Bled Dry (16 page)

“Alright, men,” Sam was saying. “Down on the ground.”

The guys all glanced at each other, unsure what to do.

“I mean it! Down on your stomachs. Crawl. You need to get a perspective on what the world is like for a baby down there. Then we’ll talk safety and babyproofing.”

Determined to do this right, Corbin got down into an army crawl beside Travis, the floor hard and cold.

“It’s freezing down here,” Travis complained.

“Point number one. Always bring a blanket for the baby to lie on. The ground might be cold or hard or covered with nasty germs.”

Corbin glanced around as his fellow classmates all crawled around the room, trying to get into the exercise, but all looking distinctly uncomfortable, except for Dave, whose enthusiasm had him zipping around the entire room. Travis had flopped onto his back.

“Is it time for my bottle and a bath yet?” he asked Corbin, and they both started laughing.

If this was Brittany’s idea of normal, then Corbin was damn grateful they were probably never going to fit in.

“Why couldn’t he drive you home?” Alexis demanded, peeling out of the hospital parking lot at sixty miles an hour. Brittany thought sometimes Alex forgot how strong she was post–blood drinking. With little effort, she could probably push that gas pedal through the floor, literally.

“Can you stop with the lead foot? You’re going to get me killed. Not to mention the whole reason I wanted to leave was because I have a stomachache.”

“Sorry.” Alexis eased up on the gas. “But what a shithead, I swear, Brittany, the hell with him. You don’t need to be treated like this.”

Rubbing her stomach, Brittany tried not to notice that her sister smelled tinny. Like she’d just been hitting the blood buffet. Since her pregnancy, her own sense of smell had heightened, and this was a bit gross. A lot gross, actually. But it was still Alexis, her sister, and she was going to have to get used to it. She was surrounded by bloodsuckers. Regardless of whether or not she and Corbin ever got their act together as a couple, he was still the father of her child.

“Alex, calm down. Corbin is not a shithead. He was going to drive me home, but I told him to stay. The class was helpful for him, since he knows as much about babies as I know about raising alpacas—which is nothing, by the way. The instructor had his baby there and Corbin was playing with him. He likes kids, Alex, he just doesn’t have any experience, and so his confidence isn’t all that great. This class was good for him, and I wanted him to finish it.”

Alexis was grimacing, focused on the road, hands gripping the steering wheel of her huge black SUV. Brittany had often thought Alexis was compensating for her lack of height with her beast of a car.

“If I could change one thing in life, I would have you pregnant with a normal man’s baby. This just complicates everything.”

That stung. Brittany knew Alexis wasn’t being judgmental, she just wanted everything to be easy for her, but it still hurt, like a paper cut. Small and unintentional, but powerfully painful.

“I didn’t set out to complicate everyone’s life. And while I’m sure you, Ethan, and Corbin all wish we could go back in time and erase the fact that we had unprotected sex, we can’t. So get over it. This is reality, and I’m trying to learn how to deal with it, and I’d appreciate you helping me instead of complaining.” So there.

Alexis slammed on the brakes on the side street that led to Brittany’s apartment complex. “Brit, geez, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Flicking her blond hair out of her eyes, she shook her head vigorously. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded... I just want to make things easier for you, sweetie.”

“I know. But there is no easier. This is it.” Brittany patted Alexis’s knee. Her sister looked sick, her light blue eyes clouded with anguish. “And it’s not so bad, honestly, in terms of me and Corbin. I know you don’t like him, but we get along. He treats me really well.”

“It’s not that I don’t like him, I just don’t approve of his research. He’s dabbling in scary stuff. And he killed a woman.”

“That was greatly exaggerated.” Brittany found it interesting that when her sister raised doubts about Corbin, conversely Brittany’s own doubts evaporated. “And he says once the baby is born and we get married, he’s going to retire.”

“Get married?” Alexis’s look of terror warring with extreme disgust showed Brittany her sister’s take on her getting hitched to an undead outcast. “That’s... that’s... ”

“A possibility, not a given. We’ll see how it goes.” Brittany felt remarkably clearheaded. This conversation had been good for her. It had shown her how futile worrying was. What she needed to do was just live her life. Take charge and stop waiting for everyone else to act, while she would react. “I think there’s a car behind us. You should probably start driving again.”

Alexis made an incoherent sound, but she lifted her foot from the brake and started them rolling forward.

“Does Gwenna have e-mail? I was hoping I could ask her a few questions. Mother to mother.”

Pulling into a visitor’s spot, Alexis shook her head. “I doubt it. According to Ethan, she lives in some moldering old castle in York. No electricity. No cell phone tower. It’s like the land before time. Ethan sends her stuff snail mail, or if it’s important, global express. But the thing is, and do not repeat this to Ethan, but... ” Alexis bit her fingernail and gave her a shrug. “I think Gwenna’s a few cards short of a deck. Not the best person to be doling out advice.”

Brittany discounted that. Alexis was such a logical, tell-it-like-it-is person that anyone who was slightly left of center struck her as weird. She saw life as black and white. But Brittany figured everyone was weird to a certain extent, and a little oddness hanging around a person didn’t mean there wasn’t a little brilliance in the mix as well. She wanted the comfort of talking to another woman who had given birth to a child with unique genetics.

“I don’t care. I want to talk to her. Can Ethan contact her? Or would it make her more comfortable if I flew over there?”

“Good gravy, don’t do that. Just sit tight and I’ll have Ethan talk to her.” Alexis gave her a stern look. “Promise me you won’t go running off halfway around the world. I’m serious.”

Brittany tucked her hand under her thigh and crossed her fingers. She wasn’t making any promises she couldn’t keep. While she had no intention of jetting off to Europe at the moment, she wanted to leave her options open. Her answer was deliberately vague. “Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

Damn, Alexis knew her too well. “Okay, I won’t fly to England immediately. Or without consulting you first.”

Alexis sighed and popped the locks on the car so they could get out. “You are going to be the death of me.”

“You can’t die.” Brittany pointed out the obvious with a smirk.

“Brat.”

Brittany laughed. It was nice to know that some things would never change.

“Hey, you want to grab a beer or something?” Travis asked Corbin when they finally emerged from the classroom, overloaded with info and a new understanding of the words
big responsibility
.

Corbin had scrubbed his arm down in the men’s room and checked his shirt to see if there was a visible spot from Austin’s spit-up. It looked presentable, and he suspected only vampire nostrils could detect the sour scent. “Sure.”

“Dave, Jason, you in?” Travis asked the others.

“I’m in,” Jason said, running his hand through his short hair and rubbing his scalp. “I need a cold one after all of that. Jesus Christ. Parenting is like police work—rules, regulations, and paperwork.”

“I need to get home,” Dave said with a regretful shrug. “My wife hates being alone.”

As he waved and trotted down the hall, Travis shook his head. “That guy’s whipped.”

“Seriously,” Jason agreed. “And I figured hey, we might as well go out while we can, right? I mean, there won’t be any grabbing a beer once the baby gets here. At least not for a while.”

“You got it.” Travis hit Corbin in the chest with the back of his hand. “Alright, you guys call your old ladies, then I’ll call mine. Let them know what’s up.”

“Oh, I don’t need to call Brittany,” Corbin said, shaking his head at Travis’s offer of his cell phone. “But you two go right ahead.”

They both gaped at him. Travis looked horrified, Jason skeptical.

“Your funeral, man,” Jason said.

“She went to her sister’s,” Corbin hedged, a little embarrassed that he and Brittany were not married. “She wasn’t feeling well, so her sister picked her up.”

“Yeah, but she’s not going to sleep there, and she’ll be pissed if she gets home and you’re not there.”

Corbin made a noncommittal sound and said, “Go ahead and call your wife.”

Travis cocked an eyebrow. “Dude, did you two argue or something? If she’s trippin’, you need to deal with it. All those hormones and shit, you need to work it through, you know what I’m saying? My dad always said never go to bed wanting to kill the bitch, and that’s good advice.”

Corbin almost laughed. It reminded him of a conversation he had had with his own father regarding marriage.
Better to despise each other and have exceptional sex, than to get along but be bored in bed.
It hadn’t made sense to Corbin at the time, and he wasn’t sure it did two hundred years later, either. But apparently his father hadn’t been the only sire doling out questionable advice.

“We are not arguing. The truth is that we do not live together, so she is not expecting me this evening.”

“You don’t live together?”
Travis said, his bellowing voice ringing in the empty hallway. “You’re married but you don’t live together? How the hell’d you manage that kind of arrangement?”

Corbin shifted and stuck his hand in his pocket. “We are not married. I never said we were married.”

“Oh. Shit. Okay. Sorry. Let’s go grab that beer.”

Apparently grabbing a beer in Vegas meant doing it in a dark bar with glossy seats and women dancing around poles on a pink-lit stage.

Corbin stared at the brunette critically. She looked bored, and harbored a certain sense of entitlement. For every little shake and slide, she seemed to expect money. There was no effort, no emotion. Corbin felt as bored as she did. There was nothing enticing or appealing about a woman just gyrating naked. Where was the aura of sensuality? Where was the buildup, the tease, the hint at a woman’s body, the titillation? This woman was naked, yes, but she was exuding as much sensuality as a stick.

Jason was staring hard at the blonde, who had breasts that were too round to be natural. “My wife used to have a body like that. Before the pregnancy. Rock-solid thighs, flat stomach, tits high and perky.” He demonstrated by holding his hands up by his pectorals. “She wore a thong all the time. Now she wears granny underwear.”

“That’s rough,” Travis said. “But don’t worry, she’ll get the bod back.”

“We met at Hooters,” Jason said. “She was a waitress. I was a cook. She used to lean in to pick up those burger orders and smile at me. That’s all it took. I was gone. I really love her.”

“That’s beautiful, man,” Travis said.

Corbin took a small sip of his beer and frowned. He liked Brittany’s thongs. She was fond of bright colors, and he liked that little scrap of fabric on her fair skin. He would be sorry to see those disappear. “What is granny underwear?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” Jason drained his beer bottle.

“They’re underwear that cover everything. You know, like from here to here,” Travis said, his arm moving from his thighs to his ribs. White, or maybe powder blue or pale pink, cotton, nasty stuff.”