Don't Lie

I forced the word past the tight lump in my throat. "Kaelen?"

The sound of my voice shattered the heavy air in the kitchen. They broke apart immediately. The dark-haired girl whipped her head toward me. Her cheeks flushed a deep, embarrassed crimson. She scrambled to pull her bunched-up skirt down her thighs, looking like a deer caught in headlights.

Kaelen did not flinch. He did not look embarrassed or caught off guard by my sudden intrusion. He simply turned his head to look at me, his large hands still resting casually on the girl's waist.

I stared into his eyes, desperately searching for the familiar comfort I usually found there. I found nothing. His gaze was devoid of the warm, honey-brown affection he always reserved for me. His eyes were flat, distant, and icy. The realization hit me like a physical blow. He was still furious about the horrible things I screamed at him last night.

"You can go upstairs first, Tessa. I'll be right there." Kaelen spoke the words smoothly, his voice devoid of any inflection.

Tessa nodded quickly. She slid off the granite counter and hurried past me toward the hallway. She kept her head down, offering only a fleeting, curious glance in my direction. She did not say hello. She did not introduce herself, likely because Kaelen had warned her not to bother. I stood frozen by the swinging door, listening to her footsteps retreat up the wooden stairs.

"Kaelen, who was that?" I asked, trying to mask the irrational, burning sting in my chest with casual curiosity.

"A girl I'm seeing." His tone was infuriatingly nonchalant.

"Really? How come you never brought her over before? Does your dad know?"

"I didn’t want to." He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against the counter where Tessa had just been sitting.

"Kaelen…" I trailed off, frustrated by his short, dismissive answers.

"I don’t understand why you're suddenly so curious, Brynlee."

He used my full name. A spark of genuine irritation ignited in my veins. He knew I hated that name. He was doing this on purpose, pushing my buttons, trying to provoke a reaction to punish me for yesterday. I rolled my eyes and marched across the tiled floor, stopping a few feet in front of him. I glared at the messy counter, making a mental note to scrub it down before anyone else tried to prepare food on it.

"You were making out in our kitchen, Kaelen. At least that deserves some kind of explanation, right?" I crossed my arms to match his stance, demanding his attention.

"It’s my kitchen. I don’t owe you an explanation for what I choose to do in it." He narrowed his eyes, his jaw clenching with barely restrained annoyance.

He pushed off the counter and stepped toward me, intending to coldly brush past me and follow Tessa upstairs. He did not use much force, but his body was dense and unyielding. The casual bump of his shoulder against mine sent me stumbling backward. I caught my balance, a mix of indignation and sheer desperation flooding my system. I spun around and lunged after him.

"Kaelen!" I grabbed his hand, wrapping my fingers tightly around his cold, hard wrist.

My grip was useless. If he wanted to keep walking, his supernatural strength would have dragged me along the floor without a second thought. But he stopped. He stood perfectly still in the middle of the kitchen, his broad back to me.

"You're mad at me, right? About what I said? I didn’t mean it. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I was too emotional and—" I poured the words out in a frantic, desperate rush, hoping an apology would fix the massive rift between us.

"I can sense a lie, Brynn. I’m not stupid." He ripped his hand out of my grasp and whirled around to face me.

The air in the room dropped ten degrees. I gasped, stumbling another step back. His eyes were no longer brown. A dangerous, predatory, hungry red glow illuminated his irises. I had only seen that terrifying hue once before, on a day when he had gone too long without feeding. The memory was hazy, buried under layers of deep denial, but the visceral panic it caused was fresh and immediate. He looked like a starving animal ready to strike.

He took a slow, deliberate step toward me. A low, vibrating growl rumbled in the back of his throat.

"We've been living together for how long now? Our parents are married, Brynn. Do you think I’m capable of hurting you?" He stalked forward, forcing me to retreat until my spine hit the hard edge of the refrigerator.

"No, no, of course not…" I stammered, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

"That’s one more lie. Why can't you be truthful for once in your life? Are you afraid I’ll kill you?" He planted his hands on the metal appliance on either side of my head, trapping me in place.

"Kaelen…" I choked on his name, too paralyzed by the raw terror rolling off him to form a coherent thought.

"Answer me, damn it!" His furious shout echoed off the kitchen tiles, ringing sharply in my ears.

"Then yes!" I screamed, the ugly truth tearing out of my throat before I could lock it away. "I’m not just afraid of you—I’m afraid of all supernaturals. But you can’t blame me, can you? I didn’t even know any of you existed five years ago, and suddenly my mom decides to marry a freaking vampire!"

Silence crashed down over the kitchen. My chest heaved with ragged, shallow breaths. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the worst. I expected him to yell back. I expected him to bare his fangs. I expected the terrifying monster I had just accused him of being to finally show its true face and rip my throat out.

Nothing happened.

I cracked one eye open. Kaelen’s furious, red-eyed expression had vanished, replaced by an unsettling, eerie blankness. The aggressive, predatory tension drained from his broad shoulders. He slowly lowered his arms from the refrigerator, backing away to give me space. I pressed myself flat against the door, staring down at my bare feet, terrified to look at his face.

Cold, gentle fingers brushed against my skin. He reached out and tipped my chin upward, forcing me to lift my head.

His gaze was not focused on my eyes. He stared at an empty spot in the air just over my left shoulder. The terrifying crimson glow was gone. His eyes had slowly faded back to their familiar, warm honey-brown. The stark contrast between his previous rage and this sudden, quiet melancholy gave me whiplash.

"You know, Brynn, I knew you even before our parents got married. Before vampires or any other supernatural beings were anything more than made-up fantasy." His voice was a soft, hollow murmur.

"You did?" Pure disbelief washed over my initial terror.

My mind raced, flipping through every childhood memory, every face I had ever seen at school or in my neighborhood. I had an excellent memory. I would not have forgotten someone like Kaelen. His striking features and intense, magnetic presence were impossible to erase from a human mind.

"The little girl who feared monsters under her bed, who was terrified of shadows and ghosts from her mother's stories, even though she could actually see them. You were never one to accept things easily, were you, Brynn?" He smiled down at me, though the expression did not reach his eyes.

A cold chill swept down my spine. The breath hitched in my throat. I stood frozen, my mind short-circuiting as he recounted those intimate details.

"I shouldn't have put my hopes up so high." He whispered the words into the quiet room, then turned his back on me.

He walked out of the kitchen. The swinging door swung shut behind him, the soft thud sealing me inside my own chaotic thoughts. I gripped the edge of the granite counter to keep my knees from buckling beneath me.

How on earth did he know that? My fear of the monsters hiding under my bed, my terror of the dark shadows dancing on my childhood walls—those were deeply hidden secrets. Only my mom knew about those long, scary nights. Only she knew about the twisted stories she told me and the actual spirits I claimed to see in the dark.

Had my mom told him? No. She would never share something so private, especially not with her new supernatural stepson. She spent her adult life running from those strange memories. She would not casually bring them up in conversation over dinner.

Were vampires psychic? Could they read human minds or extract deeply buried memories just by touching someone's skin?

I desperately needed answers to this revelation. I could not stand here in the dark kitchen and let this terrifying mystery consume me.

I ripped open the refrigerator door, grabbed a cold plastic bottle of water, and sprinted out of the kitchen. I took the stairs two at a time, my bare feet slapping heavily against the wood. I hurried down the long hallway, hyper-aware of the closed door to Kaelen's room. I prayed the thick walls were soundproof. I did not want to hear a single sound coming from there. I did not want to think about what he was doing with Tessa while my world fell apart.

I slipped into my bedroom and threw the heavy deadbolt. The sharp click of the lock provided a tiny measure of security against the unknown.

I walked over to my bed and dropped to my knees on the rug. I pulled open the bottom drawer of my bedside nightstand and shoved aside a pile of old notebooks. My fingers brushed against a thick, heavy spine. I grabbed the massive book and hauled it into my lap.

The brown leather cover was worn and dusty. It was a comprehensive encyclopedia of vampire origins and supernatural lore. Vic had originally gifted this heavy volume to Mom as a moving-in present. He thought it would be a funny, helpful guide for a human woman preparing to live with two vampires under the same roof. He thought she would read it and learn the rules of his hidden world.

Vic did not understand my mother at all. Mom was terrified of the paranormal and anything even slightly religious. She refused to open the book. She refused to acknowledge the darker, magical parts of the world. She shoved it into my hands on moving day and told me to hide it away where she would never have to look at it.

It was ironic, considering how she used to entertain me when I was little. She never read me normal bedtime stories from normal, colorful picture books. She made up horrific stories on the spot. She found it amusing to scare me half to death before turning out the lights and leaving me alone in the dark.

That cruel dynamic shifted permanently the day I decided to return the favor. I casually told her about Toby. Toby was the ghost of a young boy who had died in a tragic car accident on the street right across from our old house. I told her how he wandered aimlessly through the neighbor's living room, still searching for the family that used to live there. I described the muddy clothes he wore and the sad, vacant look on his translucent face.

Mom did not sleep alone for weeks after that revelation. She never told me another horror story. We shared the same deep-rooted terror of the unknown. That was exactly why her sudden engagement to a powerful vampire named Vic had shocked me to my core. She had found a way to conquer her lifelong fear for the sake of love. Even Mom had gotten braver. Why couldn't I?

I dragged the heavy book onto my mattress and climbed up, sitting cross-legged against my pillows. I cracked open the water bottle and took a long sip, trying to wash away the lingering, metallic taste of fear in my mouth.

I let out a deep, shaky sigh and turned my head to look out my bedroom window.

The gloomy mansion across the street loomed in the distance. The architecture was similar to ours, all sharp angles and imposing stone. The distance was far, but my eyesight had always been exceptionally sharp.

A shadowy figure stood quietly behind the sheer curtains of the second-floor window.

The figure raised a pale hand and offered me a small, familiar wave.

The lingering tension in my chest eased just a fraction. I raised my hand and waved back, a warm smile touching my lips. Toby was nice. He was quiet, tragic, and harmless. I never felt a single shred of fear when I looked at him.

I dropped my hand and stared at the empty space in my own room. I sat on my bed and wondered if Kaelen was harmless too. Could he be just like Toby? Or was he the terrifying predator I accused him of being downstairs?

A sudden thought struck me, making my pulse jump erratically against my throat. Could vampires see ghosts as well? Was that exactly how Kaelen knew I could see them? If he could see Toby, maybe he had watched me waving at empty windows for years. Maybe that was the logical source of his mysterious knowledge, not some invasive psychic power.

I shook my head forcefully, trying to clear the chaotic, spiraling thoughts from my tired brain. Guessing would not get me anywhere. I needed concrete facts.

I turned my intense gaze back to the heavy leather book resting in my hand. I ran my fingers over the embossed title, feeling the rough texture of the old cover. I flipped past the blank title pages, opened it to the very first page, and began reading.