Perhaps it was just me clinging to this hope that I wasn’t wrong about him. I wanted to believe that I saw goodness in Derek Novak, and if the prince and savior of The Shade could still be capable of goodness, then perhaps there was still hope yet… for him and the other vampires…

Or perhaps Ben was right. How could I be so naïve?

CHAPTER 16: BEN

I couldn’t understand the way her mind worked. I sat across her, waiting for her to explain her own naïveté, but she remained silent as she sat back in her chair, a pensive expression on her green eyes as she brushed a stray strand of hair away from her face.

I caught my breath at how beautiful she looked. My best friend’s appearance was something that I was never oblivious to. She was Rose Red come to life. The auburn hair, the pale white, pinkish complexion, the hourglass figure, those legs that went on for days… I’d have to be blind not to see how lovely she was. I knew she’d grow up to become a stunner from the moment I first laid eyes on her. That was the day her father left her at our house and never again returned.

What a damn fool he was.

He was just as unaware of her as she seemed to be of herself. Sofia grew up without giving much thought to the effect she had on people. She didn’t notice the way men looked at her whenever we were out. It was part of her appeal.

That and the fact that she was mine.

It helped that I was the only person she ever truly let in. She liked keeping to herself, her fear of becoming like her mother and her insecurity after being abandoned by her father always looming over her. It made it easy for me to keep her to myself. The guys in school knew that she was off limits. I think even the girls I dated knew that they were flings and that Sofia was the one. It was never spoken out loud, but we belonged together.

My security in that idea was my undoing, because during the time we spent at The Shade, it seemed she let someone else in – Derek Novak. I never could’ve seen that coming. No one was ever able to penetrate her walls, but it seemed like he did. He managed to get through to her and I couldn’t understand how.

All I knew as I sat across that table from her in the library, was that I was losing her by the minute. You never know what you got until it’s gone, Ben. You treated her like crap and now, you’re scrambling to fix things with her.

“I’m not trying to pressure you, Sofia…” I began to say.

“Really? That’s exactly what it feels like.”

I wasn’t used to her being so assertive around me. She normally always heard me out – yet another thing that changed about her since we left The Shade.

“I can’t take this.” I got up from my seat. “I’ll see you after practice.” Like I always did when forced into situations I had no idea how to handle, I ran.

Had it been any other guy, I would’ve been happy for her, but this was Derek Novak. I watched him kill Eliza, drain her of every drop of blood in her body. No hesitation. No hint of shame. He preyed on her remorselessly. I didn’t care what he did or whether or not there was still any hope of good in him. He didn’t deserve my best friend. Sofia deserved far better than him.

And yet, it felt as if I were losing her to him.

As I sped through the corridors of our school, weaving past people waving at me and calling my name on my way to the football team’s locker room, anger began to consume me as I thought of what I lost at The Shade. The island took everything away from me. I had to break it off with Tanya, because I couldn’t even make out with her without thinking about Claudia. Even if I could, I doubt I would’ve even felt much of it. I barely had a sense of touch after what that vampire wench put me through.

By the time I reached the locker room, I was raging mad. Sofia and I were pretending that we could gain back what we lost. That was a lie. There was no going back to the life we had. Why can’t you see that, Sofia?

“Hey, man. Coach has been looking for you,” Connor, one of the guys in the team, approached. “You okay?”

I brushed past him and went straight to my locker.

“Ben!” another one of the guys hollered as I dialed my combination. “Heard you broke it off with Tanya. You don’t mind if I start hitting on her, do you?”

I grunted in response as I pulled my locker open.

“Whatever. We all know he doesn’t give a hoot about Tanya, dude. I think he’s finally ready to move on to Rose Red. So Hudson…” Jed, one of the biggest guys on the team, leaned against the locker next to mine. “Are you finally going to man up and tap Sofia like you always planned on doing?”

The hollers and crude jokes that began to fill the room rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t know why it all got to me. Jokes about me not going after Sofia were standard fare inside the boys’ locker room. This time, however, it just grated on my nerves.

As if I was not irritated enough already, Jed prattled on. “I hope Rose Red’s worth your wait, Ben, but just one look at her… and you got to believe she’ll make a good lay.”

I began seeing red. I ground my teeth in a failed attempt to maintain self-control, but it was a lost cause. I slammed my locker door shut and faced Jed. “Don’t talk about her that way.” He didn’t see it coming but Jed’s face quickly got a violent introduction to my fist. Connor tried to intervene, so I punched him too.

They came at me and I didn’t care if they were attacking me or simply trying to hold me back. I fought back, fully aware that it wasn’t really the guys on the team I was fighting. Every time I threw a hit, it was at Claudia, at Derek and at every other bloodsucker at The Shade. I was hitting them back for taking everything I held dear away from me.