SAVANNAH

By the time Charmers practice wrapped up late that evening and Tristan and I drove home, I was exhausted.

"Want some help with your homework?" Tristan called out from his bedroom as I headed upstairs.

I hesitated. Since getting his memory back, Tristan's mind worked lightning-fast. He'd used the four-and-a-half-hour trip home from Arkansas yesterday to read all of our textbooks so he could get caught up on the five months' worth of homework I'd done for both of us during our absence. And not only did he read fast, but he also seemed to photographically memorize everything he read, as well. Getting good grades definitely wasn't going to be a problem for him from now on. Boredom while at school, on the other hand, was a real danger where he was concerned.

But it wasn't the smarter version of Tristan that made me hesitate. It was the idea of being in a room alone with him. Every day since turning him last fall, we'd always had someone else around.

I was being ridiculous. I could handle the temptation. Besides, Dad would be right downstairs, listening to every sound we made.

"Sure," I answered him. "Let me change and I'll be right over."

In my bedroom, I exchanged my school clothes for comfier pajama pants, thick wool socks and a hoodie. With no humans around, I could finally put on some extra layers to ward off the ever-present chill I felt in spite of the warm East Texas weather. The bank signs all said it was 78��F today, but to my frozen fingers and toes, it felt more like 28��F.

I padded over to Tristan's bedroom, next door to mine, and knocked on the door.

"Come on in," he said, setting aside a textbook he had been reading.

"Leave the door open, please," Dad called out from the living room, making me roll my eyes.

We still weren't sure I could even have children if I wanted to someday, since no female vampire ever had before. Their bodies saw baby embryos as foreign infections that had to be eradicated immediately. Then again, I wasn't exactly your average female vamp, so...

Still, I left the door open to make Dad feel better, then slowly walked around Tristan's bedroom.

Since returning to Jacksonville, we hadn't had time for him to do much to his new room. So it was still mostly bare, no pictures or posters on the dark green walls Dad had painted, the old-fashioned rolltop desk's surface clean except for Tristan's laptop, the bedside table beside him holding only a brass lamp and his MP3 player, now plugged into the wall nearby and recharging. Then I spotted the photo of me taped to the wall above his carved oak headboard.

"Where'd you get that?" It looked like my school photo from last year, but I'd never given him one, at least not that I remembered. A closer look showed that it had been printed on thinner paper than photo stock.

Tristan continued to stare at me, watching me, his hands tucked behind his head. "There weren't many messages to run from the office during first period, and I got bored. I realized I didn't have any pictures of you. So I copied one from our yearbook. Too stalkerish?"

I smiled. "No. It's sweet. You know, you could even stick it in a frame if you want. Dad's okay with you decorating however you want in here. We both want you to feel at home."

When I glanced at him again, he caught and held my gaze. "Anywhere you are is my home, Savannah." He dropped his hand to the mattress beside him palm-up in invitation.

I slowly crossed the room to him and sat on the edge of the bed at his hip. His arm rose to make room for me then rested across my thighs, his hand curving around my hip.

Because my nerve endings screamed for me to get closer to him, I forced my mind to focus on other things. "Maybe you should call your mom tonight. You know, to let her know how your first day back at school went?"

I'd already texted my mother on the way home from school while Tristan had fun driving us in my car.

His mouth tightened. His eyelids dropped halfway, concealing his eyes from me. The memory of his mother casting him out of the Clann and her life right after I turned him f lashed through his mind before he pushed it away. "Not a good idea."

"I know she screwed up that night. But she's still your mom, Tristan. And I know she's worried about you. Any mother would be."

"She's not worried about me. I'm dead to her now." His voice hitched on the word dead. He swallowed hard, the sound loud in the silence of the room.

"She can't really feel that way. She was just freaked out. She'd just lost her husband-"

"What about me? I lost my dad. Now it's like I've lost my mom, too. I feel like an orphan here, Savannah!"

I stared at him, shocked by the pain he was finally allowing himself to feel. I listened to his racing heart, waiting until it calmed down again. "Talk to her. Give her another chance. She just needed time to get used to all the changes."

"Whatever."

I blew out a long, slow breath through my lips. "Maybe the problem is you two are both being hardheaded. She made a mistake and said some things she shouldn't have. But she's your mother. You have to forgive her."

"Her first."

"What?

"Tell her to forgive me for becoming her worst nightmare. Then we can try to talk it out."

I sighed. There was no point in pushing Tristan about this any further tonight. It had been a tough day for both of us. We had plenty of time to talk about this later. "I should go, let you get to your homework or whatever. I don't really need help with mine."

"No, don't go yet. I already did my homework while you were at Charmers practice. Which I notice you were awfully careful not to tell me about. Was Mrs. Daniels and everybody else happy to have you back?"

His anger and hurt and resentment, directed solely at his mother, was immediately packed away somewhere deep inside him. Now all I saw and sensed from him was love and loneliness.

It couldn't hurt to stay a little longer. "Yeah. Well, mostly." I let him see my memory of overhearing their thoughts and the rumors currently swirling around us.

He cringed. "We should come up with a story. One that doesn't involve eloping to Las Vegas or you getting knocked up."

"Why bother telling them a lie? They won't believe it anyway. You know how they are. They'll believe whatever story they choose."

I glanced at him, noticing the thick textbook at his other hip, still open and lying facedown. It must have been some pretty interesting reading. Even with his new speed-reading ability, he still wasn't much of a reader by choice.

I reached for the book. He shocked me by quickly laying his free hand over the cover.

"Oh, now I really need to know what you're reading." I tried reaching over him for the book again, losing my balance and falling across him. He just as quickly grabbed the book and used the advantage of his long arm to hold it beyond my reach.

"It's just a book from school," he said.

"Then why don't you want me to see what it is?"

Rolling his eyes, he sighed and turned the book so I could read the title on the front.

"Intro to Genetics?" I read aloud, my eyebrows as high as they would go. "Where did you get-"

"Mrs. Horne. Remember at lunch how I said I ran into her on the way to your chem class? Well, her youngest daughter's majoring in genetics at UT at Tyler and loaned this book to her. Mrs. Horne let me borrow it after I asked her about how to make that synthetic blood we all talked about."

"Have you told Emily about it yet?" He had mentioned that maybe Emily would be interested in blood pharming since she was destined to take over BioMed someday.

He looked away. "Nah. It was just a stupid idea I was kicking around for fun."

"Tristan, tell her."

"What's the point? It'll be years before she graduates from college and is ready to take over BioMed. By then, plenty of other companies will probably start making and selling the stuff for anyone who wants it."

"There doesn't have to be years of delay. Why wait till she can use the idea herself? Your mother's still on the board, right? Emily could pass it on to her, and then your mom could get BioMed to-"

At the mention of his mother, his eyes turned dark. "Get real, Sav. The BioMed board's all Clann. They're never going to take a vampire's idea and run with it, not even if it could make them a ton of money and give them leverage over the vamps."

Okay, now his hang-up with his mother was really starting to irritate me. He was making her out to be some kind of a radical anti-vamp racist. But she was still his mother. And from what I'd heard, she was also smart. Too smart to let a great idea like synthetic blood pass by the family company just because a vamp suggested it.

Before he could stop me, I grabbed his phone and took advantage of my vamp speed to shoot off a text to his sister.

He tried to grab the phone from me, but I managed to send it before he could stop me. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Making sure that fine mind of yours doesn't go to waste." Smiling smugly, I handed him back his phone.

Grumbling, he read my text message to Emily then huffed out a loud sigh. "All they're going to do is laugh at her."

"Not if she tells them the idea was hers to begin with. And I have a hunch she will. You always told me your sister was smart." At his reluctant nod, I added, "Then why don't you trust her to figure out a way to handle your mother? Maybe the board will still be stupid and shoot it down. But you'll never know unless you let her try."

He scowled but tossed the phone onto the mattress beside him in silent defeat. "As long as I get to tell you I told you so when nothing comes of it."

"Agreed. Now why don't you tell me what else you've been learning from this big ole book?" I scooted down to curl up beside him, draping an arm across his waist and resting my cheek on his shoulder.

Warmth began to radiate out from every point where our bodies made contact, and I sighed with relief as my always tense muscles finally began to relax. Why was it that I was only warm when touching Tristan? I didn't even have to be this close to him, either. Sometimes I could swear just our holding hands made my low body temp shoot up several degrees.

"I looked that up actually," Tristan murmured. "It's called vasocongestion, where blood f low is increased in localized areas. It's a physiological response to being, um, physically attracted to someone. It happens to humans, too."

I burst out laughing. "Good grief. Does that book cover everything?"

"No. I found that stuff on the internet. This is more focused on genetics."

I tilted my head back and grinned at him. "Have I ever told you how hot you are when you talk like that? Quick, say physio whatever again."

He laughed. "There's more where that came from." He slipped an arm around me then f lipped open the textbook and began to read the introduction. I could tell from his thoughts that he meant it as a joke, but I didn't stop him.

After a page, he quit on his own, his mouth slanted in a wry smile. "Had enough of my nerdy hotness yet?"

"Nope. Keep reading."

"Huh. Could have sworn I heard you snoring there for a second."

"Ha-ha. I do not snore."

"You really want to hear this stuff?"

"Sure." If genetics was the thing that f loated his boat now, why not learn about it? Not that I could really follow much of what he was reading. There were too many holes between my high school level science education and what his college textbook discussed. But clearly he was loving being the smartest one in the room for a change. Why not let him enjoy it for a while longer?

Besides, I really did love the deep rumble of his voice, and here was the perfect chance to hear it uninterrupted. And after such a long and stressful day, I couldn't think of a better way to soothe my ragged nerves. If I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend we were back in the cabin on that Arkansas mountaintop, far away from the rest of the world and all its problems with us. Just the two of us, where things were so much simpler...

I fell asleep four pages into the introduction and slept soundly without any nightmares for the first time in weeks, completely clueless as to what I'd just done and how it would change all our lives forever.

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