Page 31 of Blood Lust

But she doesn’t.

Not tonight.

Chapter Twenty-six

A week later, I show up early for work.

No one tells me to. I just do. Rico tosses me a nod and a mop like we’ve been doing this for years. I clean up spilled beer from the night before, straighten bar stools, wipe the door handles. Keep my hands busy so my mind doesn’t catch fire.

She’s coming tonight. I don’t know that as fact, just feel it. I haven’t seen her in a week, and it’s eating me alive.

And at just past ten, the door opens, and it’s her.

That same impossible grace: not walking but drifting, as if the floor rises to meet each step. The hoodie she’s wearing swallows her frame tonight. Her black jeans melt into shadow. A disguise meant for normal people in normal bars.

Why the disguise, I don’t know. Maybe she’s not a vampire, but a secret agent.

Meanwhile, her presence rings through me like a struck bell, vibrating in my teeth, my marrow, the hollow spaces between my ribs.

She passes me again. Still no glance at me, sadly. But something in her shoulders shifts, barely. Like a flicker. Like she knows someone’s watching her but can’t quite pin it down.

Rico’s already pouring. Same white wine, same quiet nod.

She slides onto the same barstool as last week.

I again stand by the front door, pretending to check IDs. The regulars come in waves: construction guys, line cooks, lonely women looking for bad ideas.

But I’m not looking at them.

I’m watching her.

She holds the glass different than anyone I’d ever seen... like it’s an extension of her hand. She doesn’t drink fast, either. She doesn’t scan the room. She just sits. Listens. Thinks.

I start to wonder if maybe she’s lonely, too.

Maybe that’s our secret.

Maybe she’s not some immortal goddess walking among mortals; maybe she’s just another messed-up night dweller trying to find peace in a place that smells like spilled beer and burnt cheese sticks.

Or maybe that’s the lie she wants me to believe.

She doesn’t talk to anyone. Doesn’t flirt with the handsome Rico. Doesn’t even touch the free bowl of pretzels he slid down the bar for her. Oh,he’sflirting, but she’s not having it.

At one point, she lifts her glass, and for a second, her eyes sweep across the room.

And pass over me.

Just for a nano-second. Not even a pause. But my lungs forget what they’re doing.

And suddenly, I wonder if she knows.

Not who I am.

ButwhatI am.

And even though I’m not sure myself, I want her to see it.

I want her to know that I’m broken in the same way as she.

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