Page 57 of Taste of Death

The guy must have been holding it in for a while because he was just finishing up as I headed back toward the fence line. He did his little shake before tucking himself back into his boxers, and then looked up.

Our eyes met and I recognized him.

Tom Harrison. The guy I lost my virginity to.

When he first started flirting with me, Tavia warned me about him. She told me to be careful and not to believe everything coming out of his mouth. There were rumors going around that he’d placed bets with his friends. One wager was that I’d willingly sleep with him. The second was that I’d tell him I loved him.

I did both.

I fell for it all, hook, line, and sinker. I’d been so swept up in having a guy paying me positive attention for once, giving me compliments and flowers, and actually having someone besides Tavia to stand up for me. He carried on charming me and being a perfect, polite gentleman for weeks. Surely it couldn’t be an act.

But I found out the truth when it all came out the morning after we slept together. After a lifetime of bullying, I had no idea that another, deeper level of humiliation existed. Being pushed into mud puddles and laughed at while I struggled for breath felt like nothing compared to that morning.

That moment, naked and vulnerable next to Tom while he laughed, became a glass sculpture inside me. It shattered over and over again for years. Time never seemed to heal me, not when I saw him around all the time. He would give me that knowing smirk, maybe wink, or make a kissing noise, and I’d feel the shattering inside me all over again.

Sometimes, I didn’t even need to see him. I’d be feeling perfectly fine, in the middle of a conversation with Tavia, and my mind would just… go there. My traitorous brain pulled the memory like a card hidden up a sleeve, with no rhyme or reason.

I learned right then, staring at Tom in his boxers and my bucket of water in hand, that while vampire blood may have healed my asthma and my heart murmur, it did not heal that delicate glass sculpture inside my chest.

Recognition shaped his expression first, and then abject horror.

The glass sculpture broke.

“What… what the fuck?” Tom stumbled back, blinked, rubbed his eyes, then blinked again.

“Hi, Tom,” I said flatly. “Just helping to fix the fence.”

“Stay away from me!” He stumbled back some more, this time tripping on something and landing on his ass.

All I wanted to do was disappear into thin air. Maybe rewind time to a few seconds earlier, and I would know to linger in the shadows while Tom stumbled back to bed. Unfortunately, there was no unseeing that expression on his face. And he was now in my direct path to escape. I had no other choice but to approach him.

“I have to go around you,” I tried to explain.

But every step I took in his direction was met with horrified screams and frantic scrabbles backward. Tom’s eyes were wide, his chest heaving with panicked breaths.

“Oh God, oh fuck, please don’t bite me! Please. Someone help!”

He turned on his side and vomited. Probably more an effect of his drunkenness than seeing me, but it didn’t exactly make me feel any better.

I hurried past him, the sight of his curled-up form, hands over his neck as he whimpered, “No, please don’t,” worming its way from my peripheral vision deep into my psyche.

Lights inside trailers and cabins began turning on, muffled sounds of movement and voices coming from inside. Of course Tom’s noise would alert people and start a chain reaction of humiliation. I had to join the vampires at the perimeter before anyone else saw me.

A door opened just behind me and I quickened my pace.

“What’s going on?”

The pang of familiarity hit me right in the chest and my steps faltered. Robin! She raised me and Tavia, taking on both a big sister and motherly role to us. She’d been the main person I wanted to see. I couldn’t pass up the chance to say hi.

I turned toward the sound of her voice, putting on a smile to mask the despair of what just happened with Tom. “Hey, Robin.”

She was wrapped in a robe in her open doorway. The changes in her expression were in the reverse order of Tom’s. Horror hit her first, and then recognition.

I immediately realized my mistake. My fangs, although smaller than a full vampire’s, were on full display when I smiled, and I was standing right under one of the security lights. There was simply no hiding my blackened eyes.

“Amy?” Robin’s voice was filled with fear and sorrow. “My God, what happened to you?”

“It’s okay—” I started toward her, then stopped abruptly at her resulting flinch and retreat into her house.

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