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But Garrett was a kid. He still had time to figure out what kind of man he was going to be.
So did Hunter.
He stood. “Get your friend out of here,” he said. “If you guys ambush me again, I won’t stop there.”
Then Hunter picked up his backpack and started walking. But he headed for home, instead of school. If his dad was gone, there was no one to crack the whip. He had a lot more use for a day spent sleeping.
When he got there, the car was back in the driveway.
His dad and Uncle Jay were in the kitchen.
They didn’t say anything when Hunter walked in, and he wondered if he could feed them a line about forgetting a textbook.
Then his dad said, “I changed my mind.”
Changed his mind? After everything? Hunter could count on one hand the number of times his father had changed his mind. Now it made Hunter wonder whether he’d made the wrong decision in the woods just now—or the right one.
He dropped his backpack. “You . . . what?”
His dad glanced at Jay. “Your uncle convinced me. Go pack a bag. You can come with us.”
BREATHLESS
CHAPTER 1
Nick Merrick sat on his bed and ran his thumb along the edge of the sealed envelope.
He didn’t want to open it.
He probably didn’t need to. It was thin, and thin letters from universities typically meant one thing: rejection.
It wasn’t his first-choice school anyway. He’d applied at University of Maryland because they had a solid physics program and it was an in-state school. If they rejected him, he didn’t really care.
Much.
He’d thought applying early at a few local schools would be a safe bet, just to get himself into the rhythm of it, seeing what kind of feedback he’d get.
Apparently it meant he’d get used to rejection right off the bat.
The worst part was the twinge of guilt in his stomach.
Not because he might have to go out of state.
The guilt was because he wanted to. Sort of.
A new town would mean anonymity. No one would know about his powers.
No one would know him as Gabriel Merrick’s twin brother, half of a unit.
A new town meant he could just be Nick.
Whatever that meant. Sometimes he worried that he’d get his wish, that he’d end up in some strange town, surrounded by new people, and he’d realize that there was nothing there, that his entire being was based on his brothers’ expectations of him.
Well, it wasn’t like he didn’t have options. A local school would have meant he could still stay home and help Michael with the business. If he couldn’t go to Maryland, he could go to the community college down the road. Nothing wrong with that.
Except . . . he didn’t want to go to the community college.
The colored balls in the Galileo thermometer on his desk started to shift, and Nick glanced up. He was changing the temperature. His blinds rattled against the window frame, too, as a gusty breeze tore through his room.
