Chapter 14 AFTER MIDNIGHT
The swim team girl took a small step back and Caitlyn stood there in her red dress with her hand on Alexander's arm looking like she had simply come home.
Jake nuzzled my temple.
"You okay?" he murmured.
"Perfect," I said quickly.
He kissed my cheek. I kept my eyes on Caitlyn.
Alexander's POV:
"You were not invited," I said quietly.
"It is your birthday, Alex." Caitlyn said. "I have been at every one of your birthdays since we were twelve." She tilted her head. "Am I really not invited?"
I looked at her. She looked back, pretending to look innocent.
There was a time when that look had meant something to me. When Caitlyn's attention had felt like standing in warmth. That time felt very far away.
"You can stay," I said. "But Caitlyn—"
"I know," she said. Her voice was smooth. "I am not here to cause trouble, Alexander. I just wanted to see you on your birthday." She squeezed my arm once and let go. "That is all."
She smiled. I did not believe the smile but I let her stay.
Lily's POV:
I watched Caitlyn move through the party for the next hour the way you watched something that might bite you.
She was smart about it. She did not come near me. She did not make scenes. She laughed with people and accepted drinks and looked stunning in her red dress and every twenty minutes or so she drifted back toward Alexander like a tide that could not help returning to shore.
Each time he redirected her gently. Each time she accepted it gracefully and drifted away again. But soon, her eyes found me across the room, through the crowd and over the rim of her glass.
Every time they found me they said the same thing without saying anything at all.
"You do not belong here."
Jake kissed my cheek again.
"Stop looking at her," he said against my skin.
"I am not...."
"You are," he said. "And she wants you to. So stop."
I looked at him instead.
His brown eyes were warm and slightly unfocused. Now, he was on his third drink and the hard edges to him were getting softer the way they did when Jake Sinclair started to relax completely.
"Better," he said and smiled.
I smiled back.
From across the room, Caitlyn watched Jake kiss my cheek.
Her hand tightened around her glass. And then she turned and walked toward Alexander with an expression I recognised.
She had decided to stop being graceful and she did it in the middle of the room. Right in the centre of the party with forty people watching.
She stepped in front of Alexander and the two girls and put both hands on his chest.
"Dance with me," she said, loud enough for all to hear.
The music was slow and strategic. Alexander looked at her hands on his chest.
"Caitlyn," he said.
"One dance," she said. "It is your birthday. One dance with me for old times."
The room had gone quieter than it should have.
People were watching. Portia was watching and smiling to hide her annoyance. I was watching.
"It is just a dance Alexander," someone near me murmured to their friend.
Caitlyn's eyes found mine across the room.
There it was. That was the whole point.
It was not the dance, not Alexander and not for old times.
It was about me.
She wanted me to see it. She wanted everyone to see it. She wanted the whole room to be reminded that she had history with him that I could never compete with. And that she had belonged here long before I arrived in my borrowed dress with my cold pasta and my human blood.
Jake's arm tightened around my waist. He had seen it too.
"Hey," he said quietly. "Look at me."
I looked at him. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
"She is doing it on purpose," he said softly.
"I know," I said.
"So do not give her what she wants," he said.
I nodded.
He leaned down and pressed his lips to my temple warmly. And then he nuzzled into my hair and said something quietly that made me laugh despite everything and for a moment Caitlyn and her red dress and her dance request simply did not exist.
Across the room Alexander said something to Caitlyn and she stepped back.
Her expression flopped.
She was hurt. Really really hurt.
Then it was gone and she smiled and turned and walked back into the party like nothing had happened at all.
Alexander's eyes found mine across the room. He looked at Jake's arm around me and at my face.
He looked for exactly two seconds. Then he looked away and said something to another girl that made her laugh and everything went back to being a party.
But I had seen those two seconds. And I did not know what to think of them.
It started with the fourth drink.
I noticed because I had been counting without meaning to.
One drink when we arrived. Two during the first hour. Three when Caitlyn made her scene and Jake pulled me close and made me laugh.
The fourth came after that. And the fifth came quickly after the fourth.
Jake was still fun at five drinks.
He was looser and breathtakingly louder. His stories got bigger and his laugh got easier and he pulled me into conversations with people I had never spoken to ever before and introduced me with his arm around my shoulders like I was someone important.
I liked five drink Jake.
Sixth drink Jake was where things started to change.
He got quieter. Not a sad type of quiet but the type of quiet of someone whose body was working very hard to process everything and had started redirecting energy away from his mouth.
He sat down on the large sectional sofa in Alexander's living room and leaned his head back and looked at the ceiling.
I sat beside him.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Mm," he said.
"Jake."
"I am excellent," he drawled to the ceiling. "I am the most excellent I have ever been."
"You are drunk," I said.
"I am a vampire," he said. "Vampires do not get drunk."
"You are absolutely drunk," I said.
He turned his head to look at me. His brown eyes were soft and slightly unfocused and he had that particular expression of someone who found everything around them deeply interesting and funny.
"You are so pretty," he said.
"Thank you," I said.
"I mean it," he said. "You are genuinely very pretty, Miss Lily Danvers and I do not think I tell you that enough."
My heart did its embarrassing thing, thudding like a warground.
"You are drunk," I said again.
"Both things can be true," he said reasonably and we laughed.
He reached out and tucked my hair back. His hand was slower than usual but still warm.
"Stay close," he murmured.
"I am right here," I said.
"Good," he said.
His eyes slowly drifted closed.
I sat beside him and watched the party continue around us and I told myself this was fine. That he would regain himself. That in twenty minutes he would be back to five drink Jake with his easy grin and his warm hands and his cheek kisses.
In fifteen minutes he was asleep. Fully, completely, deeply asleep.
His head had tipped sideways and his breathing had gone slow and even and his mouth was slightly open and he looked—despite everything, despite being a wealthy vampire at his best friend's birthday party — very young.
I looked at him for a long moment. Then I looked around the room. The party was thinning out. People were gathering bags, finding jackets, filtering toward the door in the way parties ended, gradually and then all at once.
The music had dropped to something lower. The lights felt less electric.
I looked back at Jake.
He was not waking up.
The plan had been simple.
Stay at the party. Get close to Jake. Let the evening do what evenings did when two people were paying attention to each other.
Now, Jake was asleep.
The evening was not cooperating. I sat back against the sofa cushions and exhaled slowly at the ceiling.
Alexander's POV:
The last guests left at midnight.
I walked them to the door and closed it and stood in the sudden quietness of the house the way I always stood in my own room.
I walked back to the living room.
Jake was asleep on the sectional. His head was tipped back, his arms loose at his sides. He would sleep for hours, I knew.
Vampire metabolism and alcohol were a specific combination that, once they reached a certain point, they simply had to run their course.
Lily was sitting beside him.
She had taken her heels off at some point and tucked her feet underneath her and she was sitting with her arms wrapped around herself looking at Jake with an expression that she probably thought was unreadable.
It was not unreadable. I read it clearly. It was disappointment.
Not anger or frustration but the disappointment of someone who had been hoping for something and watched it slip away through no one's fault in particular.
She looked up when she heard me.
"Everyone's gone," I said.
"I heard the door," she said.
I looked at Jake.
"He will be out until morning," I said.
She nodded slowly, hiding her shock at the words. "I figured."
"You can take the guest room," I said. "The one you changed in earlier.”