“Yeah. He’s a good guy.” And the only one who didn’t walk on eggshells around Cliff now.
“So… what?” Bastien asked. “You’re going to punish yourself for something you neither asked for nor have any control over by denying yourself the only happiness you’ve found since transforming?”
Cliff shot him a look. “I didn’t say I wanted to stop hunting.”
“I’m not talking about the hunting.”
His pacing ground to a halt. Cliff turned to face him. Surely he didn’t mean…
Bastien shrugged. “I know about Emma.”
Of course he did. Cliff slid the car a look, thinking of the duffel bag packed with clean clothes and hand wipes. The cash Bastien had forked over. “How long have you known about her?”
“Since the first night you went to see her.” Crossing his arms over his chest, Bastien leaned back against the car. “When you started roaming around on your own, infiltrating vampire groups and pumping them for information, I was afraid you’d pull some superhero martyr bullshit and get yourself killed, so I followed you and stayed downwind, ready to jump in if you needed me.”
Yep. That sounded like something Bastien would do. He wasn’t the coldhearted bastard so many Immortal Guardians painted him.
“Once I saw you with Emma, I stopped worrying. Because I knew you had something to live for. Something precious. Something so rare it took me two damn centuries to find it for myself.”
The love he and Emma shared was precious. “Does Reordon know?”
“About you and Emma? No. I’m sure he would’ve put a stop to it if he did. Like Seth and his Immortal Guardians, Reordon tends to be very protective of the females who work for him. Even more so if they’re gifted ones.”
Which only lent credence to Cliff’s own assumptions about the network head.
Straightening, Bastien reached beneath his coat and withdrew something from a back pocket. “Here.”
Cliff crossed to him and took it. It was a jump drive. “What is it?”
“Footage of what happened. All of it.”
“I’ve already seen it. Reordon showed it to me.”
Bastien tapped the drive. “This isn’t for you. It’s for Emma. She’s heard snippets of what happened. Everyone at the network has. And I’m sure your absence is scaring her. You should go to her.”
Cliff held up the device. “You don’t think this will scare her more?”
“No, I don’t. Any woman smart enough and strong enough to love you isn’t going to run screaming from footage of you beating the shit out of an asshole who tried to murder someone you care about. You are the sole reason Linda is alive today. Had you not confronted Whetsman when you did, she would’ve died in the back of his SUV without anyone the wiser. Zach said she was mere minutes away from death when he healed her.” He rubbed his jaw. “Aaaaaaand, full disclosure, Melanie had a talk with Emma quite a while back and laid out everything she could expect if she chose to have a relationship with you.”
Cliff supposed some might resent their interference, but he chose to appreciate it. “I did, too.”
“I knew you would. Just like I knew you wouldn’t continue seeing her unless she fully understood what happened with Whetsman and the others.”
Cliff curled his fingers into a fist around the drive. “I love her.”
“I know you do. That’s why I couldn’t stand to watch you keep torturing yourself—torturing both of you—by staying away from her. So go. Don’t worry about infiltrating other vampire ranks. We’re done with that. From now on, as soon as we finish hunting, you can head straight for Emma’s place.”
If Emma still wanted to see him after this. “Could I get that duffel bag?”
Bastien smiled. “Yeah.”
Chapter Eighteen
Emma snipped a dangling piece of yarn, then held up her latest creation.
The soft winter hat was sprinkled with every color of the rainbow and sported a cheerful pom-pom on top. “Cute.”
Leaning over the sofa arm, she dropped it atop the growing pile of similar hats that would soon fill the cardboard bankers box she’d bought to contain them. A week had passed since Cliff’s psychotic break. Tales of it still circulated the building and whispered through the cafeteria Cliff no longer visited.
Cynthia gave Emma daily updates, courtesy of Todd, in the soundproof restroom after ensuring they were alone. If she hadn’t, Emma wouldn’t have known that Mr. Reordon had banned Cliff from having lunch in sublevel 1 and was once more restricting him to sublevel 5.
Had he also banned him from hunting with Bastien? Or from roaming alone?