Brennan flopped down on the bed a safe distance away from Cole, who was curled with his knees to his chest, avoiding Brennan’s eyes.
“I’m sorry for poisoning you with my spit,” Brennan said.
Cole huffed a laugh, unfurling slightly from the tight protective ball.
“I don’t care about that.” He seemed to gather his courage, finally looking up to meet Brennan’s eyes. “But you could have talked to me. I was right here, and I was telling you I was fine. I guess it kinda feels like you still don’t trust me with some of that stuff.”
Cole doodled vague patterns on his jean-clad thighs with his fingers. Brennan watched his hands skating around, and eventually convinced himself it would be okay to hold them. He did, and Cole seemed to deflate with relief. Like that gesture alone said that whatever tiff this was, they were still on the same page.
“It’s not that I don’t trustyou,I don’t trust myself. Or, the part of myself that’s a vampire.”
Cole snorted and squeezed Brennan’s fingers. “Do you hear yourself?” He gave Brennan an unimpressed look, and Brennan wanted to press a thumb to the crinkle between his brows. “You sound like aRiverdalecharacter.”
“I’ve never seenRiverdale.”
“That’s for the best, you’d hate it.”
They shared a small laugh. Cole scooted to close the distance between them, tucking himself into Brennan’s chest like he belonged there, and Brennan ached with it.
“You’re right, though,” Brennan heard himself say. “I don’t always want you to see the bad parts. You’ve seen me have vampire-related crises, like, eight times since we met. I don’t want that to be the only thing we have going for us.”
Cole remained unimpressed.
“It scares me,” Brennan admitted. “Dom and all her drama, yeah, but more the fact that—that could be me. That I’m a slippery slope away from hurting someone. Hurting you.”
“You keep saying that. Why do you think you’d hurt me? When have you hurt me, or anyone, that you’re so afraid of doing it again? Since I’ve known you, all you’ve been isgood.”
“Because I’m trying so hard to be! But what if I slip? What if I get lazy? And then underneath it all, my nature isthat.”
He didn’t know how to say,I’ve lost myself before, I’ve hurt people before, with my stupid brain, and I’m terrified of it happening again, this time with fangs.So he didn’t.
“I’m just. I mean. The vampire stuff is always gonna come up in weird, unexpected ways. It’s always gonna be… an obstacle.”
“Well, yeah,” Cole said, shrugging. “Maybe. It’s part of you. It only bothers me when you don’t let me be part of it. Like calling Nellie instead of talking to me. Or not letting me read any of the terrible pamphlets.”
“I don’t mean to keep you out of it,” Brennan said, but he wasn’t sure it was true. “I just think sometimes it’d be easier if I weren’t—”
Cole cut him off with a stern look and a sharp finger pointed at his face. “I wouldn’t change anything about you, Brennan. Or how we met, or all the drama since then.”
“Right, you’reintothe vampire thing.”
Cole didn’t give in to the joke and kept that stern look.
“Hey, look at me.”
Brennan looked at Cole, really looked at him. The barely there freckles on his nose. The curve of his lips.
“I like you. Notbecauseyou’re a vampire. Not inspiteof it. I just likeyou.Got it?”
The open expression on Cole’s face said hemeantit. It knocked the wind out of him, the force of that knowledge, that maybe this thing he and Cole had was bigger than all those obstacles. Vampires, venomous saliva, depression, angst—they didn’t seem so insurmountable with the brightness of Cole’s smile. With the fact that Cole seemed to trust and believe in him even when Brennan himself didn’t, just like he’d somehow found Brennan’s venting the night they’d first met to be kind and thoughtful instead of unhinged and lost.
“I don’t know that it’ll ever make sense to me,” Brennan said, swallowing hard around something thick in his throat. “But yeah, I got it.”
Cole almost made him believe hewasgood. That he wouldn’t do harm, that he didn’t have it in him. He wanted to tell Cole that he made him feel like the bravest version of himself. That being with Cole brought all his good parts forward and he liked it. That Cole was probably the most good, human person Brennan had ever known, and he didn’t know if he’d have gotten through half the craziness of the last semester without him.
What came out instead was “And, I mean, you know I like you, too, right? Does that even need repeating?”
He wanted to dramatically facepalm. His brain-to-mouth connection was unapologetically broken.
