Whether it was finally showering and getting changed out of the last night's clothes, his talk with his mother or bracelet working its magic, Arran was in high spirits. The new car coupled with the fact that he now had a lot of birthday money and no plans to spend it on certainly helped.

He still had to talk to Naomi and figure out what exactly was going on there but he was hopeful that fundamentally nothing had changed. It was just a kiss; it was something that they could get past. Or if they couldn't, maybe they could start up something casual.

He was given an excuse to postpone texting Naomi in the form of an invitation to lunch with his mother and Lucella. Arran drove them into town with a stupid grin on his face. The Alfa was ridiculously over the top, if he didn't love it so much he'd be embarrassed by the looks it got as they pulled up outside of the restaurant.

Lunch was enjoyable, Celyn got on well with Lucella so Arran didn't feel the usual pressure of trying to fill the awkward silences between him and the only member of his father's family that he spoke to. Having the three of them together gave Arran a rare sense of belonging. All three of them were different, each a different set of genetic quirks that set them apart from the rest of the vampire population and for once that didn't feel like a bad thing. They were a family, a real flesh and blood family. Most vampires outlived theirs.

Arran found himself the subject of much teasing about his encounter with Cree. The combined efforts of his sisters and mother was infuriatingly irritating and Arran tried his best to move the subject along.

"Cree and I are old news. I find it much more interesting that Lucella is actually currently dating a werewolf," Arran said, receiving a small kick under the table from Lucella.

It had the desired effect as Celyn turned her attention away from Arran, leaving Lucella in the spotlight.

"It's not that serious," she began, slightly flustered. "And we certainly don't want the whole world to know, thank you Arran. Besides if my mother found out, she'd kill me."

"She could try," murmured Celyn, accidentally pushing her spoon through her cheesecake with too much force, causing it to make a loud clang when it hit the plate.

Celyn did not usually mind talking about Arran and Lucella's father, in fact she would work with him when necessary, with only minimal glowering. But Katherine, his wife, was a different matter.

Katherine was one of very few humans who survived carrying a vampire child, eventually being turned herself while giving birth. But after the transformation, the new way of being was too much for her and she ran away, leaving Alastair alone with the newborn until he met Celyn, who had shared first her experiences in rearing vampiric children and then her life with him.

Until, of course, Katherine came back onto the scene and Arran's father had gone back to her. Without question, hesitation or even warning.

Celyn may have been over the betrayal, but the thought of Katherine abandoning Lucella and then swanning back into her life after Celyn had been raising her for several years would still get a visible rise from her. But Lucella had never forgotten and still treated her own mother with a detached caution, and came to her would-be step-mother for advice and comfort.

The rest of lunch settled back into a more easy tone, banal familial topics and jokes that Arran found himself starved for. All-in-all, he thoroughly enjoyed himself.

On the drive back Arran's thoughts were filled with how to talk to Naomi. He actually found himself quite nervous. Starting his relationship with Cree had been a very natural progression and anything he'd had with anyone else was a much more casual affair from the outset. Maybe he just wouldn't text her at all and they could pretend it never happened.

He was still debating what to say and how to say it as let himself fall onto the bed and pulled his phone from the charger cord.

He had a message from Cree.

Arran let out a groan into the empty room. That definitely wasn't what he wanted to be thinking about right now. What was more, she had sent the message over Facebook so he couldn't read more than the first few sentences without letting her know that he'd seen it.

He opened it anyway, if he didn't want to respond she could sit and suffer knowing that he was ignoring her.

It was less a message and more like an essay with perfect grammar and spelling. Arran half expected to see a list of her sources at the end of it. Most of what she had to say was a list of justifications for why she had behaved as she did, something Arran wasn't interested in. But at least at the end of the gargantuan wall of text there was something that resembled contrition.

'I do really want to be friends but I know that I have not been good to you lately. You mean so much to me Arran, I don't want you to think that I only want you when I need something. I miss you all the time and I know that things can't go back but I really want them to move forward. At the very least I don't want to hurt you or try to manipulate you, I won't do it again.'

If she hadn't included that last bit, he could have been self-righteously angry. This was far more complicated.

He tapped out a few different replies and deleted them, eventually settling on suggestion that they should talk properly soon, though not right now, and try to get back on track. In a way the whole thing had done him a favour. It was hard to explain because he still missed her but he felt like he'd proved to himself that he had started to move on.

If Cree could own up to her actions, then so should Arran. He decided to text Naomi right away but he just couldn't think of what to say. He concluded that it was probably better to do this face to face.

'Hey, are you free at all? We could probably do with a chat. I can come to you.'

He threw the phone down onto the duvet in front of him and glared at the screen, willing it to light up with a response. He suddenly felt very nervous. He'd trade the rest of his powers right now in exchange for being able to predict the future with any kind of regularity.

After what seemed like a very long time he got a response.

'I'm free but my parents are in, might be tricky to talk here.'

'You can come to mine. I can pick you up?'

'Sure, come over whenever.'

Arran had to stop himself from running to the car.

---

Naomi's house was in a neat little terrace between Rose House and the nearest town. It was a nice enough area with all the windows clean and none of the doors had flaking paint but the whole area screamed modesty and the shiny red finish on Arran's car didn't fit in.

He let Naomi know that he was outside and rolled down the window, planning on acting completely nonchalant. She stopped in her tracks as she came through the door and saw the car.

"Hey," he called, completely ruining his plan to feign casualness by grinning at her shock.

"Did your mum get a new car?" She asked through the window.

"Nope, this is mine."

She took a step back to look at it properly and said "Jesus Christ."

"I know."

"Holy shit."

"I know."

She got in and took in the interior. He got immense second hand joy from her expression.

"I know that you're rich but you're not so out of touch that you don't realise how ridiculous it is for you to have this, right?"

"It's totally stupid, yeah. I actually think that this is my mum's idea of a joke because this is technically what I asked for when I said I wanted a car."

"Your mother has a very expensive sense of humour."

The spectacle of the Alfa Romeo had been a welcome ice breaker and it provided a good topic for most of the drive back to Rose House and the same vein of conversation was renewed when Arran showed Naomi into his bedroom. Once she had finished half scolding him for having such beautiful things the tension started to build.

"So," she began as she sat on the sofa and crossed her legs, "what did you want to talk about?"

It was an annoying question, Arran thought that she must have known what he wanted to discuss. But now she had expertly delegated the task of starting to him.

"Well I just, kind of, wanted to go over what happened last night," Arran struggled through. This was so much easier with girls he didn't care much about.

"Ok," she replied.

She looked nervous but it was impossible for Arran to tell why. Did she want to act like it never happened or did she want something more? Either would make her look anxious. Arran tried to push into her mind and see what she was waiting for but predictably nothing happened. He was far too highly strung to focus.

"I...don't know what to say." He was being honest, he really didn't.

"You were the one who wanted to talk."

"So you don't?"

"I didn't say that."

"You inferred it."

"No, you inferred it. I just implied it."

"So you did imply it then?"

Naomi laughed, the tension lessened and Arran found it slightly easier to breathe.

"I do want to talk. I just don't know what to say," she admitted.

Arran sighed and sat down next to her on the sofa, tucking his legs up under himself and facing her. She looked slightly worried, but mostly she just looked beautiful.

"So maybe we should just sit in painful silence while we think about how much we should really be talking to each other," joked Arran, making her laugh a little more easily.

"Or you could just kiss me again, it would give us something to do in the silence."

If she had sounded more sure of herself he probably would have done it, but her voice had caught slightly as she'd said it and she didn't look comfortable. He reached out and put a hand on her knee, time to bite the bullet.

"I'd like to, believe me I really would. But I don't want to do anything unless I know it's not going to impact on our friendship. I'm not looking for someone to spend the rest of my life with right now because so much is about to change. Even so, I'm not about to pretend that I'm not attracted to you or that my feelings for you are just friendly. So I don't know where that leaves us and I don't know where you're at, but that's my attempt at putting my thoughts into order."

"No, that's actually really good to hear. I like you Arran, I like you a lot, but like you said we've got a lot going on this year and I don't think I have the time to get really seriously involved right now."

Arran found it hard to keep focus after she said that she liked him, but it sounded like they were on the same page.

"Well what's stopping us from just dating? We can keep it casual and let it be whatever it ends up being, no pressure. If it doesn't work, we still have our friendship."

Naomi turned the rest of her body toward him and looked him in the eyes properly for the first time that day, smiled and said "I think that sounds ideal."

Arran felt something inside of him jump with joy, but there were still a few things that he needed to make clear.

"I'm not the most transparent of people, there's a lot that I can't talk about with regard to my family and stuff."

She nodded, "You know James thinks that you come from a family of super spies?"

"Something like that yeah, it just means that sometimes I might not be able to explain some things and it's honestly not something that you should worry about or something that I want to do, it's just par for the course."

"I can deal with that," she said, "besides, you're not the only one with secrets."

"No?" Arran pressed, "what don't I know about you?"

She bit her lip. Arran was intrigued and tempted to try to read her mind again now that he felt calmer. But if she decided not to tell him then he wouldn't pry.

"I have a terrible immune system; I get ill a lot. Like, a lot. The moment it gets any colder I'm going straight for a flu shot and I'll still get ill this winter and now of course, if we're dating, you have to come and look after me while I'm all snotty and horrible."

A shoddy immune system hardly measured up to being, what would essentially be in Naomi's eyes, a mythical creature or even his convenient new alibi of being the son of a secret agent.

"Well I have a shiny new car that's just waiting to be used to fetch you junk food and tissues."

Naomi playfully smacked him in the stomach and laughed. "You're such an idiot."

"Oh that's another thing you should know about me," he said in a serious tone, "I'm a complete fucking idiot. I have no idea about what's going on half the time and I'm only really good for vaguely witty, sarcastic comments and looking pretty."

"Well I knew that anyway. Entertaining and pretty is all I need you to be."

They laughed together and then she was in his arms. It felt warm and comfortable and somehow complete. Deep down Arran felt a twinge of apprehension; there was no real happy ending here. It would be sad when they broke up and worse if they fell in love.

But for now Arran was just enjoying the moment.

---

It's three hours late but here is the end of the first Act! Things are really looking up but unfortunately for them there's about 60,000 words left of the book and it would be very boring if the rest was just happy, healthy relationship building and school work. I'd just like to say a massive thank you to everyone who's read this far because I've loved writing this far! I'm totally excited to show you the next Act. What have you thought so far? <3