I laugh. “Yeah.”
“Wow.”
“I think I was a goner the first time I saw him.” I laugh. I’m making conversation and playing a role, but I’ll be damned if I’m not speaking the truth. I know he’s listening to my every word. The true challenge of having a vampire boyfriend … Ex-boyfriend.
“How did you met?”
“A case of all things. There was an instant attraction. I would’ve ignored it. Instead, he pursued me.”
She laughs. “Of course he did. Those old school boys and their notions of courtly love so foreign to us modern women. Was it all poets, gifts, and pining?”
The heat rushes to my face.
“Oh, it was.” She claps her hands, and I shake my head as the song changes, and she holds out her hand. I spin her out and back to me as we fall into a comfortable state of being. She’s stronger than she used to be. Maybe she can manage the magic instead of the other way around.
Cristobal grew up in another time. When everyone was in love with love, and men went above and beyond to prove themselves worthy of the four letter word. He swept me off my feet like a wave. Of course, I fell hard. The bastard ruined all men for me. I think I knew it deep down.
“Water?”
“Please.” We make our way from the empty dance floor.
“Why run then?”
“I was a baby, and he was … intense is an understatement. You’ve seen the way they can focus on something, imagine all the power of that honed in on to you. It’s heady but terrifying.”
“Damn.”
“Are you and Blazh …” I trail off, not sure what to call them.
She snickers. “Strictly business. I don’t know if you heard, but it’s not good to mix that with pleasure.”
“Guess I missed the memo,” I say as the bartender slips us two glasses of water. They don’t even pretend to be human here. It drives home how different my life has become.
“Is there anyone in the picture?”
She snorts. “No, I’m busy building my own legacy now. I’m also not convinced love is a real thing. It’s a gamble. A risk when you offer up that much power to another person. It’d take one hell of a man to get me to even consider it.”
“You sound cynical.”
She shakes her head, her honey brown hair flying around her face, catching a little on the sweat from the dancing. “I had a front-row seat for male oppression from my brothers and father. It makes a girl gun shy.”
“Yeah, I could see that.”
We glance across the room as we rehydrate. The boys shake hands over the table, wrapping things up.
“We should do this again. I had fun, and clearly, you aren’t scandalized by the company I keep these days.”
“Can’t throw stones when I live in a glass house.” Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Blazh gestures us with a finger.
“Master beckons.”
Blazh smirks and the change is disturbing. I don’t want to forget who this man is and what he’s done. It could lead to a slip-up, and that could be fatal.
***
“What did he say?” I ask as I walk inside my house with him on my heels.