There was only the repetitive drum of my feet as they pounded the dry, cold earth beneath my socks. His socks. The morning was grey, still misty in the earliness of the forest.

I used to enjoy running, back when I had spare energy. It was quite liberating. The demand of my muscles, begging for oxygen. Lungs screaming for relief. I liked the perseverance it took. Pushing myself harder, faster. Seeing how far I can go without passing out. No one around to tell you you're taking it too far. Or that you might hurt yourself.

But now, I tired very quickly.

I left him, breathing, sprawled half on the low table. The breakfast contents scattered over the floor in a mixture of smashed ceramic and dried-out fish/ egg/ cube soup.

He'd be fine, I told myself. He'd wake up, quicker than the others usually did. Even though I held on longer. Longer than possibly I had done before, to anyone. But he healed. Probably be up by now anyway, shaking off the groggy hangover-like feeling. That'll be the worst of it. For him.

I'd gotten a slew of unfettered thought, carnal and raw, but not lewd like you might think. It was about rain. About how he found the rain freeing, listening to it drum on the rooftop above his bed. The only place where he'd felt warm and safe in as long as he could remember. About how another living thing hadn't shared that bed with him until last night, where he'd given his haven over to the girl who'd saved him from himself, in more ways than one.

I slowed, breathing hard, a stitch all the way up my side. Kinda annoyed with myself I couldn't go on longer. The oversized pajamas I still wore swished around my feet. It was a miracle they didn't trip me, being as long as they were. Thank goodness I'd thought to tie them at the waist.

Logic caught up with me then. I was in the forest. In winter. By myself. Dressed in borrowed pajamas and a pair of ruined socks. My hair, still wet from the earlier shower on a morning too cold for wet hair. How I wished the numbing cold would reach my brain so I wouldn't have to think anymore.

My possessions were back at his house… come to think of it, I couldn't remember where my car even was? Possibly still at whichever bar we were at the night before. Or did I get a cab… I don't even know.

I clutched my side, feeling the cramp easing instantaneously, the borrowed heeling only now kicking in. I guess it worked on a worse-off basis, the earlier nausea and banging headache blissfully absent. Fuck, that meant I probably wouldn't be fortunate enough to freeze to death.

I knew I'd have to head back eventually. Despite me running in any direction that was away from the house, making my way back wasn't so hard. It was either the easy sense of direction ingrained in me or the scent of home luring me back. This was all bullshit, of course. It was his scent memories guiding me back, his direction pointing me the right way.

I remember the way he'd looked at me then, right before I decided to drain him. The look that made me so mad in that moment. The way his jaw tightened, and a darkness took over his eyes. Black heat, burning into me. A look that made me incandescent.

Because deep deep down, I still felt the way I did when I was seventeen years old. I wanted him to notice me, to want me. I hated it. The way there's still hope bubbling under the surface, no matter how many ways he tells me it's not going to happen, verbal and otherwise.

It made me feel so stupid and helpless, because I couldn't fight it. As much as I couldn't help the leeching of my poisonous skin. Even thoughts of trying to fight it were exhausting. After all that's happened between us. All that I've been through. It should have proven that people like me, people like us, don't get happy endings.

We shared a kiss once. In comfort. In searching. It didn't mean anything. Clearly not to him. He thought I was almost dead. The final resuscitation. It must have worked, the dark heat of his mouth, because I awoke with his lips on mine. And it was tender, and soft and all the things I couldn't imagine him being. It shocked me so much that I shuddered, twisted into him for more, increasing our contact. And took more from him than he was willing to give.

I knew what he thought of me then. That I was a kid. A sweet, innocent kid. But a kid all the same.

I stopped walking, collapsed against a tree. Breathing hard, but this time not from running.

"You made your point," his voice cracks the silence of the forest, gravely and tense, making me jump and let out a pathetic half-scream.

"But if you drop me again, there will be consequences."

I wasn't expecting him to be back yet, let alone find me in the wilderness of what was essentially the professor's backyard. Both rookie mistakes. He could heal, and hunt, two traits I'd very recently inherited but didn't possess the foresight to use.

He stepped closer, crouching down to my level, and his familiar scent enveloped me. Something like soap and smoke and the smell of the outdoors. The smell that made behind my nose tingle and my vision go fuzzy.

"Look, kid. Let's go back to the house. We don't have to talk anymore today."

He held out his hand, noticeably absent of any covering, to pull me up.

I sniffed. Fought back the tears, shook my sleeve down over my hand so I could take his, and dropped it as soon as I was on my feet.

"I said I'd take care of you," he said after a long silence, "but you have to let me try."

There was another layer to that promise. The unspoken one. That he didn't mean in that way.

"Do you want to come out with me later? Get somethin' to eat?"

"Why? Concerned with my eating habits now?"

"Yeah, actually. I am."

A pause while he searched my face for any flickers that would give me away.

"I told you. I'm stressed."

"Nothing a good few cheeseburgers won't fix."

I nodded slowly as we walked back through the trees to where they were starting to thin out. Just beyond that, the clearing where his modern, angular wooden and glass house stood like a natural formation in the landscape.

"You inviting me out to accompany you while you pick up another airhead bar bunny to fuck?"

I spoke with a barely veiled barbed tone, but his response, in contrast, was light. Teasing.

"Why? You wanna watch?"

That dark fire was back in his eyes, wilder than ever. Hot enough to blister. The invitation was genuine but had noticeably angered him. Deeper than anger. He was furious. And I'd never seen anything more sexy.

That put a new spin on things. One I wasn't sure I wanted to accept. One I was desperate to.

Neither of us said anything more, but the end zones had been shifted. The finer line between love and hate, between vague and lucidity became ever more blurred. Elusive expectation. It loomed like an impending tropical storm. Forbidding. Treacherous. All-consuming.