“Growing up the way I did, I didn’t want Harley seeing that shit. I wanted him to have somethin’ normal and soft. I wanted him to know that when he came home from school, I would be there. I would be sober. And he wouldn’t have to be afraid when I walked through the door.”
I stared at him. If only he knew exactly how much I identified with that statement. When I was pregnant, I told myself it would be different from how I’d grown up. My baby would know how much I loved him. He’d have homemade birthday cakes and Christmas stockings that weren’t a knotted-up grocery bag. I would read him bedtime stories and take care of him when he was sick.
It wasn’t that my mom hadn’t cared. She’d worked night shifts at the Twelfth Street Launderette to pay for our lavish accommodations in the Garden Vista trailer park. I couldn’t say there was much animosity between us. We just weren’t particularly close. I knew she liked to paint. I knew her favorite color was purple. I knew she liked to listen to Stevie Nicks on the rare occasion that she cooked. But there were no long talks or maternal advice. The mothering gene was just missing in her, I guessed.
Mom seemed to be resigned to me, like some part of life that she had to accept—aching feet or the late-stage breast cancer she was diagnosed with at age thirty-seven. And even then, her dying process was very matter-of-fact. She just told me that her life insurance wouldn’t amount to much and not to let a preacher speak over her at any sort of funeral. After a couple of door-to-door evangelists had informed her that she and her bastard baby were headed for hell unless she joined their church that very Sunday, she’d never had much use for organized religion. And that was it. She might as well have been breaking a lease.
I had a much closer bond with kindly old Mrs. Patterson, who babysat me from the time Mom went back to work after her three unpaid weeks of maternity leave. Mrs. Patterson taught me to read by age four. She taught me how to make basic meals without the stove after Mom decided she couldn’t afford having Mrs. Patterson watch me every night and ten was old enough to take care of myself. She was the one who had to explain the birds and the bees to me when I started my period and ran to her trailer crying. Her trailer, which was apparently right down the row from Wade’s. And I’d never even met him.
“I grew up in Garden Vista,” I told him.
Wade burst out laughing. “Bullshit.”
I raised my right hand in a swearing gesture. “I did. We lived in the little blue-and-rust number at the end of the sixth row.”
Wade snickered. “I haven’t seen you at any of the alumni dinners.”
“Well, I took myself off the newsletter list. I married a nice boy, cleaned up the accent a little. I worked hard in community college and bought myself a word-of-the-day calendar to help beef up my vocabulary. My mother-in-law says you can hardly tell I grew up in a trailer now, which she thinks is a compliment. She doesn’t really mean anything by it, but she doesn’t have a real strong filter when it comes to condescension.”
He laughed. He was standing so close I could feel every warm breath whispering along my skin. I could make out every hair on his head, the golden sheen taking on a blue cast in the moonlight. The most insane urge took hold of my hand, to reach out, stroke my fingertips along his face, run my thumb along his full bottom lip. I wanted to kiss him, to bury my face in his iron-and-citrus-scented hair. I wanted to feel those rough hands stroking down my back. I wanted to trace the path of his jugular with my tongue, feel the warm spill of his blood into my mou—
Uh-oh.
I could feel my fangs lengthening in response to my sexy, bloody thoughts. My fangs were out. And I was alone, with a human, whose child was playing inside my house because I’d promised his father that they were safe with me and my vampire friends. Damn it. Damn it. I pressed my lips together, as if that could hide my unfortunate dental boner, and tried to think of something unappetizing. Something that would kill my libido.
The night before my wedding, Marge visited my apartment, gave me a pink lace nightie that looked just like the one she’d worn on her wedding night to Les, and tried to give me the “wifely duty” talk.
Aaaaaand away went the fangs.
Now that any trace of desire for anything had been thoroughly murdered, I was able to take a step back from Wade. I held my breath to keep that delicious scent of man and blood and leather from invading my senses again.
“I can’t believe I don’t remember you,” he said.
“I pretty much kept to myself when I was a kid,” I said. “It’s sort of a pattern with me.”