“Everything will be okay, love,” Mae promised with a sad smile, but Milo didn’t even notice. After his initial screaming, he’d gone catatonic.

Milo needed to be someplace where he couldn’t hear everything, and he needed to get cleaned up. So I took him into the main bathroom downstairs, and I turned on the sink to drown out all the other sounds. Putting the lid down on the toilet seat, I forced Milo to sit down. I got a washcloth wet to start wiping off his chest and mouth.

“Did I really kill him, Alice?” Milo asked, staring off into nothing.

“They’re working on him.” I evaded answering him. “They saved my life like that before, too. Ezra is really good at giving blood transfusions, apparently.”

“I didn’t even…” He trailed off, and I stopped wiping at his chest to look at him. “We were fooling around, the same way we had been, and then… I bit him. And I didn’t even realize how much…. I didn’t know his heart stopped.”

“You didn’t mean to.” That was the best I could come up with.

“The thing is…” Milo became more animated, and his tears got heavier and louder. “I know that he isn’t ‘the one’ or whatever, not like what Peter was to you. But I love him, you know? I really do love him.”

“I know, sweetie. It’s gonna be okay.” I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him.

He was sobbing by then, and I just kept telling him it would be okay. I had no idea if that was the truth, but that was the only thing I could say.

We stayed down in the bathroom for what felt like forever. I folded up towels and laid them on the floor, and I sat down with my back up against the tub. Milo lay down next to me and rested his head on my lap. All I could do was brush his hair back with my fingers, and eventually, he even stopped crying.

When Jack opened the bathroom door, Milo jumped to his feet. I was too scared to move, as if me standing up would have an impact on whether Bobby lived or died.

“He’s alive,” Jack said, but he wasn’t smiling. Milo almost fainted in relief, and he grasped onto the counter to keep from falling. I got up to catch him if he needed it. “But he lost a lot of blood. He’s not exactly stable yet.”

“Can I see him?” Milo asked and wiped at his eyes.

“Yeah, Ezra’s up there, and he’ll probably wanna talk to you too.” Jack touched Milo’s shoulder in an attempt to comfort him, but Milo just sniffled and hurried past him.

“So… how is Bobby?” I walked over to Jack.

“Not good,” he said grimly. “He really almost didn’t make it. I mean, Milo drained that kid dry. It was bad.” Then he forced a smile at me. “But his heart’s beating, and that’s something.”

He wrapped his arms around me, and I buried my face in his chest, surprised to find myself crying. Milo would never hurt anyone, and he really loved Bobby. It was terrifying to think that Bobby might die, and it’d be because they were in love and careless.

It scared me even more when I thought about my relationship with Jack, and how I almost lost control with Peter. Milo was way more in control of himself than me, and he nearly killed Bobby.

What would I do to Jack? Even with him being a vampire, I could find myself in the same situation, and that was too much.

Worse still, Jane was still out there, doing that kind of thing all the time with strangers. Most of the vampires she picked up were probably more experienced than Milo and me, but maybe they weren’t. She had no way of knowing. And either way, they were still draining her of her blood, over and over again.

Accidentally or on purpose, the odds of her dying were getting exponentially higher ever day that passed. I couldn’t let her do it anymore. As soon as things were settled with Milo and Bobby, I was taking Milo to the club, and we were taking her away. I don’t care if we had to kidnap her; I wasn’t going to just let her die.

The house was incredibly subdued. Mae didn’t tend to Bobby. Immediately after he was stable, she returned to her room. Ezra stationed himself in Milo’s room to monitor Bobby, but Jack later confided in me that Ezra had been crashing in the den with him the last few nights. Mae has all but kicked him out of their room.

Milo didn’t feel right being around Bobby, and he was positive that Bobby would hate him when he woke up. I couldn’t convince him otherwise, but he wanted to bunk with me, and really, I didn’t mind.

Milo cried in his sleep, but I didn’t say anything. After what he’d been through, I didn’t blame him. I don’t know what I would do if I did anything to Jack, and then I pushed the thought from my mind.

I would never do anything to him, even if that meant I had to wait months and years to do things with him. Or maybe never do anything with him. I wasn’t going to hurt him, not like that.

Not like that. I had to amend everything with that now, because I was clearly okay with hurting him other ways, as seen by me making out with Peter.

That situation didn’t want to resolve itself quite so easily either. When I got up in the morning, I bumped into Peter in the hall. There was this awkward exchange where neither of us knew what to say and just kind of stared at each other.

It was almost a full day after the transfusion that Bobby started to really come around. He’d had some hazy conversations before that, but he hadn’t been lucid. Milo was too afraid to go in and talk to him, even after Bobby had started asking for him.

I even went in to talk to him, and Bobby repeatedly assured me that he didn’t blame Milo for what happened, and he still loved him. He was pale and tired, but otherwise, he seemed okay.

Milo’s plan was to hide away from Bobby, so he went down into Mae’s room with her. Mae was abnormally useless in the situation. Jack and I ended up getting Bobby food and clothes and doing all the maternal/nurse things that Mae usually did, leaving him to survive entirely on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Campbell’s soup.

He mostly slept at first, so I let it slide, but I wasn’t going to let Milo just hide while I took care of his boyfriend. I gave Milo another night to sleep on it, but the next day I would make him see Bobby.

When I went to fetch Milo from Mae’s room, I brought along Jack with me. Milo was still pretty fond of Jack, and I thought he might listen to him, even if he wouldn’t listen to me. Stupidly, I thought Mae would encourage Milo to get up and deal with Bobby, but that wasn’t how new sulky Mae rolled. They were curled up in the dark, listening to Norah Jones.