Silent Night: Vampire Holiday Romance (The Night Songs Collection Book 4) (13 page)

“Come get me,” I pleaded, leaning up against a tree a few houses down. Slush seeped into my shoes. “Please.”

“You’ve barely been gone an hour.” He laughed, but stopped when I sighed. “Okay. Give me the address.”

I got excited every time a dark car turned the corner down the street, but none of them were Aidan. Too soon. A white SUV made the turn, its stereo bass vibrated my bones even at a distance. I squinted, hoping I wasn’t as familiar with the car as I thought I was.

The SUV slowed as it approached me. “Walking the streets now?” Matt poked his head out the window and spit. “Is this your new job?”

Instead of answering him, I kept walking. Matt threw the car in reverse, keeping pace with me. “We miss you at the house, princess.”

“Are you nuts?” I hollered at him. “You’re going to kill someone. Stop it!”

He slammed on the brakes, the car rocked back and forth from the force. A couple of his boys peered out the window at me. I pulled my coat tightly around my body, feeling exposed, and shot my audience a nasty look before I started walking again.

Matt backed up more, only stopping when a horn honked frantically behind him. “I hear your playing house with your new sugar daddy. Stop acting like you’re too good for me. You’re still a worthless whore. You’ll be right back where you started when he figures you out.”

“Shut up!” I yelled, not looking at him. Someone flipped on their porch light to voice their distaste for our argument.

“You’ll be begging me to come back when he gets sick of you, princess.” Laughter came from the back seat of his car, barely audible over the honking horn of the driver behind him. “You better lose some weight before you start begging. I don’t fuck fat chicks.”

Why did everyone keep commenting on my weight? My clothes were tighter, but they still fit. I wasn’t wandering the streets in my spare time and eating more than once a day, so I didn’t look strung out anymore. I thought it was an improvement. And I felt a million times better, healthy for the first time in a long time.

I hyperventilated the whole time I waited for Aidan. Matt must have had business at the party, and didn’t drive by again. What a bunch of hypocrites. The last thing Matt needed to see was me getting picked up from a street corner, especially climbing into a nice car. And I didn’t want him and Aidan to cross paths, ever.

“Let’s go for a ride, how does that sound?” Aidan didn’t ask what was wrong when he arrived, he just fixed the problem. Being with him was like being able to shed my mask from all the people who pointed and whispered, and just be myself. No judgment. I nodded, and I wasn’t sure if he saw me or not since he’d pulled back on to the main street.

“Everyone that I met before you treats me like I’m trash.” I traced my finger along the edge of the window as I spoke. “All they want to believe is the worst about me.”

“Why do you think that is?” he asked. My breath caught in my throat, since I wasn’t prepared for that question.

I watched the world pass by as he drove. Everything always looked the same, no matter what happened. I needed to think about my answer. “Because no one ever forgot when my mom showed up shitfaced to the science fair in junior high and knocked over Jimmy Sullivan’s erupting volcano. Because I let those same people walk all over me. I let them treat me like crap.”

“You aren’t your mother.”

“But I’m doing a pretty good job at following in her footsteps.” Now was the best time to tell him about Matt, the sooner the better, as much as I didn’t want to. He still circled my life, and like Aidan had said before, he didn’t like surprises. “I just saw my ex.” I just told that girl Matt had never been my boyfriend, but we had been together in more ways than I wanted to admit.

“I take it you didn’t have a happy reunion.”

“He’s a drug dealer.” I stopped to watch for Aidan’s reaction. He nodded, barely, as we went through the toll booth on the Pike. “Weed, pills, coke. I did all of that, when I was with him.”

“Did you like it?” I’d expected him to be disgusted.

“I hated it. I hated myself for not having the control to say no. I hated that I needed to go back to him, but some nights I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I did whatever he had because it just made everything go away.”

“Are you still doing those things?”

“No,” I said quickly. “I’m not going to say the temptation isn’t there, when things aren’t going my way. Matt makes me feel like less than a person, especially when drugs are involved. The girls who can’t pay for their fix, he makes them do things they don’t want to do. I can’t be sure of what I’ve done when I was messed up. But everyone at that party thought I was an addict.”

“You’re not an addict.” Aidan spit out the words.

“I’m not so sure. Am I? Maybe I just replaced one thing with another. Now I crave you. I knew that party was going to be awful, but that’s not why I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave you. And you need to know I’m not perfect. I’m not Marielle. I don’t deserve you.”

“You deserve what you think you deserve. You didn’t want to stay with Matt anymore, and you made the decision to stay with me. You knew you wanted a better job, and you signed up for school. Just because the options were there didn’t make it automatic. You chose better things for yourself. What you want is what you deserve.” He locked eyes with me, speeding down the highway, then looked away and swerved to avoid a slow car at the last minute. Like my heart could pound any harder.

“How did you get so smart?” I put my hand over his on the gear shift.

“By doing a lot of stupid things.” He didn’t look at me this time, but I could see the corners of his mouth turn up. “I know you feel like you’re the only person in the world this has ever happened to, but you’re not.”

“Like Marielle?”

“She did her best with what she had.” Those words marked the end of that conversation. Aidan turned up the radio as he wove his way through a busy downtown area. The highway ended at the airport, and dumped everyone onto the North Shore with no warning. I sang along quietly and tried to relax.

“Have you ever noticed,” I had to say something to break the silence. “That the North Shore is obsessed with roast beef? There are more roast beef places up here than Dunkin’ Donuts, I swear.”

Aidan laughed. “I never thought about it, but you’re right. It’s odd, isn’t it?”

“What’s your favorite thing to eat?” I never saw him eat anything. By the laws of science, he should be dead.

He sighed. “I eat to live, really. I’m much more about experiences.”

“Is that why you’re a writer?”

“Maybe.” He nodded. “It helps me process everything, and make sense of it.”

“So then, what’s your favorite thing you’ve ever done?”

“I stayed in London for a little while, years ago now. That was fantastic. I helped a good friend start her real estate business. It’s been amazing to watch that grow.”

“Where else have you travelled?”

“I’ve been all over Canada and the Northeast. London, Paris of course. New Orleans, Las Vegas.”

“Paris sounds so romantic. I’ve lived in Brighton and Cambridge. Big whoop.”

“You have your whole life ahead of you.” Aidan smiled as he parked the car. “Let’s take a walk.”

He came around to my side to open my door, offering his hand so to help me get out. He never let go of it. We’d parked right along a breakwater. The ocean waves crashed against the wall, angry tonight. There must have been a storm somewhere out to sea. The cool, salty air was more invigorating than any cup of coffee.

“Look at the moon!” I pointed at the sky. “She’s so beautiful tonight.”

“Lady La Luna is a peculiar woman.” Aidan swung my hand back and forth a bit as we walked. “When she’s in her full glory, it makes the earth crazy with jealousy.”

“Maybe that’s why that party was such a disaster.”

“Maybe,” Aidan agreed. “I know it’s why the waves are so choppy.”

I squealed as ocean water splashed us as we walked. The frigid water felt like little knives cutting my skin. Aidan didn’t flinch. “Are you shivering?” he asked.

“A little.” I hadn’t dressed for outdoors. He took off his jacket and laid it over my shoulders. “Now you’re going to be shivering.”

“I can take it.” He deepened his voice.

“Everything is just right when I’m with you.” I put my arm around his waist as we continued walking. “I mean, this night is beautiful, and you didn’t even have a plan. You came and rescued me and you knew just what to do.”

“The ocean always makes me feel better.” He stopped and looked out, the moonlight shattering on broken waves. “When I come here, all the bad stuff goes out to sea, and I walk away feeling better.”

“I’m going to make new friends, right?” I rested my head against his shoulder. I felt like I was mourning the loss of people who weren’t dead, even if I didn’t even particularly like them anymore. But there was still a part of me that felt so empty without them. Paige and Matt had been a part of my life since elementary school.

“Those people were never your friends in the first place.” His lips moved against my hair. “Your life is going to be so full, you’ll wonder why you ever thought you needed them.”

I looked up at him, just to make sure he was actually real. His lips met mine and the moon melted the crazy world away.

Fifteen

Aidan encouraged me to change my phone number. I wrestled with the idea of it for a couple days, but finally, I decided to do it. To my surprise, it was more liberating than I ever could have imagined. No more letting Paige make me feel like an animal at the zoo. No more Matt treating me like a piece of rancid meat. And I still had yet to give the new number to my aunt. Or my mom. Now they could experience that empty feeling in the pit of their stomachs when I wasn’t there for them. If they even noticed.

It’s not like I totally cut them off. They could still find me online. After a couple of days without any messages, I told myself I didn’t care and stopped checking.

I’d just got back to the house after my first interview for a CNA job. Since I graduated last week, my days were totally consumed with finding a job. It was time for me to start earning my keep, and try to pay Aidan back for his incredible generosity. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t take any money from me, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try to give it to him.

Why couldn’t Aidan be awake? Flittering around the house, I kept finding myself outside his door, with my hand on his doorknob. Patience, Kyndra. Even though I was so anxious to tell him about the interview, he’d be much more excited about it if I didn’t wake him up out of a sound sleep. It wasn’t like my news couldn’t wait another hour or so.

I was pretty sure I aced the interview. It was an entry level job, of course, a floating position at one of the local hospitals. It started off part time, with a reevaluation after a month. Once I was full time, I got benefits, vacation time, and tuition reimbursement. But the best part of the job was they desperately needed people for the overnight shifts. The lady who interviewed me eyes lit up when I said I was very interested in working nights.

Or so I hoped. I kept staring at my phone, hoping for news. If I got this job, there’d be no more dancing outside of Aidan’s door like he’d locked me out of the bathroom. We’d be on the same schedule. Finally settling in my bedroom, I leaned back against my pillow and pictured myself crawling into bed with him after a long night at work, and being able to sleep with his arm slung around my stomach. When I opened my eyes, the room just felt empty.

I jumped when my phone rang. It was the lady who interviewed me. Pending the results of a drug test, the job was mine! I had to cover my mouth with my hand to not scream when I hung up.

Come on, Aidan, wake up. We had celebrating to do.

Instead, the closest I could get to Aidan right now was reading one of his books.
A Piece of My Heart
laid on my nightstand, open to the place I left off on New Years’ Eve. Why hadn’t I picked it back up? I could say that I’d been really busy with school, reading my textbooks and writing up my clinical reports. Or that I’d been actively participating in my own hot bedroom scenes in the few hours Aidan and I were both awake. But the truth of the matter is, the book was freaking me out.

Everything Aidan and I did echoed David and Talis. It had to be a coincidence. Aidan didn’t even write that book, since it came out before he took over the franchise. He had never been shy about saying I reminded him of Marielle, but in the book, David felt the same way about Talis. The more I read, the more I felt like I was going crazy.

This wasn’t the first time I read the book, so I knew what happened. David realized that Talis couldn’t replace Marielle, and that he needed to continue his search for her. He created a mate for Talis, to make it easier for him to walk away from her. But Talis didn’t want to live forever without David. She took her anger out on her new mate, Cash, swearing to make his eternity a living hell. David swore he’d never make another vampire again.

But searching for Marielle made David a lonely vampire, and his failed attempts at finding his beloved were chronicled in the many other books in the series. I ran my hand along their bindings on the bookshelf, then moved to the living room, hoping my next read would pick me.