Saved By Blood (The By Blood Vampire Series Book 3) by Samantha Snow Page A

give him pause.
     
    It broke down his walls just enough for him to listen without being his usual asshole self.  Had it not been for their collective fatigue and the fact that this was not a topic he had any wish to discuss, he would have been pleased by this. 
     
    It was a development.  Even after a century the two of them were able to change to fit each other.  Who knew a thing like that was possible?
     
    “Yes, Philip, I suppose they are.  I suppose they’re both about life decisions at their most basic level.  But they still aren’t the same.  They aren’t .  Don’t you see that?  Can’t you try?”
     
    “I’ll try and listen.  That’s all I can promise you for now, Caroline.  It’s going to have to be enough.”
     
    She nodded, put out a butt in that first sullied glass.  Lit another clove, sucked in a deep breath of it and then watched it snake through the air with a look of mild surprise that would almost have convinced a person that she wasn’t the source of that smoke to begin with.  She looked so sad in that moment that part of Philip, a tiny part buried so deep down inside of him that he hadn’t realized it was still there, ached for her.
     
    Looking at her that way, she seemed to him no more than a little girl.  He saw that and resolved that he would, he really would, try to see things from her perspective.  If it meant enough for her to allow herself to look vulnerable, even for a moment, it was deserving of his effort, at the very least.  She looked away from the smoke then, inhaled deeply again and looked him dead in the eye.
     
    “It will be enough.  For now.”
     
    “Well then, you better start talking.  You’ve come an awfully long way to have this conversation.”
     
    “It’s part of who we are, Philip!  This order that seems so easy for you to cast aside and walk away from is part of who we are.”
     
    “And what does that mean?  Part of which part of who we are?  We’re built up of so many pieces that I can’t keep track.”
     
    This was the same song and dance they had gone through over and over and over again until both of them wanted to scream and swear each other off for good and yet here it was again, ready to begin anew.  He felt himself prickle and reminded himself, tried to remind himself, of the promise he had just made.
     
    He could see her struggling with the same thing and she was up again, pacing around the room and looking at all of the same things she had just gone over five minutes ago.  He waited to see if she would sit back down this time and when she didn’t, he realized just how badly he had agitated her.
     
    “You’re right.  We’re fractured and sometimes it’s hard.  Get over it.  You hear me, Brother?  Get over it.  You’ve spent enough of this life acting like a child, moping around, wasting time.  It’s old, do you hear me?  It’s been old for a long time.”
     
    Philip opened his mouth, allowed it to hang that way for a beat or two so that he looked a hell of a lot like a suffocating fish out of water, and then shut it again promptly.  He wanted to tell her that if she didn’t like the way he operated she could get the hell out of his house and not come back again.
     
    That’s what he wanted to do, and it probably would have felt beyond good.  But he stayed quiet.  Why?  Why did he stay quiet when any other day he would have ripped into her with glee?  Because some little part of him knew that she was right.  Shit, what she was talking about might even be part of why he felt the kind of fractured he was always complaining about.
     
    There was Irish in his blood, or at least there had been before he went, and it had a funny way of showing up in a stubborn streak a mile long.  It gave him his fight and had kept him going in times when stopping would have been a hell of a lot easier, but it also made it easy for him to hang onto things that would be better let go.
     
    And what would be the harm , he