I wanted to ask about Lucius, who he was, but other questions were more pressing.
“A bond? What’s that?”
“When a vampire feeds on a human, if he lets that human drink from him, apparently it bonds them together in such a way that he has some amount of mind control.”
I smothered my gasp with my hand.
“Do you think that’s what Lars did to my mother?”
“It’s possible,” he admitted, his unsettled expression anything but encouraging.
“So what does that mean? What now? What happens to Mom?”
Bo shrugged, a gesture he used frequently, but one that irritated me this time for some reason.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“What he wants with her.”
“What could he possibly want with my mother?”
Bo paused, casting an inscrutable look in my direction.
“There’s only one thing that I can think of.”
“What’s that?”
“You.”
The blood drained from my head so quickly, I had to sit back down in the desk chair before I fell down.
“But what could he possibly want with me?” That just didn’t sound right. I didn’t know him, I posed no threat to him, I—
I stopped when I realized why he might want to get to me.
“Unless he wants to use me to get to something else, someone else.” Bo said nothing to this, confirming my suspicion. “He wants me to get to you.”
Bo’s expression was full of guilt and regret. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he confessed. He rubbed a weary hand over his face. “I should’ve stayed away.” Obviously frustrated, he turned away from me.
I stood and crossed to him. I touched his shoulder, letting my hand rest there until he turned back to face me.
“No, you shouldn’t have. Avoidance is never the answer. Yes, life is all about pain and trouble and frustration and anger, but it’s also about love and friendship and good days and sunshine. You can’t have one without the other. If you avoid pain, you avoid living. My family has walked that road for years and, trust me, it’s no way to exist.”
He looked miserable. “You’ve had enough pain in your life without me adding to it.”
It was my turn to shrug. What he said was true, to a certain extent. “But you’ve also brought me more happiness than I’ve seen in a long time.” More like ever, though he didn’t need to know that. But then, as I looked into his face, I realized that maybe he did. “Actually,” I said, casting my eyes down, shy and a little embarrassed all of a sudden. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been. And it’s because of you, Bo.”
I was afraid to meet his gaze, heat staining my cheeks after having poured my heart out. He drew me into his arms and I went willingly, glad to bury my burning face in his shoulder.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t think I could’ve stayed away from you for even one more day anyway,” he admitted quietly.
One more day?
“What do you mean?”
I felt him stiffen at my question, so I pulled back to look up into his face, to gauge his odd reaction.
I repeated, “What do you mean?”
Bo just watched me, searching my face for something. I waited for him to explain, but he didn’t. A sinking, breathless feeling began to gnaw at my insides.
One image flashed through my mind over and over again, like an eerie strobe. It was the sight of Bo’s compelling eyes hovering outside the windshield of a car. Only it wasn’t Drew’s windshield that I was remembering; it was Izzy’s.
Air slowly filled my lungs in a long gasp of comprehension. I held it there until it burned inside my chest like a raging inferno.
“You were there,” I whispered. “Three years ago, you were there.”
CHAPTER NINE
Several emotions flickered across Bo’s face, but neither confusion nor denial ranked among them.
“Bo?”
He sighed, and it was a weary sound that carried a heavy weight. “Even though it was so long ago, it seems like it happened only yesterday.”
Bo walked to the window and stared out into the dark. I could tell he wasn’t seeing the night, at least not this night. His eyes had a distant look about them, the look of someone peering into the past.
“I hadn’t been turned very long and, fortunately, I slept through most of it. I’d been in the woods for days when I woke up. And there was this thirst—a thirst I couldn’t explain, a thirst that no food or water would quench. That’s the day I met Lucius.
“He’d been feeding me. He’s an elder, but he lives a…different kind of life. He explained what I was, what I needed. It was like waking up to a different world. My dad was dead. The prime suspect in his murder had been released on a technicality. I was turning into some kind of creature from the movies.
“For weeks after that, I searched the woods day and night, waiting, hoping to find the person responsible. I needed blood, but I refused to drink from humans. I realized that I could survive on animal blood, just barely, but enough to find Dad’s killer.
“I was going into the woods one night, stalking a deer, when I heard the squeal of the brakes. I ran back to the road and got there just before the car started rolling. Just in time to see your face through the windshield. For a second, I couldn’t move. I can’t describe what it felt like, but I can still feel it when I remember that night.”
He paused, lost in the feelings that he couldn’t articulate.
“The sounds of metal and glass on asphalt were so loud. I wanted to turn and run, knew that I should, but when the car hit the tree and stopped, I knew I had to get to you, to make sure you were alright.”
Though he was finally telling me how he felt—something I’d wondered about and agonized over for quite some time now—it was another thought that took center stage in my mind. He’d come after me. Me.
“I had to know that you were alright,” he groaned.
“Me?”
Bo nodded.