Still cried for him.

Still hurt for him.

Because she loved him so much, she knew she couldn't walk away from his father. For as long as Jake needed her, she'd be around. Kel wasn't there to take care of his dad, but Angel was. So she would.

Driving him to the store, to the doctor's office, helping him with his physical therapy, transcribing his dictated notes onto the computer. Whether or not Jake would ever try to publish the long, rather sad story of his life, she didn't know.

But telling it was therapeutic for him. She knew that.

She just wished it was as therapeutic for her, plunking out details about Kel's life, from his birth to a death that came way too early. Pair that with the fact that Jake still had hopes that Kel was alive, that he'd come back-shit, it hurt.

Rufus whined and nosed her leg again. Sighing, Angel muttered, "Yeah, I know." Shoving out of the bed, she shuffled to the bathroom.

It wasn't even seven in the morning, way too early for her to want to be awake. But if she stayed in bed too long, she'd never make it to Jake's before the old man decided to try his hand at making breakfast again.

She shuddered, recalling the last attempt. Since the stroke, Jake had a problem with short -term memory. He would start breakfast and then wander off. It wasn't until the bacon would burn, the biscuits turned to charcoal and every smoke detector in the house was going off that he'd remember he'd left the oven on.

The last time it had happened, she'd walked into the kitchen with Rufus just as a grease fire was starting. Thinking about how close Jake had come to setting his home on fire, Angel had made the decision to start taking care of breakfast, as well as lunch and dinner.

Sundays tended to be her only days off. God love them, the women's committee at Jake's old congregation had settled into a routine where one of them would come for Jake in the morning for breakfast and then church, followed by lunch and usually dinner.

You should come with us sometime, Angel. It would do you a world of good.

No, thanks.

Angel believed in God, but she completely lacked Jake's steadfast patience. After losing her dad, then Kel...then Meredith, watching as Jake grew old, sick and feeble, Angel decided she was too pissed off at God to consider stepping foot inside a church.

Not to mention that half of the women there had some freaky idea of trying to pair Angel up with the young preacher who had taken over Jake's position. Seth Roberts was a nice guy, pretty nice to look at, but he left her cold.

Every man did.

With a flick of her wrist, she turned on the shower. As steam started to billow out, she stripped out of the T-shirt and panties she slept in. She climbed into the shower and lifted her face to the spray, let the water sluice over her and wash away the cobwebs.

Cold. That pretty much described how she felt damn near all the time. The only time she felt warmth was in dreams she couldn't quite remember. Even now, with the hot pulse of water beating down on her, she was chilled.

What she wouldn't give to feel warm and safe again. It was a comfort that had been denied to her since awaking in the hospital to find Kel's parents at her bedside, watching her with tearful, hopeful eyes.

She'd dashed those hopes when she told them she didn't know what happened, that she couldn't remember the attack, or anything about Kel. She couldn't explain the blood loss, she couldn't explain her bruises.

Her attack was another mystery because she'd been admitted to the hospital for massive blood loss, treated for blood loss- responded to that treatment-but there hadn't been hardly a mark on her. A couple of punctures at her neck, but nowhere near the jugular and certainly not deep enough to explain the blood loss.

She didn't have any answers about her attack or about what had happened to Kel.

He'd tried to save her. She didn't need the memory to know that. He'd tried to save her from...something...whatever or whoever had attacked her and it had gotten him. Because of her, he was dead. Cold, lonely misery was the least she deserved.

Slumping against the shower wall, she wrapped her arms around her body and started to rock. "Kel..." Sinking down to the floor, she huddled there and whispered his name again.

Images that she couldn't quite make sense of flashed before her eyes. Someplace dark, the pulse of music throbbing, a woman's face- Blood.

Her mouth watered and for a few moments, the bathroom faded away and she was someplace dark. Some place warm. The taste of blood filled her mouth...

Outside the shower door, Rufus barked.

Jerking herself back into awareness, Angel shoved to her feet and hurriedly washed her hair, her body. The spray of water went cold before she finished but it didn't matter. She was already so chilled it wouldn't make a difference.

Nobody knew the bizarre hallucinations that had plagued her after Kel's death had never completely gone away. Back in the black days that separated her old life from the life she lived now, those dark, awful days plagued by inhuman urges and hungers, the hallucinations had seem too vivid to not be real.

Now they weren't so strong, but the fascination was still there. She'd wake in the night to the sound of her own heartbeat, or at least it seemed that way, so painfully aware of the sound. She could be walking through a store and realize she was staring at the throats of the people around her, thinking about the rhythm of their pulse, the warmth of flesh.

Mindful of how hypnotic those unwanted thoughts were, Angel had taken to wearing a thick rubber band around one wrist.

When she realized she was daydreaming about blood, almost running through the woods, chasing after some unknown prey, she'd snap the rubber band. That small, sharp pain helped her clear her head, helped her focus.

There were days when she'd have red welts on her wrist from it.

It had been really bad the past few days. Seriously bad. Even the sight of somebody's throat was enough to have her mouth watering. She'd promised herself last night if it got worse, she was going to make an appointment. She'd stopped going to therapy years ago, but when she found herself this close...

Oddly enough, though, this morning, it was better.

Easier.

Her mind seemed more like her own as she stepped out of the shower and went to inspect her pale, wan face. Her eyes were puffy from her crying jag, but that was nothing new. Sometimes she could go days without crying.

But then others...

Time heals all wounds.

"Not in my book," she muttered. Time hadn't healed her.

She'd never quite managed to get her appetite back after Kel had disappeared and she was still reed-thin, too thin. The ache in her heart hadn't ever gotten easier to handle and even the years she'd spent taking antidepressants hadn't helped.

It was like she just wasn't capable of letting go.

And after twelve years, she didn't expect that to change.

Chapter Four.

Age 32 The cool air drifting through the open window dried the sweat on his body. It wasn 't his-but Phoebe's. Vampires didn't sweat. They also didn't get cold too easily. They never got hot. He did like the warm feel of Phoebe 's small, delicate form plastered up against his cooler body. "Happy Birthday," she whispered, her voice soft, drowsy.

A faint smile curled his lips. "I don't count birthdays any more," he reminded her. He'd told her that the first time she'd asked him about his birthday, and the second, and the third...and when she'd finally snooped in his wallet and found the fake ID he carried, she'd asked him if that was his real birthday.

Pretty much every Hunter had a fake ID. They came in handy. They tried to keep the facts as close to their own personal data as they could, and when somebody at the enclave had gotten the fake ID for Kel, they 'd used his birth date...minus ten years.

There was no way he could pass for somebody in his thirties. He'd be lucky to pass for twenty-five.

"It's the day I was born, but I don't celebrate birthdays," he'd told her. Birthdays were for the living...not dead men walking.

And no matter what Phoebe said, that was how he saw himself.

It didn't have so much to do with the vampire crap, legends of the undead or any of that shit. At least not as much any more.

He just felt dead inside. He didn't look forward to the beginning of a new day, or the end of one. He didn 't look forward to feeding, he didn't look forward to sex, he didn't look forward to life.

He didn't have a life.

Unless he was on the Hunt, speeding down the highway on his bike, or tearing up the sheets-literally-with Phoebe, he felt dead inside.

It wasn't really even Phoebe who made him feel alive, either, and she probably knew it. It was the way they pushed each other, hovering just on the edge of sheer madness, the way they used pain to bring that false sense of life.

After nearly a year of this, Kel had managed to stop feeling so guilty every time he gave in and came to her. She'd become his regular feeding companion, or as much as he'd let himself have one, although he still never came over more than once a month.

More often than not, he had to force himself to do it even then, although once he got here and she put her hot little hands on his body, urging him on, he did grow a bit more enthusiastic.

Kel was still young enough as a vamp that he needed to feed once or twice a week if he wanted to keep the hunger under control, but those feeds were quick and anonymous. Finding a lonely woman in a bar, buying her a few drinks, having a few dances and then coaxing her into the shadows. One thing about Phoebe was that time he spent with her was enough to keep his sex drive under control.

Under control so that he no longer feared feeding as much because he knew his need for sex wouldn't get the better of him.

He wouldn't close his eyes and pretend he was making love to Angel, and then drown in the instinctive surge of guilt once he 'd satisfied himself, guilt over making love to a woman who wasn't Angel, guilt over using some anonymous woman and pretending she was somebody else.

They never remembered him come morning. A vampire's bite healed quickly thanks to the enzymes in their saliva. Although the bite itself wasn't gone in the blink of an eye, it healed quicker than wounds generally did and a lightly placed compulsion kept the woman from even thinking about the bite, had her hiding it without understanding why until even the faintest mark was gone.

Generally, it just took a few days.

No harm. No foul. They didn't get used for anything other than a few sips of blood they'd never miss, and he didn't walk away from it feeling like a man betraying his wedding vows.

Not that he ever gotten around to asking Angel to marry him. He hadn't had the chance... Closing his eyes, he reached up and touched the gold chain around his neck. But it didn't matter in his heart. Heart and soul, he belonged to Angel Pierson and making love to another woman was wrong.

What he did with Phoebe wasn't about love-hell, half the time he didn't even think it was about sex. It was about meeting a need that could destroy him if it wasn't satisfied. Since he'd met her, Kel hadn't fallen back into one of his black moods that lasted for weeks on end, and he hadn't made Rafe or any of the others so fucking mad they ended up going at each other like mortal enemies.

Regular feeds had put some seriously needed weight on his lean frame. Even if he still had an eternally young face, at least he didn't have that awful, stretched-out gaunt look any more. The regular feeds, the regular sex made his existence a little less miserable. And sometimes Phoebe even made him smile.

Made him laugh.

He didn't love Phoebe. She didn't love him.

But he did care about her.

Cared about her enough to see the faint hurt in her eyes as she pushed up onto her elbow and saw him toying with the ring he'd bought for Angel. He let go of it, but didn't apologize. She met his eyes and forced a smile.

"You really should get rid of that," she said, her voice soft, gentle.

A muscle ticked in his jaw. Instead of jerking away the way he wanted to, he put his arm under his head, pillowing it on his palm as he met her gaze dead on and replied, "You still keeping those pictures tucked away in that trunk?"

A grimace twisted her rosebud lips. "Guilty." Sighing, she lowered her head and rested it on his chest. "But I don't carry them around with me day after day. I don't look at his face while I lay next to you after we've made love."

Make love...

This time, Kel couldn't stop himself from pulling away. He jackknifed out of the bed and walked away, not looking back at her until he'd put the length of the room between them. Slowly, he shook his head. "We don't make love, Phoebe. We fuck each other's brains out, we hurt each other."

Phoebe slid out of the bed, a strange smile on her lips as she stalked him across the room. But there was no other way to describe that predatory prowl or that predatory look in her eyes. "Yeah. We do, and you love it."

"No. I don't love it-but I do need it."

"Need it...need me. Can't you even admit it?" she asked.

What in the hell... He didn't know where this was coming from. Phoebe came to a halt before him, slicking her tongue across her lips, sliding her hands up over her hips, her sides, until she could cup her breasts in her palms. As she squeezed her nipples, she stared at him and her smile turned decidedly wicked as his cock stiffened, hardened.

"You can't do without this," she whispered. "No more than I can. You need it...you need it to forget about her, whoever she was. Let her go, Kel. Whoever she is. She's not meant for you, not anymore."

She leaned into him, but instead of kissing him, she pressed her mouth to his shoulder and bit down. Sharp teeth pierced his flesh and Kel groaned, battling back the surge of lust, fighting the need to grab Phoebe, shove her to her hands and knees and take the little wildcat until she was too busy screaming to talk.

But something inside him was sounding an alarm bell.

Phoebe had been acting...off ever since he'd showed up at her door two days ago. Off enough that he'd changed his mind about spending the weekend with her, but when he'd started getting his stuff together a little before dawn, she'd slid up behind him.

In her hand, she'd held the reinforced cuffs Hunters carried on patrol and when she'd put them on his wrists and then went down on her knees in front of him, he'd stopped using his head to think and let his dick handle things.

Bad mistake.

Gritting his teeth, he reached up, laying his hands on Phoebe's shoulders, trying to ease her back. She wasn't in any hurry to take her teeth out of him though and he ended up fisting a hand in her short dark hair and jerking. She bit down harder as he pulled her away and pain slashed through him. "Damn it, Phoebe."

She smiled up at him, his blood staining her mouth. "You know you need it..."

The alarm bells turned into a siren's screech. Shouldering past her, he grabbed his jeans from the back of the chair but before he could jerk them on, Phoebe lunged for him, tearing them away.

"What the..."

Dropping the jeans, she swiped out, her eyes narrowed. Kel saw where she was looking and he deflected her arm with one hand as he closed his free hand around the chain. "Phoebe, what in the hell is your problem?"

"My problem?" she asked, stopping in her tracks and staring at him like he was speaking another language. "My problem is that I'm tired of seeing you touch that damn ring when you're laying in bed with me, still wet with me, my blood inside you and my body still aching from what we did to each other."

Her words sent a hot stab of guilt shooting through him. Keeping an eye on her, he grabbed the jeans she 'd dropped and dragged them on, pulling them up over naked hips. He could smell her on him...but the scent of her didn't appeal to him. It didn't bother him exactly, but it didn't feel right.

It...

It felt wrong.

This is wrong. It was an abrupt realization and not one he cared for. He'd thought... Hell, screw what he'd thought. Yeah, he had feelings for Phoebe but they wouldn't ever be anything more. He liked her. Yeah, from time to time, she made him laugh, made him forget his misery for a short time. His life had been a little easier since he'd met her.

But he didn't love her-he couldn't love her. He'd thought she was in the same messed-up boat, but something about the way she was looking at him had him damn uneasy.

"You knew pretty much from the get-go that I was a mess, Phoebe," he said, trying to keep his voice soft and gentle.