Bryna looked around, and realized, she could almost hear the people walking by talking about her. She shrugged and took his hand. “I never cared what they thought. I’ve always known the real you.”
He winked as they walked into the clinic. Several of her classmates where sitting in the waiting room with their parents. They all stared at her as she went to the intake nurse to sign Vincent in.
One of the mothers kept letting out long sighs and rolling her eyes. She shifted in her chair this way and that while Bryna and Vincent went to a couple of chairs not near anyone else.
The woman let out a loud huff, got out of the chair and walked over to them. “You’re setting a bad example for my Tracy. She wants me to let her move in with her boyfriend.”
Vincent lifted his lip in a sneer. “And this is my problem why?”
The woman gave a mean “mom” glare. “Because she reasons that if someone as sweet as Bryna is safe with the likes of you she should be able to live with the quarterback.”
Vincent laughed. He leaned forward. “So let me get this straight, you’re pissed off at me for saving Bryna’s life from a murderer?”
The woman’s eyes went wide, and then she scowled at him. “That is not what I meant, and you well know it.”
Vincent nodded once. “Some of us don’t have the luxury of living parents who are capable of taking care of us while the law says we can’t do it ourselves. Bryna and I take care of each other because no one else will. Tell your daughter unless she wants to start ironing work shirts and working full time while attending school, she might want to rethink what she wants.” He glanced at Tracy who had heard what he said, and then looked at the mother again. “And you might want to tell her a quarterback is useless in a real world fight to the death.”
The mother paled and went back to her daughter.
Bryna squeezed Vincent’s hand. “You handled that well.”
He snorted. “The sooner we’re out of this town, the better. The people here make me itch.”
“Vincent Asher,” a nurse called.
He stood up, and grinned at Bryna. “Come hold my hand.”
She shook her head and laughed, but followed him into the exam room. They waited another twenty minutes for the doctor. He checked Vincent’s wound, and then carefully removed all the stitches and then went to wash his hands. “I can give you the name of a plastic surgeon.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Bryna said. “But thank you.”
The doctor looked at her as if she was odd, but didn’t say anything else. They did the simple pleasantries of leaving a doctor’s office, and then they were on his bike again, heading to the book store.
She and Vincent spent an hour going over the cookbooks together. They had the occasional gawker and endured more whispers, but overall the experience wasn’t traumatic as they made it up to the checkout. They would have made it, too, if Mr. Bailey, Uncle Ron’s fishing buddy, hadn’t walked in as they were going out.
“Hey, you!” Mr. Bailey’s voice boomed out. He wasn’t a small man at six-feet-four and two hundred and fifty pounds. He was the high school wrestling coach. “Yeah, you, Asher. You’re not supposed to be with Bryna.”
Vincent’s face twitched, and his hand went a little tighter around Bryna’s. He tugged her toward his bike in the parking lot.
“Asher! I’m talking to you.”
*
Vincent stopped. “No, this fucking shit has to stop.” This was the exact type of thing that made him and Bryna vulnerable to vampires in the first place. He let go of her hand and rounded on the big man. He also started to understand why Caleb had chosen a serial killer. A vampire wasn’t much different. “That thing that wanted to cut her up followed her home. Do you for one fucking second think Ron would have been able to do a goddamn thing to save her?”
Mr. Bailey stared at him. “She’s still only fifteen.”
Vincent rolled his eyes. “And where was all your concern when I was only fifteen? Huh? Would any person in this godforsaken town have lifted a goddamned finger to help me if I’d needed it when I was fifteen? Fuck you and fuck them. I was the one there. I was the one who stopped the bad things from happening to her.” This new past and the old past blurred in his mind, but it didn’t make what he was saying any less true. Draven had followed her home the first time. “And you know what? She’s the only person in this town who gives a damn about me. You think you’re being noble and protecting her from the big, mean monster, but let me tell you, you have no idea what a real monster is. Would you die to keep her safe?” Vincent pointed at the scar on his face. “Would you let someone disfigure you to keep her alive?”
Mr. Bailey just stared at him.
“I didn’t think so.” Vincent grabbed Bryna’s hand and pulled her to his bike. This town was going to make him mental. The first time he lived here they’d been a bunch of fucking asshats. After everything he’d survived, and after how he’d treated Bryna himself, he couldn’t handle it. He made sure she had her helmet on before putting on his own and getting on the bike. He helped her hop up behind him, and then he was gone, as fast as he could go without scaring Bryna.
She wrapped around his body, and the anger bubbling inside boiled down to a simmer by the time they got home.
They got off his bike, but didn’t speak until they were in the apartment.
“Vince?”
He let out a slow breath as he put their helmets on the top shelf in the closet, where Bryna couldn’t reach. “Yeah?”
“Talk to me. Something other than Mr. Bailey pissed you off.”
He turned on her, and just stared into those big green eyes before his face crumpled. “I-I don’t deserve you. Not after what I did to you.”
Bryna set her backpack by the closet door and hung up her coat. She looked at the floor for a long moment before she looked up at him. “You came back to protect me even when you thought I’d killed you. Hell, I thought I’d killed you. I can’t blame you for thinking that. It’s rough, and the guilt is a monster by itself, but that’s in the past.” She traced her finger along his scar. “The first time you got this, it was with a crowbar when Draven bashed in your skull. You were trying to save me even after you thought I was cheating on you. And the second time you got it was because I put myself in danger and you saved me again.” She went up on her toes, captured his face, and pulled him down to her level. “I can’t figure out why you love me when all I do is cause you trouble, but you know what? I don’t care why you love me. I just need to know that you do.” She kissed him, soft and sweet. “I love you, and while I am sure I will never be good enough to be loved by a man who died for me, I am happy to spend the rest of my life earning that love.”
He wrapped his arms around her, holding her as tightly as he dared. This was exactly why he loved her, because even when he should be unlovable, she loved him. Even when he didn’t deserve her care or devotion, he had it anyway. His Bryna gave to him when he didn’t deserve to be given anything, and he loved her more for it. “I love you,” he whispered against her hair. And he’d spend the rest of his life proving it to her.
Epilogue
Ten Years Later
Vincent’s Twenty-eighth Birthday
“Run!” Vincent bellowed. He had a tight hold on Bryna as he forced her to keep his pace through the brush and bramble. For ten years he’d trained and slain both vampires and demons as a human. And for ten years he knew the Hell Spawn wanting to take Bryna away from him would eventually find them. It did, on the day of his twenty-eight birthday. They were right back where they started all those years ago.
This had been the right date in time to fight all the powers of hell to save Bryna’s life, just not in the time line she’d been trapped in.
“Come on,” he urged her. “You can go faster than this.”
She puffed out a breath. “Damn you. My legs aren’t as long as yours.”
He grabbed the back of her jeans and forced her to go even faster. He had this planned and perfectly timed. No innocent humans had to die. No other time walker had to give up his life. He and Bryna trained for this moment. A hoard of howlers, vampires, and demons two hundred strong followed them, but he was more worried about the Hell Spawn. It was faster than he’d anticipated it being.
They just had to make it to the top of the hill. They broke out of the tree line with the Hell Spawn right behind them. It was big and ugly, with horns branching out of its head. Its red body smoked and sizzled as it stomped across the grass, leaving scorched earth in its path.
“Today you die,” it said in an earthshaking rumble.
Vincent slowed to a stop when they reached the top of the hill. He wrapped his arms around Bryna, keeping his body between hers and the Hell Spawn.
“Fuck you.” Howlers, demons, and vampires came at them from all sides. Vincent’s arms went tighter around Bryna. “Now,” he whispered against her ear.
Every ounce of raw rage and anger and suffering he’d ever felt because of these monsters combined with Bryna’s terror from one hundred and ninety-one deaths. The blue wave of energy pulsed out of them like a nuclear blast, annihilating every undead thing in its path.