“Right. Thanks. Tell them I said thank you. I’ll see you guys at home.”
Gray gave me a nod before turning away to stare at his viramores with laser eye focus.
Turning to Grim, I absently pet Blaze’s neck as he stuffed his head into my collar, and I said, “We should head out before the others get here and confiscate the body for evidence.”
Grim’s head cocked to the side. “You’re comin’ with me?”
“That okay?” I didn’t really need to go with him, but… I wasn’t ready to leave him either. Especially since he’d been amiable today.
“Yeah, sure.” Once we were in his car and driving away, he asked, “You live with your brother?”
“Huh?”
“Back there, you said ‘see you guys at home’ to that Gray guy, so does that mean you live with them?”
I was shocked he was bothering to ask anything personal, but I kept my shit together enough to answer. “My whole family lives on coven ground. Del, Nik, and Gray have their own house, and so do I, but we see each other in the big house a lot. Most of us eat dinner there, or we try to as many nights a week as we can.”
“The big house?”
I nodded. “It’s the house my siblings and I grew up in. Our coven leader, his viramore, and a few of my younger siblings still live there. It’s where we tend to congregate.” I shrugged, not really wanting to go into the whole Ailin being my kind-of-dad thing.
He nodded, but fell quiet for a few minutes. Totally randomly, he pulled the car over, put it in park, then angled his body to face me and asked, “Why did you help me?”
I blinked at him. “Because you asked.”
His eyes narrowed. “I can’t figure you out.”
“Me? Seriously? You’re the one trying to kill me one second and asking for help the next.”
He sighed and ran his gloved hand over his hair.
Since he seemed as out of sorts as I felt, I changed the subject. “I can’t take you seriously while calling you Grim.”
He stared at me for several beats before sighing. “That’s not my name, anyway.”
“Is that your weird way of saying I can call you Hiro?”
He lifted a shoulder, but since he didn’t deny it, I grinned.
“Hiro… I like that. It fits you.”
His brow furrowed. “I’m not sure why you think I look like a Hiro, but whatever.”
“It’s a lot better than Grim.”
He tilted his head. “I’ll give ya that.”
That made me smile wider.
He wrinkled his nose. “Stop smiling at me like that.”
“Aww, come on, you like it. It’s okay to show emotions other than stoic asshole, you know.”
“Is that what you see? A stoic asshole?”
I shrugged as I continued staring at him. “Not really, but I think that’s what you want everyone to see.”
He sighed and surprised me by saying, “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Wow. Are you feeling alright?”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’re being nice and agreeing with me and shit. Are you dying? Did you get hit? Were you poisoned and something terrible is eating away at your brain and turning you into an entirely different person?”
A reluctant laugh came out of him. “Shut up. God, you’re annoying.”
“But you like me.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
I ticked things off on my fingers as I listed them. “You came looking for me. You took me to lunch, you drove me around, you’re sitting in a car with me for long periods of time like a teenager dropping off his date, and the biggest thing of all.”
When I didn’t continue, he tilted his head toward me and said, “I can’t believe I’m fallin’ for this, but what?”
“You haven’t tried to kill me in weeks!” I said loudly, throwing in a little jazz hands.
Hiro chuckled, a deep husky sound that resonated with me and woke something up inside of me. His eyes were bright and filled with amusement, his lips were spread in a pretty smile—those damn dimples were on display—his entire face was lit up, the sound infectious. He was gorgeous. And I really wanted to lick his dimples. Was that weird? Probably, but I so didn’t care.
When he laughed, all I could do was stare at the beauty of it. And then it hit me, right there, sitting in his car with a dead body in the truck bed, it hit me, and I breathed out, “Holy shit.”
Grim blinked at me, still with a smile on his face. “What?”
“You… holy shit, I get it now.”
“You get what?”
My eyes widened and I blurted, “You’re my viramore.”
He froze and the amusement of a moment ago was wiped clear off his face. “What did you say?”
“You’re my viramore. Holy shit, that’s why I can’t stay away from you, and why I can’t stop thinking about you, and—”
“I’m not your viramore.”
I stopped short. “What? Yes, you are. It’s the only thing that makes sense, and now that I’ve said it out loud, it’s like… it settled in my chest, and now I just… I just know. You’re my fucking viramore, Hiro Grimsby.”
“There’s no way I’m a viramore to a witch. No fuckin’ way.”
“But you are. I know you can feel it.”
“I’m human, Basil. We don’t have viramores.”
I rolled my eyes. “Humans do too, they just can’t recognize it as easily.” Pursing my lips, I narrowed my eyes at him. “Maybe that’s why you’re being weird right now, although you’re more than a simple human.”
“I’m human.”
“Whatever. Viramore can b—”
“I’m not your fuckin’ viramore!” he yelled.
I snapped my mouth shut with a frown and took him in. He was seething, anger brewing beneath the surface, his face turning red, his jaw clenched, his whole body tense. Blaze unstuffed his head from my collar, his entire body going tense and ready to pounce as he eyed Hiro. I pushed myself up against the car door to put more space between us and asked, “What’s wrong?”
He turned and leaned over, getting in my face. “What’s wrong? A fuckin’ witch just told me I was his viramore, that’s what’s fuckin’ wrong. Witches hate humans and only look out for themselves. A witch my viramore? You must think I’m stupid ‘cause there’s no way witches even have real souls. Witches don’t care about people. They use them and throw them away when they’re finished with ‘em.”
I jerked back as if he’d slapped me. “I don’t know what witches you’ve known before me, but not all of us are like that.” My voice was softer than I intended. It almost sounded a little hurt, but that couldn’t be right, I didn’t know him well enough for that yet—yeah, going with that for now.
He snorted and sneered. “Right. You just want to use my heart for some evil deed. Well guess what? I don’t fall for that shit, and I sure as hell ain’t fallin’ for some fuckin’ witch.” He sat back and turned to look out the windshield. “Now get out of my car.”