Blood Isn't Always Thicker Than Water

I took a breath for preparation, then continued. “Logan died when I was fourteen. Kaitlin committed suicide when she found out.”

Sam gasped. “How old was she?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“My gosh… That’s horrible.”

Indeed. “Troy and I sold Logan’s manor. I’m living off the money we got from it to this day.”

“Do you have a job?”

“Yeah. I work at F.Y.E.”

"Are you supposed to be there…tomorrow?”

I smirked. “I told them I was on vacation for the next month.”

She rolled her eyes. “Keep talking.”

“Troy and I bought the house that Jeremy and I now live in. Then Troy got into drugs and stuff. He died at fifteen, the year after Logan while I was still fourteen.”

Samantha frowned at me. “Your life is just death after death after death. Are your parents still alive?”

“I think my mom is. My dad’s been gone for a while.”

“How do you know?”

“There’re such things as DNA tests.” There are, right? Oh, gosh, I hope there are. But I’m not lying!

She just nodded. “You still haven’t told me about Jeremy.”

“Yep. So I’ll tell you now. I found him in an attic with a whole ton of hobos. I took him in. No one really liked him, and I thought he deserved better.”

“That’s sweet of you.”

I bit my lip and blushed ferociously.

She shook her head. “It’s ridiculous, how much you look like Ryan Ross.”

I nodded. “I get that a lot.” A smile started to creep onto my face. “Once I had to sign a ton of stuff all these girls shoved at me.” Then the smile disappeared. “Man, was it horrible.”

She laughed at my sudden change. “Why was it so horrible?”

I grimaced. “One of them pulled up her shirt and made me sign her…bra.”

Sam laughed really hard while I cringed at the memory.

When she stopped, she had another question ready. “What exactly did you mean before when you said you had no association with Ryan?”

My face went hard, my insides went cold and some part of me started parading around telling the other part, I told you that you shouldn’t half-lie!

I stood up, fast as a rocket. I forgot to hold back and act human, so Samantha got jerked a tiny bit and her eyes widened as she stared at me in shock.

“I’m not talking about this,” I growled darkly. There was no way I was going to talk about him with Samantha.

“Okay, then, let’s talk about something else! I find you really…interesting.”

I take it as the highest compliment.

But I frowned anyway and sat back down next to her, slightly closer than before. “Really? You think I’m…interesting?”

“Yeah. How many people do you know that have grown up at a manor in Idaho? Or been abandoned when less than a week old?”

I frowned. “True…”

“Um, Cas?”

“Yeah?” I looked at her warily.

“Why are you so pale? I mean, I’m pale, Fallen’s pale and boy is Jeremy pale, but you’re…like…ghostly. Sort of blue pale.”

My eyes widened. “I’m blue?”

“No! That’s not what I meant. You’re…paler than Snow White.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. “You’re pale as snow.”

I nodded. I knew what snow was.

“So…why? Why are you so pale?”

I shrugged, a bit distracted by how she had just inched closer to me.

“I guess it’s ’cause you were brought up in a manor, right? How much did you get outside?”

“Not at all, really.”

“So that’s why you’re so scared of all this stuff out here.”

Wow, we had finally reached the point of the whole conversation. I just nodded. “I love long halls, huge empty rooms, velvet curtains, creaky floorboards—” she laughed at that—“barely cooked meat, my iPod, laptop, house and Jeremy.”

She nodded. “Why is Fallen suddenly so…down?”

I bit my lip and looked at the horizon line again. I didn’t want to ruin our comeback from my last little outburst about George, but there was nothing else I could do. “Sorry. Can’t tell you that.”

She sighed, then I heard a really strange sound. I turned and looked at her. “Was that…you?”

She smiled sheepishly. “That was my stomach.”

Oh gosh… The human is hungry… And for some reason I don’t think she’ll like raw meat.

Samantha and I walked over to where the beach people sold their excuses for food, and I was introduced to mankind’s amazing savory invention:

Ice cream.

Sam ordered a Reese’s flavored one for her and got plain old chocolate chip for me. But I loved it anyway.

“Whoa…” I said after my first spoonful. “What is this stuff?” I shoveled another spoon-load into my mouth and closed my eyes, letting the icy concoction melt over my tongue.

She laughed, holding a tuna sandwich fro Jeremy’s cooler in one hand, a scoop of Reese’s in the other. We both made sure not to pull on the handcuffs. “Don’t tell me you forgot what it’s called already.”

“How could I?” I asked. “It’s ice cream. But how could I not have eaten it before? It’s spectacular!”

She laughed again. “It sure is.”

Some of the people around us were staring at us with weirded out expressions. What? Is it against the law to be this pale? Well, excuse me.

We sat back down on our dune and chowed on ice cream and tuna. Samantha couldn’t eat the last half of her ice cream—don’t blame her, she’s über thin—so I got to eat it for her! Yay! And the Reese’s was way than the plain old chocolate chip.

While we walked to go throw our trash away, she asked me, “Cas, how much sun block did you put on?”

“Uh, enough. I think.”

She rolled her eyes. “Just put some more on. It'll make me feel better.”

“Anything for you,” I said back sarcastically and put more on. When I looked up after I was done, I caught Samantha’s eyes scaling up and down my body appraisingly and intensely. That made my cheeks tingle, feel…hot and cause my brain to turn to oatmeal for a few seconds. Then I blinked myself back to normal and said in a teasing voice, “Miss Royce, were you just checking me out?”

She looked like the sun had suddenly intensified and burned her into a lobster crisp in one second. Her eyes locked, frozen, on mine. I swear I could hear her brain go “fizzzzzzklunk” as it came skidding to a halt then fell hopelessly out of orbit. If that makes sense. Then it sparked spontaneously back to life and the color started slowly fading from her face. “What, you got a problem with that?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never been complimented like that before.”

“And what if it wasn’t a complimentary ‘check out’?”

“Ah, but it was! You basically admitted it.”

“But I didn’t.” She held up a finger on her free hand.

I crossed my arms and lifted an eyebrow. She mimicked me and did about the same thing back. Problem: she got to flip her long hair out of her face and cock a hip to the side.

After a second she laughed and said, “This is so pointless.”

I nodded and laughed a bit too. “I think there was a point in the beginning. I just don’t really remember what it was.” Yes I did. I’m such a liar. I just don’t want to bring up the thought that she was the first person ever to “check me out” for me, not because they thought I was George.