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“Growly?” He smirks—but it’s a ridiculing smirk. Like he thinks I’m crazy. Like he isn’t close enough with me to tease.
I plunge right on ahead, keeping things casual even as my pulse picks up. “Yep, growly.”
He stares at me. “Is something wrong, Cleo?”
“No,” I hedge. “But I... last night, I saw a DVD of you playing football.” I search his handsome face. “You had black hair, and you were playing for USC. Your last name wasn’t Walsh. Your jersey said Drake.”
I know I’ve hit on something, because his face stays absolutely neutral and his jaw tightens. He doesn’t move, just stares right through me.
“Kellan?”
IT ALMOST FEELS RIGHT—that Cleo found it. Sloth. I let her in my house, of course she finds the DVD of me playing.
This girl has got some fucking link to me. I’ve heard of it before: a soul tie, that’s what Whitney used to call it. When people’s souls just know each other. Maybe that’s Cleo and me. Sloth and “R.”
As I cooked her breakfast this morning, I wished I knew more about her than chicken pizza. Tonight before we meet Pace to look over the stuff, I thought about taking her for pizza. I can’t let her stay the full three weeks now that I know who she is—but I’m not sending her away quite yet.
Call it selfish. You’d be right.
I look down at her, and I try to imagine Cleo writing me the letters.
I didn’t really go to sleep last night. After I slipped into the windowed room and held her for a little while, I re-read every one of them. Before the sun rose, I went and got Truman. Got her some strawberries from the farmers’ market. Stared at her art.
Cleo.
Sloth.
I’m not in a good place, but having her here... it eases me a little.
“You watched my DVD?” I ask.
She nods.
“What did you think of it?”
“Your name was Kellan Drake. You had black hair.”
I smirk and run a hand back through my sweaty locks. “Which do you prefer?”
“I think the blond is really your hair. Is that right?”
I nod. I have a memory of Lyon snickering at the black dye stains all over my neck the day I did it—to disguise myself at a game of flag football with the senior dudes from our rival high school. I can hear his laughter.
“That’s right,” I rasp.
“Why did you dye it?”
“For a dare.” It’s not entirely true, but I don’t want to recount the flag football game. Don’t want to think about it—him.
She chews her lip. Her brows are drawn together. “What about your name? Which one is real?”
I remember the stench of heavy perfume, and an older lady’s gentle hands on my shoulders. The way I fell into the cab that day, the first day I told someone my name was Walsh. “Walsh was my mother’s maiden name,” I tell Cleo now. “It’s my middle name.”
“So your real last name is Drake?”
I nod. I’m not telling her much more, but I don’t see the point in lying about these basic facts. I don’t think BTM ever to
ld her anything about me. She doesn’t know anything but what I told her in my letters: that my name is Robert. Which is, of course, untrue.
