Covet (Clann)

again.
    “You know, I’m kind of surprised you decided to stay friends with me after I told you about my family’s secrets.”
    “That’s different and you know it. I’m not dating you. And you and I have been best friends for years. Ron is just some guy I dated for a few months.”
    She was so full of crap. “You’re reaching.”
    “What?”
    “You heard me. You’re reaching for excuses. You know good and well that you never should have broken up with him. But you can’t admit it because then you’d be admitting you were wrong.”
    “I was not wrong! Ron was pushing too hard too fast. What did he expect me to do with that kind of info? And that, by the way, was before my best friend told me vampires and witches actually exist, too. By the time you dropped your little bombshell on me, I’d had months to get used to the crazy crap that’s out there.”
    I would not get offended by that. She was panicking at the truth right before her face, and she was lashing out like a cornered animal.
    But it was time for her to wake up and see reality, whether she thought she was ready for it or not. Losing Nanna and Tristan had taught me life could be incredibly short and love could end at the drop of a hat. She needed to figure that out, too.
    “You’re scared.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You’re running scared. You realized you love Ron. You could have handled a one-sided love, but then he showed just how much he loved you back by telling you all this. So you ran away.”
    “I’m not scared,” she hissed. At the next intersection, she ignored the yellow light and plowed through without slowing down. “I go hog hunting all the time. Some of those boars are six hundred pounds! Scared little girls don’t go hunting animals five times their size.”
    “So what? Maybe you’re not scared to go hunting. But you’re definitely scared of love. And do not run that red light.”
    She screeched on the brakes, the front tires stopping inches from entering the crosswalk area.
    “That’s ridiculous! I love my parents, my aunts and uncles, even my pain in the butt cousins—”
    “Not the same thing and you know it.”
    Silence filled the cab as we waited for the light to change. When it did, she turned left without using a blinker, and I sent up a prayer of thanks that there wasn’t any oncoming traffic.
    She stomped on the gas as we passed the Tomato Bowl, and we hit the railroad tracks fast enough to get an inch or two of air between our butts and the seat before the curve in my street forced her to slow down. The tires squealed as she slammed on the brakes at the curb before my house, rocking both of us forward then back. I sighed in relief as she shoved the gearshift into Park then killed the engine.
    The silence grew, the ticking of the cooling engine the only sound inside the cab. I could have gotten out, let her run away from the conversation. But I refused. Not this time. She needed to see what she was doing to herself and Ron.
    “You know, I’m not the only one who’s scared around here,” she muttered. “What about you and Tristan?”
    “What about him?”
    “You come up with all these reasons why the two of you can’t be together. But let’s face it. If you really wanted to still be with him, you’d make it happen and to heck with the consequences. Just like when you first decided to start dating him.”
    “That was a dumb decision I made last year. I had no idea my grandma would pay for it. Once the consequences of what we were doing became clear…”
    “That’s a load of crap and you know it. You decided to break up with him hours before your grandma died. Remember? You said you promised the vamp council that you would break things off with him back in France .”
    “Because I found out my kisses were killing him!” Okay, now she was going too far. I tried to twist sideways to face her head on. The seat belt bit into me. Growling, I wrestled with the buckle till it finally snapped free. “So, what, I should just not even care if I accidentally kill him? To heck with risking his life, as long as I’m happy?”
    She hesitated, and I heard her think, Well, no, but… “You could find a way. What about turning him?”
    She sounded like Tristan. This was an old argument I shouldn’t have to rehash with my so-called best friend. “I can’t. For one thing, I’m not even a full vamp. And even if my vamp genes were strong enough to take hold, he’d still die from the process. Every