17
Love is about facing fear. The fear of rejection, the fear of intimacy, the fear of being hurt. With vampire relationships, the fear quotient tends to be a little higher.
—Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less
Destructive Relationships
W hen Gabriel helped me out of his car, I fussed with his tie, straightening the blue-gray silk before giving his bottom lip a nipping kiss.
“What was that for?” he asked.
I kissed him again and adjusted the straps of my own blood-red silk party dress. “For guaranteeing that I will no longer be remembered as ‘Planed Jane’ by my classmates.”
“Why do I get the feeling that I’m being used for my pretty face?” he asked as we passed under a white and blue balloon arch and a banner that read, “Welcome Back, Howlers! Class of 1998!”
“Hush up, arm candy,” I muttered.
Half-Moon Hollow High School’s gym smelled exactly the same, like BO and anxiety. The reunion committee had tried valiantly to transform the gym into an Enchanted Paradise using the same props they used at our prom ten years before. Let’s see, transparent plastic palm trees lined with twinkle lights? Check. Giant papier-maché volcano with fake flame streamers blowing out? Check. Giant parachute billowing artfully from the ceiling to give the impression that we were extremely well-dressed castaways under an impromptu shelter? Check. Ignoring the fact that said parachute’s storage closet was rumored to be the conception site of Coach Kelly’s love child with Mindy Noonan? Check.
“This is a rite of passage?” Gabriel asked, eyeing the faux volcano. “What exactly does this signify?”
“Nothing, let’s go,” I said, turning on my heel and making what would have been a brilliant dash for the door if Gabriel hadn’t caught my arm.
“We agreed this was an important part of your emotional development.”
“When did we agree to that?” I demanded as he dragged me toward the registration table.
“You said it, I agreed to it. It’s similar to a verbal contract.”
“You’re not a nice man,” I told him.
“I think we’ve established that,” he said as he planted me firmly in front of the table, where a brunette in a cantaloupe-colored suit turned to me with pasted-on smile. I searched her face. Huh. I was expecting to be confronted with someone who’d tortured me in the cafeteria or mocked me in math. But I had no idea who this person was.
“Jane!” she cried. “It’s so good to see you!”
“Hey …” I zeroed in on her name tag. I didn’t even recognize the little senior photo that was laminated next to her name. Like so many of us who graduated from HHHS in the 1990s, she suffered from poufy bangs combined with the horrid plaid flannel of the grunge period. (Pop-culture influence had only so much sway over Hollow girls. We could not be persuaded to put away our curling irons.) I scanned the name. “Mary Beth. How are you?”
“Oh, you know me.” She chuckled as she handed me my name tag. I winced, because, no, I didn’t. “I’m always busy. I’m just so glad to see you here. You look great. And who is this?”
“This is my boyfriend, Gabriel,” I said as she scribbled out a guest name tag with a Sharpie.
Mary Beth winked broadly at him. “Well, you better watch her, Gabriel. She was always one of the sassiest girls in the class.”
“Not much has changed,” Gabriel informed her.
“I can’t wait to find the two of you later so we can catch up,” she cooed.
“See? That woman seemed very happy that you’re here,” he said as we walked away. “She said you were sassy and seemed to think it was a good thing.”
“I have no idea who that woman is,” I told him.
“It still counts. So, that’s what you looked like in high school?” he asked, staring at the tiny yearbook photo embossed on my name tag.
I pinched his arm. “I went through an unfortunate-hair era. Don’t judge me. You used to wear stockings.”
“They were in fashion at the time,” he protested.
“So were the permed bangs. Thank God for cruel college girls and a roommate who read Cosmo .”
He snorted.
I hadn’t seen most of my classmates in a while. Some of them had actually managed to escape the Hollow and establish life on the outside. And the ones who did live in town had daytime schedules, so our paths didn’t cross often. Everybody looked … smaller. Not weightwise, because a few people had packed on some pounds. But somehow I remember these people as giants, looming over me. Most of them were smiling, making polite conversation. And the social boundaries that had defined us ten years ago seemed to have melted away. The former jocks were mixing with the AV club, the Homecoming queen had an affectionate arm around the softball captain. We ambled past a display of photos, surrounded by white votive candles. In glittery silver letters, it said, “We Remember Fondly …”
“I’m on the memorial board!” I gasped. “I thought I took care of that! I RSVP’d, for goodness sake. Dead people don’t RSVP!”
“Well, at least they remembered you fondly,” Gabriel said, trying to find a silver lining.
“Gah!” I huffed.
“It says fondly!” he said again.
“Oh, Jane, it’s so nice to see you back from the dead,” I heard Jolene drawl from behind me. Jolene was dressed in a simple sleeveless red dress, backlit by the low votives on the tables. Even with a baby tucked in her arms, her hotness was undeniable. She was smirking, obviously enjoying the premature reports of my demise.
“You brought the kids?” I asked, taking Janelyn from her.
“Zeb sort of insisted on it,” she said, rolling her eyes. She nodded to where Zeb stood with Joe, surrounded by girls who wouldn’t have given him the time of day in school. They were all cooing and making funny faces at the baby. I couldn’t help but think he was trying to show them what they had missed by turning him down as a prom date.
“Something about proving to the jerks from wood shop that his ‘boys swim.’ And we weren’t the only ones.” She gestured to several other couples bouncing uncomfortable-looking babies in their Sunday best.
I scoffed. “Well, the twins are obviously the best-looking babies here.”
She smiled adoringly at Janelyn. “Obviously.”
“Having a good time?” I asked a grinning Zeb as he hefted the baby on one hip.
“This is awesome!” he cried as another group of women flocked around his beautiful children, cooing and ahhing. He handed Joe to me, taking Jolene’s arm and dragging her toward Adam Morrow, Rick Mullen, and most of the former baseball team. “I think some of the guys over there haven’t seen Jolene yet.”
Adam spotted me from across the room, and a smile lit up his perfect, even features. He straightened his tie and was two steps toward me when Gabriel slid his arm around my waist and commented on how fetching I looked with babies in my arms. Adam blanched, seeming to size Gabriel up in one long look, and took two steps back toward safety. I snickered.
“What’s funny?” Gabriel asked.
I considered telling him, but I remembered Gabriel had threatened to literally put a boot up Adam’s ass the previous year. I didn’t think an introduction would go over very well.
“Not a thing. Here, can you take one?” I said, awkwardly shifting both babies in my arms.
“Er, I don’t think I’m qualified—OK, then.” Gabriel grimaced as I tucked Janelyn into the crook of his elbow. He looked into her little face and cleared his throat. “Um, how do you do?” He seemed offended when I laughed at him. “I’ve never held a baby before! It’s not something men did in my time. Even if they were your own.”
“No, you’re doing beautifully,” I promised, kissing him.
“Hey, cut that out, there are impressionable children present,” Dick said, taking Joe from my arms and making silly faces. Joe, who thought Dick was the funniest person alive—in his limited worldview—gurgled hysterically.
Dick had been in high spirits for the last week or so. With Andrea’s almost seamless transition into vampirism and his renewed friendship with Gabriel, the only thorn in his side was Emery’s sentencing. Of course, Ophelia had lifted that burden a few days before, when she arrived at the shop, looking for a copy of the latest Michele Bardsley novel. Dick had asked her what the Council had decided to do with Emery. She gave him a razor-thin smile and said, “There is no Emery.” And then she flounced out of the shop in her usual unsettling manner. Knowing that Emery had suffered hideously at the hands of the Council had given Dick and Andrea some measure of closure. Dick and Mr. Wainwright mourned the end of their bloodline but, given Emery’s example, agreed it was probably for the best.
“I don’t think you qualify as impressionable anymore, Dick,” Gabriel said dryly. “But the child label certainly fits.”
Dick responded with a hand gesture that was also inappropriate for underage viewing.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. Dick had a tag on his chest declaring that he was Martin Gruber, president of the Chess Club and the Latin Society. Even in the short-sleeved plaid shirt and Clark Kent glasses (complete with white tape around the nose piece), Dick looked nothing like poor, gangly, bespectacled Martin. “And what are you going to do if Martin actually shows up?”
“Claim identity theft. There was no way I was going to miss this.” Dick snickered. “Zeb said there was a distinct possibility you might freak out and smack some people around. Maybe even a cheerleader. You know how I love it when you do that!”
I rolled my eyes and focused on Janelyn, who was spitting up on Gabriel’s jacket. The twins giggled and drooled, oblivious to the fact that they were surrounded by monsters. Seriously, werewolves on one side of the family, vampires on the other. What were these kids going to be afraid of?
“There’s always clowns,” I muttered to myself, shuddering.
Jolene swooped in as I struggled to keep Janelyn still and mop up the mess on Gabriel’s shoulder.
“Um, something’s leaking from somewhere,” I said, holding Janelyn at arm’s length as she dribbled from her tiny rosebud mouth.
“Come here, baby,” Jolene cooed, tucking the baby into her arms and producing a wet wipe from her purse.
“That is the best part. I can give them back,” I told Gabriel quietly.
Gabriel asked, “Where’s Andrea?”
Dick nodded to the stunning pale redhead standing by the punchbowl, chatting with Hector Gonzalez and a girl I used to take French with. Andrea was pretending to be Dora Grady. Overweight, cursed with bad skin and a shock of unruly red frizz, Dora was our very own Carrie White, without the telekinetic revenge. While I didn’t exactly participate in the locker-room abuse of Dora, my social paralysis, my failure to do anything to help her, still haunted me years later. If anyone deserved to reemerge as slim, beautiful Andrea, it was Dora. I wondered where she was and hoped that she’d found some measure of happiness, that she wasn’t here tonight because she’d decided her former classmates weren’t worth her time.
And that she wasn’t lurking in the eaves of the gym, waiting to trap us inside and kill us in a well-deserved inferno.
I shook off these thoughts. Andrea was adjusting to vampire life far faster than I had. She was already used to nighttime hours. She didn’t have the moral confusion I did about feeding from donors, having been in their shoes. And she and her vampire boyfriend, now fiancé, had settled most of their issues before she was turned. I could only hope that she wouldn’t ask me to be a bridesmaid.
I thought back to my plan for a Brave New Jane. Andrea would never need one, but so far, I’d made impressive headway on mine.
Normal, healthy relationship? As normal and healthy as I was ever going to get, so: Check.
Fulfilling career? Check.
Loving, nonjudgmental family? I’d created my own and managed to include a few blood relatives, so: Check.
Plan for world peace? I’d get right on it.
I was standing there, admiring my friend, when Gabriel tapped me on the shoulder.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked, leading me away from the punchbowl, oozing infants, and our friends.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we quietly left the gym and headed for the electives building.
“To sneak around the campus for a little bit in the dark. Isn’t this what couples do in the movies?” Gabriel asked as we passed the metal shop.
“Yeah. The horror movies where loving couples are killed by maniacs wielding farm implements. Please don’t tell me that after all this, you’re leading me to my death.”
“Well, you’re already dead, and I’ve gotten used to having you around.”
I laughed. “Right back atcha, sweetheart. But seriously, what are we doing out here?”
“I gave your sister a present today,” he said, slipping his hand into mine.
“You’re dragging me out in the hall to tell me you gave my sister a present? This is just like my sixteenth birthday.”
“I’m bringing you out here to tell you that I went to your sister earlier tonight and offered her the deed to my house.”
I arched a brow. “You mean the deed to one of your nicer rental properties?”
“To my house on Silver Ridge Road. I asked if she would like to have it, and she accepted. Actually, I’d barely uttered the word ‘deed,’ and she’d accepted. She’d like to move in as soon as possible.”
I found that didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. Our muddy catharsis seemed to have exorcised the old, almost instinctual resentments toward Jenny, though it was sort of weird to be around her now that we’d called an unofficial truce. I was so used to automatically rejecting any invitation to family gatherings that I stumbled over telling Mama that, yes, I’d come to Thanksgiving and to tell Jenny that I’d bring my own dessert blood. When we talked, Jenny couldn’t figure out where to put her hands. It was like a bad commercial audition. Also, now that she wasn’t openly knocking me to Grandma Ruthie anymore, I don’t think they were spending as much time together as they used to. Mama was beside herself with joy, even though I still turned down half her invitations.
I said that Jenny and I had reconciled, not that I’d gone crazy.
“But that’s a huge part of your family history. Why would you give it up?” I exclaimed.
Gabriel shrugged. “Eh, I’ve lived there for a hundred and fifty years. I was getting bored with it. Besides, nobody will take better care of the place than Jenny. And I suspect she’ll let your mother put the house on the Historical Society’s Spring Tour of Homes, which will indirectly cement your mother’s affections for me even further.”
“So, you’re basically homeless now?”
“No, I still have the houses in—” Gabriel caught himself. “Yes, yes, I am.”
I crossed my arms. “So, where do you plan on living?”
“Well, I was thinking I might move in with you.”
“Why don’t you wait to be asked?”
“Because I’d be waiting forever,” he muttered. In a very deliberate motion, he squared my shoulders in front of his and clasped my arms. “I know I could never ask you to leave River Oaks. It means a lot more to you than my family’s house means to me. Your aunt Jettie is there. It’s your home. I would like it to be my home, too. I want to make a life with you, and for most people, that means living in the same house.”
Gabriel kissed me, as gentle as an angel’s wing brushing across my lips. “You’re my bloodmate in every sense of the word, the person I choose to spend the rest of my immortal life with, if you can stand me that long.”
“That’s what that means?” My forehead wrinkled in concentration, and I tried to remember the first time I’d hear that word. “Wait, you told Missy the crazy Realtor that she’d suffer dire consequences if she hurt your ‘bloodmate.’ That was more than a year ago.”
“I knew even then. You’re it for me, Jane. You’re my eternity.”
“Well, why couldn’t you have told me?” I exclaimed.
Gabriel shrugged. “You—”
“I wasn’t ready to hear it yet,” I finished for him. “I’m sorry.” But as the enormity of what Gabriel had just said sunk in, a huge grin split my face. I brought it under control, so I could narrow my eyes at him. “So, you’re saying you will tell me everything now. You won’t try to protect me or keep me in the dark. You’ll trust me to make a rational decision about bad news after I have my inevitable, initial panic attack?”
He nodded solemnly. “I will.”
“And when I have my spastic fits of insecurity, when I make inappropriate jokes and wonder aloud why you love me, you’ll understand that this has nothing to do with you but years and years of conditioning by my mother?”
He smirked. “I will.”
“Will you agree never to accept invitations issued by my family unless you check with me first?”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
I giggled, throwing my arms around him and kissing him deeply. “I love you.”
“Wait, it’s my turn,” he said, cupping my face so I was locked in that bottomless gray gaze of his. “Do you promise to trust that I want to be with you and no one else? That I’m not going anywhere? Will you promise to stop trying to find problems in our relationship where there are none, to give us time to work on the problems we do have?”
“What problems?”
Gabriel huffed out a breath. “Jane.”
“I will,” I promised.
“Will you quit trying to push me away?”
“I will.”
“Will you promise never to let Dick move into our house?”
I snickered. “I will … but, um, there’s one last thing.”
Gabriel frowned. “What’s that?”
“Can we wait on telling my mother that you’re moving in? As much as she likes you, she has this thing about ‘living in sin.’ The minute she finds out, the pressure for you to make an honest woman of me will start. She’s already making noises about us getting engaged. I think this would just fuel her fire.”
“I could always propose,” he suggested, kissing my cheek.
Suddenly, my mouth went dry. As much as I couldn’t imagine my life without Gabriel, I knew that neither one of us was ready for the rice-and-veil route just yet. We’d only reconciled a few weeks before. As sure as I was of his love, I needed more time before I could accept a ring from him.
What can I say? I’m a contrary soul.
“Thank you, but I’m not ready yet,” I told him. Gabriel tried and failed to tamp down the flash of disappointment on his face. “I won’t marry anyone but you, Gabriel Nightengale. But for now, let’s just see if we can live together without anyone getting hurt. And the family thing, it won’t be that big of a deal. It just means you can’t leave any evidence of you living there lying around where my family can see it, like clothes or personal items or your car. It’s just for the next few decades, until, you know, they die.”
“Let me get this straight. You can face down psychotic vampires and legions of anal-retentive entrepreneurs, but you’re afraid to tell your parents that I’ll be living with you before marriage?”
I nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly it.”
“We’ll have to talk about this,” Gabriel said dryly.
“But hey, between Jenny’s new attitude and having you present at Christmas, I may be able to escape the holidays unscathed.”
Gabriel blanched, his face even paler in the moonlight filtering through the window. “Christmas? With your relatives?”
I smiled, my fangs nicking my lip. “Welcome to the family, honey.”
Gabriel smiled back and kissed me, long and deep. “I can live with that.”