“A succubus,” he mused quietly as we walked. “How do you feel about that?”
“Completely weirded out.” It was the most honest answer I could give.
He looked at me with those intense blue eyes and squeezed my hand. “Yeah, I get that.”
Empathy rolled off of him in waves, and it killed my defenses dead. Words started pouring out of my mouth completely unchecked.
“It’s not the sex thing. Sex is fucking awesome, I love it. It’s the… the needing you all thing. I’ve never, ever been reliant on anybody. Not since I was little, anyway. My mom spent most of my life sick. She was barely functional most days, and some days she wasn’t functional at
all. I was making my own lunches in first grade. By second, I was keeping house for her.”
“Damn, that’s rough. Where was your dad in all this?”
“Gone. Wasted somewhere or locked up. He floated in and out of our lives for a while, and for some reason my mom always let him come back. Once she took a turn for the worst, though, he disappeared entirely.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine.”
I attempted a shrug and swallowed hard. “I don’t tell anybody this stuff,” I said, choking on a laugh. “The point is, I’m reliant on you guys now, and I don’t like to rely on people.”
“Maybe it’s time you did,” he said softly. “It’s not the worst thing in the world. What happened then? After your dad disappeared?”
“Oh, God, um… well, my mom passed away when I was seventeen. I had an aunt who handled all of the funeral arrangements and everything, but she had no interest in me. I was close enough to being grown up that nobody really thought about rescuing me.”
“At seventeen?” He gave a low whistle. “Hell, I couldn’t even do my own laundry when I was seventeen.” When I shot him a look of disbelief, he grinned. “Okay, maybe I could, but I didn’t want to. My mom spoiled me a little bit.”
“Is your mom still alive?”
A cloud passed quickly over his face. “Yeah, she was when I left her. When I got turned. My dad too. They own a little self-sustaining ranch half an hour from the beach. Doing their part for the environment and all that. Total hippies.”
“That explains a lot.” I laughed. “You’ve got that granola vibe.”
He grinned. “I liked where their heads were, you know? Save the planet, save humanity. They weren’t all that effective, but I was going to change that.”
“How?”
“Acting.”
I cocked my head at him. “Acting, huh? Okay, so I’ve been dying to ask you this since school started, but I didn’t want to sound like a creep. Have I seen you somewhere before?”
Jayce smiled and gave a small shrug. “I mean, maybe. Where are you from?”
“Seattle.”
He thought for a second. “Hmm. I’m pretty sure it was broadcast in Seattle. Even if it wasn’t, I’m sure it was on the internet for a minute. Oh, and the other one definitely was.”
“The other one what?”
“Commercials,” he answered with that slow grin. “One for SPF tanning spray and another one for edibles.”
I raised a brow. “Edibles?”
His eyes sparkled. “Hey, everybody’s got to start somewhere. I wasn’t planning on doing commercials forever. That second one caught the attention of a TV network exec, and I was on my way to my callback audition when all this happened.”
“Oh, shit.” My brows scrunched together. “That’s terrible. But it doesn’t explain how you were going to save the world.”
“Yeah.” His grin widened. “See, what I figure is, if a twenty-thousand dollar nest egg could get my folks off the grid, then a twenty-million dollar nest egg could get a whole lot of people off of it. I was going to make it big and spend every penny helping people get independent.”
“Wow. You’re kind of incredible.”