The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) (6 page)

“Matt and I got wooden dowels, knives to whittle them with, more concrete mix, a couple of buckets, and those Co2 cartridges you wanted,” Jeremy says to Damon as we approach. “Do you really think we can get what we need for Ric to build more stake shooters? I mean, he’s going to what, do it in the backseat of the truck?”

Jeremy’s gaze wanders toward us as we head his way and then he moves swiftly, catching a wobbling can on the top of Cali’s stack before it falls. I tense automatically at his speed. Sometimes I forget how agile he is since he became a Hunter.

She smiles and blows a strand of hair out of her face. “Thanks. Something tells me you don’t want to drop those too hard.”

“Yeah, that could hurt a little if it hit the trigger,” Jeremy says and glances down at her flimsy shoes. “Your feet look nice. In, um, those shoes, I mean.”

Damon rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath.

Cali’s brows rise and she stares at Jeremy, a slow smile spreading across her face as a flush creeps over his. And then she bursts out laughing and he has to catch two more cans before they fall to the floor.

“Jeez, you don’t have to mace me for it,” he protests, starting to chuckle too, even though his neck is turning a deep red.

“That was possibly the most awkward compliment I’ve ever gotten in my life.” She grins.

Jeremy stops laughing, staring down at the three cans of bear mace in his hands, and for a second I feel sorry for him, even though deep down in my gut something twists hard at the thought that he’s the one who made her smile, not me.

She stretches up on her toes and presses a quick kiss to his cheek as my hands tighten on the load in my arms. “It was sweet,” she tells him, her eyes sparkling. “Now, will you do me a favor and go grab me a shopping basket to put these in before I accidentally mace myself?”

“Um, sure,” he says, clearing his throat and hurrying back toward the door.

Damon and Ric share an amused look that for some reason pisses me off.

“What?” I say, and it comes out like a challenge. Damon smirks, but before he can speak, Katherine saunters around the corner, her high heels clicking loudly on the industrial tile that’s more used to hiking boots.

She clucks her tongue at me. “Better loosen up before you break something, Salvatore,” she says, nodding at the cans I’m gripping far too tightly. “Could get messy.”

Jeremy comes back with the basket and Katherine snatches it from him, joggling my arm so my whole load of mace cans falls in and then shoving the basket back into his hands.

“Hey!” he protests, and Cali frowns at her.

“Rude much?” Cali says, her arms still full.

“Honey, when you look like this, you don’t have to be nice,” Katherine purrs distastefully.

“Or useful,” Damon puts in. “Or bother with pesky things like a
soul
.”

She gives him an eye roll and grabs my hand, tugging me along behind her. “Come on, lover, help me pick out a gun.”

I yank my hand away from her too-soft skin, but follow along anyway because right now I need to be somewhere far away from Cali and her clear, happy laugh and Damon’s knowing eyes.

“Why?” I complain. “You know I don’t know anything about guns.”

The salesman already has a full selection of handguns laid out across the counter and Katherine smiles at me, trailing her nail slowly down the barrel of a semi-automatic like it is something far more sensitive.

“Yeah, but all this cold, hard metal gets me hot and bothered and I might need…” She leans close, breathing the words into the hollow just beneath my jawline. “…a little relief.”

I stare stonily over her head at the bearded, middle-aged salesman, whose eyes are bugged out like he’s about to witness a scenario straight out of Penthouse letters.

I take her shoulders and push her firmly away. “Keep your hands on the things you
can
buy, Katherine.”

She pouts, but there’s a gleam in her eyes I don’t like. “Come on, Stefan,” she murmurs, her eyes sliding sensually down my chest and into my lap in a way that makes me want to step behind a display table just for a little extra cover. “You used to know how to have fun in bed. Not like last night when you just…went to sleep.”

The salesman clears his throat. “Um, I’m going to uh, get a little registration paperwork started for you folks for your purchase today. You just holler if you have any questions, okay?”

“We’ll do that,” I tell him, wincing slightly. “Sorry.”

Katherine perks up, her shiny lips curving into a genuine smile. “Are you apologizing for me? How cute.”

“I went to sleep because we’re sharing a hotel room, not a bed.” I pin her with my eyes. “Just like I told you. And if you push it, you really will be sleeping in the truck.”

She tilts her head dismissively, running her hands over the arrayed guns in a way that’s inexplicably sexual. I find myself shifting uncomfortably, and hoping to God my body cooperates right now. It’s been a long time for me, and the last thing I need is to give Katherine any ammunition for her sexual manipulations.

“Just tell me one thing.” She picks up a pistol, popping the magazine out and racking the slide to check that it’s unloaded in a series of quick, practiced movements. She brings it up in a perfect double-handed shooter’s stance and sights at the far wall.

“What?” I ask tiredly.

She drops the gun back down, cocking her hip in my direction as she smirks, her eyes dark. “If your brother and Elena weren’t here to judge, we’d be having a lot more fun, wouldn’t we?”

“Nope,” I say honestly, and put on a smile just to rub it in.

Katherine lays down the gun with a decisive click of metal on glass.

“Have it your way.” She steps closer to me and lowers her voice. “Go ahead and deny that there’s still an attraction between us. No one believes you.”

My eyebrows climb and I shift back from her but she has me pinned between a display counter and her eyes, which are serious in a way that is hard to look away.

“You and I have seen a lot of the same years,” she says, her voice a little scratchy when she’s not forcing it into a seductive purr. “We’ve both done things we weren’t proud of and I know you would die before you’d let anyone compare you to me, but think about this, Stefan.”

She tilts her face up to mine, and I freeze.

“Damon and Elena may love you,” she says quietly, “but they judge you all the time. They need you to be in control, and to drink just enough of the right type of blood from the sources that they’re comfortable with. I don’t need that from you. And I
won’t
judge you,” she says, urgency ringing in her tone. “If you don’t want to be with me like you were before, okay. That’s your call and we can both satisfy our needs elsewhere. But after all this time, Stefan, would it really hurt so much to be my friend?”

I can barely look at her. There’s a vulnerability to her that hurts like a fist in my chest, no matter how hard I try to hate her. The last time she spoke to me like this was when we worked together to kill Klaus, and then gave it all up to save Damon.

I think those might be the only two times she’s been her real self with me.

And that’s what makes up my mind.

I duck my head until I’m close enough to brush a kiss over her temple, but I don’t touch her when I whisper, “Yes, it would. Because you’re Katherine Pierce and you hurt people. It’s kind of your thing.”

She flinches, actually flinches, and the cow bell on the door rings abruptly as Caroline and Elena breeze inside. Caroline is holding a pad of paper, a shopping bag is draped over her wrist and she’s reporting to Ric before she even reaches him.

“I got leather, and awls, and the special needles that you…”

I close my eyes, focusing on Caroline’s voice for the second I need so I can prepare myself to push past Katherine without looking down at her. I have to remember that I don’t care if I upset her. She uses everyone around her, all the time, and it’s better this way.

But how is it that I can be so lonely, with so many different women in my life? I open my eyes, swallowing a sigh.

Katherine’s face stays down as I slide away but even from this angle, her forehead looks pale. She’s human now, she could be getting sick. I pause, wondering if I should check on her. But Caroline’s familiar recital cuts off, and I can all but feel her gaze hit me even before I hear the determined stride of her polished boots.

Katherine’s chin jerks up and her face hardens when she sees Caroline.

“Uh-oh,” Katherine singsongs, dropping a deliberately flirtatious glance my way. “Busted.”

Caroline grabs my arm, her lips pressed in a firm line. “Emergency sober sponsor meeting, aisle five.”

She tows me away and I frown down at her as I catch up and match her steps. “I wasn’t planning on
biting
her, Caroline.”

“I wasn’t talking about her blood,
Stefan.
” She tosses the gentle waves of her hair over one shoulder, glaring at me as she skids to a stop in a quiet aisle of the sporting goods store. “Katherine Pierce qualifies as a Class V controlled substance.”

“Do you even know what that is?” I ask her, a smile quirking my lips.

“In her case? It’s like black tar heroin combined with a personality disorder and topped with Chlamydia. Forget it, Stefan. If her personality weren’t toxic enough, now she’s human, which means all her slutting around is about to start having consequences.” She raises her eyebrows expectantly at me. “Consequences you don’t want growing on Little Stefan,” she stage-whispers, gesturing with a flick of a coral-manicured fingernail at the fly of my jeans.

I chuckle softly. “First, I’m kind of immune, Care. Second, I wasn’t going to sleep with her.”

“You were
talking
to her,” Caroline accuses.

“Clearly the first step toward holy matrimony. You caught me. I was going to buy her a set of monogrammed brass knuckles for an engagement ring.”

“It’d be only appropriate, considering that relationships to that woman are absolutely a weapon,” Caroline snaps.

I grin, her lecture strangely making me feel more cheerful than I’ve been since the flames of my family’s house faded into the trees behind Matt’s truck. She narrows her eyes at me.

“And don’t think I haven’t noticed what’s going on with you and Jeremy’s new girlfriend.”

I stop smiling.

“They’re not…together,” I say after a minute. “They just met yesterday.”

She folds her arms, hugging her notebook to her chest. “And she has no idea she met you first.”

I glance away, wishing I hadn’t confided in her about the whole mess with Cali.

Caroline softens. “What are you going to do?” she whispers. “You can’t just keep lying to her.”

“I know that…” I gesture helplessly. “But if we tell her, she’s going to hate us, and she’s going to want to leave. If the Augustines find her after that—and they will—she’ll lead them right to us. Even if we run, they can use her to threaten us.”

“Not if they don’t have anywhere to send the ransom note,” Caroline points out.

I give her a stern look. “There are plenty of ways to do that, even if they don’t have our phone numbers. All we’d have to do is see her face on the news as a missing person and we’d know they had her.”

“Look, we’re going to have to deal with that,” Caroline says, “and I’m here for you, however long it takes us to talk it out, okay?” She touches my arm, her eyes soft.