"What do you want?" she asked without inflection.
"I want to talk to you. I want to apologize. I want things to be like they used to be between us," he pleaded. "It kills me to see you huddled on the floor crying because of me."
She shook her head. "I haven't changed, Lucas. Not toward you."
"Yes, you have. You have new friends, a new home, and practically a whole new life that I don't have a place in anymore," he spat out.
"You seem to have made some new friends too. I'm not complaining about that. What did you think was going to happen? Was I supposed to go to school, sit in my room and cry over your picture, while you hit the clubs and partied with your new friends? I can't believe you're sitting there trying to make me feel bad about having goals and wanting to go to school." She was crying again. Damn it!
"Dani, will you please turn around and look at me?" Lucas put his hand on her back. "I want you to tell me what happened Friday night."
She kept her back to him. Looking at his face would wash away her anger, and she needed to be angry. She wanted the truth. Her vision went blurry with the rage that burned at the memory of that night. She focused on getting the truth.
Lucas was quiet at first. He was thinking, trying to decide how much to tell her of what he could remember. She didn't realize, at first, that he wasn't speaking out loud, until the pictures started to flash in her mind. Then she knew she was in his head, just like that night in the back of his pickup. She decided to relax and close her eyes. Everything that was running through Lucas's mind flashed behind her eyelids.
She saw the entire evening from his perspective. The football players thought she was the hottest thing at the party, and they told him so. He didn't like the fact that he would be going home and she would be staying there with all those guys. The more they drank, the more comments the guys made about her.
He saw her leave the kitchen area and followed her to the hall, where he watched her speak to Chase's friend Kayden. It was fuel to his jealous fire after listening to the jocks all evening. He went back to the kitchen, where the guys were then joined by a bevy of girls. He stood and watched the group, imagining her with all the ballplayers who wanted her more than any of the other girls. The crowd headed down the stairs to the game room, and he followed. Looking around the room, he noticed the girls were checking him out. "That's right," he thought to himself. "She's not the only one who can find someone else."
One of the girls stepped forward. He smiled slyly at the girl and said suggestively, "What can I do for you?"
The girl raised her eyebrows in disgust. "You can get your shit together and go find your girlfriend. You got her all drunk and left her alone, asshole!" She stomped up the stairs. It was Lindsay. Dani was mortified. One of the jocks saw the conversation and patted him on the shoulder. "You're screwed, man. You might as well have fun while you can. Bitches stick together."
After that he only had flashes of memories of rolling around making out with some chick. He was trying to screw her, because it'd been so long since he had any ass, but he was so wasted he couldn't get it up. So he got her off with his hand. Everything else was blank until he woke up. He was lying on the floor of a bedroom he'd never seen before with a half-naked girl sleeping in his arms. He ran back to Dani's dorm and the door opened before he could knock. He collided with another guy who he assumed was with Olivia, but it was Chase just leaving Dani's room after spending the night with her.
Lucas let Chase pass. He was more worried about finding Dani but she was already gone. He sat on her bed with his head in his hands. He couldn't even call her. His cell phone was missing. He had ruined everything, again.
Dani jumped up, and when his hand left her back, the images stopped. She was so focused on finding the truth that somehow she'd been sucked into his memory and absorbed by it. She turned to Lucas, but he was staring off into space, the same way he did that night in the back of his truck. She wasn't sure what she'd done, but she was glad he wasn't going to follow her. A hiss escaped her lips. She was so angry and hurt by her look into his mind.
Dani ran up the stairs and into her room. She was forcing a few things into an old duffel bag to go back to school when her mom entered the room. Dani was furious. So furious she wanted to hurt someone, break something.
Apparently her mother knew, because she said, "I can feel the waves of tension in the air around you. It's just like the angry static your father used to emit at times. Danielle, I need you to calm down. Where is Lucas?" She put a hand on Dani's wrist, but Dani yanked it away. Tessa grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around, flinching slightly when she looked into her eyes.
"Please, let me go. I need to get back to school. I can't deal with his crap. I just want to leave. He's in the kitchen. Don't wake him until I'm gone." Dani pulled out of her mother's grasp and headed for the stairs. She needed to leave and leave immediately. Whatever was wrong with her was getting worse, and she just wanted to run from it.
"You aren't leaving until we talk! What happened with Lucas? Why are you so angry? We can get through this together. I can get help." Tessa chased her down the stairs.
"Oh, now you wanna talk? Twenty-one years of silence, and now you wanna talk!" By the time she reached the foyer table to grab her purse and keys, not only were her eyes black, but her canine teeth were also slightly elongated. She froze at the sight of herself in the mirror and stared for a moment before squeezing her eyes shut and taking deep breaths to calm herself. When she opened her eyes, they were ice blue again, and her teeth were normal. Tessa stood behind her taking ragged breaths. Tears fell from her chin, making dark spots on her pink shirt.
"I love you, Mom," Dani told Tessa's reflection in the mirror. "I'll text you when I get to school. Tell Lucas I need some space. It seems boys are the least of my worries right now." She tilted her head in the direction of the kitchen. Dani didn't want to see Lucas sitting there, dazed. She was stunned by what she'd just seen, and what she'd done to Lucas. Her mind raced, and the only explanation that came to her was one she couldn't yet accept. This was all about her father. Her mother had implied it just a moment ago. This was happening to her because of who, or what, her father was. It was a crazy thought. She didn't want to believe it, but the proof had just been staring back at her in the mirror.
Tessa stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Dani. "I love you too, baby. I think it's time we get some help."
"This has something to do with my father, doesn't it?" She still watched Tessa in the mirror.
"Yes, it has everything to do with your father," Tessa finally admitted.
Dani hung her head and shut her eyes. "I'm not ready, Mom. I thought I wanted all the answers but I was wrong. I'm not ready." She gathered her things and left.
Tessa sat at the kitchen table. Lucas slowly began to come around. She recognized the absent look in his eyes. She'd seen it before on the faces of people who had been lulled into giving a little blood or information. Vampires enthralled their donors before feeding so they didn't remember the experience, and it was actually very pleasurable for the human. Something about the saliva messed with the pleasure centers in the human brain. Tessa knew so from personal experience. She bent to look at Lucas, turning his head from side to side. There were no signs of a recent bite. That meant Dani was able to enter his mind to retrieve the information she wanted. She picked her cell off the counter and found the newly programmed number. She no longer had a choice. She had to get help for her daughter.
Dani looked around the empty parking lot at Thirst and sighed. She'd been sitting on the sidewalk, propped up against the brick building with her hoodie pulled over her head, for an hour. On the long ride back to school she began to understand people who said they needed a drink after a stressful day. The blissful numbness that came with getting a good drunk on sounded like just the thing she needed.
Her life up to this point had been drama free. Now she had more issues than anyone she'd ever known. She wanted to be alone and she was tired of driving. If she went to the dorm she would have to face Olivia and Lindsay. Dani was too mortified by the things her friend had seen to face them just yet. So Dani went to the club for some solitude and a dose of liquid courage. It was too early for the club to be open, but she expected the staff to be rolling in soon. Vince was the head of security, so she hoped he would be in early and ready to live up to his promises to "hook her up." She'd nearly fallen asleep waiting.