The Vampire Hunter's Daughter: Complete Collection(57)

“That is just stupid, Drew! Why not?”

Suddenly he slammed his fist into the floor and I flinched in surprise, the thud resonated throughout the cell. “Because! He is the reason my mother isn’t my mother! He is the reason she left. If he had never been…then my mom would have gotten over that damned affair and would have stayed with us.”

“Oh...” My heart ached for him. I couldn’t imagine going through that. “I’m so sorry.”

He was quiet, head turned away from me.

“Drew?” I placed my hand on his arm and tried to turn him toward me. When he resisted, I only tried harder. Still, he didn’t want to turn toward me, so I crawled around until I was in front of him. I knelt and took his face in both my hands and stared into his now watery green eyes. “I know it hurts. I know that you don’t want it to hurt, but hating Gavin isn’t going to make the hurt go away.”

Suddenly, without warning, he grabbed my arms and yanked me forward until I was kneeling between his legs and our chests were touching.

And then… he kissed me.

He kissed me better than Gavin had kissed me, I’ll admit that. Drew’s kiss felt like he had been waiting a hundred years for our lips to finally meet. I placed my arm on his shoulder, around the back of his neck and kissed him back, not wanting it to end.

All too soon, he pushed me away.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, almost under his breath.

I shook my head. “Why are you sorry?”

“I just had to do it, just once.” He caught my eyes with his.

“I don’t understand. Why only once?”

For some reason I felt the tears starting again. Damned tears always showed up when I didn’t want them.

“Chloe, I’m not about to be second choice for anyone. I care about you, but you want to be with Gavin. If that’s what you want… fine. I just don’t want to be a choice you made because he wasn’t available to you at the moment.”

Now the tears were really rolling.

“Gavin and I are friends, Drew.” I sniffed. “Don’t ruin this.”

“Ruin what? We are stuck in a freakin’ dungeon!”

“Ugh! You can be so frustrating.” We’d just had our first kiss and he was ruining the moment with every word that came out of his mouth. “Drew…”

He held up his hand in the dark. “Stop, I know what you’re going to say, but I’m simply telling you not to make any decisions right now. I don’t want to hear that I shouldn’t have done that, I don’t want to hear that it was wrong, and I don’t even want to hear that it was right! Let’s just figure out how to get the hell out of here.”

I kept my mouth shut and only nodded. I don’t know what kind of decisions he was talking about anyway, him or Gavin, I guess. He was right. After a kiss like that and Gavin not being here, especially after hearing he didn’t want to join Drew on the rescue, I was feeling drawn more to Drew than ever before.

I heard a door clang somewhere in the distance and sat straight up. “Did you hear that?”

“No, what is it?”

“I heard a clang. Someone’s coming.”

“I didn’t hear anything.” He got to his feet and held his hand out to help me up.

“I can hear it because I’ve got vampire gifts, too.”

He nodded, trying to listen. “I forgot about that,” he whispered.

“They’re coming,” I told him.

“I hear them now. It sounds like more than one.”

I moved forward toward the bars that enclosed us into the tiny dank cell. Whoever was coming down the hall way was being extremely careful and quiet.

“Who’s there?” I called out.

“Chloe!” Drew chastised me in a loud whisper at the same time as Alice popped into my line of vision. She held her finger to her lips, shushing me.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded. I was so ticked off at her for what she had done..

Drew joined me by the bars.

“Who is she?” he asked.

“It’s Alice, and she’s no one,” I told him.

“Chloe, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Alice came up to the bars and stood on the other side, straight across from me. “I came down here to let you out. You have to get out of here.”

“Yeah! You think?” I yelled at her.

Drew put his hands on my shoulders. “Calm down.”

I shrugged him off. “No, I don’t want to calm down! How the hell am I supposed to trust her anyway? How do we know she’s not just trying to lead us into a trap or something?”

“Who cares, Chloe? She's letting us out.”

Alice nodded and withdrew a set of keys from her pocket, searched for the right one, and then turned the key, releasing us from our prison.

“Which way?” Drew asked.

Alice pointed the same direction she had come. “This way,” she told us and sped off in that direction.

I grabbed Drew’s hand and bolted after her. We ran through the stone hallways as quietly as we could, knowing that even footsteps echoed loudly.

Suddenly I heard a whimper. “Stop!” I hissed at both of them.

“What?” Drew asked. “What is it?”