Callum texts me once the sun gets lower in the sky and lets me know that he’s here. Our house is really tall and I live upstairs, but there’s a big willow tree outside of my window so he should be able to get up here. He’s a vampire, so he won’t get too injured if he falls. 

I open the window and wave to him. 

He looks around and his eyes find the tree. “Seriously?” he asks, turning back to make eye contact with me. 

“My bad, why don’t you just walk through the front door?” I quip sarcastically. 

“I’m really bad at climbing trees!”

I shrug. “I have all night to wait.”

He scowls at me and awkwardly climbs the tree, looking shaky the whole time. “I broke my arm when I was human and fell out of a tree,” he says, staring at his feet and at the thinner branch he needs to cross in order to get to my window. 

“Good thing a fall from here won’t kill a vampire,” I say, holding my hand out. “It’s just two quick steps and I’ll catch you.”

Callum takes a shaky breath and nods. He nearly runs across the tree branch and instead of grabbing my hand, he launches himself into me and knocks us both to the floor. Thankfully it’s not too loud of a crash because I don’t need someone to investigate and find him here, but I still glare at him. 

“I said two quick steps, not a full on sprint,” I say, unable to keep glaring once he smiles at me. “What happened to your dark bad-boy aura from last night?”

He laughs. “I only put that on when I’m trying to intimidate someone and stay in control of situations. I don’t really think I need to do that right now,” he says, sitting down on my bed. 

I open my bag of food. “Are you hungry? It’s really garlicky but I feel bad that I didn’t have anything ordered for you, since, you know, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“I’m okay. Honestly, that’s what I miss about being human,” Callum says, laying on his stomach across my bed. “Eating garlic, I mean. Now it hurts my tongue, but I don’t need to eat actual food with this whole vampire thing.”

“Do you anyway?”

“Sometimes. Just things that I really miss, but even then it doesn’t have the same appeal anymore, you know? I made the shift from food type to blood type.”

I open my food and start eating. I have extremely high metabolism and I get hungry several times each day; almost all of the food in the fridge here is for me and there’s a lot of it. Every time I glance over at Callum, he smiles at me and then goes back to looking through my shelves. 

There’s a lot of pictures on the shelves on my walls. Family portraits are there but it’s mainly pictures of me and Ramsay, from when we were kids to recent pictures of when we were doing stupid things together as young adults. Ramsay is my best friend… he’s really my only friend.

“You’re close with your family?” he asks me, lifting up one of the fancy family portraits Dad made us take. 

I nod, putting down my fork. “Yeah, especially with Ramsay since we’re so close in age and because we were homeschooled. Joseph and I are close, too, but he has more responsibilities so we’re not as close as when we were younger.”

“And your sister?”

“Not as close. She was eight when I was adopted and she was still grieving the loss of her mom so she didn’t try to connect with me. We’re on good terms, but we tend to avoid each other.” 

Callum hums and puts the picture back. He continues to look around my room at the countless books and lifts them up, a small smile on his face the whole time. He seems to be trying to learn about me by investigating what I have in my room, which is interesting to watch him do.

I stay seated on my chair, eating the rest of my food in silence while I observe Callum. I have questions that I want to ask about him being turned from human to vampire, but it feels too personal and too quick to ask those questions, so I bite my tongue. 

Callum lays across my bed on his stomach, his hands under his chin. “How’s your birthday been?”

“I haven’t left my room.”

He frowns. “Your family didn’t want to spend time with you?”

“They did. I’m still pissed off, though, so I don’t want to go see them.” I put my garbage in the bag that my food came in and leave it outside of my door so I can take it down tomorrow. “Do you still see your parents? Even with… you know?”

“No.” Callum sighs, rolling onto his back and staring at the ceiling. 

I lay down beside him, resting my head against his shoulder. I’m usually pretty affectionate with my family and I hope Callum is well because I like physical touch. Since he doesn’t move away, I hope he’s okay with it and isn’t just pretending to be. 

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I’m curious.”

Callum turns his head, meeting my eyes. He’s not smiling, but there’s a fondness and tenderness in his eyes that keeps me calm. “I interrogated you enough last night, so it’s only fair that you get to interrogate me.”

“I think I owed you that after puking on you.”

“Yeah… last night was not your night. Sorry I ruined your birthday.”

I shake my head. “I found my mate. That’s better than any gift I could have ever been given or any night at a club.”

Callum’s easy smile makes its way back onto his face. “I can’t feel it as strongly as a werewolf, but I can feel the connection. Anyway, back to my depressing transformation from basic, innocent human boy to vampire because that’s obviously the best thing to talk about right now.”

“We don’t have to!”

“I’m joking, I promise,” Callum says, snickering. “Uh… I was turned three years ago. I was walking home after work and I was attacked by a vampire who seemed to have gone psychotic. He was trying to kill me, not turn me, but my aunt managed to chase him off and took me into her loft in the club where she helped me heal and recover. I call her my aunt because she took me in and has acted like a mentor and she always wanted kids but she isn’t able to. So, we compromised.

“I never went back to see my family because they think I’m dead. Since the blood on the street matched mine and no body was ever found, they assumed I was dead. I was attacked on a bridge by the Willamette river so the idea of me being thrown in isn’t impossible. I don’t feel right going back. I was an only child and both of my parents are only children, so I’m just waiting for them to die now and hoping they don’t see me before then. I spy on them at times but I think after three years they’ve kind of recovered.”

I frown, listening to his somber tone. I turn and look at him, trying to convey as much sympathy as I can in my eyes. I’m not sure what to say; I still have my family. 

“It’s okay, though, I have a new life now,” Callum quickly says. “Don’t look so sad, it’s your birthday!”

“It’s kind of hard after I’ve just dug into your depressing past,” I comment. 

Callum smiles and holds out his hand. “Come on, let’s go sit on the roof.”

“You had a breakdown climbing a tree and you want to climb on the roof?” 

“Well, I got hurt falling out of a tree. Not off of a roof.”

I smile at his comment because he’s pretty funny. It could also be my total obsession with my mate right now, but I don’t think Callum is the kind of person who will let me live that down; I don’t think it would scare him off, but he’d probably laugh a bit. He just seems like that kind of person: light-hearted, funny, and a little bit chaotic. 

We climb the roof and lay on our backs, ignoring the cold. At some point, Callum reaches over and wraps his pinkie around mine. 

I smile to myself but otherwise don’t comment on it.