"Not the point," he muttered, dropping his face into his hands.

"No? What is the point?" She sat up, trailed her fingers over his shoulder. When he looked back at her, she smiled. "What's the point? Both of us are miserable. I saw that on you even before I realized what you were. Neither of us are going to get to have what we want in life."

Startled, he shoved up off the bed and grabbed his jeans. "What in the hell are you talking about?" he demanded.

A humorless smile curled her lips. "You know what I'm talking about." She slid from the bed in a smooth, sinuous motion. She moved across the floor in a glide of silken skin and sleek muscles, bending down to grab a T-shirt from the floor. She tugged it on, the hem falling down to cover her delicate curves.

Kel felt a little better as the simple white cotton hid those curves and the faint traces of blood, lingering reminders of what they'd done to each other. Reminders he really didn 't need. His gut was already a nasty mess, from guilt and from the overpowering urge to grab her, push her down to the floor and start it all over again.

Tearing his eyes from her body, he watched as she shoved a hand through her short, spiky hair. "Broken souls recognize each other, Kel. I look at you and I see a man with a huge, gaping hole inside him. Not many things leave that kind of hole. That kind of hole is caused by loss. Losing the one you love, losing your family. " She slid him a look over her shoulder. "Which one did you lose?"

He didn't answer her. Not even when she approached him, staring into his eyes and she reached out touched the gold chain he never took off. Not for Hunting. Not for fighting. Not for anything. It was a simple rope chain and it had a gold ring on it. The diamond on it wasn't much, although that wouldn't have mattered to Angel. He'd bought it the weekend before it happened. It was why he'd been busting his ass working those extra hours, hours he could have spent with her.

The ring was a mocking reminder that it had all been for nothing and now he had the rest of his life to think about everything he'd missed. Phoebe slipped a finger under the chain and lifted it, staring at the ring. "Who did you lose?" she asked again, her voice soft, but determined nonetheless.

Protectively, he reached out and took the ring away, closing his hand around it. His voice was rusty as he replied, "Everything.

Everybody." A hollow ache settled in his throat. "My mom died two years after...after this. I never got to tell her goodbye, couldn't go to her funeral. But-"

He broke off, shaking his head.

Phoebe watched him with knowing eyes. "Losing your folks didn't put that pain in your eyes."

"No. It was a woman-the woman. Losing her is what..." He trailed off, unsure what to say. Yeah, he missed his dad, and wished a million times he could have had a chance to tell his mom goodbye, that he loved her.

His dad was alone now. It had been twelve years since he'd seen the kind, gentle man who had raised him, helped make him become the halfway decent guy he'd been before he'd been Changed. Kel had thought about going to see his dad... Not visit, but just to look at him without letting the old man know he was there. Visit his mother's grave.

Just once. To say goodbye.

But their absence, missing his mother 's funeral, or knowing his dad was alone, none of that was responsible for killing something inside him. It was Angel.

"She's the one who put that hole inside you," Phoebe finished for him.

"Yeah." And she was the reason he wouldn't let himself go back home. There was no way he could look at her from a distance. If he was close enough to see her, he'd have to touch her, have to hold...have to make love to her.

Vampires couldn't have sex without feeling the urge to feed and he wouldn 't do it. Wouldn't risk it. Not with Angel. He wouldn't damn another person to this life, least of all her. Since he couldn't trust himself, he wouldn't risk it.

A hole... Yeah. That pretty much summed it up. Kel had a huge, gaping hole in his useless heart, a place Angel had filled inside him.

"Hmmm. I get that." Phoebe turned away and padded on silent feet across the room, kneeling down in a front of a dark wooden chest. The metal hinges squeaked as she opened it, gently, carefully easing the lid back. Something about the way she handled it told Kel it was important to her. She smoothed a hand along the front of it, touching it with reverence. Reaching inside, she said, "My parents have been gone a long time...a real long time."

Glancing at him, she gave him a forced smile. "Really long. Probably longer than you've even been alive."

Curling his lip, Kel said, "I ain't been alive in more than ten years."

Phoebe shook her head. "You're alive, Kel. You're just different now." She lowered her gaze, staring back into the trunk.

Curious, he edged closer, but she shifted her body, shielding him from seeing inside. She pulled out one thing and eased the lid back down before she stood and turned around. Whatever she'd pulled out was pressed against her middle, shielded from him.

"Not too many of us come into this life happily," Phoebe said, her voice soft, faraway. "And most of us fight it. I know I did."

"Do you hate it?" Kel rasped, his hands opening, closing, the impotent rage inside him fighting to break free.

"Now? Not as much as I did then. Now...now, I guess I just get by. But back when I was first Changed, yeah, I hated it."

Taking a deep breath, she looked down and stared at what she held in her arms. "If I wasn't such a coward, I would have ended it a long time ago."

It was a picture frame, Kel realized, even as his mind processed what she'd just said. Ended it. His brows dropped low over his eyes as he stared at her face. "You mean..."

Phoebe laughed, a sharp, cynical sound that sliced through the air like a knife. "You know damn well what I mean. Can you tell me you haven't ever thought of it? Hard not to think about it, when you've lost everything. When you have nobody."

Abruptly, Kel found himself remembering a night more than fifteen years earlier, when a sharp, harsh pain had jerked him out of his sleep. The night Angel's dad had died, how he'd gone to her, held her until she cried herself to sleep. His dad emerging from the darkness to sit beside him as Angel slept in his arms.

She doesn't have anybody now. He'd said those words to his dad on that long ago night, but he'd been wrong. She hadn't been alone then. She'd had him. And his family.

Hopefully, she still had his dad. Kel sure as hell didn't. In an unconscious echo of her words, he murmured, "Yeah, I get that."

She sighed. In that moment, she looked so sad, so desolate. The thick black eyeliner smudged around her eyes, her tousled black hair, even the T-shirt hanging from her shoulders added to the air of lonely grief. "They've been gone from me now for more than fifty years. It still hurts."

"Yeah. It does." Fifty years? Kel reached out and gently tugged on the picture frame, unsure if she'd let him see it or not.

But she let go easily, averting her face as he studied the grainy black and white family portrait.

It was Phoebe in the portrait. She was easy enough to recognize even without the short, gamine haircut and the Goth -girl makeup. In the picture, she had one of those beehive-looking hairstyles and a dress that would have done June Cleaver proud. The man at her side wore a suit and tie, resting his hand on her shoulder and giving the cameraman a stiff smile.

And sitting on Phoebe's lap was a little kid. A boy with his mother's dark hair and his dad's eyes. Kel's already battered heart ached with sympathy. "Both of them." He lifted his eyes to stare at her. Without realizing it, he reached up and closed his fist around the engagement ring he'd never been able to give to Angel.

Phoebe stood with her back to him, staring out a narrow window and swaying back and forth in a slow, unconscious manner.

"Yes. Tommy wanted to take our son fishing. They'd left when he got home from work on Friday and they were going to camp out in a tent and spend all day Saturday on the lake. Saturday night came, and they never showed up. I got scared and worried. The lake where they'd gone fishing was a few miles away so I went to a friend's across the street to see if somebody could drive me out there." She broke off and when she spoke again, her voice was hoarse and thick with tears. "It was too late. Even if I'd gotten there earlier..."

"Werewolves."

"Yes." She nodded. "I was walking around, looking for Tom and Robbie, calling them. I heard this howl. Then a scream. They killed my friend, Tina. I heard her screaming and I ran, but by the time I got there, she was already dead. And then they came for me."

He'd always sucked at this part. Hell, as far as he was concerned, he sucked at all of it. But this was the worst, comforting the victims when he had nothing warm or comforting inside him to offer. And even though it had been a good fifty years, Phoebe was definitely still a victim. In a tight, rusty voice, he said, "You have to know there's nothing you could have done to help them."

"That doesn't make it any easier." She sighed, rubbed a hand across her chest as though it hurt.

Kel imagined it did. Broken hearts weren't just about emotional pain, but physical. That was a lesson he'd learned in spades.

"No." His voice was hollow as he responded, "No, it doesn't." Looking back at the picture he held in his hands, he rubbed a finger across Phoebe's image.

She looked happy.

In love.

Complete.

A whisper of sound drifted to him. Slowly, he lifted his gaze, watched as she turned around and stared at him. "I've been dead inside for longer than you've been alive," she said softly. "Am I wrong?"

Kel shook his head. Even though he could argue that he wasn't alive anymore, he didn't see the point. She must have been born sometime in the 1940s. Hell, his parents hadn't even been alive in the 40s. Shit, he'd just fucked a woman who technically was about the same age his grandparents would have been, if any of them had been alive.

Crossing over to him, she moved with a slow sinuous rhythm that called to mind the predator that lived under her skin. Eyes bright and half-wild, she said, "You look like you're in the same place as me. Alive on the outside...but in your heart, you're dead." Gently, she took the picture frame from him and set it aside before reaching up and curling a hand around his neck, pulling him down with surprising strength. "I can't feel guilt or shame over this, Kel. I won't let you make me. This is the only time I feel alive. So I like a little pain. A little blood. At least I 'm still capable of feeling something. And at least I never turned into the kind of monster that did this to me, to my family." Her eyes glittered with a queer light. His slowed heart skipped a few beats, sped up a as they stared at one another. Then, abruptly, she shoved him away and said, "You better go. Dawn isn't too far away."

Chapter Three.

The alarm blared into the silence, the hard, driving sounds of classic Aerosmith blaring from the speakers. Rolling onto her side, Angel Pierson smacked at the snooze button and she ended up knocking her iPod off the docking station.

"Shit." Eyes gritty with fatigue, her entire body aching from head to toe, she rolled upright.

The iPod lay face down on the hardwood floor, numerous little dings and scratches on the shiny silver back attesting to just how often she subjected it to such treatment.

Angel was not a morning person.

There'd been a time when she'd loved mornings and sunrises, but it was so long ago, it was almost like another life.

Hell, it was another life.

A life with Kel. The way her life was supposed to be. Like a mirage, she saw the memory of old visions flicker before her eyes. A happy life. One where she married the man she loved, the only man she ever would love.

That life was a fairytale now, something that would never happen. She didn't want another man. She didn't want to fall in love, even if she could. She'd spent her life alone and she was just fine with that. Even if it meant growing old alone, because nothing was worth risking the agony she'd experienced when Kel disappeared. Nothing.

Besides, deep inside, in a place that went even deeper than what she felt in her heart, she knew that she was only meant to fall in love with one man. Trying to make any sort of relationship with another when Kel was all she could think about, how fair was that?

For years, she'd deluded herself into believing that maybe one day, Kel would come back to her. But that had been just another fairytale.

He'd been officially declared dead five years ago and his case remained unsolved. The few clues had been worthless to the police, a blood trail that police dogs had followed into the woods a good five miles from Angel's childhood home, and then the trail went cold. The dogs had searched the woods for a good twenty-four hours trying to find a trail, but there was nothing.

Inside her house, there'd been plenty of physical evidence that had given the cops hope, but most of the blood had come from her or Kel. She'd learned later, months later, that there had been trace evidence, most likely from the intruder, but somehow every last bit of it had disappeared from the lab, leaving the cops empty-handed.

No eyewitnesses-not even Angel, because she couldn't remember much of anything from that night. Neither had her step- siblings or the girl who'd spent the night with Lindsey. The three kids had slept through the entire attack, waking in the morning with no memory of anything.

Angel's own memories were so vague, so unclear, they hadn't been any help. Memories of fear. Memories of pain. Then Kel's face. Waking in the morning and feeling...something. It wasn't that he had felt gone, exactly, but she couldn't feel him the way she'd always been able to, either.

It had been that feeling that had lulled her into believing Kel would come back to her, that he'd show up someplace, hurt...but alive. But the first week passed, then the second...by the third, she'd fallen into a fit of depression so severe, she'd ended up hospitalized over it.

The night Jake had found her, he had no idea how close she'd come, no idea that when he knocked on her door, she'd been standing in the kitchen, holding a knife and admiring the way it glinted under the light, wondering how it would look if she pressed it to her wrist and slashed.

Blood... It called to her and she'd been obsessed with seeing how it would look trickling down her skin, how it would smell, how it would feel.

When she wasn't thinking about blood or fighting a deep inner rage, she was caught up thinking about Kel. Thinking about him hurt so much, she'd been willing to turn to anything, just to get away.

Even her compulsive obsession with blood had been better than the pain. But then, like it had just been waiting for her, that obsession got stronger, stronger, and eventually, it overtook her thoughts. She couldn't make herself quit thinking about it.

It had started when Kel disappeared.

Months later, her obsession with blood had damn near caused her to slit her wrists. Not so much to kill herself, she didn 't think...at least not at that moment. But to see the blood.

She dreamed of it, both awake and asleep. She dreamed...vivid, consuming dreams of blood, thoughts and needs that felt so alien, intruding on her, overtaking her, overwhelming her until they were all she could think about, all she could see. She 'd wake craving the taste of it and with every passing day, she drifted farther and farther away from sanity.

It was nothing short of a miracle that she'd come back.

By the time she had finally gotten herself steady, Kel 's case was all but dead in the eyes of the law. It hadn't been officially closed then, but with nothing but dead ends, Angel had known. Even without the cops coming right out and saying so, she 'd known.

A rash of violence had plagued Greenburg for the two days following Kel 's disappearance. Another teenager nearly died of blood loss after something attacked her and tried to rip her throat out. Outside of town, the police found the body of a dead hitchhiker.

But after those two days, it had all stopped.

Just like her life, it seemed.

A cold, wet nose brushed against her bare calf and she looked down to see a pair of soulful brown eyes gazing up at her over the rim of a blue plastic food dish. "Hey, Rufus," she murmured, reaching out to scratch the dog behind his ears.

Rufus was a big, ugly mutt, but as lovable as the day was long. She spent many a night cuddled up against him, her face buried in his thick fur as she cried herself to sleep. He was also a present from her current employer.

Jake Saunders.

Sometimes she wondered why she tortured herself like this, working for the father of her dead lover. It wasn 't like she couldn't find another job. A better-paying one. It wasn't like she needed the heartbreak.

But he needed her.

Kel was gone, and less than two years after Kel had disappeared, Meredith had been killed. In the past twelve years, the man looked like he'd aged fifty years. He'd just turned fifty-five a month ago, but he looked like he was in his seventies. Frail, stooped and bent.

After a debilitating stroke two years ago, he'd retired from the church where he'd preached for nearly thirty years. The stroke kept him from driving, but not from walking, not from talking.

Not from hoping.

Being face-to-face with that hope almost every day was destroying something inside Angel, in what little remained of her heart.

But she couldn't turn away from Jake. She owed him her life, as pathetic as it was, because he'd reached her just before she lost herself completely.

Even though it was a lonely, miserable life, it had to be better living it as a rational -or mostly rational woman, instead of locked in some mental facility. Or dead.

Angel was too stubborn to let herself contemplate how much easier things would be, how the pain would have stopped long ago if Jake hadn't pulled her back from the edge. She might not love her life, but it had a purpose.

Even if that purpose was just caring for Kel's dad.

All in all, it was as good a reason to go on as anything. Jake needed help, and Angel would give it. Because he was Kel's dad.

She couldn't have walked away from this any easier than she could have stopped loving Kel-dead or not, it didn't matter. She still loved him.

Still dreamed of him.