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“When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow.”
I nod and turn my back to him, looking out my window in search of Valentina and coming up empty handed.
Disappointment hits me hard, and I’m not sure if it’s because my brother is going to bail on me yet again, or if I can’t look at Val’s face while he does it.
“When are you coming back?” I hear myself ask.
“That's the thing. After this trip, I'll just head onto campus. School starts in three weeks anyway, so this trip is just the last hurrah for me and the guys.”
I bite my inner cheek to keep my cool in check.
“Okay. Have fun,” I tell him, but there is no real sentiment in my words.
“You're still thirteen, Carter. If you were just a little bit older, I’d take you with me. You know that right?”
Do I?
No, I don’t.
I know why he can’t bear the thought of spending time with me. I just remind him that our parents are dead. That’s the real reason behind him staying away. He says I look too much like Mom and sound too much like Dad, whatever that means. Thing is, when I look at Alex, I see Mom, too. I hear Dad's voice when he talks, too. And while he wants to push the memories away, I want to hold onto them with every fiber in my being.
I guess we're just different that way.
He slaps his knees and gets back up after he sees that I’m not going to say anything to keep him here. It’s not like he would stay anyway if I did.
“So I guess I'll see you around, Car.”
“Guess so.”
When the door clicks shut, my shoulders start to shake. A mixture of hate, anger, and a whole lot of sadness cripples me. I hate that I feel this way. That I need his love so much while he can’t stand to be in the same room as me for even five minutes. Not unless he’s drunk off his ass.
But I still got Gran.
I have Logan, and I have Quaid.
And maybe, just maybe, I’ll have Val, too.
That’s all the family I’ll need.
I go over to the window and finally catch a glimpse of her. Valentina’s hair is wet, and she's in some Star Wars pajamas with Kylo Ren in the center. So she likes the dark, bad types. Maybe I do have a shot after all. I take a few more photos until she goes to bed, turning off her bedroom light and ending my fun.
“Goodnight, Valentina,” I whisper into the night.
I go to my desk and open my laptop, ready to see today’s work. I look at the photos on my screen and see that all of them are flawless. Each one is more perfect than the other. However, I know it’s not my photography skills that are improving, but my new muse who makes the images pop vibrantly on the screen. I’ve never seen a girl with such soft angelic features, and yet at the same time, look like she’s lived ten lifetimes.
She's an old soul. Just like me.
Gran says that after trauma, we grow older before our time, we mature far too quickly. Maybe that’s what I see in Valentina. After what she told us back in the river this morning, it’s clear she’s suffered more than her share. That could be why I’ve become so quickly infatuated with her, when nothing much grabs my interest. Maybe on some deeper level, my soul recognizes something in hers.
Maybe she's the kindred spirit I’ve been waiting for.
Chapter 5
Now
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