Page 39 of A Visitor’s Guide to Guarded Vampires
“That’s a bad idea.”
The radio seems to drop out, leaving my words hanging heavy in the stillness.
“Okay…” She’s careful, quiet. “Why?”
I could stop. There’s a version of this conversation where I stop, shut my damn mouth. I don’t.
“This isn’t a place people like you put down roots—”
“People like me.” She turns in her seat. “Go on. Finish that sentence.”
“For people who come here from the city, Alaska’s a novelty. The quaint little town, the scenery, the quiet. It’s the gloss, the romance. Alaska is a hard place to live. Besides, you came here to figure out what you want from your life, didn’t you? You don’t find out who you are by grabbing onto the first thing that’s kind to you.”
“Kind to me?” She laughs, but it’s hollow. “You’ve been nothing but rude to me since I got here. What kind thing do you think I’m grabbing onto exactly?”
“I just mean, it’s easy to shut out your problems here. Except that doesn’t fix anything, and one day, you’ll want your real life back. And you’ll wonder what you’re doing hiding in a van in Alaska.”
Her heartbeat stumbles. One beat in the wrong place. She folds in on herself, and now I’m the one making her feel small, not Chad. If I could claw back every one of those words, I would. It only lasts half a second, then her chin lifts, and her fingers dig into her thighs.
She doesn’t say anything for a long moment.
“Wow.” Her voice is even, which is worse than if it shook. “Hiding. Okay. Just…wow.”
“That’s not…I meant—”
“No, I get it. I’m a tourist who naively thought the layover could be home. Clinging to my cozy delusions, hiding in the woods, not equipped for the real world.” She’s looking straight ahead. “Thanks for the assessment. Very thorough.”
“Ellery. I didn’t mean… There are rules here. Things you’d need to agree—” I stop myself because how do I begin to explain anything about me or the secrets of this town? “You’d regret it. Eventually, you’d regret it. That’s all. Isn’t it better to know that now than down the line?”
“Right.” She nods slowly. “Because you know what’s best for me. You and my parents, turns out you’ve got a lot in common.”
That one goes in clean, through the scar over the place where my heart used to beat. Exactly where she aimed.
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it? ‘You don’t know what you want, Ellery. Let me decide what’s good for you, Ellery. I know better, Ellery.’” The hurt in her eyes is so overwhelming I have to look at the road. “I came three thousand miles to get away from people who want to control my life. I didn’t think I’d find another one here.”
Anything I say now would make it worse or betray me, so I drive and let the silence fill the cavern I created. Neither of us touches the windows.
When I get to her apartment, she pulls on the handle before I’ve fully stopped.
“Ellery—”
“I’ll be at work tomorrow,” she says. “On time. You don’t have to worry about that.”
She climbs the stairs, and I wait, like I have any other choice, until her light comes on and her door clicks shut.
For a few weeks, she’ll hate me. Then the ice will thaw, not enough to repair the damage, but it won’t matter. She’ll go back to a place where the dangers are myths and never know how close she came to being stuck in a town full of secrets she isn’t allowed to know with a man who can’t cross a line on a map. Someday, if she thinks of this town at all, it’ll be as a strange winter she spent with someone who wasn’t worth the trouble.
That’s the only version of me I can give her.
Chapter 19
Ellery
The rest of the week passes by on three hours’ sleep and too much coffee. My outrage turns up at the start of every shift and stays until he drops me at my door, and then I lie there in the dark at four in the morning, wondering whether he’s right, which is worse.
The van goes back to one-word answers, the radio too loud, and a distance as wide as the miles I flew to get here. When I think I can’t do this anymore, that maybe it’s time to move on, or go home, Tess flips the sign to closed and drops onto a stool like her legs have given up.
