Silent Night: Vampire Holiday Romance (The Night Songs Collection Book 4) (21 page)

I’d let Aidan drink my blood.

Matt was dead as a consequence of my actions, but I would be lying to myself if I said a part of me wasn’t relieved that part of my life was over. Now that I actually passed the test, I felt invincible.

Fear rumbled in the background, preparing to cushion my inevitable fall.

But first, I needed to call the hospital and let them know I had the all-clear to start my job.

“That’s awesome! We can’t wait for you to start.” Stephanie, now my new supervisor seemed genuinely excited to hear from me. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, too. I talked to your boyfriend, Aidan, is it? He sounds like a catch. You’re going to have to tell me your secrets on getting such a great guy to take care of you.”

If she only knew.

Twenty-Five

“A girl’s gotta eat!” Vanessa, one of the girls I trained with justified her serial dating to the rest of our group as we all laughed at her description of her routine.

“You take them all to the same restaurant?” Lenore, one of the other girls, asked for clarification. “And the waiters don’t rat you out or anything?”

“No, actually they tell me who tips well and who doesn’t,” Vanessa revealed to more gasps and giggles. “It’s right down the street from my house, so if I need to bail, it’s easy. If I want to bring them back for a nightcap, they don’t have time to pussy out. It’s perfect. And who doesn’t like sushi?”

“I don’t miss those days,” Lenore sighed. “I don’t know how you girls do it, all that online crap. So many creeps! Have you ever had anyone do anything freaky?”

“One did ask for my panties at the end of the date.” Vanessa shrugged. “I let him have them. Why not?”

“I would have smacked his perverted face.” Lenore looked disgusted. “If Derek ever tried that, I would have never brought him home.”

“Tell me more,” Maria, the oldest of all of us, propped her chin on her hands, enthralled. “I’ve been married for so long, if it wasn’t for our patients, I’d forget what a penis looked like.”

“Don’t tell me that!” Lenore groaned. “My wedding is in six months! Everyone says the romance dies. I love sex so much.”

“Have three kids.” Maria fed into Lenore’s fears. “You’ll pray for a chastity belt.”

“What about you, Kyndra?” Vanessa asked. “How come you never talk about that man of yours?”

My face turned red, and I smiled and looked down at the lunch Aidan had packed for me. The more I listened to them talk, the more I realized I’d never had a normal relationship. Matt was a clumsy and manipulative fight to keep my self-esteem from drowning, and Aidan was this fantasy in the flesh that I shared blood with. If I knew what the middle ground was, I’d share that with them.

“I don’t know.” I blushed more. “He’s awesome, though.”

“How long have you been together?” Vanessa asked.

According to me? Two months. According to Aidan? Two hundred and fifty years. Give or take. “Since Christmas.”

“You still have sex?” Lenore’s eyes perked up. “You are sleeping with him, right? You’re being all shy about this. It could go either way.”

I laughed. “We live together.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Maria scoffed good-naturedly.

“Okay. All the time.”

“Keep talking girl.” Vanessa leaned over the table, pushing away her leftover cafeteria food.

What should I tell them? We drink each other’s blood like they probably shared wine with their significant others? That he killed my ex-boyfriend? That he tracked me by smell? That being away from him felt like I left a piece of myself behind?

“It’s great.” I shoved my Tupperware back in my lunch bag. “I’m sorry, I’m not used to talking about this kind of stuff.” Paige had never asked me anything about my relationships. Instead she concentrated on what she thought was wrong with them. Anything I said could and would be used against me. And so far, these girls still liked me. It never seemed to last when people got to know me, until I met Aidan.

“Sometimes I forget how young you are.” Lenore remarked. “It’s okay. As long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters. Don’t let these girls pry.”

Everyone burst into laughter all over again as we cleaned up our lunch table and headed back to work. It was a shame that when training was over we’d all probably go separate ways to different departments and shifts. The hospital was huge. I felt comfortable working with this crew. We helped each other out, all having different strengths. Since this was a training hospital, no one questioned a crowd coming in to work on you. I hoped my permanent team would be as welcoming as these girls.

As we snapped on our gloves to make our afternoon blood draws, I became preoccupied with thinking about sharing blood with Aidan. We took so many precautions to protect ourselves from exposed blood here, and at home, I drank it like nectar. It was dangerous and foolish, and like every other bad thing that crossed my path, I couldn’t say no. But unlike drugs, I knew I could never walk away from Aidan.

“On my count.” Maria led us as we rolled over a patient who couldn’t move on her own. Stephanie, our supervisor, nodded in approval in the corner of the room. “One, two, three.”

School prepared us to pass our CNA test. Nothing could prepare me for the actual job. Every day here so far exhausted me. Just learning the rules and regulations, the major players, how to deal with the patients and their families, where to find everything was grueling enough. Standing on my feet all day and moving bodies that didn’t want to be moved made every muscle in my body ache.

I wasn’t used to being awake during the day anymore, either. And I struggled every night to stay up as long as I could with Aidan. Every morning, the alarm clock might as well have been a sledgehammer slamming against my head.

When I got home that night, I dropped my lunch bag and jacket in the foyer and stumbled into the living room, falling onto the couch. Aidan brought out a plate for me, tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. He kissed my head when he delivered it, and I could only moan in appreciation of the entire gesture.

I dunked my sandwich into the soup, then let the mixture melt in my mouth. Food was a whole new experience after drinking Aidan’s blood. Every one of my taste buds stood at attention, fighting to give me the best sensation. “This is so good.”

“Thanks. It’s been a long time since I’ve cooked, and I can’t taste anything anymore so I have no idea what I’m giving you.” Aidan sat on the other end of the couch. “So if it’s terrible, let me know. Really. I won’t be offended.”

“Do you know how much I appreciate you doing this for me?” If Aidan hadn’t cooked for me, I wouldn’t have had the energy to do it for myself. “I have nothing to bitch about.”

I turned, putting a pillow on my lap to balance my plate, and watched Aidan while I ate. He balanced his printed manuscript on a pillow in his lap as well, and periodically highlighted or wrote something on it, but kept looking up to smile at me. I thought of Maria, not wanting her husband to touch her anymore. Would that ever be us? I just couldn’t imagine.

Once I’d used the toasted bread to sop up every last drop of soup, I placed the plate on the coffee table. I felt bad putting it on top of a book, but it was unavoidable. And I didn’t want to move. Aidan put down his work as well, and crawled to my end of the couch.

As he started rubbing my shoulders, any thoughts of my day became fuzzy. It hurt a little, in the good way, because my muscles were so tired. He leaned in to kiss my hair, and I pulled it down from the tight bun I wrapped in for work hoping that he would play with it. Picking up on my cue, Aidan got up from the couch and came back with a hairbrush. “You should go to bed.”

“I want to spend time with you.”

“You’re exhausted. This is only temporary. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know.” I turned to him, my whole body warming, realizing that he was mine forever, and had quite possibly been mine forever, but turned my head quickly when I realized looking at him made him stop brushing. “I’m not, either.”

“Then one night won’t matter.” He kissed my shoulder. “You need to rest.”

“Come with me,” I insisted. “Bring the book with you. You can work while I fall asleep.”

He pulled me in to his body. “Do you really think I’ll be able to get any work done when you’re lying in bed beside me?”

“I’d fall asleep in the middle anyway.” I sighed. “I guess I should go to bed.”

Aidan stood up, holding his hand out to me and pulling me up off the cushion. I kicked off my sneakers and left them in the living room. Once we reached the bedroom, Aidan helped me out of my scrubs and pulled my pajamas on me. Having someone take care of everything was more than I ever could have dared to hope for.

I snuggled beside him when he climbed into bed with me. My eyelids fought me so hard, but I won the battle of consciousness, for now. My head rested on his chest, and he put his arm around me, opening the manuscript to where he left off. He no longer had any secrets on those pages, now that I knew them all.

The words blurred in front of my eyes as he highlighted certain passages for whatever reason. Whole paragraphs got crossed out. Sometimes he sighed and shook his head in frustration.

“I hate this part of writing,” he said softly, since he probably wasn’t sure I was awake anymore. My breaths were heavy and slow, in preparation for sleep. “I just like telling the story. I hate having to rearrange the words.”

“Will you read it to me?” I asked.

He sat up straighter, surprised. “You’d like that?”

“I’d love that.”

“Okay.”

He began to read, his voice rich and words slow, our story from his point of view. It sounded like poetry, and if I hadn’t been there, I would have never believed someone could have felt this way about anyone, especially me. I drifted off, the rhythm of his tale lulling me to dream about Aidan reading to me in a small, dusty room someplace else. A cool breeze blew in through the wall slats and the hay mattress crunched as we moved.

He was still Aidan, but in my dream, I saw everything through Marielle’s eyes.

Twenty-Six

“Do you think you’ll be all right in ICU?” Stephanie asked me as she started to work on the rotation schedule. As I predicted, I’d been separated from the group I’d trained with once we got our regular assignments. I was the only one of that crew who actually wanted to work overnights.

“I think so,” I told her. I was going to find out.

“It’s not that bad on the night shift. Everyone’s asleep, so you just have to check vitals and make sure they’re clean. Unless, of course, there’s an emergency, but that could happen anywhere at any time.”

The last year or so of my life had already conditioned me to the horrors I might see working here. When cancer gets ready to place its victory flag on someone, it doesn’t worry about being nice, neat, or pretty. It was a slow progression, giving me a chance to grow accustomed to the monstrosities it committed against Memere. You wouldn’t believe what you could trick your mind into thinking was normal. Needles? Bodily fluids? I got used to those going back and forth between Matt’s house and the shelter. At Paige’s house, I learned to put on my best game face and act like none of it bothered me.

And the blood? I craved that. Only from Aidan, of course. I worried, the more we drank from each other if I’d be affected by the sight of any blood, but only his had any magical power over me.

After all I’d been through with Aidan, I still wasn’t totally convinced he could really be all he said he was. Immortal. Was it really possible? My brain couldn’t totally reconcile it, so I just went along for the ride. Everything else in my life was so much better when he was involved. I couldn’t fight with him on this anymore. If he was just crazy, I could live with that. If he really was a vampire, well, I’d live with that as long as I could.

Although, I didn’t really understand how he could survive without killing me. But he did it. In some ways, I was drained. I felt tired a lot, but that could be my new job. In other ways, I felt stronger and more alert. All the little details of the job I might not absorb as my old, unaffected self I was able to catalog with amazing precision.

When my rotation made a swing through the ER, I saw plenty of Matt’s old friends. Some of them talked to me, asked if I’d heard what happened. Others looked at me wide-eyed, almost with fear, like they knew exactly what happened. If they talked, I told myself no one would believe them. They were here on an overdose, or something else drug related that killed their credibility.

After that, ICU sounded like a walk in the park. Stephanie hadn’t asked me if I could handle the ER.

On my first night in ICU, I met Stephanie behind the desk. She introduced me to the residents and interns on duty. She’d been right about the workload, after the ER, I was actually kind of bored. Everyone slept as peacefully as they could with tubes and wires poking out of them.

My body was getting used to the work, I wasn’t so sore from moving patients anymore. And now that I could crawl straight into bed with Aidan when I got home, I wasn’t exhausted every day. I got to read a whole magazine on that first night.

“This feels so wrong,” I whispered to Stephanie as she swapped magazines with me.