“You don’t wanna talk about this?” She turned the radio back down.
She saw a muscle flexing in his jaw. He didn’t answer.
“You keep trying to keep me in the dark, Tristan. That shit won’t fly with me.”
His mouth tightened.
“Seriously,” she muttered.
“The last thing I need is to worry about how you’ll deal with shit. It’s shit that’s irrelevant. I’m president of a company. I’m in a high-ranking position on a council that runs the company and that works with others to protect vampires from being discovered. My council works with other councils as a collective, to protect our secrets. End of.”
“It’s that bad? The stuff you keep from me?”
He shook his head, “We know how well it went when you knew I had to deal with that vamp with a taste for kids. You really want more of that?”
“Is there a lot that’s that bad?”
“There’s a lot of a variety of things and some of it you don’t want to know, believe me. And it’s stuff that just doesn’t factor right now. There’s no need to add more stress on top of everything else.”
“You’ve been treating me like a mushroom, Tristan.”
He didn’t reply and she guessed by his expression that under his sunglasses he’d likely rolled his eyes.
“Keeping me in the dark, feeding me shit…” she added.
He shook his head, “Baby, listen…” he started but then he didn’t finish.
“I’m on a need-to-know basis with you. I have been since we met. I understand that there’s stuff that’s irrelevant but you need to get that I’m not okay with being the ‘little lady’ that you keep in the dark.”
He roughly ripped his sunglasses off and glared at her, “And with everything we’re dealing with, Kyla, I need you to know that you can trust me. There’s shit you don’t need to know, stuff that doesn’t factor for you and me. Trust that I am doing everything I can for us. It’s all for us.”
He made a sudden lane change and laid on the horn for a sec, frustrated at something on the road that Kyla hadn’t even noticed. She suspected it was more about him being frustrated with her than with other motorists.
“Who you are, what you do, who we’re dealing with in terms of your colleagues slash compadres, or whatever… it factors.”
“Yeah? You find out shit you don’t like, you don’t get to leave. Then you have to deal with shit you won’t want to deal with and it puts distance between us. Why would I do that to you, to us?”
“I don’t get to leave,” she said with a sneer, “nice.”
He got louder, his driving got more erratic, “No matter what you find out about me, you don’t get to leave me, you know this. You’re mine and I am not ever letting go of that. So, princess, I get to make the fuckin’ choice about whether or not I want you burying bitterness about the things I’ve done, the things I did before I knew you, the things I have to do to protect you, the people I have no choice but to deal with. I choose no.”
“I’d rather deal than---”
“No! Believe me, you wouldn’t rather deal. And I’m not the same as I was before I met you, so giving you a bunch of ugly details doesn’t give you an inkling of who I am now. I need you to trust that I’ll keep you safe, that I’ll share knowledge about Kovac and about my past if it helps us but I will not burden you with shit that will do nothing but hurt you. There’s nothing productive about you learning about any of that. Nothing but pain for you if you do.”
Kyla folded her arms across her chest, which was burning with emotion, “Don’t call me princess when you’re yelling at me,” she said, meaning to come across pissed off but instead coming across hoarsely, her voice cracking.
The anger drained from his face. He reached across the centre console and took her hand. She yanked it away and re-folded her arms across her chest.
The next three hours were filled with loaded silence and if it was possible to shoot daggers at him with her brain, that’s what she was doing the entire time, although she was doing it while also trying to stop herself from agreeing with him because he had a point.
Her stress would filter through to become his stress and they both had enough of that already. She hated it when her brain reasoned with her that he was right because she almost always came to that conclusion after a temper tantrum.
Arrival in their next motel room was punctuated by her slamming the bathroom door so she could take a long shower and get a minute to herself. The room was a lot like the last place. It was a typical single storey motor inn with drive up rooms that contained two beds, small sitting area, TV, and a bathroom.