened to his empty chest before pulling away in time to catch him sniffing me. Did I stink to his undead senses?
I looked up into his face as he cupped my cheek in his cold hand, "Did you miss me?"
"Would it matter?" I asked knowing he already knew I had missed him.