Sun Damage (The Sunshine Series) (28 page)

I expect
her to give me more of a fight but I think she’s realizing just how much she needs this. Sophie turns to Evelyn, her back to me. “I don’t know how,” she whispers.

Evelyn cradles her wrist in front of her, patiently waiting.

“I’ll show you,” I say. I position our bodies so one of my arms is behind Sophie, reaching toward Evelyn’s wrist, which she gives me, no questions asked. I speak very softly into Sophie’s ear, afraid that if I say the wrong thing, I’ll hurt her more. “Open your mouth.”

She takes in a heaving breath, like the words I’ve said and what they mean are enough to make her lungs collapse, but she parts her lips.

Evelyn finally lets a thought through her mind and into mine.
Should I?
she asks.

Yes
.

She presses h
er open wound to Sophie’s mouth and Sophie immediately backs away; I can’t let her. I hold her head in place with one hand and I clamp Evelyn’s wrist to her mouth with the other. “It’s okay,” I whisper into her ear. “Keep your mouth open.”

Sophie takes a minute to adjust her breathin
g. At first she starts to panic, then she settles.

Evelyn looks from her to me, unsure what to make of the entire scene.

Are you okay?
I ask. There isn’t much pain going through her arm, just the usual sting before the bite. Only there won’t be a bite.

She nods.
“Is
she
?”

I can’t answer that question, but Sophie does when she stops struggling against the both of us and gives in. She’s drinking it. She’s drinking it and keeping it down.

“Good,” I say. “You’re doing really well.” I stroke her hair, gathering it from the clammy skin at her neck. I brave a small kiss there and she relaxes more. Her muscles stop straining, the worried creases in her forehead smooth.

Then she starts to cough against Evelyn
’s skin and a jolt of pain stabs at Evelyn’s wrist. She twists her face into a grimace, but she quickly wipes the expression away and takes in a deep breath.

I smooth Sophie
’s hair behind her ear. “Try to keep it down, Sophie,” I whisper. I can’t imagine what it feels like: your body needing something so badly but not being able to hold onto it at the same time.

Maybe it was selfish to bite her. It was selfish of me to do anything with her. Become a part of her life before
becoming a part of her. I broke everything until she became the girl in front of me right now. It’s all my fault and I don’t know if I can fix it this time.

Sophie hunches
forward while reaching back towards me with her hands. Her heart is pounding so hard, so fast, that I’m afraid this really is too much stress on her body.

“
Okay,” I say, carefully shifting Sophie’s head away from Evelyn, who takes a balled up paper towel from her pocket and presses it against her open skin. The smell of blood fills my nostrils and my fangs push themselves against my gums. They want to come out—they probably would if I wasn’t so concentrated on Sophie.

She
’s spitting whatever blood is left in her mouth onto the rug in front of her, coughing, gasping. Then she vomits in the same spot as before. I’ll have to have someone come clean this up before I check out. The amount of blood on the floor would be alarming to anyone who found it.

Evelyn jumps off of the couch, backing away like someone
’s pulled a knife on her.
What the hell?
She’s thinking.
What’s wrong with her
?

Nothing
.

There isn
’t much this time. Sophie didn’t drink as much as she had with the dog. She starts crying again, crumpling in on herself. “No.” When she says it, it’s weak and defeated.

She curls her enti
re body onto the couch, holding her legs with her arms.

I stand up, reaching into my back pocket for my wallet. Evelyn looks like she wants to leave and she can
’t help us anyway.

I count out sixty dollars, think better of it, and add sixty more. She
’s staring at Sophie until I place the cash into her open palm at her side. “Sorry,” I say.

“
N–no,” she says, maybe seeing the hurt in my expression. Maybe seeing something else when she looks at me. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”

“
It isn’t your fault.” I clench my jaw shut as I lead her back to the door.
It’s mine
.

Sophie is
shaking when I turn back to her but she hasn’t moved from her position on the couch. I sit next to her, cautious when I lift her head and place it in my lap.

“
I don’t know what I did wrong,” she whispers. “My head.” She takes both of her hands and squeezes her temples with them. “What’s wrong with me?”

I move her hands away and make her look at me. She blinks, tea
rs starting to fall.

“
Nothing.” When I say it, I know it’s not true. I know she can see right through me. She always can. This just doesn’t happen. Maybe she really isn’t supposed to exist. Maybe people like her are supposed to stay human and never become monsters like me.

Sophie turns then, pounding on my chest with so much force that it’s hard to stay upright.
“Stop lying,” she cries.

I try grabbing her hands
but she’s too fast and ends up punching me in the face.

That’s what makes her stop. She stares at my lip as it grows warm and wet and I taste the iron in the blood blooming to the surface.
She doesn’t look away, and when I wipe my mouth, she stares at my hand. I feel the spot on my lip shrink and heal moments later.

“
When I turned you,” I say very quietly. “Did my blood bother you the same way?”

She sniffs a few times, chokes
down a sob.  “No,” she whispers. “I–I
liked
that.”

Something occurs to me that had, vaguely entered my mind before. I just thought it wouldn
’t work. It still might not work but I have to try.

“
Okay,” I say, more for myself than her. “I have an idea.”

She shakes her head, already afraid of what might come next.

“You have to trust me,” I say.

Slowly, she sits herself up. Her knees are against my thigh.
“How much more can I trust you?” she asks, and her voice is almost the same as it used to be. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

Sophie swipes some hair from her eyes.
“I–” She has to clear her throat, which must remind her of the blood on the floor, because she looks at it for a long time before continuing. “I’ve tried so hard not to,” she says. “I’ve tried
hating
you. I’ve never wanted to cut a part of my life out more than when you told me...what you told me.”

I don
’t interrupt her. She needs to say these things and if they hurt me, I deserve to be hurt.

“
But I can’t,” she says. “And I...I don’t want to. I want to believe everything you’ve told me. How you love me.”

Her hand rubs at her stomach. She must be in so much pain.

“And...” Now she looks at me. “I think a bigger part of me
does
believe you. I just wish I wasn’t so afraid of what that means.”

I nod, deciding it
’s safe to say something now. “I don’t deserve to be forgiven,” I whisper. “But I do love you. No matter what happens.”

Her eyes are watering again. I don
’t want to make her cry anymore. “I love you too, Myles.” Her voice cracks. “Lately, I’ve been wishing that I didn’t, but I do. I don’t think I can change that.”

It
’s so hard for me to not move closer to her, to not hold her, kiss away all of the pain etched on her face. I don’t have to fight the urge; she leans her head against my shoulder.

“
So,” she says. Her voice is thick but flimsy at the same time. I could swim right through it. “I’m not going to hate you. I’m not going to try. I’m tired of trying. I’m tired...” She wipes at her eyes again. “Just tired.”

I kiss her forehead
and she allows it. “I know,” I say. “Me too.”

“
So what do I do now?” she asks after a little while.

“
Lie down.” I decide it’s the best way without explaining it to her. I think if I explain, it’ll be too much for her right now.

She hesitates
and I don’t blame her. I take a pillow from behind me and after another moment, she lays her head back in my lap so she’s staring up at me. It reminds me of the first time she did this. When I followed her back from the mall to her house because I was afraid she was going to hurt herself. She fell apart that day, but afterwards, I got a small glimpse of that girl–the one I was set on bringing back from the dead. And I did. For a short while, she was completely herself. Happy in her own skin. With me. Now...now it’s different.

“
Close your eyes,” I whisper.

Another brief hesitation
and then her eyes close. She squeezes them shut for a moment before relaxing her lids but her hand is on the side of her head again. The pain must be unbearable.

“
Just try to relax. Breathe slowly.”

The first breath shakes in her chest, like at any moment, her body will reject the oxygen. The ones that follow come easier. I take her hand away from her head and hold onto it at her stomach.

“Good,” I say when her muscles aren’t tense anymore.

If her breathing becomes any deeper, she
’ll be asleep. This is what I want. She won’t be so scared this way, if she lets her mind sink into the background so her body can take over.

I fin
ally allow my fangs to come out and I make sure I don’t flinch when they do so I don’t disturb her. It’s hard for me to shut off my mind too, so I do it quickly before I can talk myself out of it. I bite through the skin of the bend in my elbow, making sure the blood flows freely before I wrap my arm around Sophie, the wound pressed to her slightly parted lips.

At first, her body tenses up.

“Shh,” I try to ease her. “Don’t think.”

I want this to work. I’ve never wanted anything to work more. Maybe it will. Maybe my blood is the thing
that can save her. She isn’t a normal vampire so maybe she can’t feed like one. It explains why she’s so calm and still when she’s near me. Maybe my blood will have the same effect on her body. I can only pray.

Her eyes pop open and she mumbles something
unintelligible against my skin. I know how overwhelming feeding can be sometimes. How your mind wars with itself, how you’re not sure what to do, if you should be doing it, but all the while your body is craving, pushing you towards it.

“
Calm down,” I say, waiting for her to take in a few deep breaths. “Close your eyes again.”

Then I bend my head down to hers; I brush my lips against hers.

There’s a moment of uncertainty and complete terror on my part. I don’t know if she’ll even be able to do this, I don’t know if she’ll accept a kiss from me now. I can’t be sure about anything anymore.

But soon, her tongue flicks out across her lower lip. The small amount of my blood there disappea
rs and she opens her eyes partway.

“
Do you like that?” I ask.

She gasps
, pausing like she’s afraid admitting it will make it backfire. Then she nods.

“
Do you want more?”

She doesn
’t pause before nodding this time. I recognize the look she gives me: hunger. Pure hunger for blood. I take it as a good sign as I press my wound to her waiting mouth before it heals.

Sophie relaxes a little
and I can feel her tongue against my skin, gently prodding at the wound, asking for it to give her more. Her eyes close again.

I was going to tell her how to do this
but I find that she already knows the way. I was worried that the wound would close too soon but she knows how to keep it open, gently sucking, then letting the blood trickle into her mouth. If she finds this display disturbing, she doesn’t let it show. She drinks, sighing, sinking into the calm that comes with it.

When she pulls away this time, I
’m afraid that it hasn’t worked, but it’s different than before. She sits up immediately, pushing my arm away with one hand while covering her mouth with the other. Now I think that maybe something has gone off in her mind, the way it has so many times in my own while I was first starting out. You think about how it’s possible that you enjoy taking blood,
life
from another person. You don’t know how to cope with it.

She
’s crying, shaking her head. She stares at the closing wound on my inner arm, and in order to keep her from getting more upset, I bend my elbow so she can’t see it anymore. When I try to move forward to touch her, she holds a hand up in front of her, so I back away.