Page 40 of The Hunter’s Affection

Chapter 11

The problem with living and working in a small town? When you called off sick, you were basically homebound. Not that Charlotte felt like moving from the comfort of her bed anyway. But she hadn’t gone grocery shopping this weekend and had no idea what surprises, or lack thereof, her refrigerator would bring her for breakfast or lunch.

Pulling the white down comforter to her chin, she breathed in the chocolate cake scent of the candle she’d lit on her bedside table. Toni knew all about Charlotte’s obsession with chocolate cake. She considered herself somewhat of an expert. And so Birdie had stocked some at the shop especially for her.

Oh yeah, and Torr was a vampire.

And one of her best friends was a . . . Cheld.

Yep. Just another typical day in Stone Haven.

When her phone buzzed on the nightstand, Charlotte startled. Deep breaths. It was a text message. Nothing more.

She checked her phone and saw the message was from Alessandra. Direct and to the point as always, it simply said: here.

Tossing off the covers, Charlotte grabbed a gray and pink robe off the back of her bedroom door. Her apartment was her sanctuary, decorated in creams and browns with orange and yellow splashes, from the couch pillows to the three large paintings on the wall. Everything had its place, an order that reliably comforted her whenever her life felt out of control. She reached out reflexively to straighten one of the three barstools along the kitchen counter as she walked to the door.

“I didn’t even hear you knocking,” she said, opening it to reveal Alessandra on the other side. Dressed casually in jeans and a black sweater, she looked . . . pretty normal actually. Not at all like some mysterious supernatural being.

“What,” Alessandra asked, making herself at home in Charlotte’s kitchen, “were you expecting exactly?”

Charlotte closed the door, then sat on the same stool she’d just straightened, watching as Alessandra made herself tea.

“Want a drink?” her friend asked.

She blinked. “Tea?”

“No, silly. Coffee. I know you don’t drink tea.”

Nodding, she tried to reconcile the person in her kitchen with the one who had run abnormally fast off Lawrence’s porch the previous night.

“How did you know—?”

“When you didn’t answer my calls, I went to the school. I was worried about you.”

She’d gone home alone last night, chaperoned by Toni. Her friend had wanted to stay with her, but Charlotte had refused. She’d wanted—needed—time to make sense of it. Although she wasn’t sure how much it had helped. She was as confused now as she’d been then. Oh, and embarrassed, she was plenty embarrassed too. Toni and Laria and Lawrence had all seen her sucking face with Torr like she was a college student in a nightclub.

“So, do you want to start? Or should I?”

She accepted the coffee and pretended not to know what Alessandra meant.

“Maybe you go ahead. And start with when you learned Kenton was . . . is . . .”

She couldn’t bring herself to say the word aloud.

“A vampire?” Alessandra offered. Charlotte nodded. Her friend leaned on the counter across from her, making her scrunched-up thinking face. “Let’s see . . . oh yes, it was at Amendment 18, not long after he came to town. I freaked out, of course—”

Charlotte smiled for the first time that morning. “Naturally.”

“Listen.” Alessandra took a sip of tea. “I get it. I went through the same thing a few months ago. That’s why I’m here. That, and to tell you . . . I’m sorry that we kept this from you.”

Something about her tone, so honest and earnest, pricked at Charlotte. She felt herself thinking about her own secrets, and somehow her old rationalizations—that she was only keeping her past from her friends, not her present or her future—no longer held weight.

“Since we’re letting it all out—”

“Finally! I hope you don’t mind . . . Toni told me all about it this morning on her way to the bar. She apologized for not coming with me, by the way, but she and Lawrence had a meeting with the decorators.”

“I’m actually not talking about Torr.” Charlotte shifted on the wooden stool.