Page 64 of Sunflower

Callum saying that he and George were private investigators. That they worked for the US government.

Callum trying to protect me from partnering with him on George’s team. Saying it would be too dangerous.

I’d already figured out that the government official that they’d referred to was this guy, but had I ever actually stopped and asked either of them to show me their government ID? This idiot hadn’t shown mehisgovernment ID either, but if it boiled down to who I believed and trusted the most out of everyone in this whole sordid mess, it was Callum I trusted with my life.

His vision, the one he’d somehow shared with me, showed me how much love there was between us. How much I loved him in the future and had cleared up any lingering doubts in my mind about how I felt about him now.

If nothing else, his decision to walk away from me four years ago showed what sort of moral standard he lived for.

He was an honorable man.

Far,farmore honorable than this homophobic fuckwit sitting next to me on a random park bench in a parking lot, who had threatened me and my family just to get his way.

I couldn’t see Callum working for a conspiracy group. This guy, though? Yeah. I coulddefinitelysee this guy doing that.

“I work for a government organization that has been tasked with bringing that cell down,” he continued, ignoring the fact that I hadn’t responded to his bombshell.

I was starting to wonder if he just liked to hear himself talk.

“That’s why I approached you, Joey,” he said, his eyes trying to look sympathetic but failing. There was a glint of icy arrogance that he couldn’t shake. “You’re our in to get these superpowered freaks shut down for good.”

The look of disbelief on my face had more to do with him daring to call my boyfriend afreakthan anything else, but he, thankfully, misinterpreted it as confusion about him using the termsuperpowered.

“You didn’t know?” he scoffed, his fingers fidgeting slightly in his lap. “I can see how little trust there is between you and Callum.”

Instantly, I locked my feelings down. My instant anger at him assuming Callum and I kept anything from each other wasn’t important. I mean, Callumhadbent the truth a little at the start of all of this, but he’d kept nothing from me once I asked him to elaborate on something. Hewantedme to know everything but knew it’d take time to bring me fully up to speed.

No. The only important thing here was getting information from this little fucker.

Give me knowledge, nut job. I’m a motherfucking sponge.

It was only because I was watching him so carefully that I saw his eyes skip down to my neck before he suddenly reached forward and flicked at my scarf, before settling back in his seat like nothing had happened. “Sorry. You had a spider. It looked dangerous.”

Leaning as far back as I could, I tried to breathe slowly and steadily to keep my nerves from spiking out of control. This was the first time he’d gotten close enough to touch me, and I didn’t like it.

I also knew just as much as he did that there had been no spider. His little act was all about planting a bug on me.

It annoyed me that I needed to leave it there. Maybe Callum could get a read off it later or they had a scryer in their team who could trace this fucker with it.

“They’re freaks of nature, Joey,” he continued, thankfully assuming that I was leaning back because of thespiderrather than my apprehension about letting him anywhere near me.“Did you know George can see the future? And Callum can read your thoughts if he’s touching you?”

I did what any rational person would do when faced with such an outrageous statement: I frowned at him in a hopefully convincing mixture of confusion and disbelief.

My mind whirred away in the background as he kept giving me information. Our assumption that he knew about Callum’s powers was right. This was why he’d made such an effort not to touch either me or Callum in the past, which made him reacting to aspiderhilarious. Surely, he’d know Callum would read it when he got his hands on it. Right?

But it also thankfully proved that he didn’t know about Callum’s seer ability. Callum’s secret was safe.

“Even your stepmother is a freak. Did you know that?” he asked condescendingly. “That’s how Callum got his power.”

Okay, that was interesting. He knew about Erin. She’d stopped working with George years ago after she’d met Dad. She shouldn’t be on this fucker’s radar as anything other than being Callum’s mom, but she was.

He chuckled and shook his head sadly. “I can see that you don’t believe me. Hell, I wouldn’t have believed me either, but I swear to you, it’s the truth, Joey. They’re all abominations. They shouldn’t exist. This is why their group is so dangerous. They’re able to do things us regular humans can’t. That’s why the people I work for, thehumansI work for, work so tirelessly to stop them.” He uncrossed his knees and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Imagine if they bred with each other. Imagine what sort of horror would be unleashed if their powers ever combined. The world would be thrown into chaos.”

I blinked, trying to get my thoughts in order without showing my feelings to him. He hadn’t come right out and said it explicitly, but it sounded awfully like he knew about how thefamilies kept from mixing their lines. Maybe notwhythey did so but enough that they did it at all.

George had been right when he’d been terrified at the thought of Callum’s seer ability becoming well known. Itwouldbe catastrophic. I could easily see nut jobs like the one sitting next to me sliding all too easily from wanting to simply dismantling and probably jailing aclandestine cell conspiring against the Presidentto wanting to kill all thefreaks with superpowers.

“They think they’re gods, you know that?” he asked, not waiting for a response before he continued, “But they’re not infallible. Even with as much as George can see, he can’t get a read on me or the people I work with.” He visibly preened, a smug smile lurking on his face as he idly toyed with a stray thread on his pants. “Even when I left a present with his golden protégé, Callum. Pretty poor form for someone who likes to boast that he can see everything.” He chuckled and shook his head, looking down at the ground in front of us. “Delusional bastard.”

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