The Survivors: Body & Blood (book 3)

Eavesdropping

As the day wore on, Sadie told him all about leaving her family, meeting mine, and everything that had happened since. The war. Raven. Lizzie. The witch hunt in her family's city. Her exile to our Canadian home. It was dusk before I realized she'd never spoken of falling in love with me. And she'd never mentioned Cole.

I realized that must have been one of the things they talked about out of earshot.

This was all bizarre. Sadie was a fortress. She didn't tell people things. Didn't explain her feelings. Didn't even usually show them. And in 36 hours of knowing Kutoyis, she was willing to do all of this with someone just because they were alike?

This led me to drinking scotch alone at our dining room table, my forehead pressed to the wood.

"It's quiet in here." Patrick's voice. He'd just walked in.

"Everyone's gone," I said without lifting my head. "Where were you guys?"

"Mad and I were feeding. She's still out there, trolling around, I guess. Narcisa hasn't been around in a few days. I'd be worried but that seems to be her new M.O. Why so sad, baby brother?" he called as he pulled a green smoothie out of the fridge.

"Wishing for a metabolism," I said, but the words came out muffled with my lips on the table.

Patrick came toward me. "What?" Then he picked up the bottle of scotch. "Oh," he laughed. "Got it. What seems to be the trouble?"

"Sadie and Kutoyis are bonding," I said, straightening up.

"And that's a bad thing?" he asked. "Last I heard, you were terrified of telling her he existed for fear of how she would react. Bonding sounds like a much better outcome of introducing them than you'd anticipated all this time." He chugged half of the smoothie and then poured himself a glass of scotch. His red eyes glowed in the near-dark room.

"It is, I guess. She has spoken to no one but him since the moment I introduced them yesterday. It's a little weird that she's so attached to him. She's not exactly into sharing . . . or friendship . . . or anything remotely emotional. It's not like she ever tells me what's going on in her head."

Patrick laughed. "That's because she doesn't think you'll understand her. You have to show her that you will."

I looked at him sideways. "Are you giving me girl advice?"

"Not exactly. I'm giving you screwed-up girl advice. There is a difference," he said. "I don't know a damn thing about normal girls. But girls who hate themselves? Who are in a weird way mad at you all the time and yet very in love with you? I'm good at those."

I stared at him in disbelief. How had it never occurred to me that Patrick was married to a girl who hated herself and the world around her considerably more than Sadie did and that if anyone should have advice on how to keep said girl as happy as possible, it would be him?

"Don't look so shocked, Goldilocks," he smiled and punched my arm. "I may have ruined her life, but she does sleep in a bed with me every night. I must be doing something right."

I had to stop this Goldilocks thing before it became the next Polly in this house. "A fair point. What do you think I should do?"

"I think you should stop being jealous of everyone around you."

"I'm not," I huffed.

"Aren't you? I know why you weren't talking to Mark, and I've got to tell you to let that go. Lightning rarely strikes twice. You're jealous of Cole, which is the most understandable, but you should stop coming at it from a win-her-back angle or an I-hate-that-stupid-human-kid angle. That just turns her off to you in every possible way. If you come across as understanding, then you're more likely to actually interact with her in the ways she wants to interact. Like why don't you try to find out why she keeps running to him, rather than hating him because she does? And you definitely shouldn't be jealous of Kutoyis getting to know her better. Just be grateful that she has someone she's willing to talk to," he said. Patrick was very rarely tender with me after I got over needing his help with kills a hundred years ago. He was not very different from my father. But right now, he was making me wonder if I'd written him off so long ago that I was missing out on . . .him.