“Red, listen to me,” he said, as gently as he could manage. “And listen good, because you know I’m not any good with words, so I probably won’t be able to repeat it.”
She sniffled, and made a noise that might have been a weak chuckle.
“I – I died over there. The thing they loaded in that helo that day was just a corpse.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. You gave me a reason to get up in the mornings again. Made it so I can. So don’t…” He trailed off into a sigh. He wasn’t saying this right, and he knew he never could, but it was important. “I don’t know how all of this is gonna turn out in the long run.” Secretly, he knew that there was a clock somewhere, ticking down to the zero hour when he finally got caught unawares and taken out. Just like he’d known on this last deployment, when he’d shielded Deshawn with his body: his days were numbered; he gave them willingly so that someone worthier might live. But. “But I’ll never walk away,” he told her. “I won’t ever leave you. So get that out of your head right now, alright? I can’t promise I won’t be kinda crazy.”
She tipped her head back, her chin resting on his sternum, tear-bright eyes looking up into his. A crooked, tremulous little smile touched her mouth.
“I’m a Marine, kid, it just comes with the territory.”
“I know.” She settled again, cheek pressed over his thudding heart. “I’m just sorry you don’t get to do normal things.”
“What’s normal, huh? Rush hour traffic and the bar scene? Nuh-uh. I ain’t missing that.”
She hesitated a breath, and then, just a whisper: “You could have a family.”
He squeezed her gently, combed his fingers through her hair. “I have a family. Right here with you.”
She dug the tip of her little nose into the groove under his pec and dissolved into silent, shaking tears.
Rooster held her, rocked them side-to-side, for a long time.
26
Buffalo, New York
“You’re a lucky girl. Not just anybody can say they had a Russian prince over for dinner,” Lanny said as he dropped down beside Trina on the top step of her parents’ back deck.
She rolled her eyes and took another sip of her vodka tonic. “It’s tsarevich, dummy.”
He elbowed her. She could feel his smile, the way it took up physical space. Her dad had busted out the good scotch and Lanny had had enough to put down three men; he was only pleasantly buzzed, loose and relaxed in a way he hadn’t been in a long time – even since before the craziness had started. He’d been living with his diagnosis – wallowing in misery – for a long time now, she realized. It saddened her.
“Don’t get all technical on me,” he said, a laugh threaded through his voice. “He’s an asshole. End of story.”
“Hmm. And yet you seem weirdly fixated on him.”
He made an affronted noise. “He turned me into a…” He gestured toward himself.
“Can you not say ‘vampire’?”
“It’s a stupid word.”
“I think you just insulted yourself there, champ.”
He grimaced. “I just mean…”
“Yeah, I know.”
It was a beautiful late summer night, just cool enough for her to be grateful for her light jacket, the crickets and tree frogs hosting a pastoral symphony across the moon-silvered fields. Trina stared out across the shadowy vista and took a deep breath of country air, resolutely pushing aside the worry that it might be the last chance she had to do so for a while.
Lanny wasn’t one for quiet, though. Never had been. Trina suspected it was because he had so many siblings; he’d never learned how to enjoy silence.
He said, “This just doesn’t seem like you to me.”
She glanced over with surprise. “What doesn’t?”
He shrugged, gaze fixed on the purple horizon. “Out here in the country. Being a farm girl and all.”
“It’s not a farm.”
“Look at all that acreage.”
“We don’t have animals.”
“Tell me somebody here doesn’t have a tractor and I’ll buy that it’s not a farm.”
She made a face, and he laughed.
“I don’t look like I could be a farmer?” she asked, only half-joking. A part of her – before they found Nikita, before Lanny’s cancer confession and subsequent turning – she’d entertained fantasies of finally telling him how she felt. Of them transferring to a local sheriff’s department and building a little house on the family compound. Wildflower summers and downhill sledding winters.
But that was part of a fantasy that asked too much of Lanny. That assumed all the obstacles could be overcome.
And that was before she’d known that the obstacles involved his need to drink blood.
As if he sensed her eyes on him, his slid over, narrowing. “Nah, it’s just – you like having a cause, you know? Something good to do. At work, in the city, you stand out. You’ve got this walk, you know? Like you’re a badass and you don’t care who knows it.” He grinned a moment, sly enough to make her stomach leap. But then it faded. “Here, though…you fade.”
“I fade?” She tried to disguise the flare of hurt in her voice. Tried. “Damn, you’re a sweet talker.”
“No. I mean–”
“I’m invisible.”
“Damn it. Okay. Lemme try that again.”
“Please do.”
He took a deep breath.
“I know putting sentences together is hard for you,” she deadpanned, and he shoved her shoulder, which made her smile in spite of the lump forming in her throat.
“What I was trying to say,” he said, “is that I don’t know what kind of badass stuff you’d do around here is all. If you weren’t making arrests, and interrogating shitheads, and just in general being the coolest fucking chick ever, what would you do? Garden?”
“What’s wrong with gardening?”
“Nothing. But I can’t see you doing it.”
He’d hurt her, and the most frustrating part was she didn’t know why, exactly. “Okay.” She turned away from him, facing the gently tumbling hollows that stretched on toward the tree line.
Talk to him, her mom had urged.
You just have to sort through it, her grandmother had said.
But it wasn’t that simple. Nothing ever was.
“Shit,” he said, “I stepped in it, didn’t I?”
“A little bit, yeah.”
He shifted closer, until she could feel his body heat pushing against the coolness of the evening. His voice dropped, just a low murmur. “I know things are messed up,” he confessed. “But I don’t know how to fix them.”
“I know. Me neither.”
She felt something at the back of her hand, and looked down with a little start to find that it was his thumb: smooth hard calluses from lifting weights for years. His skin warm. Human. He didn’t feel any different than he had before. So why was she…
Her breath hitched, a painful little hiccup in her throat, and he pulled her whole hand into his, cool palm to warm one, their fingers interlaced.
“It’s still just me,” Lanny murmured, his breath fanning across her cheek. He smelled of Scotch. Like himself. “Are you afraid of me?”
“No.” She squeezed his hand. “Maybe.”
He pulled her in close, into the sheltering solidity of his shoulder, and pressed his lips to her temple. “I would never hurt you. Never, Trina.”
“Not on purpose,” she whispered, a shiver stealing through her.
“Not ever,” he insisted, and the fierceness in his voice made her smile. He was a fighter in all senses; he didn’t know how to be anything else.
He worked his hand loose from hers so he could put his arm around her shoulders, and Trina realized how much tension she’d been holding when she let it go, slumping into his chest.
“I’m not trying to push you away,” she said, playing with the zipper on his jacket. “Everything’s just been…”
“Weird as fuck?” he suggested, and she snorted.
“Yeah, pretty much. I know it was my idea for you to ask Nik for help. And Lanny” – she tipped her head back so she could look up at his face, edged silver by moonlight – “I’m so glad you’re healthy. You have to know that. The thought of you…” Her eyes started to burn and she ducked her face into his throat, blinking hard. “So I’m glad. I am. It’s just…”
“Not as hot as teenage girls seem to think it is?”