Read Sweet Last Drop for Free Online Page B

like to discuss, if you don’t mind.”
    “I mind. I’m already late for a phone call.”
    “Then you can continue to be late for a few more minutes.”
    I crossed my arms and stared him down, but Walker’s grin only widened.
    “We haven’t had much time alone since you arrived, and with a full house, I doubt we’ll have as much alone time as you might have anticipated.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “So you’re taking advantage of the little alone time we have now, in the bathroom?”
    He laughed. “Not exactly. I just wanted to make my intentions clear, if they weren’t already.”
    I held my breath for a moment against what I was about to say, but I’d never been one to mince words. “Honestly, they’re not.”
    “They were clear enough that you came to visit.”
    “That was before I realized that you and Ronnie were living together,” I said pointedly.
    Walker blinked. “Ronnie?”
    I nodded. I’d seen their looks. I’d seen his smile. He could discount their relationship if he wanted, but he’d be lying to me. Worse, he’d be lying to himself.
    He leveled his eyes on me. “There’s nothing romantic between Ronnie and me. She’s my family.”
    “If that’s true, why didn’t you tell me that you live together? You’ve known that I was visiting for weeks. In all that time, you could have warned me.”
    “It never occurred to me to ‘warn you’ because there’s nothing to warn against. There’s nothing there.”
    I rolled my eyes. “You didn’t tell me because whether or not there’s nothing or something there, you know how it looks. I’d bet some of the people living in this house think you’re a couple. How long did you live together, just the two of you, before you started building your night blood coven?”
    Walker pursed his lips, his grin wiped clean. After anticipating this visit for weeks and finally closing the physical distance between us, the inches separating us now felt wider than the miles we’d been apart.
    “I guess you have everything figured out,” Walker said. He turned away from me, and I let him leave the bathroom without another word.
     

Chapter 3
     
    I wasn’t good at keeping in touch with people, which made distance impossible, even with people I loved unconditionally, like my parents and Nathan. I had the uncanny ability to not see or speak to friends and family for months, and when we finally did visit one another, pick up right where we’d left off. Other people, so I’m told by frustrated friends and family, normal people, need regular phone calls to replace the physical void that distance creates.
    Walker was the second person with whom I’d ever achieved a functional long-distance relationship. The emotional closeness we’d developed while we were physically apart still stunned me.
    My little brother was the first.
    When I moved to California for those four years of undergrad at Berkeley, my parents had fits about my lack of communication. I didn’t call. I didn’t write. I didn’t email. I texted Nathan, which likely only made my silence toward them even more infuriating, but since they wouldn’t upgrade to texting, which was all the communication I honestly had time for during the week, I didn’t talk to them until I traveled home for Christmas.
    On weekends, when I finally had ten or fifteen minutes to breathe between classes, essays, interviews, and a social life, I called the one person I wasn’t angry with, who hadn’t nagged me all week to call because I knew he could hold a conversation without further nagging. I called Nathan.
    I talked to him about the freedom of college life, about staying out late without worrying about curfew, having sleepovers without asking for permission, and eating dessert for dinner. I didn’t mention drinking or guys. I just wanted to give him something to cling to in the prison of rules with our parents at home. He talked to me about his budding career as a track star, how he’d medaled at districts and