Love Is The Beginning (Valerie Dearborn) Read Online Free PDF Page A

up. Jack looked around for somewhere to be sick
and took a few deep breaths, hoping to keep the nausea at bay. 
    His thoughts were interrupted as someone came and led Jack
out of the room where his father and Ella had died, taking him to the apartment
at the back of the hotel that he'd grown up in. Someone put him on a couch, and
it could have been someone else who brought him food—he didn't care enough to
see who these people were. Why were they trying to feed him? He'd just watched
people be butchered—the last thing he wanted was food.
    Jack looked to the door repeatedly, fantasizing that his
parents would walk in. Grief smothering him, he got up and went to their
bedroom. The bed was covered with pillows and the quilt his grandmother had
made. He lay down and thought of them, waiting for sleep to claim him.
    When he awoke, it was the middle of the night. He went to
the living room where one of his mother's friends was asleep on the couch. Out
of morbid curiosity, he left the apartment and went upstairs. All the lights
were on, and he could hear someone in one of the rooms opening drawers.  He
walked towards the sound, uncaring about the danger. What did it matter if one
of them was back?  He deserved to be dead after what he’d done to his parents.
    Nate’s daughter, the girl with the gun and sad eyes, was
back, staring into a wardrobe laden with clothes.
    “It's you,” he said. Surprisingly, more words came to him,
so he kept talking, his grief making his tongue feel thick in his mouth. “How
is your father?”
    The girl turned and looked at him over her shoulder. Her
gaze wandering over him in a rather distant way, like he was a statue instead
of a person. “He's all right. He's going to live.” She looked down, the words
quiet, as though she felt so sad that her father was alive when his were gone
that she couldn't meet his gaze. She looked back at him earnestly.
    “I’m Val. I want to tell you...I'm really sorry about your
parents. My mom was killed by a vampire too. When I was five.”
    Maybe it was because he didn't know her, so it didn't matter
what he said, but he found himself confessing, “It's my fault. Your father told
me to stay away, and I sent them upstairs.”
    She'd been holding a red sequined cocktail dress in her
hands, but she threw it aside and strode over to him, her face angry. “No, it's
not your fault. You can't do that to yourself. It was Marion who killed
them.”
    She was an idiot.
    “You don't understand,” he said. “I made a stupid decision.
If I had done nothing , they'd still be alive.”
    “How old are you?” Her dark brown eyes were looking him
over, trying to guess.
    “Thirteen.”
    She sighed heavily, her shoulders slumping in resignation.
“Well, if I had been smarter maybe my mother would be alive too. I froze like a
moron, just waiting to be next. Like the worst freebie line ever.” She lifted
her chin and turned away, walking back to the closet. She started rummaging
through pockets.
    “You were five! You couldn't do anything to protect her at
five!” His voice was loud and indignant.
    Val turned back and looked at him, her eyes slitted like a
cat. Scheming eyes, he thought. “Why couldn't I have protected her?”
    “You were not strong enough or old enough, experienced
enough—”
    “Oh puh-lease.” She gestured at him, as though at a loss for
words. “You're Italian for crying out loud! What the heck were you gonna
do?”
    “What does that have to do with anything?”
    She spoke slowly, carefully, so that he would understand.
“You had a happy family. Muy bueno, you know? Bad things didn't happen to you.
What were you going to do, wander around with a stake just in case monsters
were real?”
    He was done with this conversation. “Why are you here?”
    She turned away from him, her head disappearing into the
closet to get a better look. Her hair was a rich dark brown, heavy and fairly
straight. She wore it in a ponytail, and she looked like