Page 35 of Guarding the Rock Star
“Yeah.” Her expression looked carefully blank, the way it was before I got to know her.
“When will you be back?” I asked, suddenly feeling needy.
“Back?”
I frowned. “Back here. Home.”
“I don’t live here Tasha, remember? This is your home, not mine. Now that the case is over, I need to go back to my place.”
I felt a stab of pain in my chest at her cool tone.
“I thought maybe it would be both of ours,” I said, putting myself out there in a way I normally never did.
She grabbed my hand, her thumb stroking my wrist. Her eyes looked troubled.
“We need to take a few days apart.”
“What? Why? I thought everything went great last night.”
“It did, but you’ve been very clear since you found out about the mate thing that you were not a person who wanted a relationship. I’m a vampire, Tasha, when we find the right person, we mate for life. Until last night, you insisted you weren’t interested in that.”
Her other hand reached up to cup the side of my face and I fought the sudden urge to cry.
“I need to know that you want me, want us, when you’re not impacted by danger and adrenaline.”
“What are you saying?” I asked, my throat feeling tight with tears.
“I don’t want your judgement to be clouded, and I don’t want you to regret getting together with me,” she said. “Take a few days, figure out how you feel once things get back to normal, and if you still are interested in pursuing things with me – and to be clear I really hope you are – let me know.”
“But...”
Wanda leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to my lips. “I’ll talk to you soon, Princess. At least I hope so.”
When we walked out of the bedroom, Chloe was sitting at the dining room table. Her eyes widened as she saw us together.
“Well, this is an interesting development,” she teased.
“Hey Chloe,” Wanda greeted her, not stopping on her way to the elevator door. “Bye Tasha.”
She pressed the button and entered the elevator while I watched the woman I loved walk away from me. For some reason, it felt incredibly final. My eyes welled up with tears.
“What’s happening here?” Chloe asked, pushing me into a chair.
When I didn’t answer, she stepped away, returning a few seconds later with a cup of coffee in each hand. Chloe slid a cup towards me, then took a sip of her own brew, waiting patiently. She knew me well enough to know that I would talk when I was ready.
“I’m in love with Wanda,” I finally blurted out.
“Yeah, no kidding.” She studied me for a second before asking, “Wait. Is this a surprise to you?”
“Yeah, but when I woke up in a basement with my hands tied behind my back, I realized that I’d known it for a while. I just didn’t want to admit it.”
“Speaking of which, what the fuck happened with Monica and Mark?”
“Apparently, he thought I was flirting with him or something and he fell in love with me and convinced himself that I could fall in love with him too. He and Monica thought my being gay was a phase or something delusional. I just needed to see how depraved it was – their words not mine obviously – and I’d come to my senses.” I took a deep breath. “Monica even told me I must not be that into being a lesbian because all the years she and Mark worked for me, they never saw me having a woman stay overnight.”
“That’s still really weird.”
I shrugged. “I know. Their logic was so twisted, and the fact that they were both kind of fixated on me, it’s super weird. I still don’t quite understand it and I was there.”
