Sunset Rising (Sunset Vampire Series, Book 5) (18 page)

“
Maybe not ignore,” I
said. “But you could try to forgive.”

“
How can I forgive what I
don’t even understand yet?”

“
Because you say that you
love me,” I said. “Because, even if you’re pissed at
me—”

“
Oh, I’m very pissed,” she
said.

“
Yeah, well, you hopefully
still care.”

She paused, as if considering that for a
moment.

“
Because, deep inside
where few can see, you’re kind,” I added.

Her features hardened. “Listen to me. I’m
not at all a kind woman, Caleb,” she said. “Especially where either
my heart, or my trust, is concerned.”

I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling as if I
was playing with a coiled serpent that was ready to strike at any
moment.

“
You’re wrong,” I said.
“Maybe not with other people, but you’ve always been kind to
me.”

Her firm resolve appeared to momentarily
waver.

“
And as for your trust,
I’ve never betrayed it,” I said. “Not
once
.”

Her facial muscles relaxed slightly. Slowly,
she withdrew her index finger from beneath my chin.

Though relieved, I resisted the temptation
to reach up and see if her fingernail had drawn blood.

“
Still, what you did was
wrong,” she said. “I’m not going to just overlook that. It was a
serious lapse of judgment of your part. And it was recklessly
dangerous.”

“
How can I say I’m sorry
so that you’ll believe me?” I asked.

The corners of her mouth upturned. “You
could begin on your knees.”

I started to smile, but her gaze turned
cold.

Apparently, she wasn’t kidding.

I dropped to my knees before her, staring
into her abdomen, her clothes still damp from the rain.

I breathed in her scent and felt a familiar
carnal desire rise within me. The mere prospect of holding her body
in my arms again was irresistible.

It had been too long.

She snapped her fingers above my head and I
looked up.

While her expression was almost menacing,
her body was also painfully ravishing, which only heightened my
attraction toward her at that moment.

Maybe we’re due some makeup sex?

“
I know that look,” she
said. “But you can forget it. You should be so lucky right
now.”

Oh, I should, indeed.

“
Don’t forget why you’re
actually down there,” she added coolly.

I swallowed. “Kat, I’m so very sorry if my
actions were reckless,” I said. “And I wasn’t trying to hurt you.
But you need to understand, my perspective on life has matured
quite a bit since I left.”

She folded her arms before her and stared
down at me.

Something told me that she wasn’t convinced
of my sincerity.

“
We should talk about
this,” I said. “I can help you to understand what I’ve been
feeling.”

“
Perhaps,” she
said.

“
Look, I feel really silly
down here,” I said. “Maybe we could chat over on the couch instead
of like this?”

“
Why? Are your knees
getting uncomfortable?” she asked.

“
A bit,” I
conceded.

“
Good.”

If that was a sign of things to come, I was
probably in big trouble.

“
Kat, at this point, I
don’t know what our future holds,” I said. “But I do know that this
isn’t helping either of us.”

After silent moments passed while I stared
up into her eyes, my neck felt strained at such an angle and my
muscles started to ache.

“
I suppose,” she
conceded.

Well, that hardly seemed like a shining
endorsement.

I stared back into her abdomen and reached
out to encircle her waist in my arms.

Then I firmly pressed my lips to just above
her belt line and kissed her.

“
Don’t toy with me,
Caleb,” she warned.

“
I’m not,” I insisted.
“Unless you’ve forgotten, you’re my mate, remember? I’m supposed to
be allowed to kiss you, dammit!”

The muscles in her stomach went taught,
almost like stone. “Of course, I remember you’re my mate,” she shot
back. “Why the hell else would I even be here?”

The intensity in her eyes alone was
intimidating.

“
I wouldn’t
know.”

She remained silent and her gaze reverted to
staring ahead, as if looking at something far away in the
distance.

“
I wouldn’t have expected
that from you. How can you even say that? What’s gotten into you?”
asked Kat.

I paused to gather my thoughts.

“
I feel like we’re
drifting apart,” I said. “Like I’m losing you to something with
greater pull than I can muster enough strength to
counter.”

She looked down at me with surprise.

“
Why?” she asked. “What’s
changed between us for you to say that?”

Despite the many centuries of experience
that I knew she had, veritable lifetimes more existence than that
of my own, her expression reflected sheer confusion toward me.

“
Our distance, both
physical and emotional,” I replied. “It’s like a barrier that’s
formed around you over time…first like a fog, subtle and amorphous.
Now, it’s like a thick cloud that’s nearly
impenetrable.”

I looked down at the wood floor and a tired
sense of resignation flowed through my body. I felt both weary and
helpless.

She squatted before me, placed her fingertip
before my chin, and tilted my head upward until I gazed into her
piercing eyes.

“
Your reckless actions
concerned me,” she said. “Now, your words worry me. What’s
happening with you?”

“
Me?” I asked. “It’s us!
Don’t you see that?”

“
What about
us?”

“
There isn’t any us
anymore, that’s what!”

She appeared taken aback by my response.

“
That’s ridiculous,” she
retorted.

“
Oh, really? I never even
see you anymore.”

“
Caleb, I can’t exactly
fly back every weekend as if I’m working some nine to five office
job,” she said. “You know what’s at stake, as well as how
unpredictable what I’m doing is.”

“
I can’t even call you
anymore,” I continued. “Hell, our contact is a series of stupid
text messages.”

“
Now you sound like some
spoiled teenager,” she said, standing up.

“
Teenager? Maybe I just
sound like that because you’re like – what? – almost twenty times
older than me. Which means you should understand far better than me
what I’m trying to tell you.”

“
Oh, you’re really driving
me crazy right now,” she said. “At times like this I can’t see how
this relationship even works between us.”

“
Well, it’s
not
, in case you hadn’t
noticed. So maybe you need someone much older than me…maybe another
vampire then?” I countered. “Somebody who’s so much wiser and
capable at handling this insane life we’re having to
live.”

“
It’s becoming apparent to
me that you’re obsessing over everything. Perhaps you simply have
too much free time on your hands,” she said.

Something inside my brain snapped as weeks
of emotional strain, stress, and fatigue flooded back through my
memory.

I jumped up to stand before her.

“
Free time?” I demanded.
“Look, my life has turned into an endless slog. I can’t handle this
pace anymore! My life is nothing but an endless damned stream of
combat training and physical workout sessions and classes and
stupid papers and then perpetual research for a thesis topic that I
didn’t even choose. Hell, Alton has me looking down some dark
rabbit hole with no bottom. Now I don’t even have a life anymore! I
hate this! In fact, I can’t stand it anymore…I want to be anywhere
else, doing anything else.”

Her eyes widened.

“
I hate this life! I don’t
have you or freedom or downtime,” I raged. “I can’t keep this pace
up anymore. Dammit, I’m not some friggin’ vampire; I’m only
HUMAN
!”

I suddenly realized that my fists were
clenched at my sides as I glared into her eyes. I felt as if
standing on the edge of a precipice and very nearly ready to fall
over the edge.

She frowned, studying me at length as if
divining her future from a cup of tea leaves.

“
Well? Aren’t you even
going to say anything?” I demanded.

“
Your haunted-looking
eyes,” she said softly, placing her warm palm against my cheek. “I
haven’t seen that look in such a long time.

“
It’s a visage that I
prayed might have been banished forever, and now I’m staring back
at it once again. It breaks my heart to see you this way,” she
said.

I felt too stunned to utter a single
word.

Chapter 15

Caleb

The saddest expression commanded Kat’s
features.

How could I have realized that she hadn’t
been divining our future in her expression, but rather reflecting
on the past?

My past.

I felt spent all of the sudden. My entire
body felt ragged and emptied of strength and energy.

I reached out to place my hand around hers,
grateful even for that limited contact, yet realizing that it was
much more than I’d had in weeks, with her away in Europe.

In an instant, I was wrapped in her arms, my
face pressed against her shoulder. My own arms embraced her
tightly.

It felt as if had been forever since I had
held her.

“
Come,” she said, guiding
me toward the couch.

She sat alongside me, cradling one arm
around my shoulders.

“
Take a moment,” she said.
“Then tell me everything.”

I took a deep breath, suddenly feeling
unprepared to unload what was the culmination of months of building
tension, self-doubt, and angst.

“
My life,” I began. “It
feels like its spiraling forward out of control, full-tilt and
mixed with both routine and menace, but neither in a manner or
direction that I care for it to go. And worst of all, I feel like
you’re less and less a part of it…”

I told her about the conflicted emotions I
had experienced; including my feelings of guilt for all that’s been
done for me, and yet, having found myself wanting for more, or at
least different circumstances.

She listened as I recounted my fears about
what felt like our waning relationship and her obligations that I
felt powerless to balance in our relationship.

Of course, I confessed my feelings of regret
over holding Alton responsible for her obligations, given how he’d
saved my life more than once. Not to mention how he’d generously
offered himself as a quasi-avuncular figure in my life.

Of all my conflicted feelings and emotions,
guilt appeared to figure prominently among them.

The thunderstorm outside raged for a time in
a manner that seemed to mirror my own tumultuous inner
feelings.

I don’t know how long I spoke, but it felt
like an endless stream of thoughts, feelings, and even confessions,
poured forth like a flood. I left nothing out, recounting events
and inner feelings that spanned fear, shame, anger, and
anxiousness.

Most of all, no matter the consequences of
my revelations, I felt unbridled relief at getting everything out
in the open.

By the time I finished talking, I felt
nearly exhausted. That’s when I noticed that, while it was still
dark outside, the thunderstorm had ceased, save for droplets of
rain occasionally pelting against the glass window panes.

Kat pulled me close against her again,
holding me in place and gently nuzzling the top of my head with her
chin. I had almost fallen off asleep when she finally spoke.

“
My dear, sweet, Caleb,”
she said. “You maddening, precious, silly man. You drive me almost
insane at times.

“
Why did you wait this
long to tell me these things? Why endure this on your own at such
length?” she asked.

“
I don’t know, really. At
first, I just tried to brave my way through it, or ignore it
completely,” I replied. “Then it felt too imposing to confront,
wearing on me day after day.”

“
Why didn’t you tell
me?”

I reveled in her embrace. “I sort of tried,
in my own way. But I always ended up feeling as if I was imposing,
or standing in the way of your duty to Alton. Eventually, it felt
as if we didn’t even have time for a phone call. But—”

“
But what?”

I took a deep breath. “It wasn’t easy trying
to press my concerns with you. You can be a very insistent woman,
but lately it’s as if you’ve grown evasive with me much of the
time.”

I felt her body tense and she remained
silent.

After a few moments, her body relaxed
again.

“
Yes,” she conceded. “Yes,
I suppose that can be true sometimes, particularly
lately.”

I let out the breath that I hadn’t realized
I’d been holding. It was a considerable concession on her part.

She kissed me on the cheek, which felt very
reassuring.

“
But I’m still really put
out with you for just up and leaving so abruptly.”

Yeah, I sort of figured that might be the
case.

She retracted her arm from around my
shoulders and started to rise from the couch.