My heart started to pound and I sat up in bed, listening.

"We should have waited until tomorrow to get you released," said a woman. A mother?

"I didn't want to be there anymore," said Emily. "Being in the hospital makes me feel like I'm going to die."

I noticed that no one mentioned how close she had come to dying. Instead, a man laughed and said, "Emmy gets what she wants." Her dad. His voice was tense, but he was playing it off pretty well.

Emily. She was home. I had to be with her. I had to see with my own eyes, feel with my own hands that I hadn't hurt her.

I put my shirt back on and headed downstairs. I was all the way to the front door before it occurred to me to stop and wonder what the hell I was doing. Was I about to march down there and demand to see the woman I'd tried to kill? Emily would scream her head off when she got a good look at me. Then she'd call the cops and it would all be over.

And, yet, shouldn't she have called the cops already? And if she had called them, why hadn't they come for me?

I was still debating this as I stepped out on the porch and closed the door behind me. My body had forgotten that my brain was supposed to tell it what to do. I would go to her even if I got caught or killed. Obsession. There was no other word for it. I was obsessed with Emily Harding.

Look, I was sixteen years old and male, and except for that unwanted kiss from Parva I was as pure as the driven snow. I'd done my fair share of obsessing over the opposite sex. But my obsession with other girls made me dry-mouthed and clumsy. Emily was different. My obsession with her woke me up. It turned me on, and not like in a horny way. My nerves felt bright and aware. There was no static in the transmission.

I crept through the front yard and across the next-door neighbor's property. I could hear Emily and her family walking through their house and talking to each other. Emily was getting ready for bed. I heard her tell her family she was so tired and she just wanted to go to bed right away, and could they please not disturb her until the morning because the nurses had kept disturbing her in the hospital and all she really wanted was a chance to rest uninterrupted.

Then the light came on in the upstairs room I knew to be hers. I scanned the side of the house, looking for some way to climb the outside wall to her room. I already knew there wouldn't be anything. If there had been a way up I wouldn't have had to throw myself out of the guest room like a flying squirrel. But I couldn't help but hope something had magically appeared in the last twenty-four hours.

I realized I was panting and I made myself take several deep breaths. I had to calm down. I needed to be with Emily, but I also needed to maintain some self-control or I was going to get caught. If I could just manage to wait until everyone went to sleep I could find some way into the house. How hard could it be? There was that window Brick had bashed in. They wouldn't have replaced it yet, right?

I slipped into the yard and flattened myself against Emily's fence. A shadow moved behind her curtain and then the light went off. Her bed creaked as she lay down. I was torn between the need to get to her and the need to stay hidden, and the inner struggle kept my body frozen against the fence. Her parents stood in the kitchen talking, cleaning up, worrying aloud about her. Cold air crept into my t-shirt. A spider crawled across the back of my hand. I kept waiting for someone to mention me, or make a reference to an attack. It didn't happen.

I was afraid they would stay up all night talking, but eventually they went to bed [https://img.wattpad.com/ce027947e5d1e1ddb36206ae3fac9279a7f43bd2/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f3162706b395956707a47565943673d3d2d313336303437343838382e313736666537323334306466623238313835363633343837393739362e706e67?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]

I was afraid they would stay up all night talking, but eventually, they went to bed. I waited until they were quiet and their breathing slowed. I waited until her dad started to snore. Then I listened upstairs for Emily.

She was still awake.

I couldn't wait anymore, and I couldn't let myself think about what Emily would do when she saw me. I took a step away from the fence.

The bed creaked as Emily got up. I froze.

Emily moved through her room almost as quietly as the mice moved through my walls at home. I heard her slip into the hall and tiptoe down the stairs. Then the front door opened. It popped like gunfire and Emily went still. Her parents stirred but stayed asleep. Emily held still for a few eternal minutes, and then she slipped outside and left the door open behind her.

She crept across the lawn in her cotton pajama pants and yellow sneakers. She had a dark hoodie zipped up to her chin and her hands were stuffed down in the pockets. She headed in the exact direction I'd just come from. I no longer had any doubt about where she was going. I just couldn't believe it.

"Emily," I whispered.

She stopped and whipped her face toward me. Her eyes were aimed in my general direction but she couldn't see me in the dark.

"Who is it?" she whispered back.

I stepped out of the shadow of the fence and into the moonlight. Her eyes widened when she saw me. For a long moment, neither of us moved.

Then we started toward each other. I didn't know what I was going to do when I got to her, I only know that I had to touch her. I reached for her with one hand, but then her hand flew out so fast I didn't have time to register what she was about to do before she did it.

The slap rang out through the quiet yard.

My head was thrown to one side. This was the third time in two days that I'd been hit by a woman, and the surprise and pain of it made my breath catch. I'm sure it would have hurt my feelings if Emily's other hand wasn't now wrapped in mine, fingers entwined together so hard that it ached.

"What the hell did you do to me?" she whispered.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." My free hand found her shoulder, searching for bare skin. It brushed her face. Crept behind her neck. She knocked my hand away, but then immediately she touched my face.

"You bit me," she said, in accusation and disgust. I reached for her again. God help me, I couldn't stop.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"I know," I said.

"You're like a vampire, Nathaniel."

"I know."

"Stop touching me."

I gritted my teeth and tried to obey. I couldn't do it. She looked so alive, flushed and pink instead of cold and white. I pushed one of her sleeves up to the elbow and rubbed her arm. She was so angry I thought she was going to erupt. But, at the same time, she held my face between her hands. She pulled me toward her, and then she was in my arms.

I inhaled her scent until I was dizzy. Her hands crept into the back of my shirt and I felt like I could finally get a good breath for the first time. I was relieved, humiliated, desperate, sick. I knew I was still hurting her, but I didn't know how I was supposed to stop.

"You're a freak," she said into my chest. "I can't believe you bit me on the neck and---did you drink my blood?"

I nodded, even more humiliated.

"That is so gross. You are disturbed. You're like this crazy, wannabe-vampire boy. Except now I'm letting you touch me and you---" She sobbed. "What did you do to me?"

I began to understand what she was asking. She'd been obsessing about me, too. But the difference was, to her, I was the psychopath who had pushed into her house and taken advantage of her. I disgusted her, and she couldn't keep her hands off me.

I grasped her by the shoulders and made myself hold her at arm's length. I wanted to be strong enough to take my hands off her altogether, but it was the best I could do.

"I'm sorry," I said. I wished I could have explained it, but I didn't understand it any better than she did. "I'm not a wannabe vampire, Emily. I am a vampire."

"No such thing."

I tilted my face and let her watch my canines grow. It wasn't hard to do it on demand this time because I was already thinking about biting her again. Yes, there is something really wrong with me. I wish I was still normal, but I'm not.

She sobbed again and wrenched herself out of my grip. She backed away, staring at my teeth the whole time. "Stay away from me."

I crossed my arms over my chest to show that I wasn't coming near her.

"How could you be a . . ." She swallowed. "I mean, I've gone to school with you for years."

"This is a new thing," I said. Now that my teeth were out, they weren't going back in, which made me sound even more like a monster. "Like, really new."

"What, you just recently made a deal with the devil?"

"I got bitten by another vampire. She changed me. Trust me, I didn't ask her to do it."

Emily looked horrified. "Am I going to turn into a vampire, too?"

"I don't think so. It would have already happened already. Emily . . ." I gave up on fighting and took her hands again. I expected her to yank them away, but she didn't. The conflict in her eyes was obvious. She truly did hate me. And she kept staring at my teeth.

I said, "I promise, I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't even know what I was. It just happened."

"And this?" She held up our hands. "Did this just happen?"

"I don't know."

"Since I woke up in the hospital, all I could think about was you. At first, I thought I had to get to you so I could punish you. But then I realized what I wanted---what I needed---" She sucked in a breath and shuddered. Her eyes blazed with fury and tears. "I made my parents take me out of the hospital early so I could be with you, and you're the one who did this to me!"

"It's the same for me. I don't know why."

"It is not the same for you! You're not the one who wants---"

She gasped, suddenly, like she was fighting something painful deep in her guts. I stepped toward her, wanting to help but not knowing how. But I was knocked backward when she launched herself at me.

"Hey---" I began, but she grabbed the back of my head and forced my face into the crook of her neck.

"Just do it!" she said. "Do it and get it over with!"

I held her in shock. Was she trying to say she wanted me to bite her again?

I couldn't believe it. But, man, did I want to do it. Not because I was starving, either. For some other reason.

But she wasn't being herself. If we ever snapped out of this stupor we were in, we'd both be completely humiliated at what we'd done. Attacked each other. Groped each other, sort of. Emily would die to think that she'd begged someone like me to bite her, and she'd hate me even more because I'd given in.

"This isn't right," I said. Being so close to her made me feel drunk, and I tried to pull back but she wouldn't let me lift my head. Just a reminder: I'm the vampire. I could have broken away if I'd wanted to. So you can see how my biggest enemy is always me.

Anyway, she was holding me so close that my lips were brushing her neck. She said, "Don't try to tell me what's right and wrong. It was wrong for you to bite me in the first place."

"I know, but we---" Oh, god. The way her skin tasted. "---we don't know how this works. Maybe if we leave it alone, it'll go away."

"You don't want to do it?" She moved her neck a little, teasing my lips. I might have whimpered.

"Emily? Are you trying to seduce me?"

"Not on purpose, you loser! Would you hurry up, before I degrade myself anymore?"

I put my teeth against her skin. It would have been so easy to go into that huge artery again, drain her again. Instead, I found another place and pierced her gently. She jumped as though she were expecting something much worse. I tasted her blood. It tasted wrong. Not like before. Too many conflicting flavors that didn't belong in the same body. Maybe because of her transfusion, I was getting samples of several different people. Whatever it was, I didn't like it. It reminded me of how much I'd always hated casseroles. The ingredients were all so random.

But underneath it all was the essence of Emily, slowly reclaiming her body. And when I finally found her in the midst of that crowd, something popped into place. Actually, something ground into place, metal against metal, and then thunked as it stopped moving. The thunk made all the tension and confusion leave my body. I was where I needed to be. It didn't matter if Emily hated me, because she was with me. She was safe.

She was safe [https://img.wattpad.com/8cd20c2814663a2ca0ec5a311879da9468f30299/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f585f674c676f53434643347675413d3d2d313336303437343838382e3137373035656463633734623332643337333137383430383230302e706e67?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]

She was mine.

Emily relaxed, too. That whole time she'd been trying to make me take her blood, there was part of her that was pushing me away at the same time. But now she wasn't fighting anymore. She just leaned against me and let me drink.

But I was done. I pulled away from her to give her some space, and I had no trouble keeping my hands to myself.

She touched the place where I'd bitten her. "That's it?"

"I don't know how much you can afford to lose." And, to be honest, I'm not a fan of your blood casserole. "But it was enough, right? Do you need me to---"

"No! No, that was enough." She took a step back, and then her eyes went to my feet. "What's wrong with you, Nathaniel? Don't you wear shoes? It's like forty degrees out here."

She was right. My feet were bare, and not even all that cold. I hadn't bothered with a jacket, either. This vampire stuff was so disconcerting. One, I kept doing odd things without thinking about it. Two, I kept acting like Parva. How much was I going to have in common with her, in the end?

I cleared my throat. "So, did you feel it? The, um . . ." I locked my knuckles together like gear teeth, trying to show her what I meant because words were so insufficient. "The thunk?"

She eyed me. "I didn't feel anything thunking, luckily for you."

I heard movement in the house and realized that her father was awake. I grabbed Emily and pulled her back against the fence. She struggled but it was all theatrics. It didn't bother her anymore when I touched her but she needed to pretend it did.

"What are you doing?" she said.

"Your dad woke up."

Her voice dropped to a whisper. "If he sees me with you, he's gonna freak out."

"Does he know that I'm the one who---you know?"

"No."

"What did you tell them?"

"Nothing. And now I have to get about a thousand tests done, so thanks a lot."

I still didn't get it. I didn't understand why I wasn't in jail.

"Why not?" I said. "Why didn't you tell on me?"

"Because I couldn't!" she hissed. "Don't you think I tried? As soon as I was awake, I tried to tell my dad what you did, but I couldn't say your name or talk about a vampire or anything. It wouldn't come out."

"Oh," I said. I didn't know what else to say. I hadn't heard of anything like that in a vampire story before.

"But everyone knows about the bruises on my neck, so he's suspicious of every boy. Don't bother trying to get him to explain how the bruises and the missing blood fit together. He's irrational."

"Not really."

Her dad walked through the front room, and then he must have seen the open door because he ran out onto the porch, suddenly frantic.

"Emily? Emily! Where are you?"