I opened my mouth cautiously. I wasn't sure I wouldn't throw up. "He wasn't home. I guess I dodged that bullet."

"Yeah, well… you're still calling him when we get back." He eyed the window, where rosy sunlight sneaked in around the edges of the curtains. "I'm gonna go take a shower. By the time we're ready, the sun will be off the streets and we can head out."

I nodded and watched him start for his bathroom before I left for my own room.

Max's penthouse condo took up three stories in a corner of an old building near the museum campus, the lake-shore park where the city's big attractions clustered. It wasn't the hip, happening part of Chicago I'd imagined Max inhabiting, but he hadn't had much choice in the location, as he had inherited it.

Marcus, the former owner of the place and Max's late sire, stared accusingly from an oil painting on the landing. Max had always described his sire with glowing words, but it was hard to imagine the grim-faced man in the powdered wig as being "loving" and "fatherly."

Though it had happened twenty years prior, Marcus's death still haunted Max. I saw no need to heap another broken heart on him by revealing his werewolf almost-girlfriend was boning Nathan, the man he considered a close, loyal friend.

How could he? I fumed silently as I took the stairs to the guest rooms on the lower level. I flopped onto the ornately carved bed in my neoclassical guestroom and pulled the duvet over my head.

Cold tears escaped the corners of my eyes. Nathan had made it clear from the beginning that there would never be anything between us except the blood tie, but each new reminder stung more than the last, because I'd never really believed him.

I thought it had been settled the night Bella's spell let Nathan relive losing his wife. He'd as much as said there would never be anything between us. I thought it was because be hadn't yet gotten over killing his wife. Now, less than a month later, he appeared to have moved on: So either he'd needed seventy years and a month to get over his guilt, or it hadn't been the memory of Marianne at all. He just wasn't interested in me.

My parents had raised me to be a logical thinker. Logic insisted that the most plausible assumption was the correct one. Nathan was probably still screwed up, he just wasn't going to be screwing me.

Because I didn't want to break the news to Max yet—he was still in deep denial over Bella—I acted as if nothing was wrong as we gorged ourselves on cotton candy and elephant ears on the pier.

Unfortunately, Max picked up on my vibes. "Carrie, what's going on? You're not acting right."