Nightwolf

But still, I’m not sure how much longer I can pretend I’m not feeling it.

I open the passenger door and get into the car.

Wolf gives me a sympathetic smile. He’s still breathtakingly beautiful, he’s a vampire after all, but even he looks worn down. The spark in his eyes is gone. Instead, there’s just sadness. “How did it go?”

I shake my head, feeling the exhaustion hit me at once, and close my eyes. “It was a lot to take in. If you don’t mind, when I have to go back for the viewing, I’d like you to come.”

Silence fills the car.

I glance at him, trying to read his stony expression. “If you want,” I add quickly. “You don’t have to see her, I just don’t want to be alone next time. You can wait in the next room. It’s totally personal, I get that.”

“Sure,” he says, swallowing hard. “I can do that.”

“Great, thank you,” I tell him as he pulls the car away from the parking lot and starts driving it back in the direction of the house, the mist blowing past us through the streets. “Actually,” I quickly say, “do you mind if we just go for a drive? Anywhere, I don’t care, I don’t want to go back to the house yet.”

“Sure,” he says again, his voice in that same neutral tone, as if he’s walking on eggshells with me. And he probably is. I have been breaking down over everything lately. When people say you have to take loss and grief day by day, what they really mean is moment by moment. I’m okay one minute, almost like my old self, and then in the next minute I’m curled up in a ball, crying my eyes out.

He pulls the car over onto Point Lobos Ave, heading north.

“Are you okay?” I ask, though the moment I do, I know it’s a stupid question.

“Are you kidding me?” he asks. Then shakes his head, pressing his lips together, jaw tense. “No. I’m not okay. None of us are okay, Amethyst. It’s not just you.”

Right. “I don’t mean about my mother. I mean…are we okay? You and me.”

Something dark flashes over his eyes and the air in the car grows a few degrees colder. Okay, not a good sign. My heart immediately clenches.

“Pull over,” I say, the words just coming out.

“Here?”

I nod, my fingernails digging into my jeans, as Wolf pulls the car off to the side of the road outside the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Heavy mist flows past us, obscuring the building from time to time, and I feel like I’m in an awful dream, one that keeps changing and morphing while I’m inside it.

I twist in my seat to face him, and it feels like everything inside me is shaking, my heart rattling against my ribs. “Talk to me.”

He slowly nods and eyes me, those eyes looking more haunted than ever. “What do you want me to say?”

Not a promising start.

I clear the lump in my throat. “I just need you to reassure me that I’m not losing my mind. Because I know I am losing my mind, I know grief sort of makes you go crazy, and I’m living two different realities now that keep blending in with each other and I don’t know what’s what. But I just…I have fears and I’m scared and I really, really need assurance that everything is okay. Between us. You and me.”

“You know I’m here for you,” he says, and there’s such deliberation in his words, like he spent time carefully choosing which ones, like he’s on trial for something. “That will never change. I’m here for you.”

“Yes, I know,” I tell him, worrying my lip between my teeth, wondering if I should just jump into it. “You’re there for me. You’ve been a big help and you’re so supportive and I couldn’t do this without you but…you haven’t touched me in days.”

There. I said it.

I watch carefully as his teeth grind together. “There’s been a lot going on.”

“I know. That’s why I’m asking for reassurance.” I let out a dry laugh. “Trust me, I’d rather not ask for it. It’s…embarrassing. But I am. I just need to know that we’re still…”

“Still what?” he says, but his voice is barely audible.

“Still together. As a couple.”

He frowns. “I’m not really sure that we were a couple.”

My stomach sinks and I blink at him in shock. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…we never really discussed what we were before all this…before…” he trails off and looks out the window at the fog.

“Wolf,” I almost snap, leaning forward toward him. “I told you I loved you. I opened my heart to you and I bared my soul and I became my most vulnerable and I told you that I loved you. I know you didn’t say it back, you didn’t have to, but, but…you can’t pretend that this is all resting on the semantics of being a couple. I love you!”