The Vampire Next Door by Charity Santiago, Evan Hale Read Free Book Online Page B

locked his phone and announced that he wanted a divorce.
     
    A week later, he decided he didn’t want a divorce after all.
     
    Two weeks after that, he wanted a divorce again, and I said I was fed up with his indecisiveness, and left.
     
    In another two days, he was apologizing through email and asking me to come back.
     
    “You give me whiplash!” I’d growled at the computer screen, sequestered in the guest room at my dad’s house in Phoenix. Even then, though, I’d known that I would accept his half-hearted attempt at an apology and go back home. Cole would assume all had been forgiven, and I would grow ever more embittered. From then on, I braced myself every day for Cole to change his mind for the millionth time and ask for a divorce. I told myself that if he flip-flopped just one more time, that would be it- I was gone.
     
    I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m a total doormat. You’re probably tearing your hair out, screaming, “He’s such a jerk! Why the hell did she bother giving him another chance?”
     
    I don’t know the answer to that question. I have all sorts of theories, but there really is no clear reason why I stayed with him. Maybe it’s because I didn’t want my marriage to fail. Maybe I was also scared…scared of being alone, and scared of losing touch with the girls. A stepmom is in a precarious position, especially in Arizona. I had no legal rights to my step-daughters, and I certainly didn’t trust Cole or Kellie to allow me to continue my relationship with the girls in the event of a divorce.
     
    You can probably tell that I think about Cole, and our relationship, a lot. Even at inappropriate times.
     
    Even while trapped in a house with a vampire.
     
    To make matters worse, while I was reflecting on my relationship with Cole, I somehow managed to fall asleep on Reeve’s floor. Some vampire slayer, right? I’m like the anti-Buffy. I’m sure vamps everywhere are quaking in their boots at the thought of me napping in their living rooms.
     
    I slept pretty soundly, and the next thing I knew, I was blinking sleepily as my body tried to wake itself.
     
    Once my tired eyes began to focus, I saw Reeve looming over me.
     
    Though it had obviously been taking a coffee break when I’d lulled myself to asleep, my survival instinct kicked into overdrive at the realization that there was a vampire just inches away from me.
     
    I yelped and threw up my arms, striking him right in the nose with the heel of my hand. I was wriggling backwards on the floor, searching desperately for my wooden stake, when he reached over and grabbed my wrist.
     
    “Calm down!” he ordered, and I froze, staring wide-eyed at him as a thin trickle of blood made its way from his nose to his upper lip.
     
    He reached up and wiped it away, then looked down at the blood smearing his fingers. “I’m not going to eat you,” he said crossly. “You can stop acting like I’m some kind of mindless barbarian.”
     
    Aren’t you? my wise-ass inner voice shot back at him. I decided not to regurgitate that particular retort, figuring that it was probably not a good idea to goad the giant vampire who had me at his mercy. Instead I nodded and tried my best to look apologetic. As I shifted my weight to sit up, I felt my hand bump into something rough and solid.
     
    The stake.
     
    My fingers closed around it.
     
    Reeve grabbed a cotton pad from a shoebox on the floor beside him and wiped the remaining blood from his nose, then cleaned off his hand. “I was just going to bandage your arms,” he said to me, crumpling the pad in his fist. “You’ve got some nasty road rash.”
     
    I looked down at the shoebox and realized, with some surprise, that it was a first aid kit. There was a small bottle of peroxide, medical tape, gauze, and cotton pads, along with several other items that I couldn’t identify.
     
    “You want to…bandage my arms?” I repeated, wondering what possible angle this guy