Page 114 of So Thirsty

I look at Naomi. I can read her; I can tell. She senses him, too. And she knows what I know. Tatiana was right. We need to commit to our existence. The two of us, together. And I need to learn how to save myself.

“Naomi and I will stay,” I say. “Okay?”

Naomi doesn’t flinch. “Okay, hoss.”

“Bonne chance,” Tatiana says as she gets into the back seat.

“Sloane,” Henry says, his eyes finding mine through his tangle of overgrown dirty-blond hair. I trace my fingers across his face, still trying to solve the mystery of what makes it more strange than beautiful.

I slide my hands to his chest, lay them flat, feel him beneath me. I want to thank him for ending my drought. I want to tell him that once I figure this out for myself, accept it, embrace it, can control it, I’ll gladly risk heartbreak for the chance to love him. But there’s no time for all that, so he gets one word.

“Dare,” I say, and I push him back.

He grins. That grin.

And then he’s in the car, and the door is shut, and the vampires—our new friends, our new loves—are speeding away. And then they’re gone.

Naomi and I start toward the dead, smoking camper, moving against the snow, the wind.

“So, this is an exercise in self-control, yeah? I mean, I’m not typically pro-abstinence,” she says. “But in this case…”

“We’re on a case-by-case basis,” I say, thinking about the man at the rest stop. “We’ll see what happens.”

“Happy to follow your lead.”

“Car trouble?”

His voice reaches us before he does. But then there he is. Maybe in his fifties. Camo coat. Jeans. Baseball hat. Boots. He swaggers up to us with a wide gait, thumbs hooked on his belt loops.

“Yes,” Naomi says, not missing a beat. “This stupid old thing.”

“Ah, yeah, yeah. You got a dinosaur,” he says. He’s a particular kind of genial that women learn early to be skeptical of. The jolly drunk uncle who will turn on a dime. “What are you doing parked back here?”

“We’re lost,” I say. “Go figure.”

“We turned in here by mistake,” Naomi says. “Thought there was a way out. It’s so hard to see with all this snow. Then the engine started making this noise.”

The man sighs and shakes his head. He stares at the camper, hikes up his jeans. “Where you ladies headed?”

“Raleigh,” Naomi lies.

He whistles. “That’s still a ways.”

“Is it?” I ask.

He lifts the brim of his hat, looking us over. “You know why women are bad drivers?”

Naomi and I are silent. The sound of distant sirens slinks through the night.

“No guesses?” he asks. “Because there’s no road from the kitchen to the bedroom.”

There’s a pause, and I have no idea what’s about to happen. But then Naomi laughs. A big, fake laugh.

“That’s a good one,” she says, flirty. She turns to me. “Don’t you think?”

The sirens fade. They’re not for us. At least not yet.

“You’re funny,” I tell the man. I reach up to the delicate skin of my neck. I can feel my thirst vibrating underneath. I push against it. Patience. Restraint. Control. We can’t drain every asshole we come across. Ignorance isn’t enough to justify our kind of bloody retribution. Though maybe it should be.