“There’s always clowns,” I muttered to myself, shuddering.
Jolene swooped in as I struggled to keep Janelyn still and mop up the mess on Gabriel’s shoulder.
“Um, something’s leaking from somewhere,” I said, holding Janelyn at arm’s length as she dribbled from her tiny rosebud mouth.
“Come here, baby,” Jolene cooed, tucking the baby into her arms and producing a wet wipe from her purse.
“That is the best part. I can give them back,” I told Gabriel quietly.
Gabriel asked, “Where’s Andrea?”
Dick nodded to the stunning pale redhead standing by the punchbowl, chatting with Hector Gonzalez and a girl I used to take French with. Andrea was pretending to be Dora Grady.
Overweight, cursed with bad skin and a shock of unruly red frizz, Dora was our very own Carrie White, without the telekinetic revenge. While I didn’t exactly participate in the locker-room abuse of Dora, my social paralysis, my failure to do anything to help her, still haunted me years later. If anyone deserved to reemerge as slim, beautiful Andrea, it was Dora. I wondered where she was and hoped that she’d found some measure of happiness, that she wasn’t here tonight because she’d decided her former classmates weren’t worth her time.
And that she wasn’t lurking in the eaves of the gym, waiting to trap us inside and kill us in a well-deserved inferno.
I shook off these thoughts. Andrea was adjusting to vampire life far faster than I had. She was already used to nighttime hours. She didn’t have the moral confusion I did about feeding from donors, having been in their shoes. And she and her vampire boyfriend, now fiancé, had settled most of their issues before she was turned. I could only hope that she wouldn’t ask me to be a bridesmaid.
I thought back to my plan for a Brave New Jane. Andrea would never need one, but so far, I’d made impressive headway on mine.
Normal, healthy relationship? As normal and healthy as I was ever going to get, so: Check.
Fulfilling career? Check.
Loving, nonjudgmental family? I’d created my own and managed to include a few blood relatives, so: Check.
Plan for world peace? I’d get right on it.
I was standing there, admiring my friend, when Gabriel tapped me on the shoulder.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked, leading me away from the punchbowl, oozing infants, and our friends.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we quietly left the gym and headed for the electives building.
“To sneak around the campus for a little bit in the dark. Isn’t this what couples do in the movies?” Gabriel asked as we passed the metal shop.
“Yeah. The horror movies where loving couples are killed by maniacs wielding farm implements. Please don’t tell me that after all this, you’re leading me to my death.”
“Well, you’re already dead, and I’ve gotten used to having you around.”
I laughed. “Right back atcha, sweetheart. But seriously, what are we doing out here?”
“I gave your sister a present today,” he said, slipping his hand into mine.
“You’re dragging me out in the hall to tell me you gave my sister a present? This is just like my sixteenth birthday.”
“I’m bringing you out here to tell you that I went to your sister earlier tonight and offered her the deed to my house.”
I arched a brow. “You mean the deed to one of your nicer rental properties?”
“To my house on Silver Ridge Road. I asked if she would like to have it, and she accepted.
Actually, I’d barely uttered the word ‘deed,’ and she’d accepted. She’d like to move in as soon as possible.”
I found that didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. Our muddy catharsis seemed to have exorcised the old, almost instinctual resentments toward Jenny, though it was sort of weird to be around her now that we’d called an unofficial truce. I was so used to automatically rejecting any invitation to family gatherings that I stumbled over telling Mama that, yes, I’d come to Thanksgiving and to tell Jenny that I’d bring my own dessert blood. When we talked, Jenny couldn’t figure out where to put her hands. It was like a bad commercial audition. Also, now that she wasn’t openly knocking me to Grandma Ruthie anymore, I don’t think they were spending as much time together as they used to. Mama was beside herself with joy, even though I still turned down half her invitations.
I said that Jenny and I had reconciled, not that I’d gone crazy.
“But that’s a huge part of your family history. Why would you give it up?” I exclaimed.
Gabriel shrugged. “Eh, I’ve lived there for a hundred and fifty years. I was getting bored with it.
Besides, nobody will take better care of the place than Jenny. And I suspect she’ll let your mother put the house on the Historical Society’s Spring Tour of Homes, which will indirectly cement your mother’s affections for me even further.”
“So, you’re basically homeless now?”
“No, I still have the houses in—” Gabriel caught himself. “Yes, yes, I am.”
I crossed my arms. “So, where do you plan on living?”
“Well, I was thinking I might move in with you.”
“Why don’t you wait to be asked?”
“Because I’d be waiting forever,” he muttered. In a very deliberate motion, he squared my shoulders in front of his and clasped my arms. “I know I could never ask you to leave River Oaks. It means a lot more to you than my family’s house means to me. Your aunt Jettie is there.
It’s your home. I would like it to be my home, too. I want to make a life with you, and for most people, that means living in the same house.”
Gabriel kissed me, as gentle as an angel’s wing brushing across my lips. “You’re my bloodmate in every sense of the word, the person I choose to spend the rest of my immortal life with, if you can stand me that long.”
“That’s what that means?” My forehead wrinkled in concentration, and I tried to remember the first time I’d hear that word. “Wait, you told Missy the crazy Realtor that she’d suffer dire consequences if she hurt your ‘bloodmate.’ That was more than a year ago.”
“I knew even then. You’re it for me, Jane. You’re my eternity.”
“Well, why couldn’t you have told me?” I exclaimed.
Gabriel shrugged. “You—”
“I wasn’t ready to hear it yet,” I finished for him. “I’m sorry.” But as the enormity of what Gabriel had just said sunk in, a huge grin split my face. I brought it under control, so I could narrow my eyes at him. “So, you’re saying you will tell me everything now. You won’t try to protect me or keep me in the dark. You’ll trust me to make a rational decision about bad news after I have my inevitable, initial panic attack?”
He nodded solemnly. “I will.”
“And when I have my spastic fits of insecurity, when I make inappropriate jokes and wonder aloud why you love me, you’ll understand that this has nothing to do with you but years and years of conditioning by my mother?”
He smirked. “I will.”