Dark Secrets (76 page)

“
No!” I squealed,
rapping my fists on his leg as he swept me up like a football, legs
kicking behind us, and bolted up the stairs. “Put me
down!”

“
Make me.” He laughed
over my protest, so I angled my head just so, and bit his thigh.
“Ow!”

I landed on the carpet
on my hands and knees.

“
I can’t believe you
just bit me.”

“
I can’t believe you
just dropped me.”

“
Sorry. Defensive
reaction.” He rubbed his leg.

I stood up, dusting
myself off and we both held eye contact for only a second before
laughing. “Truce?” I held up my pinkie.

“
Truce.” He linked
his with mine, then pulled it close to his body, wrapping his other
hand behind my head to bury my face in his chest. “Come here,
you.”

“
Yeah. I missed you,
too.” I patted his back a few times then stepped away.

“
So—” He looked from
one door to another. “Which one’s my room?”

I pointed to the spare
room.

“
Which one’s
yours?”

I nodded to the one
behind him; he took a look, then hobbled over to his door, his hand
firmly on his thigh.

“
Oh, grow up, Mike. I
didn’t bite that hard.”

“
How do you know?” He
stood tall, dropping the act. “I might need a tetanus
shot.”

I wanted to whack him,
but knew it would start the war all over again. So I took the moral
high road instead and opened his door for him, ruffling his hair as
the light from his room swept the carpet by my feet. “Does poor
baby need a cuddle?”

“
Quiet, you,” he said
playfully and his eyes widened as he looked into his room. “Ooh.
Nice.”

“
Yep. And you can
thank David for putting the bed up,” I said, and crossed the room
to close the window. “Dad was trying to put the foot at the head
and the same on the end.”

“
David,
huh?”

“
Yes.” I pushed the
curtains further apart to allow for more light, then turned around
and opened the door adjacent to the window. “So, there’s a bathroom
here.”

“
Wow, my own
bathroom. Nice.” Mike leaned his head around the bathroom door,
then smiled back at me.

“
And you have a TV.”
I walked to the wardrobe—the door on the left of his bed—and rolled
out one corner of the LCD. “We usually roll it away to make more
space.”

“
Great.” He grinned.
“I’ve got a stack of our favourite movies on my hard
drive.”

“
Awesome.” I nodded,
pressing my lips into a thin line.

Mike stared down at me
with a half-lit smile, his hands on his hips like he was
questioning a suspect, and a narrowed look in his eyes that made me
clear my throat.

“
Why do you keep
staring at me like that, Mike?”

“
I’m sorry. There’s
just—” He went to walk away, but stopped and gave that same look
again. “Did you dye your hair or something?”

“
Why?” I toyed with
the ends. “Does it look different?”

“
Not
sure.”

“
Okay.” I laughed.
“That makes perfect sense.”

“
Sorry.” He shook his
head and hooked his fingers under the handle of his suitcase. “I
just haven’t seen you in so long. I think I forgot how you
looked.”

“
Oh. Well, didn’t you
have a picture?”

He shrugged
dismissively, placing his suitcase on the end of the bed. “Probably
somewhere. Why?”

“
You could’ve
referred back to that.”

“
I ‘spose I could.
Guess I just didn’t think of it.”

“
Oh.” I nodded
solemnly.

“
What?” he said,
looking up from the padlock on his bag. “What’s with the long
face?”

“
Um...well, it’s just
David,” I said, instead of blubbering that he clearly didn’t miss
me like I missed him. “I told you—he has to go away for a few weeks
before he leaves indefinitely, and—”

“
You’ll miss
him?”

“
Mm-hm.” I
nodded.

Mike softened then and
grabbed my wrist, pulling me into his chest for another
way-too-tight hug. “It’s all right, kid, you got me. I’ll keep ya
company.”

“
I know.” I pushed
out from his arms. “But, I’ve relied on him so much to get me
through. I just don’t know how I’ll—”

“
Well, what was I, if
not the one who helped you get through things, before you came
here?” he said. “You’ll be fine, Ara. It’s not the end of the
world. And he’ll be back to say goodbye, right?”

I nodded. It was all I
could do for fear of crying hysterically.

“
Okay.” He patted my
arm. “So just…cheer up and enjoy this time with me.
Okay?”

“
Okay.” I
huffed.

“
And sit down. You’re
making me feel edgy just standing there, hovering by the door.” He
motioned to his bed.

I looked at it for a
long moment. It didn’t seem right to sit on his bed now—now that I
had a boyfriend.

Mike looked at the bed
too, then smiled. “What? Did you booby-trap it—like last winter
when you and your friends thought it’d be funny to—”

“
No,” I said swiftly,
then wandered over and slumped down in the centre, with my feet
dangling off the side. “I just—I don’t know if I’m comfortable
being in your room now, is all.”

“
Right.” Mike nodded,
letting his gaze slip past me to the window.

I rolled onto my side
and propped my head up with the ball of my palm. “So, what’s the
plan today?”

“
Well, a change of
shirt’s first on the list.” He unzipped his suitcase. “Then, I
wanna hear all about this boyfriend of yours.”

I grinned at the sound
of his accent, how, alone, in a quiet space, the Aussie in him
became more prominent, more noticeable—not a strong accent, just
enough to surprise me.

“
What?” He
frowned.

“
Oh, um. It’s the
accent,” I said. “It sounds so...foreign.”

“
Have you heard
yourself
? You’re all
American
.” He put on a
mock American accent, but it sounded more
Canadian.

“
Hey, don’t knock the
accent.” I rolled onto my back and looked up at the ceiling. “Took
me weeks to get it right.”

“
Well, it sounds very
authentic,” he said warmly.

“
Thank
you.”

“
Don’t mention
it.”

He chatted away then,
zipping and unzipping pockets in his suitcase, laying things in the
drawers across from the bed then closing them gently, while I
watched in a sort of dream-like state. He still didn’t seem real. I
half wondered when I was going to wake up.

When the suitcase
scuffed along the floor, I looked at Mike as he kicked it under the
bed and laid a clean shirt on the blanket. “Hey, wanna see what
I’ve been doing lately?”

“
What?” I pushed up
on my elbows.

He yanked his shirt
from the back of the neck and pulled it over his head, and my mouth
dropped. “You like?”

“
Looks like you’ve been working hard to get into the Tactical
Group.” I smiled at him one last time before a shiver ran down my
spine, forcing me to look at the roof again. “There’s no way
not
to appreciate that
kind of workmanship.”

“
Well, they expect a
certain level of fitness,” he said, ruffling about at the foot of
the bed, “it’s my duty to exceed that.”

“
Well, you certainly
didn’t look like that the last time you took your shirt off,
so...duty fulfilled,” I scoffed, and everything went dark with the
strong scent of Mike. “Ew. Wash this thing. It stinks,” I joked,
peeling his shirt off my face then tossing it back at
him.

He caught it, held it
to his nose, then shrugged and threw it behind him. “Come on—move
over.”

“
Make me.”

“
Fine.” The giant
jumped onto the queen-sized bed and sunk his elbows heavily into
the softness beside me, making me roll slightly into
him.

I shoved my palm
against his arm and rolled onto my back. “God, you take up so much
space.”

He chuckled and tucked
his elbows under his ribs to hold his head off the bed. “If you
don’t like it, you could just get off my bed.”

I smiled as he shoved
me gently. “Like I said;
make
me
.”

“
If
anyone could
make
you do anything, Ara-Rose, my life would’ve been much
easier.”

“
Ha-ha.” I flicked
his earlobe.

“
Ouch.” He laughed,
cupping it. “That actually hurt.”

“
Sorry.”

“
Yeah, right.” He
pretended to flick mine, pressing the tip of my nose when I shied
away. “Pain.”

“
Wide
load.”

“
Meany.”

“
You know I’m
joking,” I said softly.

He drew a long breath
through his nose, his gaze tracing circles over my
features.

I smiled back up at
him, seeing the fine lines I’d memorised and the little pupil-sized
scar on the bridge of his nose that he got when I threw a rock at
him for being a jerk one day. I felt at home in the comfortable
silence—the kind we were used to.

“
Know what?” he said
in that husky whisper.

“
What?”

When his face came
closer to mine, I almost held my breath, thinking he was going to
at least kiss my head, but he rolled onto his back with a rather
large huff and linked his fingers behind his head. “I’m
tired.”

“
Yeah. Long trip,
isn’t it?”

“
Especially changing
over at LAX. I was stuck at Customs for an hour.”

“
An hour?” I blew my
fringe off my face. “They must’ve been moving fast that
day.”

Mike laughed softly
and grabbed a pillow from the top of the bed, stuffing it under his
head. And as his breathing slowed and the noise in the house died
down after Dad and Sam went off to school and Vicki started the car
up then drove down the street, I looked out at the clouds through
the top of the window, just happy to be by Mike’s side again.
Mostly, I could only see the eaves of the roof jutting out above
the glass, but beyond that, the summer sky went on forever—leading
to the place, the world David was living in today. Even though I
knew he was a fast runner, part of me wondered how he was going to
get all the way back here from New York every night and still be
back there in the morning to start work. Then I wondered what he
actually did while ‘operating the Set’.

As the shadows and the
yellow glow of the sun moved across the floor and to the wall, I
rolled onto my side and watched Mike’s chest rise and fall with his
quiet breath, while the vein on his neck pulsed lightly on each
heartbeat. It was something so small—seeing someone’s body live,
function—but until I’d spent so long with a vampire who didn’t need
a heart, I’d never really appreciated the miracle in our design. I
wanted to reach inside his chest and feel the blood pulse through
his heart, feel it full and fat and living, feel the life in his
veins—the life David took from others. And, looking at my best
friend sleeping so peacefully, so trusting, a small occurrence
crept up; how could I ever take that. How could I reach into a
person’s life and take them from the world—destroy their family?
Destroy their future, their hopes and dreams. What if it were Mike?
Or my dad?

It was all very easy
to brush it off and think, “Well, I don’t know this person,” but at
the end of the day, how would I feel if a vampire killed someone I
loved?

“
What you thinkin’
‘bout?” Mike’s voice startled me.

“
Oh, hi, I thought
you were asleep.” I tried to smile—it was a pathetic
effort.

“
Clearly
.” He sat up and shuffled to
the edge of the bed. “What was on your mind?”

“
I don’t want to talk
about it,” I stated.

He sighed and dragged
me, by the hand, to sit beside him. As the weight of his heavy arm
fell around my shoulder, I nestled my brow under his jaw. The deep,
almost candy-musk scent of his cologne made a flash of his bedroom,
back home, pop into my mind.

“
You smell good,” I
noted.

“
It’s the cologne you
bought me for my birthday.”

“
Really?” I sat up
and looked at him, incredulity littering my grin. “I thought you
said it reeked like an unopened coffin.”

“
Hm. I did say that,
didn’t I?” His gaze became thoughtful.

“
Yes. Among other
things.” I looked down at my hands.

“
I was a bit of a
dick, wasn’t I?”

I shrugged. “You were
only young.”

“
I was your
age.”