Accidental Sire (Half-Moon Hollow #6)

“You proposed to her,” I noted.

“Because I was afraid I would lose her otherwise. I could feel her pulling away from me, trying to find a way out without hurting my feelings. I panicked. She was my first love, and we made sense, and I didn’t think I would ever find someone else who . . . Well, anyway, when I asked her, she broke up with me, and rightly so, because fear is a terrible reason to ask someone to spend the rest of her life with you.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I told him.

“I want to find a way for us to get back to the people we were sitting out in front of the dorm . . . before you were crushed by a flying free weight. Because I liked those people. They were good together.”

“Our meet-cute is not like other people’s meet-cute.” I sighed. “I like you, too. But I’m torn between those feelings of like and knowing that there’s a very good chance you could freak and run out on me. Or just decide to be a dick again and make me feel so uncomfortable in my own temporary home that I think I can’t move without weirding someone out. I don’t like either option.”

“And if I promised I wouldn’t do that again?” he asked. “That I wouldn’t run away or shut down?”

“That’s really easy to promise and twice as easy to forget,” I countered. “I need to feel anchored somewhere, Ben. I need to feel like I can’t be kicked out of my home, even if it’s only home for a little while. I don’t want to risk what I have at Jane’s. No matter how cute you are.”

“What if I said that if it ever got awkward again, I would ask Jane to send me to some other vampire for fostering?”

I shook my head. “Jane wouldn’t do that.”

“She would if I asked her.”

He was offering to make sure I was safe, comfortable. It was more than I’d been offered by any of my previous potential romantic partners, who considered covering pizza to be a big gesture. I wasn’t sure Jane would honor his request, but it meant a lot that he was willing to give up his own comfort to guarantee mine.

Yes, he’d been a jerk, but he was apologizing. And his olive branch was more trunk-sized. While it didn’t make up for everything, it was something to consider.

“I can’t ask you to do that.” I sighed again. “You don’t have a lot of places you feel safe, either. Besides, we’re under such heavy restrictions that if you lived somewhere else, we’d never see each other.”

“Aw, your self-restraint is so sweet,” he said, bumping me with his shoulder. “I can’t promise you much, but I will do everything I can to make sure you don’t feel uncomfortable or unwelcome in Jane’s house, even if this doesn’t work out.”

“This is not a commitment,” I told him. “This is like a tryout, to see if we would be any good at dating if and when we’re ever released into the wild. If it goes well, great. Maybe once we’re back on campus, we can be a couple who likes each other but doesn’t live together. If it goes badly, we’re just going to have to learn to coexist in the house in a way that doesn’t make me want to throw a van at you.”

“I think we can make this work. I just have to get past the whole hang-up about Jane’s house.”

“So I guess we have to establish a rule: nothing in the house,” I said cheerfully. “Nothing under Jane’s roof. Too many weird emotional strings attached there.”

He grimaced. “Which is a problem, since we spend most of our time under house arrest.”

“What are you going to do about it?” I asked, tilting my head.

“Find a way for us to date without being able to leave the house? Jane’s property is pretty big. We could sneak out to the cow pasture.”

“Anything that involves the word ‘pasture’ is not going to end in a good-night kiss for you.”

“It strikes me that there are plenty of beds on the R and D floors.”

“You know, when I thought about having sex with you, creepy lab facilities didn’t really play into it,” I told him.

“Yes, but you did think about it!” he quipped. “There has to be somewhere that two healthy adult types can find some time alone together.”

This was the same feeling I’d had when we’d spent most of the night talking outside my dorm. This was the Ben I remembered. And somehow, despite the fact that I’d seen him every day for the last several weeks, I’d missed him.

“You’re taunting a desperate man here, Meagan.”

I leaned closer, just enough that my lips almost brushed against his. “You’re going to have to try a little harder, Ben.”

And with that, I slid under the metal railing, turned in midair, and grabbed the ladder in free fall. Ben’s eyes went wide, but he relaxed the moment he saw me dangling from the rungs.

“I deserve that,” he said.

I pulled myself back up on the ladder until I was at eye level with him. I gave him a quick kiss. “Yes, you do.”





10




Your childe may surprise you with his or her interests. Remember that a vampire with hobbies is forty percent less likely to have a “rampage” incident.

—The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire

Jane’s bookshop was a colorful, comfortable, quirky paradise. My inner book nerd rejoiced at the squashy purple chairs, the pretty knickknacks, the cozy smell of coffee and blood percolating behind the maple coffee bar. Crystals and silver figurines and geodes took up space along the upper shelves, displayed to catch the eye but high enough that they didn’t make the place look cluttered.

The book selection covered a little bit of everything: classic literature, graphic novels, straight-up occult studies, and a huge array of vampire self-help books. That made sense, given the number of vampires who circulated through the door.

I absolutely loved it.

It was safe for me to be there. While plenty of people would recognize Ben if he sat in the middle of Specialty Books working on his laptop, no one outside of Jane’s trust circle would recognize me. It reminded me of Pages, the little independent bookshop in my hometown where I spent a sad number of Friday nights in high school. While Ben was spending tonight working in the IT office, I’d gotten permission from Jane to take the night off so I could do a history assignment that had me stumped. Dr. Baker was a stickler for punctuality and punctuation, so my usual trick of turning in a first draft would not fly.