“Not the lover,” I say stupidly, because I have no idea what else to add.
“Definitely not,” Grace says. “I mean, he hasblondhair. That’s a red flag by itself.”
“Red flag?”
“Yeah, a red flag. Like:stop here! This guy is obviously a tool! Just look at his hair!”Grace pitches her voice as she talks, and my lips twitch into a smile. “If a guy has blond hair, that basically means he’s either going to be the bad guy or in the friendzone. Sometimes both.”
“I have blond hair,” I say.
Grace laughs so hard she snorts.
“Exactly,” she says.
“So I’m a red flag?”
“Sebastian, you are a red billboard.”
I frown, studying the blond man on the screen. He looks like any other human. Soft, slow, weak.
“Anyway,” Grace says, dragging out the word. “Now thatwe’ve coveredShe’s All That, are you going to tell me why you’re here?”
I stare at the screen. Once again, words elude me. I know why I’m here, but it feels stupid. Grace doesn’t hate me. It’s clear from the way she’s sitting that she trusts me well enough. If she didn’t, she’d be cowering at the door. She’d be begging me not to kill her.
She knows I won’t kill her.
Yet, a voice adds silently in my mind.She knows you won’t kill her yet.
I swallow.
“Play it,” I say. I nod to the screen.
“The movie?” she asks. Her blonde eyebrows stretch toward her hairline. “You want to watch it?”
“I want to understand,” I say, and I guess that’s partially true. I do want to understand. Only I want to understand Grace, not her movie. I want to know her, to understand how she thinks and feels.
If I can find a way into her mind, maybe I can speed up her progress. Maybe we can break the curse long before word gets out that she’s here, that she exists.
“All right,” she says slowly. She drags her finger across the computer, and the images flash across the screen, too fast to make them out.
“Slower,” I command.
“Relax,” Grace says with a laugh. “I’m just starting it over. It won’t make sense otherwise.”
Another click of a button, and the movie starts. Grace shifts, as if making room for me on her bed. I stare at the empty space, long enough that she realizes what she’s done.
“Actually, you can stand,” she says.
“Yes,” I agree. My voice is strained, but I doubt she cantell. I doubt she knows I’m imagining crawling into that bed, biting into her flesh and consuming her every last drop.
She shifts back into the center, and we watch the entire movie like this. With her lying on the bed, making occasional comments—not to me, but to the characters on the screen, as if they can hear her. And me, standing to the side, perfectly still.
I’m watching her more than I am the screen.
By the time it’s over, she’s yawning and I realize I held my breath for the duration of the entire movie. Now that it’s over, I steal a tiny breath. Her lavender and blood perfume burns my throat.
Hells, I want to fuck her. Forget drinking her blood. She’s too beautiful like this, laid back in bed, beaded nipples visible through her shirt. It’s a temptation I’m not sure why I’m fighting. If there’s even a chance she’d let me…
Blonds are the bad guys or in the friendzone.
