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I decided to blame him

"You’re a ho," I accused overacross my face

"What does that mean? I haven’t slept with anyone besides --"

"Look at this room" I stepped off the staircase and started for the table Reyes had clearly reserved for us, because every other table in the joint was taken, and several other people waited up front "They’re only here for you"

We wound past chairs full of wory for an ite either the same or Reyes’s de out the emotions in people

He wrapped a hand around my arm from behind, and I turned, my brows drawn in curiosity He pulled h ere still in the middle of a crowded roo I felt radiate off him sliced into me

I placed a hand possessively at his hps and stepped closer "Reyes, what?" I asked

"I’m not – I don’tthe exact sa, only they were all zeroed in on hiuided ," I said, flexing ainst his hip "I didn’t mean to imply that you do this on purpose" I looked around helplessly "I was just kidding"

I didn’t knohat else to say My remark had actually hurt him

He leaned in and confessed in "

The possibility of his being hurt by the e able to feel others’ e and curse At times like this, it leaned toward curse For ined it would bother hiht So off others were so powerful, so… well, suffocating, I had to block theh school Up until that point, school could be utter agony Sure, I knew things others didn’t, but I also knew things I didn’t want to know No one could "talk behind my back" I always knew the truth about how they felt about me It kept my friendships to a minimum The bare essentials And once I lost my BFF, Jessica, I really didn’t have another person I could call a best friend until Iup: People were never, ever, ever 100 percent honest about their feelings

Never

But that was soo

This time, I wrapped my hand into his and led hie closet I held up an index finger to Cookie to let her knoe’d be right back, then pulled him around a corner and into me "I’m sorry, Reyes I didn’t mean that It was just a joke"

He kept his features schooled "I was just kidding, too"

"No, you weren’t" I liftedhis lower lip

But just like every other tied htly aroundthe subject He knew better than to orderTo stop feeling We’d been over it a hundred times He couldn’t just order me not to care But he could switch the focus off hiood at that

He heldmoment before I felt the tension ease out of him This was his life He could hardly run froular aninetis He’d once told irl he met in one of the plethora of aparthout his childhood tried to kill herself when they’dThey moved out because their rent check had bounced, but Reyes was relieved The girl’s desire had been so thick So palpable

Then he began to tell me another story, one that involved a boy in the aparto – the one where I watched Earl, the monster who’d raised him, beat him bloody He’d dropped the anecdote abruptly and refused to elaborate on what happened, so I took it uponaround the tied himself in his closet a couple of days after Earl had absconded into the night with Reyes and his nonbiological sister, Kiht after his best friend moved away, but the kid’s friends had said he was in love with a boy fro who didn’t reciprocate After the boy hbor had to have been Reyes And he knehat the boy had done What would that guilt do to a person? Hoould it affect one’s psyche?

And the ogling didn’t stop there I’d noticed departed hanging around more and more But Reyes looked different to them than he did to humans He was forever enshrouded in a dark low of a fire The angrier Reyes becahter that fire I’d seen it only once, after al lunatic And, as incredible as Reyes was in huly beautiful when seen fros from that plane, and in that form, whenever I wanted to, but I had yet to master said talent Because of this handicap, I wasn’t sure if the departed who followed Reyes around were like the humans – insanely attracted to hiawkers, unable to believe what they were seeing, curious about hiet to him