Her eyes f lashed at me then narrowed. "Whatever. The point is, he obviously doesn't have the same respect for me because I'm just a measly human."
Okay, time to make a run for it. Nothing I said was going to help her cool off any quicker.
I stood up. "You know, I think I'm going to go walk around a little bit. Need anything from the gas station?"
Mom shook her head and returned to the sink, the dish in her hand banging against the sides of the metal sink with a swishy bong sound that vibrated right down into my teeth.
I tried not to run for the door. But once safely outside with the trailer door shut, I couldn't stop a sigh of relief.
Good grief. Now I knew where I got my temper.
"Hey," Tristan murmured, surprising me.
I spun to face him. "Oh! Hi. Um, I thought..." I waved a hand at the truck. "You know, that you'd still be out for the count from the blood memories."
He leaned against the side of the truck, his green eyes watching my every move. "I was for a few hours. But I didn't feed much. Wasn't hungry for some reason." One side of his mouth tightened in the semblance of a half smile. "So I thought I'd come man the gas pump while your dad checks the oil and tires."
I cleared my throat. "Listen, about last night. I'm sorry I got so mad."
He nodded, still watching me.
Okay, this was awkward. There was too much distance between us, both literally and figuratively.
I walked closer to him, stopping a couple of feet away to sit on the top of a cement cylinder in the island meant to keep vehicles from hitting the gas pumps. "Everybody says stuff they don't mean when they're upset. I know you didn't mean what you said last night."
"Which part?"
"The part where you said I was dumb."
"No, I didn't mean that."
I nodded. Then I frowned. "Wait. So you did mean it when you said you plan to kill Mr. Williams?"
Too late, I remembered to look around us. Thankfully we didn't have an audience.
Not that Tristan seemed to care. He shrugged. "Yeah, that part I meant."
Oh, great. I'd hoped he'd had time to cool off and come to his senses. "Tristan, you can't go after him."
His eyebrows shot up as if to say oh, yeah?
"How is getting revenge going to make anything better?"
"It'll sure make me feel better."
I shook my head. "But it won't bring your mom back any more than Emily's killing Gowin brought your dad back."
"I don't care. He has to pay for what he did."
I stared up at Tristan, and it was like looking at a stranger. Gone was the boy with the soft smile and even softer green eyes I'd first fallen in love with. He'd been replaced by someone so filled with hatred and anger that he couldn't even think straight, or see what killing yet another person might do to him.
I fought to find the right words to explain. "I know you're angry right now and that makes it hard to think clearly. But if you could find a way to push it aside, you'd see that wanting to kill Mr. Williams is only going to hurt you in the end. It's like that hunter in Arkansas. Remember how that felt so right at the moment, too? But if you'd killed him, how would you feel right now? And what about killing Dylan? Don't try to tell me there isn't a part of you deep down inside that's wrecked over his death."
Tristan stopped breathing, the muscles in his jaw forming knots along his jawline.
"Wanting revenge is a slippery slope." At his raised eyebrows, I tried to explain better. "You know, you take one wrong step that leads to another and then another, until suddenly you find yourself in a really dark place and you can't even figure out how you got there."
He stared at me. "So you're saying if I kill Mr. Williams, I'm going to turn into a serial killer?"
I rolled my eyes. "No, I mean...it's like a disease. Wanting to get revenge will eat away at your insides and take over your whole life if you let it. Look at how many hours you've already wasted obsessing over ways to kill Mr. Williams."
"You call it obsessing, I call it planning ahead."
"Does it really make you happy to spend all that time plotting ways to torture and kill him?"
"Yeah, it really does."
"Liar."
"What do you know about wanting revenge anyway?"
I stepped up to him. "You think I've never had a reason to want revenge? After dealing with Dylan and the Brat Twins calling me names in school for years? Should I have killed them for that? Or how about when your dad had Nanna kidnapped and tortured for information she didn't even have until she died? Should I have killed your father for that?"
Heat f lared out of him. "Your grandma's abduction and death were a misunderstanding and an accident and you know it."
"Sure. And your mother's death could have been every bit as much an accident, too, for all we know."
I leaned against the side of the truck, all the will to fight draining out of me. "My point is that I've been wronged and dealt with loss, too. But I'm not letting it eat me up inside anymore because I can't afford to. Every time I let the anger take over, I'm not myself anymore. I lose control, and I prove they're right and I'm nothing more than a monster. And then they win. I don't want to live like that. So I chose to let it go a long time ago, to not let them have that power over me. Just because I'm a vampire doesn't mean I have to act like a monster. That's my choice, not theirs."
His eyes narrowed. "But that's what we really are, Savannah. Like it or not, we're supposed to be killers."
"You know perfectly well that we don't have to kill anyone to survive anymore. Nothing makes any of us monsters except the decisions we make and the actions we take."
Tristan's eyes blazed at me as he leaned forward and hissed, "He helped kill my mother. You think I'm supposed to just let that go?"
"I know, it hurts. But Nanna and your mom and dad, they're all gone, and nothing you or I or anyone else can do can bring them back. And I know for a fact that they wouldn't want us to destroy ourselves to try to avenge their deaths." I took a deep breath, pushing the ever-present anger back down inside. "I've been to the other side, Tristan. I've talked with Nanna. We're not supposed to waste our lives seeking justice. We're supposed to move on and let them go."