Crimson Born - Amy Patrick Page 0,38

it’s for the best.”

After that, Reece seemed to settle a bit. I continued to visit him in the clinic every day. He was always waiting in his chair when I arrived, a little closer to the barred doorway each time.

After a few days, he agreed to take the injections of vampire blood—but only if I was the one holding the needle.

At long last Dr. Coppa allowed me to go into Reece’s room.

He touched a panel on the wall, and the steel bars retracted into the door frame. Accompanied by the doctor—and a couple of sizable orderlies—I entered the room.

Funny, though I’d been seeing Reece daily, I was suddenly nervous. Not about the shot—about being close to him again.

One of the orderlies told Reece to go sit on his bed, and he complied. The other one held a small tray containing a hypodermic needle filled with red liquid.

I picked it up and moved toward the bed, willing my fingers not to shake. “You’re not scared of needles, are you?”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” he admitted. “Every time I had to get a vaccination, I cried like a baby—long after I was a baby. I’ve skipped getting a flu shot for the past few years and just taken my chances. Of course, if you’d been my nurse, I might have had a better attitude about it.”

My cheeks heated in a flash at his flirtation. He smiled, rolling up the sleeve of his t-shirt to reveal his left shoulder muscle.

After being around vampire males non-stop these past few months, it shouldn’t have surprised me that that muscle—all of them in fact—were even more developed than they’d been the night we’d met.

But this vampire male... well he was just that much more alluring than the rest.

At close range he smelled just as amazing as before. More so, now that my senses were more acute.

“Well you won’t have to worry about that anymore,” I said to keep my mind off it. “Vampires don’t get the flu. Okay, please hold still. Maybe don’t look at the needle going in.”

And please stop looking at me like that.

Reece took the suggestion, turning his head away from the injection site and staring straight ahead. Unfortunately, straight ahead happened to be where my chest was located.

Not helping the nerves. At all.

He barely winced when the needle made contact or when I pressed the plunger to inject the vampire blood into his system. But then his brows drew together, and he reached out with his right hand to capture my locket in his palm.

“I didn’t think Amish people wore jewelry.”

He let the locket drop, and my hand came up to cover it, pressing it protectively to my body.

“As you may have noticed, I’m not exactly living the Amish life anymore. Anyway, this is more of a recent development. I started wearing it after I turned.”

His gaze came up to meet mine. “Really? Why? What’s the significance? Are there pictures in it?”

I swallowed hard and stepped back from the bed, suddenly self-conscious. The necklace was a private thing. A memento, not of good times, but of the very worst.

Of something I never wanted to forget or allow myself to repeat.

An image of Josiah’s haunted eyes came back to me in startling detail.

“No. Not pictures.”

In fact, there were no pictures of my family and friends from my former life. Amish people shied away from cameras, believing personal photographs promoted vanity and individualism, both of which violated our ideals of humility and community.

“But it does mean something to you,” he prodded. “What, did a boyfriend give it to you?”

If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn Reece was jealous. He stared at the locket as if it were a poisonous snake, his lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line.

“No, nothing like that. It’s... remember when I told you Josiah was turned too? What I didn’t tell you is I think I’m the one who turned him—at least I’m pretty sure it was me. He was dying, and I didn’t want him to die. But it all went wrong. After he killed his parents and daylighted himself... later, that night, I went to the spot where he died. I scooped some of his ashes and put them inside this pendant.”

“That’s a little morbid, isn’t it?”

“It’s not like I think he’s in the ashes or something—I know he’s gone on to a better place—or at least that’s what my religion taught us.”

“And yet you’re still trying to hold onto him.” Reece’s tone was sour.

I