The Vampire Prince goes to High School (Book 1)

Fissure

A sudden calm washed over me. Even as the Prince waved around the crumbled paper, I felt nothing. Was this how true fear felt like?

"What are you talking about?" I heard myself ask.

The Prince smirked. "Don't play coy with me." He waved the paper again. "Your little friend threw this away."

"So, you're digging through trash now? Isn't that a little weird even for you?"

Not once did the Prince's smirk faltered. "This has your scent."

"You're being creepy again."

The Prince sauntered over. "This is what you were hiding. Tell me. Who is this M?" He came to a stop in front of me.

"Are you going to threaten me again?" I whispered.

This time the Prince flinched. All the playfulness on his face vanished. "I thought I had earned your trust," he answered quietly.

I almost choked on my saliva. Looking at him, I could tell that he was being serious. How could he honestly think that I could ever trust him? He wasn't different from the first night I met him. He hadn't changed. All he had done was twist around his words.

"You should be worried about yourself. I'm sure the mafia isn't patient." I shook my head. "Stop acting like you care. Just act like the obnoxious vampire you've always been."

I walked past him. Why was he trying so hard? My mind flashed back to last night and my cheeks warmed again. He was confusing everyone, including himself.

"What if I don't want to be that anymore?"

At first, I thought I heard wrong but, when I looked at him, he was being serious. I knew that he acted the way he did to protect his father - although that was never really confirmed and it could be just a ploy to make me let my guard down. Yet, staring at him now, that train of thought faltered. He had stayed with me and rescued me when the mob had kidnapped me but that didn't matter.

"You have to be," I told him.

His face twisted with hurt and confusion. Then he became expressionless.

"You can't act like you care," I continued, "people will use that against you. If that happens, you can no longer protect your father and keep him on the throne. You have to act like you don't care about the consequences."

I shrugged.

"We've talked about this enough. There's nothing keeping you here. Just go back to the way your life was before. If you want, I will pledge my undying loyalty to you." I showed him the inside of my arm. "I will personally donate blood to you. Just, just stop. Okay?"

It was then that I finally noticed my raging heart. I had trouble breathing and even my vision blurred. Why did it feel like I had just stabbed myself?

He stared at me for a while as if he was having a hard to process what I had said. As he did, my heart raged. I swiped my hands on my jeans. It was the only thing I could have said to him.

We weren't friends and this had to stop. Everything he had done until now wasn't real. He was an actor. I had just justified his actions by creating a sympathetic story. But it had to stop. Whatever this was between us couldn't be.

"No," he finally said.

Whatever I had expected for him to say, it wasn't this. Alexander shook his head.

"Good try," he continued, "but that's not going to work on me. I know what you're trying to do and it's not going to work."

I swallowed thickly. For whatever reason, I kept staring at the paper in his hands. Why hadn't I just ripped it apart and burned it? Why couldn't have just done that?

"It's okay if you don't tell me who wrote it, but it's not okay to pretend that it doesn't mean anything. That it doesn't hurt you."

"You don't know anything -"

"I know more that you know," he said, interrupting. "I know that you have nightmares and you cry. You yell for someone to help. You yell at someone to stop but they don't, do they? They continued to hurt you."

I looked away from him. My vision blurred. I was not going to cry in front of me. I wasn't going to cry at all. 

"I know that you don't trust me at all. That's okay." He shrugged. "I wouldn't trust myself either. I know what I've done. I won't deny that but let me help you."

"How can you help me?" I croaked. 

He paused for a moment. "I don't know," he finally replied. "I don't know and it's frustrating."

My chin trembled. "You shouldn't care."

"Well, for better and worse, I do."

I shook my head. "You could be pretending."

I heard him sigh. "I know," he said, quietly. "But I'm not."

Neither of them spoke. When I looked at him again, he was much closer. I took a step back at the proximity. His eyes saddened. Tentatively, his fingers brushed my eyelids.

"I won't pressure you," he said quietly. "I shouldn't have pushed you, but I didn't know how else to ask. I haven't exactly had practice."

I couldn't help but smile. Before I could stop him, his lips brushed the tip of my nose. Surprised, I moved back. 

"Wh-what are you doing?" I stammered out, "stop."

My cheeks burned. 

"You don't like it?" he asked.

I couldn't come up with an answer. His gaze dropped down to the paper in his hand. I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

"I don't care who wrote this," he told me, "I can assure you that whoever this M is, won't hurt you. I won't allow it. M doesn't understand that you're mine."

"You need to worry about the mafia," I sighed. There he went again, saying ridiculous things. 

"I can worry about you and them," he said. He took my hands in his. "We're going to get through this okay?"

I couldn't tell if Alexander was serious or not. I could no longer tell with him. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing but I wasn't sure if it was a good thing either. Could I really trust him? He had changed . . . a bit, but I couldn't base it off of that. A part of me still thought this was all an act. I just didn't know what to think anymore. 

Somewhere in the distance, the bell rang. Alexander suddenly released my hands and stepped back. The letter had disappeared. Almost as if on cue, the Tutor walked in. 

"I hope you're more focused this time," the Tutor commented.

"Y-yeah," I stammered out, "I will be."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Prince smirk. Ah, so that's how it was going to be.