Flutter (31 page)

“The night we met, you came up to my room, and I
didn’t want to meet you. I didn’t want to want you, but the instant
I saw you…” He looked away from me. “Before I even saw you. I felt
you as soon as you walked in the house, and it was
overwhelming.

“I reacted poorly when we met, so Mae took you away,
out to the hot tub with her and Jack. I watched you when you
weren’t looking. You were sitting with him, laughing, and the way
you looked at him… You’ve never looked at me that way.”

“How did I look at you?” I asked thickly.

“Like you had to, like I was a magnet you were pulled
to. There was no choice,” he said. “And when you look at Jack, it’s
because when he’s around, why would you want to look at anything
else? You love him the way you could never love me.”

I swallowed hard, knowing that was true. While that
should have been comforting, it was painful. I felt like I had hurt
Peter without ever giving him a chance.

“But I love you in a way that he never can.”

“No, Peter, you don’t love me,” I shook my head.

“Alice, I am many things, but I’m not naïve,” Peter
said breathlessly. His voice had changed to something I had never
heard before, desperate and earnest, and I looked up at him. “I
love you, more than I’ve ever loved anyone, even Elise. As much as
it kills me to do it, I can’t stop.”

“I can’t be with you.” My voice quavered.

His eyes were so beautiful and pleading. Part of me
really wanted to be with him, but I could never hurt Jack again. I
refused to. And Peter was right. Despite anything that I might feel
for him, I still loved Jack more.

“I would never ask you to,” he whispered.

“But you would love it if I offered,” I smiled sadly
at him.

“Yes. I would.” He stared at me a moment longer, then
exhaled shakily. “But you can’t.” He finally lowered his gaze and
ran his hand through his hair. “I can’t do this anymore, either. I
suppose I should start packing up my things.”

“No, you don’t have to go.” I reached my hand out,
meaning to touch his arm and comfort him, but I realized how
dangerous just touching him would be, so I dropped it. “This is
your home. We have no right to keep kicking you out of here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jack and I are moving out. You can stay here,” I
smiled, trying to be hopeful, but his expression changed to one of
dismal understanding. I had expected this to be at least kind of
good news, but he didn’t take it that way.

“Of course,” Peter looked at Jack’s
room,
our
room,
with jealousy and disgust. “This had already been planned. You’re
going to run away and live happily ever after, and I will stay
here. With them. Forever.”

“It’s not meant to be a punishment!” I said,
surprised that I was somehow hurting him even when I meant to be
helping.

“Neither is my existence, and yet, it is.” He shook
his head and took a step toward the stairs. “I should go. We
shouldn’t even be talking. If Jack caught us, that would be
disastrous, and I don’t want to put a damper on your
honeymoon.”

“Peter!” I shouted, but he just kept walking. I stood
in the hall for a moment, trying to catch my breath and clear my
head.

“So…” Milo poked his head out of his room. I blushed,
forgetting that he was in his room and had been able to hear
everything. “I guess you really do need to move out.”

“You think?” I laughed hollowly.

Peter vanished after my conversation with him, but I
was grateful for it. I couldn’t handle anymore run-ins with him,
especially with Jack around. Milo, Jane, and I camped out in the
living room watching bad chick flicks until Jack and Bobby made us
stop.

When I had a moment alone with Jack, I asked him how
the apartment hunting went, and he hadn’t found anything exciting
yet, although he had some promising ones to look at tomorrow. He
told me to cross my fingers about them, but I wasn’t sure if I
wanted to.

Jane never mentioned her fight with Peter, but she
was acting weird. All fidgety and twitchy. She complained of being
hot and cold more than usual, and she added complaints that didn’t
even really make sense. Like the fabric on the couch was too rough
for her skin, or that the air in our house was making her
itchy.

Her mood swings were intense, too. One minute she’d
be laughing, and then next she was threatening to smother Bobby
with a pillow.

Bobby had put
Sid & Nancy
on the TV in the
living room, because he claimed it was a love story that we could
all relate too. I think Gary Oldman is a fox in it, so I didn’t
protest. I curled up next to Jack on the couch to watch
it.

Milo laid a blanket down on the floor, and Matilda
tried to take it over, but Jack convinced her to lay by his feet
instead. Since Milo wasn’t that interested in the film, he laid out
long ways on the blanket, and Bobby rested his head on Milo’s
stomach, facing the TV.

Jane sprawled on the chaise lounge, with her current
lament being that bracelets were too confining. Mae didn’t want
anything to do with the movie, so she opted for a bubble bath
instead.

“Are all the doors locked?” Ezra appeared in the
living room. He didn’t seem anxious, but something wasn’t quite
right.

“Uh, I don’t know?” Jack shrugged looking at him. “Do
we ever even lock the doors?”

“You
have
to lock the doors!” Jane yelled,
sounding tremendously worried. “People will steal your stuff!” Our
stuff must really have meant a lot to her.

“Maybe, but someone is always here, and we’re
vampires, so…” Jack trailed off.

“I locked the French doors after I let Matilda out,”
Milo said.

“Why? They’re glass. Anything that really wants to
get in can get through them,” Bobby pointed out.

“Regardless, I want you all to start locking
everything,” Ezra said.

“Alright. Don’t we have an alarm or something?” Jack
asked. “You had one put in when you built the place, didn’t
you?”

“Yes, I did.” Ezra nodded and scratched his head. “I
turned it off immediately after we moved in, and I can’t remember
the codes. I’ll have to reset it and give everyone new
numbers.”

“That seems like a lot of trouble to go through.”
Jack had his arm around me, and it tensed. “Did something happen?
What’s going on?”

“No, it’s probably nothing.” Ezra shook his head.
“There’s just been a string of robberies in the neighborhood.” I
don’t know how I knew, but he was lying.

“Oh my god,” Jane gasped and put her hands to her
mouth.

“We’re still vampires,” Jack gestured to himself, me,
and Milo. “I’m pretty sure that we could take whoever broke in
here.”

Jane was over-the-top terrified, but Bobby didn’t
look concerned at all. When you’re human, vampires seem extra
invincible. But as a vampire, I knew that I wasn’t anywhere as
strong or amazing as everyone else.

“It’s always better safe than sorry.” Ezra nodded, as
if that settled that. “I’m going to go look for the alarm manual,
and I’ll get back to you when I have codes.”

“Alright.” Jack gave me a weird look, and he was as
skeptical about Ezra’s intentions as I was.

“I don’t how you guys can just sit here!” Jane got to
her feet after Ezra left the room.

“Jane, relax. Nothing’s gonna happen to you,” Milo
tried to reassure her.

“No! I don’t mean that! It’s just
so
boring
here!”
She pulled at one of the bangle bracelets she had taken from me,
and her eyes darted all around the room. “You just sit here all the
time!”

“Jane, its four in the morning. What do you suggest
we do?” Jack asked her honestly.

“And we don’t sit around here all the time,” Bobby
said. “I went to school, Jack went out, Milo goes places too, I’m
sure. But you’re not because you’re still not feeling well.”

“I’m feeling fine!” Jane stomped her foot and tried
to take off the bracelets. “If it weren’t for these damn bracelets!
They’re like handcuffs!”

“Jane! Just calm down and watch the movie,” I said.
“We’ll go somewhere tomorrow night. Okay? But right now, it’s too
late. So just relax.”

“Whatever.” She managed to get off the bracelets and
chucked them to the other side of the room, startling Matilda into
barking.

“Is everything alright in there?” Ezra shouted from
his den at the end of the hall.

“Seriously. What’s going on?” I looked at Jack. “Is
there like a carbon monoxide leak? Everybody is being a total freak
today.”

“I am
not
being a freak!” Jane protested,
then collapsed heavily back onto the chaise lounge. “I’m fine.
Let’s just watch the movie. I wanna see what happens to this Sid
guy.”

Before the credits started to roll, Jane fell asleep,
but she twitched a lot in her sleep. It was actually super creepy.
We all watched with mild fascination until Mae came out of the
bathroom and yelled at us for just staring at her. She carried Jane
up to Peter’s room, and Mae came down because Ezra enlisted her on
his search for the missing alarm manual. It was the first time
they’d really interacted in awhile, and she seemed to bare a grudge
about the whole thing.

The rest of us watched movies for awhile longer,
until Ezra tried to get us to search for a manual we’d never seen.
We headed up to our respective rooms to avoid the whole thing.

“You know, Ezra’s in the den,” I said to Jack when we
got to our room. He had already taken off his tee shirt in
preparation to put on pajamas, but when he turned to look at me, I
started slipping off my jeans in the most seductive way I could
manage. “So you can’t really sleep there.”

“Here’s the funny thing.” Jack grinned as he walked
over to me. He’d come into the room and gone straight to the closet
to change, but I had other plans for the night, so I stayed next to
the bed. “I’m not really all that tired anymore.”

“Really?” I took a step back, so my butt hit the bed.
“You wouldn’t want to crawl into bed at all?”

“Oh, no, I definitely wanna crawl in bed,” Jack
smiled wickedly. He took another step towards me, so he was right
in front of me, and put his hands on my bare thighs. Slowly, he
slid them up under my shirt and let them linger on my waist. “God,
you’re beautiful.”

I looped my arms around his neck and stood on my
tiptoes so I could kiss him. He kissed me deeply, cupping his hands
on my butt and holding me to him. Gently, he pushed me back onto
the bed. I wrapped my legs around him, pulling me closer to him. He
pushed against me, and I moaned. His mouth trailed to my neck, and
suddenly, I wanted it.

“Bite me,” I breathed, burying my fingers in his
hair.

“What?” Jack stopped kissing me so he could look at
me. He tried to play it cool, but his excitement was unmistakable.
“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” I looked up at him. Being bitten felt
amazing, and he was in control enough where it wouldn’t be that
dangerous. I’d be the weak one, but I’d just fed so I wouldn’t be
ravenous.

“When was the last time you ate?”

“Jack!” I said. “Don’t break the romance with logic.
I’m fine, okay?”

He bit his lip and looked down at me. He was making
sure that I was completely okay with it, but he obviously wanted to
do it. I could feel his hunger, hot and eager, flowing over me. His
heart pounded heavily, and it was just above mine, so I could
almost feel it. His eyes faded translucent, the way they did when
he really wanted me. The more passionate he got, the lighter the
color of his eyes.

When his lips pressed against my veins, I moaned
involuntarily, and I arched my back, pushing closer to him.

“Alice!” Mae screamed and threw open the bedroom
door.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!” Jack yelled
incredulously and sat up, and I agreed. He turned to glare at her.
“There’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing!”

“I don’t care about you,” Mae said. She looked
stricken, so I sat up and pushed Jack back out of the way. “Jane is
missing! I think something’s happened to her!”

- 30 –

In the panic over a possible Jane-napping, I didn’t
think to put on pants and Jack didn’t put on a shirt, so we both
got dirty looks from Milo. He’d rushed out of his room when he
heard Mae screaming. I returned his dirty look since Bobby was
shirtless and guilty looking.

We were all crowded inside Peter’s room,
investigating Jane’s disappearance. Mae had tired of her pursuit of
the alarm manual, so she had gone upstairs to bunk with Jane again,
but when she’d come in the room, Jane was gone. That was all her
evidence.

“Did somebody ransack the room or something?” Bobby
asked, admiring the disheveled state of Peter’s room. Somehow, half
of my wardrobe had migrated over here and had been strewn around
everywhere.

“No, it always looks like this,” I said. I hadn’t
seen her room lately, but this was her natural state of being.

“Not to sound like a dick,” Jack said, “but you just
dragged us out of bed to show us Jane’s messy room? That’s not
really an emergency, Mae.”

“She’s not here!” Mae gestured to the mess around
her. “That’s the emergency.”

“Again, not to be a dick, but that’s not really an
emergency,” Jack said.

“Something could’ve happened to her!” Mae insisted.
“She wouldn’t just leave like this!”

“She might,” Milo said. “She was bitching downstairs
about how boring we are.”

“But she didn’t tell me where she was going.” Mae
looked at us all with disbelief. Jane had really gotten to her, and
she wasn’t willing to let her go so easily.

“You know what? I’m sure she has her phone on her,” I
said. “I’ll call her, and we can figure this out right away.”