“Can I help you...again, Dmetri? The meeting isn’t for another two hours.”

“Yes, I know. I wanted to see if you’d take a walk with me.” He sent a withering glare to Jacks who seemed completely unaffected by it.

Vera snorted. “You don’t go for walks, Dmetri. What do you really want?” He shifted on his feet, a subtle tell, but one she was familiar with. He was getting uncomfortable.

She looked up into his handsome face, and for a moment, she almost wanted to cry. To break down and let it all out without a care for who saw her. This man had broken her heart into a million irreparable pieces.

“I wanted to talk.”

Vera’s smile faltered. Her heart felt like an anvil was sitting on it and her eyes watered. She quickly looked down and discreetly blinked them away, hoping like hell that he didn’t see that. She really needed to take a good sniff, but couldn’t with these two men around her--her old lover and her new one.

When she had her tears under control, she finally lifted her head—and knew from the tightening around his eyes that he’d noticed it.

In a cheery voice, she said, “Fine, I was going out anyways,” and stepped past him.

She couldn’t get out of there fast enough. She walked and didn’t stop until there was grass under her feet. Dmetri came up beside her, his long blonde hair reaching towards her in the breeze. The sunlight bounced off his pale skin giving him a faint, creamy glow.

A sudden thought had her snickering. “What?” Dmetri asked, looking at her.

“I was just thinking it’s funny that your skin doesn’t glitter in the sunlight.”

He looked at her as if she’d just escaped the nuthouse. “Why on earth would I glitter in the sunlight?”

After she had her laughter under control, she said with all seriousness, “Because you’re a vampire. Edward Cullen glitters in the sunlight, like a diamond twinkling in the light.”

“I don’t know who Edward Cullen is but vampires do not...twinkle.” He said the word with such disdain that she broke into a fit of laughter. His eyes softened as he looked down at her and her laughter quickly turned into hard coughs.

She knew he was there because she could smell his distinct scent but she looked behind her anyway to see Jacks trailing them. He looked every bit the bodyguard with his eyes alert on the environment—on Dmetri. Her heart leaped in her chest, stomach fluttered and danced as she looked at him. When she turned back to look at Dmetri, she didn’t miss the fact that she felt none of that for him.

“What did you want to talk about?”

“You, me, us.”

“There hasn’t been an ‘us’ for a long time, and there isn’t going to be.”

“God dammit, Vera, just give me a chance. I fucked up badly. I know that now and I want to fix it.” Some things were either too broken to fix or too old to bother with. She wasn’t sure which category they belonged it, but it was probably the former.

“You don’t really want me, Dmetri.” He started to argue but she held out a hand. “No wait, listen to me. You don’t. We were together for a whole year. A year that I spent loving you and you spent not loving me. You didn’t love me then and you don’t love me now. That’s why you ended things.”

Calm and cool, Vera took a deep breath and nearly smiled. She was doing good at this. Shock couldn’t begin to describe what she was feeling. More like her mind was in a blender and someone hit frappe. But neither she nor her beast was interested in his offer, which surprised her most of all.

“Dammit, I’m sorry about that Vera. I’ve been sorry about it ever since I said it, ever since I let you go. And why does love matter so much to you anyways? We didn’t need love then and we don’t need it now. We were good together, Vera. We both know it.”

Vera’s hands curled into fists. She may not be as strong as a vampire, but with the rage of her lykaen beast, she was certain she could get in a few, very gratifying shots before he could react. Something in her snapped. Coming to a hard stop, she shoved him hard in the chest.

“You’ve been sorry about it? What the hell does that mean. No, don’t answer that. I know what it means. It means you realized you fucked up and now you miss me. Well do you know what I have to say about that,” she looked left then right, then got up in his face and yelled, “too fucking bad!”

It felt good to be telling him how she felt. Hell, she’d been living with it for years. And now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop. She paced before him and ranted.

“You don’t know what love has to do with it? What are you Tina Turner? Love has everything to do with it. I loved you, Dmetri. I wanted to marry you and spend my life with you in that ridiculously huge castle you call a home.” She was shouting now but she didn’t care.

“We might have been ‘good’ together, but dammit I can do better. I can be great with someone, if I’m lucky we might even be perfect. And you know what, Dmetri? I’m glad you broke up with me. I’m ecstatic because it was the right thing to do. You didn’t love me, and that’s not what I want. I want a man who can actually say the words and mean them. A man who actually needs to hear that I love him too.”

Her voice lowered to a husky, shaking whisper. Unshed tears were shiny droplets hanging in her eyes, her body a shaking mass of wired flesh.

“And you don’t deserve this either. You don’t deserve a half a relationship. You deserve a woman you can love and a woman who loves you. You may not realize it yet, but it’s true.”

And with her words still lingering in the air, she turned and walked away, her old pain a fleeting memory.

# # #

Vera had to walk, couldn’t stop moving even as she pushed into the trees and felt her feet sinking into the soft, muddy soil. She looked up through the canopy of trees to see gray light filtering in like flashlight beams from heaven. A storm was moving in, it darkened the sky with dark puffy clouds as it rumbled and growled its way overhead.

She couldn’t catch her breath and her stupid heart was panicking in her chest.

What had she done?

Elation turned to excitement and buzzed in her veins like a drug, but regret and doubt clouded her mind with worry, making her climb her way over fallen trees and rocks with steely determination.

A hand touched her shoulder and she screeched, spinning around with her hands held out. She blinked then cocked her head to the side. God, how had she forgotten he was here? This was so not what she needed. That last thing she wanted to think about was the newest complication in her life.

She squared off to face him. “What are you doing here?” Jacks narrowed his gaze on her.

“I’m here to protect you.”

“Oh yeah,” she said, throwing out her arms and spinning in an unsteady circle. “I really need your protection all the way out here in the middle of nowhere. Why don’t you do me a favor and meet me back at the house, okay?” There, she could be calm and reasonable.

“I can’t do that.” Vera didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry, but when she stopped spinning and faced him she realized he was much closer to her than before. Or maybe her mind was just out of it. God dammit, she really didn’t need this now. So she did the only thing she could do and plastered on her trademark cocky smile.

“Yes, you can do that. See it’s not very difficult. You just turn around and start walking.” She mimicked the motion with her two fingers. “See? Easy.”

Too late, she realized she’d said the wrong thing. His body seemed to grow bigger, stronger as he came towards her. Blue eyes darkened to the color of midnight and never left hers.

She could have backed up, but dammit, her legs were traitorous bastards and stayed frozen in place. She let him brush against her, wrap his arms around her, and when his mouth captured hers, the worry in her left like a fleeting wind. Leaving only a different kind of exhilaration. He lifted his lips and whispered her name—a haunted, husky ache of sound.