Аманда Хокинг - Flutter

“You were human like ten seconds ago,” Milo rolled his eyes.

Bobby peered nervously around Milo at him, and I realized that it wasn’t his species difference that offended me so much. This was the first time Milo had ever brought a guy, of any distinction, home. On top of that, I had been away when it happened, and this kid was older and had tattoos. Some kind of maternal instinct had reared its head.

“I couldn’t tell you very much about anything since you wouldn’t answer my calls or return my texts,” Jack pointed out icily, and he glanced back at Peter.

Peter was still carrying all our bags and stood awkwardly by the front door. Matilda was sniffing him up, wagging her tail happily, but nobody else acknowledged him at all. Ezra looked a million times better than he had when he first stumbled back to the hotel, but he was still clearly unwell. Besides that, I’m sure Mae could smell the other vampires on him. She was more tuned into his scent than I was, and I could still smell something, dank and musty and unpleasant. Touching his face gingerly, she looked up at him with sad tears in her eyes, oblivious to the ever growing unease in the room.

“Come on,” Milo gestured to the other room. “You’ve all had a long trip. I’m sure you guys wanna come back and relax for a bit, and fill us all in with all the juicy details.”

Milo started leading the way to the living room, deliberating putting himself between Bobby and me.

It was a whole new feeling to think of myself as a threat. Jack’s arm was still around me, and I suddenly remembered with some delight that I was with Jack. I smiled up at him, but he was slow to return it. His heart beat was louder than it should be, meaning something was distressing him. For a second, I was too filled with that ecstatic relief of just being near him to even worry about anything else at all.

“I would really love to catch up with all of you. I missed you all so much,” Mae announced tiredly when we reached the leaving room. She smiled sadly at me and reached out to squeeze my arm lovingly. Ezra stood behind her, his expression still very drawn. “But I think that Ezra and I are going to have to excuse ourselves. He needs some rest.”

“I understand,” I said, my voice tight.

Ezra was still in pain, and that was an impossible thing to shake. As I watched them walk away, I felt Jack’s eyes settle seriously on me. Ezra’s level of anguish had made Jack suddenly very wary about what had gone in Finland. I avoided his gaze, knowing that I wasn’t ready to explain that to him, especially not in front of Milo and his new friend.

Milo flopped back in an overstuffed chair. Bobby, who had remained glued to his side the entire time, sat on the arm of the chair next to him, half sitting on Milo’s lap. Something about that sight sent a ripple of agitation through me. Whereas Milo had always been very happy to encourage my romantic exploits, I became uncharacteristically protective. When Bobby put his hand on his thigh, I wanted to slap it away.

“So…” Milo looked at me. “How was your trip?”

“It was okay,” I shrugged, unwilling to give up anymore right now.

Peter had walked over to lean against the wall, and Jack moved smoothly around me. At first I didn’t understand, then I realized that he was putting himself between Peter and me. This was the way things would go for awhile, and it was too early to already getting annoyed by them. Instead, I just walked over to the couch, where we would be sitting down and he wouldn’t be standing to block any advances Peter might make.

“Since you brought Peter back, I assume it was a rousing success.” Milo looked at Peter out of the corner of his eye, trying not to make it obvious that he didn’t trust him at all. He’d only met him once, and that meeting hadn’t gone that great. On top of that, the only information he had about him came filtered through Jack, who had a pretty biased opinion on the subject.

“You could say that,” I replied shortly.

Jack was sitting next to me, and I wanted to snuggle up next to him, but everything felt so off. Peter glanced around the room diffidently, managing not to look happy or upset by the situation. I pulled my knees up to my chest and leaned in closer in the crook of Jack’s arm, but he was still unnaturally tense. He had no idea what had happened, and something was wrong with Ezra, so he wasn’t happy about the situation. I would’ve loved to ease his fears, but I was completely preoccupied by this Bobby character that was all but sitting on my little brother’s lap. I know I was currently curling up with my boyfriend, so I really had no right to judge his behavior, but I couldn’t help it.

“It looks like you’ve had a pretty busy time without us,” I commented as casually as I could.

“You could say that,” Milo laughed.

He looked up at Bobby, sharing one of this disgustingly sweet looks that made the bile rise in my throat. Then Bobby leaned down and kissed him on the lips, and I could hear his heart race faster. My stomach twisted in knots, out of disgust and hunger, and I didn’t appreciate that combination at all. Don’t get me wrong: It was not the fact that Milo was kissing a dude that I found so upsetting. It was that he was kissing anyone. Even after becoming a vampire, there were still so many things I was unprepared for.

“I think I’m gonna crash,” Peter said randomly. He looked over at Jack, which I found astonishingly disconcerting, and Jack’s arm tightened around me, as if he really expected Peter to tear me from his arms. “Is my room in the same place?”

“It’s exactly as you left it,” Jack replied crossly.

“Alright.” Peter nodded at Jack, then he turned and darted up the stairs.

“That guys has weird vibes,” Bobby remarked, speaking for the first time since I’d met him.

He stared after the space where Peter had been, then shook his head to toss his bangs out of his dark eyes. As if to comfort him, Milo rubbed his back, and Bobby smiled, settling back into the chair with him.

Is it too early to say that I really hate Bobby?

“So Bobby?” I asked, and he turned back to me, smiling clumsily. I decided to dispense with the small talk immediately. “Are you gay?” Jack laughed, filling me with a familiar glee. Once Peter had left, he had managed to relax a bit.

“Alice!” Milo snapped, embarrassed.

“What?” I asked innocently.

There was nothing overly gay about Bobby, other than the fact that he had kissed my brother and looked at him like he couldn’t wait to jump his bones. His clothes were just fashionable scene apparel, skinny jeans and slip on Vans. He might be wearing eyeliner, but he might just have really dark eyelashes too. He was white, but his features were dark, like Italian or Russian.

“No, it’s okay,” Bobby laughed, brushing off Milo’s concern. “Yeah. I am gay.”

“How old are you?” I asked pointedly.

“Twenty-one,” Bobby answered, and I bristled.

Admittedly, Milo was a vampire, and thanks to they’re rapid maturation, he looked about nineteen or so. In actuality, he wasn’t even sixteen, and he was making out with a twenty-year-old guy.

Not cool. In fact, it was so not cool that I planned on freaking out on Jack for letting this happen while I was away. (At this point, it had not occurred to me that Jack was born over 40 years ago, and I wasn’t yet eighteen.)

“Alice, you were in Finland for weeks!” Milo said, sensing that I was revving up for some kind of argument. “I’m pretty sure you have more exciting things to do than interrogate my boyfriend.”

Boyfriend? They were already up to that terminology? It had been months and months until I started referring to Jack as my boyfriend. In fact, in conversation, I still don’t think I would use that word. It sounded too weird to say about him. Once you’re over the age of like twenty-five or you’re no longer human, the word