We walk hand in hand through the halls and down the three flights of stairs to the front door. Almost everyone else is in the last class of the day—Jaxon should be, too, but he’s ditching—so the common areas are nearly deserted. Which works for me. I’m still not ready to face most of them after everything that has happened.

“Are you okay?” Jaxon asks as we head out into the cold—and down even more steps. Which is great. I mean, it’s not like every muscle in my body aches or anything…

Still, I nod, both because I don’t want him to know that I’m hurting and because the biting cold kind of takes me by surprise. Which sounds ridiculous—this is Alaska; I know exactly how cold it is outside. But it’s still a shock to my system every single time.

I must not be hiding it as well as I’d hoped, because Jaxon takes one look at my face and says, “We could go back in.”

“No. I want to do something with you. Just the two of us.”

His eyes widen at my words, and the guarded look in his eyes drops away. For a second, just a second, I get to see the real Jaxon—a little awkward, a little vulnerable, a lot in love with me—and it takes my breath away all over again. Because I feel all of that and so much more around him.

“Then let’s go.”

We set out in the opposite direction that I went on my walk around the grounds that first day. Instead of going by the classroom cottages, we head across the pristine snow to the forest that takes up a lot of the school grounds.

We walk slowly, partly because the cold isn’t that bad once I start moving and partly because walking in snow really isn’t easy, especially when you were beaten half to death less than a week before. Eventually, though, we get to a little clearing in the forest. It’s not very big—maybe the size of my and Macy’s dorm room—but there are a couple of benches to the side.

Jaxon drops his backpack on one and pulls out a tall black thermos. He takes off the cup at the top, then opens it and pours something into the cup. Then he hands it to me with a grin.

“Hot chocolate?” I exclaim, delighted.

“Yeah, well, I figure you might want to lay off tea for a while.”

I laugh. “You make a good point.” I start to take a sip, but Jaxon stops me. Then he reaches into his backpack and pulls out a small bag of marshmallows.

“I don’t know much about drinking hot cocoa, but I do know that it usually needs marshmallows.” He pulls out a few of the small, homemade-looking squares and scatters them in my cup.

And I swear my heart nearly bursts, right here in the middle of a bunch of trees, as darkness slowly descends around us. Because even after everything we’ve been through, I’m still blown away by how Jaxon always thinks about me. About what I might like or what makes me feel good or what would make me happy. And he’s always, always right.

I take a big sip of the cocoa and am not surprised at all that it’s the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had. “So who did you talk into making this for you?” I ask, eyeing him over the rim of my cup.

He gives me a blank look. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” But there’s a shadow of amusement in the depths of his eyes that belies his words and makes me laugh.

“Well, whoever it is, please tell them it’s really good.”

He smirks a little. “I’ll do that.”

I take another sip, then hold the cup out to him. “Want some?”

“Thanks, but it’s not really my thing.” Now he’s full-on grinning.

“Oh, right.” Which makes a million of the questions I’ve been accumulating for days rush back into my head. “How does that work, anyway?”

He lifts a brow. “How does what work?”

“I saw you drink tea, but you don’t drink cocoa. You ate a strawberry during the party, but I’ve never seen you eat anything else. Except…” I trail off, blushing.

“Except your blood?” he asks archly.

“Well, yeah.”

“Vampires drink water just like every other mammal on the planet, and tea is basically hot water. You start adding in milk and chocolate and it’s a different story.”

“Oh. Yeah.” That makes sense. “And the strawberry?”

“Yeah, that was totally for show. My stomach hurt for the rest of the night.” It’s his turn to look embarrassed.

“Really? So why’d you do it?”

“Honestly?” He shakes his head, looks away. “I have no idea.”

It’s not the answer I was expecting, but looking at him, it’s obvious that he’s telling the truth. So I let it go. And instead say, “One more question.”

“The blood thing?” He looks both wary and amused.

“Of course the blood thing! And the going outside when it’s light thing. I thought vampires could only be outside when it’s dark.”

He looks uncomfortable for a minute, but then he squares his shoulders and says, “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On what kind of blood they drink. Here at the school, Foster serves animal blood. If we drink only that, we can be outside in the sunlight. If we choose to…supplement with human blood, however, then we have to wait until it’s dark.”

I think about his comment in my room, about how we could go out, since civil twilight had started. “So when I got here, I saw you outside because you were only drinking animal blood. But now—” I blush, and it’s my turn to shift my face away. Not because I’m necessarily embarrassed by what Jaxon and I do but because it feels so intimate to talk about the fact that he—

“You mean, now that I’ve been drinking your blood on the regular?”

And the blush gets even worse. “Yeah.”

“Yes. I drank from you. And Cole. And then you again in the tunnels. So, no light for me.”

“For how long?” I ask, because it’s been days since the tunnels, and he definitely hasn’t drank from me since—even though I’ve kind of wanted him to. But apparently me nearly dying of blood loss has him less than eager to sink his fangs into my neck any time soon.

“Until the hormonal spike that comes from metabolizing human blood wears off.” When I look mystified, he continues. “It’s like humans and insulin. When you eat high-carb foods, your insulin spikes and takes time to come down. When I drink human blood, my body secretes a hormone that makes it impossible for me to be in the sun. It takes about a week for all traces of that hormone to disappear. Animal blood doesn’t trigger the same hormone.”