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“You are people watching again”
“I like it”
“Considering how ht find your fascination with our species odd”
Just because she was cautious about the friends she made and the time she spent with the to her How they interacted with each other The way their bodies often said things differently than what they said with their mouths
Yes, she found coiving up on trying to decode her fellow hus “There’s plenty to find odd about me, Andreas I spent years of rades”
He squeezed her hand, understanding wrapping around her, though no words were exchanged Andreas was the only person she’d ever told about her past, and he’d never once made her feel like a freak because of it
“You responded to the abandon the world out It was natural that refusing to speak was part of that for you You trusted no one with your words”
He’d gotten that, when none of her social workers had Her first foster h, and she’d been the one to draw Kayla out of her silent isolation Only to send her back into it with the woman’s death from breast cancer several years later
“It’s not the nor”
“You kno I feel about normal, Kayla”
Kayla grinned “According to you, nor”
“I refuse to allow anyone else to tell me what normal for my life is supposed to be My father tried to tell me normal was a family with parents afterme to live amid the very people who believed my mother was so beneath them, they never even spoke her name?”
“Weren’t any of the to know?” Kayla asked
She’d never questioned hias clan, but she could not ile distant cousin to call her own He had so many and rejected them all
“I do not know I refused to let anyone close enough to find out”
“And you don’t regret that? Not even a little bit?”
“Why would I?” he asked with negligent arrogance
“Andreas, don’t you realize what I would give to have a single person I could call family?” She shook her head and then looked up at hi His expression hard to read in profile “Someone I knew I could rely on to just be there?”
“You can’t always rely on family You know that”
“My mom, your mom’s familythey aren’t all there is Families are there for each other Just because we haven’t lived it, doesn’t mean we haven’t seen it Just look at how Bradley’s family is They are all so close Look at Jacob’s sister, she’s mad at me because I ditched our date Family”
“You think I could have had that with a Georgas cousin?” Andreas’s voice was filled withdoubt
But she wasn’t going to back down just because he got a little snippy “You don’t know you couldn’t You don’t know your dad wouldn’t have given you so more than you let him”
She knew that right theretiest problem between Andreas and his father was that they were too ant Both sure they kneas right
And for a tias had the power to impose his will on his son Without a true father-son relationship to temper that imposition, all it did was make Andreas despise the man more than he already did for the way Barnabas had treated Melia Kostas
No atte to work because Barnabas Kostas had irreparably da
Andreas stopped in front of a glass building they’d seen from the boat on their harbor tour
He turned to face her, no proble now
An expression of stunned disbelief tinged with anger covered his face “Are you kiddingbut what he wanted and only for the benefit of his own consequence”
“He was spoiled Used to getting his oay I doubt he knew any other tactic but the one he took with you”
“His loss”
“One I bet he feels to this day”
“You don’t really believe
that”
She sighed “I don’t know, okay? But it’s possible Maybe there was , but uts before they ever met”
“I had reason”
“I know you did” Barnabas Georgas had given Melia Kostas money for an abortion and to leave Greece
She’d been ostracized by her fas, rejected by the man she’d loved, but she’d kept her son and raised him to the best of her abilities And fro mom
“But circuret choices they made”
She’d often wondered if herher She’d always assumed the ansas no After all, in order to contact Kayla, all she’d had to do was go through social services