All Just Glass - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [69]
He hadn’t been there for any of that, and she couldn’t blame him. Nikolas had said Kristopher wasn’t hard enough to force her to feed, and he was probably right. He thought that if he could only convince her this life was worth living, the rest would take care of itself. He didn’t understand that the first steps of survival were too much to take on her own, no matter what she wanted.
He and Nikolas had left their world behind when they had become vampires. They had even changed their names to mark the transition. It wasn’t as easy for her to stop being Sarah Vida, even if the Rights of Kin hadn’t been in play.
“Nikolas and Kendra are going to join us for the show. I’ll explain everything once your brother gets back.” She didn’t want to have to describe Michael’s betrayal twice. Nikolas was going to meet them at home, but Kendra had said she would catch up with them at the theater, so there would be time for them to talk.
“Okay.” She could still sense Kristopher’s concern, but he was willing to let it drop if she wanted it to. “Where is Nikolas?”
“Talking to some contact,” Sarah said, vague because he had been vague with her. “He has a plan, but hasn’t explained it to me. He promised he would be back in time for the show, though.”
Kristopher didn’t object to Nikolas’s joining them, or even ask when that had been decided, and there wasn’t as much as a tendril of annoyance in response to his brother’s having invited himself along on their date. Sarah realized, quite suddenly, that she was irritated by that—not that Kendra and Nikolas had invited themselves, but that Kristopher just accepted it as a matter of course, even without knowing that Kendra had been involved in the decision.
“You look good,” she said, the compliment lame, but she couldn’t get more eloquent words past her throat.
Of course he looked good. Kristopher Ravena in a tux was a sight to see. She was glad Nikolas and Kendra had insisted that Sarah find something “appropriate,” or she would have been devastatingly underdressed. The beautiful man in front of her was like something out of a black-and-white magazine. He was standing before her, but impossible to touch.
He took the words as further invitation to change the subject and pretend everything was fine again. Holding out a hand to her, he said, “You look incredible yourself.”
She ducked her head, oddly shy, and admitted, “I kid you not, Kendra took me shopping.”
His eyes widened. “How on Earth did that happen?”
“Nikolas asked her to,” Sarah replied. “I gather he figured I would be hopeless to prepare myself adequately on my own.”
At that, there was a stab of something from him … not jealousy, but … guilt? “It’s okay,” she blurted out. “This whole thing has been hard on you, too. I can understand needing to get away for a bit.”
She said the words before she even fully processed the thoughts she had picked up from him. Nikolas had exaggerated the amount of help Nissa had needed, but Kristopher had stalled nevertheless, needing time to go over some of the same thoughts Sarah had found slashing through her brain.
She accepted his hand.
As he drew her closer, he observed, “You’ve hunted.”
Something made her hesitate to say Nikolas’s name again, but she knew that it was implied when she said, “I went to Phaethon.”
“Oh.” He reached up as if to run his fingers through his hair, and then seemed to remember that it was tied back tightly. When she had met him, Kristopher’s hair had been chopped short, but it had been long when he was changed. Since he had rejoined his brother, his vampiric body had swiftly returned to its original state, and now he and Nikolas were again close enough that they were like reflections of each other. Even their auras were nearly identical, in the way they twined together.
And yet they were very different.
She had comforted him, because the feeling of his guilt had hit her so powerfully, but Kristopher