Bite Me

Chapter 10

      kieran

     I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't this.

     Poor Cella was probably getting whiplash from having to constantly look back and forth from me to Mason so much. It was as if, in his eyes, I wasn't even there.

      Now, after a week of knowing him, this wasn't the first time I'd been ignored by Mason. But it was the first time without reason.

     Because, last time I checked, I hadn't done anything to provoke him into acting like this. Well, yeah, I kind of blew up on him yesterday—but after that, I thought I'd made up for it with that phone call.

     It wasn't like I expected us to suddenly be friends—I even said that. But I didn't expect him to completely cut me off, either. It left me wondering, what did I do?

     It also left me wondering, why do I care? I should have been fucking relieved that Mason randomly chose to pretend I didn't exist. After all, I was supposed to hate him. But no, it was all I thought about, from the moment I stepped out of Art to the moment I went to sleep that night. And the next night, and the night after that. When school came to an end on Friday and I still felt like there was an invisible wall separating Mason and I, I got...

     I don't really know what I got. I got something. Worried, maybe? No, why would I be worried? Mason wasn't a concern of mine. Confused was a better word.

     Confused as to what I'd done wrong. Confused as to what was motivating Mason to be so distant. Confused as to why it fucking hurt.

     My heart may not have a beat, but it can still ache. And, damn, it was aching. It made me realize that, in a strange way, I craved Mason's attention. Whether positive or negative, I needed to be acknowledged. If I had to get a rise out of him to make him stop acting like I didn't exist, I would get a fucking rise out of him. I didn't bother questioning why I craved Mason's attention. I was finding that the more questions I asked, the more questions I made. And all of these questions were giving me a massive headache. Especially the big one—

What does this all mean?

That pull, that draw, that attraction I'd felt for Mason ever since we kissed was still there, burning bright at the front of my mind whenever I was around him. But at least in the beginning, it had been mere attraction. I could handle attraction, because attraction was easy enough to get over.

Caring was a different story. I wasn't supposed to care, I didn't want to care, I couldn't care. But I did. I cared a lot. I cared that Mason hated a part of himself. I cared that he was suddenly ignoring me. Hell, I even cared about the fucking football game he had today, because it could make or break his chances of officially getting on the team. I cared about Mason.

Mason, my enemy. Mason the werewolf.

Vampires and werewolves were natural enemies, and they were supposed to stay that way. It was so freakishly wrong for me to care about Mason. It went against every fiber of my being. It tore me apart from the inside out—one half of me saying I should hate him, the other saying I should smooch his fucking face off.

Perhaps if I admitted it to myself, if I said it out loud, all of my questions would be answered. But I didn't want that answer. I didn't want a moment of self acceptance, where I realized that it was okay to feel the way I felt and just fuck it. I needed everything to go back to how it was before, before I did something I'd regret with the werewolf.