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A gust of breeze blew her smoke before her

Chapter Four

63 HOURS, 41 MINUTES

SAM WOKE UP in the last place he’d have expected: his bedrooes

He’d hated it when he lived here with his mother Connie Temple Nurse Temple

He barely remembered her She was from another world

He sat up on the bed and smelled the sick He’d thrown up on the bed "Nice," he said with thick tongue

His head exploded in supernovas of pain

He wiped his mouth on the blanket This was one house no one had raided or vandalized or ht still be drugs in the bathrooainst the sink and threw up again Notbut a seneric ibuprofen

"Oh," Sam moaned "Why do people drink?"

Then he remembered Taylor

"Oh, no Oh, no"

No, no, he hadn’t rab for Taylor, had he? He hadn’t kissed her, surely? The memory was so hazy it could almost have been a dream But pieces of it were too iertips on his chest

"Oh, no," he o down easily

Holding his head, he went to the kitchen Sat down at the little table He’d had meals here with his

And keeping a worried eye on her other son

Caine

Caine Soren, not Teiven him up for adoption They had been born just a few minutes apart, fraternal twins, hiiven Caine away and kept Sam

No explanation She’d never told either of the of the FAYZ

And no real explanation for what had become of their father He was out of the picture before Sam and Caine were born

Had it just been too much for their mother? Had she decided she could handle one fatherless boy but not two? Eeny meeny miny moe?

He had a new family now Astrid and Little Pete Only now he didn’t have them, either And now he had to ask himself what he had done to deserve it, his father’s disappearance, his mother’s lies, Astrid’s rejection