“It’s not that, Sophie. Sheep is just a word. It’s you. I’m sure you’re older than I am…I just don’t know how much older. And I don’t care. But you do. Right?”
“It’s not that I…care, exactly,” she said slowly. “I’m just used to things being a certain way.”
“Yeah, well, I love you.”
“What?”
“I figured, best to get that out of the way,” he explained, as if he hadn’t just said a shocking thing, as if he hadn’t changed everything. “You know, being in love with you. The thing is, I’ve always loved you. And I’ve always wanted you. And I knew you were a vampire and I knew you were pretty old—”
“Not that old,” she said, her vanity pricking her. “Not for a vampire. I’m not even a hundred yet.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just saying, I don’t care about any of that, I care about you. But this won’t work unless you don’t care, either.”
“Liam, you drop this bombshell on me—”
“Yep,” he said cheerfully.
“—all in the last forty-eight hours…do you realize that before Tuesday, we’d never spent any time together that wasn’t pet-related? You have to admit, this is all very fast.”
“Yep. I have to admit that.”
“Well, you have to give me some time.” She folded her arms across her chest, feeling stupid and happy and annoyed and afraid.
“How much time?”
“More than two days,” she snapped. “It shouldn’t be a problem, since you’ve been waiting your entire life to be with me, right? So you can give me another forty-eight hours?”
“I’m glad you hit me over the head with that right away,” he retorted. “I wouldn’t want you to wait.”
“I’m just saying.” If she could have blushed, she would have. That had sounded much worse out loud than she had meant. She was just…surprised. She hadn’t a clue he had such deep feelings for her. All this time, and he never told her.
“You never told me.”
“Well, I was waiting for exactly the right time.”
“A vampire serial killer throwing us together? That was the right time?”
“Well, yeah.”
“And there’s a lot more to it than love, you know.” She said this with triumph, as if she were thinking of reasons to make him be wrong about loving her.
“Sophie, what the hell are you talking about?”
“There’s the issue of how I need blood to survive.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Liam: I drink blood from living donors in order to function. I have to do it a lot.”
“So? I have to eat regular food to survive.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“But it doesn’t make you a bad person, right?
“No,” she said slowly. “Feeding…biting and taking blood…it’s like any weapon, I think. You’ve got a shotgun at home, yes? Well, is it a good shotgun or a bad shotgun?”
“Guess that depends,” he replied. “If I use it to blow the head off a serial vampire scumbag killer, it’s a good one. If I used it to, I dunno, hurt a kid or whatever, it’s a bad one.”