Ivy stretched to drop the money into the jar atop the fridge. It wasn’t the safest place to keep the money we pooled to pay our bills, but who was going to steal from a Tamwood vampire? Saying nothing, she slipped into her chair across from me, the length of the table between us. The fan of her computer whirled up to speed as she jiggled the mouse. My bad mood eased. She hadn’t left. She was working at her computer. I was in the same room with her. Maybe she felt safe enough that she could at least listen.

“Ivy—” I started.

“No,” she said, flicking me a frightened look.

“I just want to say I’m sorry,” I rushed. “Don’t go. I’ll drop it.” How could someone so strong and powerful be so afraid of herself? The woman was a conflicting mass of strength and vulnerability that I didn’t understand.

Her eyes went everywhere but to mine. Slowly her wire-tight posture relaxed. “But it wasn’t your fault,” she whispered.

Then why do I feel like crap? “I’m sorry, Ivy,” I said, pulling her eyes to mine for a brief moment. They were as brown as chocolate, with no hint of black rimming them. “It’s just—”

“Stop,” she said, her gaze going to her hand clutching the table, the nails still shiny from the clear polish she had put on to go to Piscary’s. She visibly forced her grip to relax. “I … won’t ask you to be my scion again if you don’t say anything more.” The last was hesitant, disquieting in her vulnerability.

It was almost as if she knew what I was going to say and couldn’t bear to hear it. I would not be her scion—I couldn’t. The tie that would bind us would be too tight and take from me my independence. While I knew in the vampire existence that the giving and receiving of blood was not necessarily equated with sex, to me they were the same. And I didn’t want to say, “Can we just be friends?” It was trite and degrading, even if to be her friend was all I wanted. She’d take the words as the brush-off most people used them for. I liked her too much to hurt her that way. And I could tell it wasn’t a lingering bitterness that prompted her promise. She wouldn’t ask me to be her scion because she didn’t want the pain of being rejected again.

I didn’t understand vampires. But that’s where Ivy and I were.

She met my eyes with a faltering sureness that strengthened as she saw my silent agreement to ignore what had happened. Her shoulders eased and she regained a wisp of her usual confidence. But as I sat in our kitchen with my feet in the sun, I went cold with the knowledge of how badly I was using her. She was freely giving me protection against the many vampires that would take advantage of my scar—in essence, she was ensuring my free will—and she was willing to overlook that I wasn’t paying for it in the usual vampiric fashion. God help me, it was enough to make me hate myself. She wanted something I couldn’t give her, and she was content to take my friendship in the hopes that someday I could give more.