“I guess I just forgot about the finer details.” I sat up and swiped my hair from my cheeks, still tasting the sweet liquor of Eric on my lips.

“Well, I remember everything. It’s all very clear to me.” The stern, protective tone hovered long after he spoke, his eyes staying focused on the wall above my dresser. “I thought David had done that to you,” he continued, “so I called him to tell him you were in surgery, that you’d been attacked. He arrived within the minute, like he was already in the vicinity—except he told me he was across town. I waited ‘til we got word that you were gonna survive before I approached him about it; all the while, I wanted to strangle him.

“But when he saw you—when they brought you back to intensive care—he fell apart. I started to doubt if it was him. So, I followed him to the car park; found him leaning against a wall, hardly able breathe.” Mike’s fists clenched. “I grabbed him by the collar and spun him into the wall.”

“Mike, how could you?” I couldn’t help but picture it. “He didn’t do that—he’d never do something like to me.”

“I didn’t know that then, Ar. All I’d seen so far was a cut on your wrist and bruises on your neck. What was I supposed to think?”

“Did—did he hurt you—when you tried to attack him?”

Mike’s gaze dropped onto mine, his face alight with humour. “Course not. But—”

“But?”

“But, I never meant to hurt him like that.”

“You hurt him?”

Mike sighed through his nose, looking away. “He just—he said Kill me. Just kill me, I did this to her, and I snapped. I threw him to the floor—smashed my fists into his face so many times that he should’ve died then and there.” Mike looked at his knuckles, at the tiny white dots littering the tops of his hands, then flexed his fists.

“These were from David—you hurt David?” I ran my fingers over the scars as if maybe some small piece of David might still be in there. “You tried to kill him? You can’t hurt a vampire, Mike—they don’t die.”

“He was already dead,” Mike stated factually. “He died inside the minute he saw you. I only broke his body, and believe me, Ara, you can hurt a vampire. They feel pain and they bleed. Granted—” he squeezed his fists tighter, looking off into the corner of my room, “—it takes a hell of a lot more to break their skin, but they do break.”

“How could you hurt him like that, Mike?” I couldn’t even imagine him hurting David. “Don’t you know—he could’ve killed you?”

“I know. But he let me do it. Do you really think I could’ve done that if he didn’t want me to? He nearly broke my arm when he stopped me for a second to tell me—” Mike stopped as if he’d swallowed a golf ball.

I looked at his autumn eyes, waiting. “Tell you what?”

“That I was wrong,” he said to his lap. “I said he didn’t love you because he let you into his life, and he said it was because he loved you that he left you—so you could live.”

“So he says.”

Mike turned to face me then. “You don’t believe that?”

I shrugged. “Not sure what to believe. Mostly, these days, I just wish I’d never met him.”

Mike looked forward again, making a tight fist. “Then I’m glad I hurt him. I wish I’d killed him.”

“Are you enjoying that memory?” I huffed, folding my arms as a wave of nausea flooded through me.

“Yes. He put you in that place, Ara—he did that to you. Whether it was by his hand, or not.”

A flash of Jason’s face and his cold, unwanted hands, intruded my thoughts. “It hurts, you know,” I said. “It hurts as much as if it were actually him.”

“Why? What do you mean, Ara?”

“He never came for me.” I started crying then, for things I thought I’d moved on from. “He always said he’d catch me whenever I fell. I thought he’d come. I thought he’d save me, but he didn’t.”

“Oh, baby.” Mike pulled me against his chest. “I shouldn’t tell you this—I’d rather you hated him—but he couldn’t save you. He didn’t know you were being hurt, and it killed him.”

I looked up into Mike’s eyes. “But he was supposed to know. He was supposed to be like the knight in a book—he was supposed to be my hero, and he wasn’t.”

“Aw, Ar—don’t place clichés on the poor guy. Do you want to know what he was doing while you were being hurt?”

I nodded, wiping away a line of tears and snot.

“He got very sudden approval for a meeting with the World Council—to request an eighty year leave of absence, to be with you, baby.” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and stroked his thumb down the bridge of my nose. “Okay, he didn’t know you were being hurt. Do you really think he’d have just sat back and let that happen to you?”

“No. Not the David I know, but—” I stared into nothing, weighted down by this new information—information Mike had had all along. I tried not to cry again. I needed to know everything Mike knew, so crying just wouldn’t be productive. “So you talked to him for a while then? To talk that way about the World Council.”

“Had three months.”

Why would David tell him more than he told me? “How much did he tell you?”

“Everything, baby—he told me everything.”

“He told you about their society?”

“Yes.”

“And about...about us as well?”

“Yes.”

“Did he tell you about the Sets and the Council?”

“All of it. I waited for you to tell me. I hoped you would.”

I didn’t know all that.

“But, then you started getting better, and I thought you were moving on, so I didn’t wanna bring it up.” He placed each hand carefully over my arms. “Just tell me one thing though, Ara. Did you want to drink Eric’s blood?”

“Yes.” My eyelids fluttered. “I wanted it. But I didn’t want his.”

Mike nodded. “So what is that? Is it like a drug? Or did you get some freaky blood-thirst when you were bitten?”