Page 59 of Ticket to the Stars: Part Two

Introducing Cleo to them would be ten times easier than it was telling my mom… provided Priest didn’t say anything else stupid.

I overheard my mom telling Cleo I was here, and even though she was outside, I heard my sister squeal when our mom said I’d brought company. I glanced at the guys, willing them strength. I’d warned them about Cleo. We’d see if they were prepared for her rambunctious craziness.

Cleo was practically screaming by the time she raced through the front door. Her backpack fell onto the ground, and she darted around the couch, her light blue eyescomically wide as she took us all in—okay, mostly the guys, since I was her boring sister.

“Oh, my God!” she squealed. “Oh. My. God. I can’t believe you guys are here. I can’t believe it!” She brought her hands to the side of her head, tugging at her dirty blond hair. And then, without a warning, she body-slammed the guys. Like, full out ran to the couch and threw herself on top of them—and me.

And, the poor guys, they weren’t expecting it, so they all fell back with the added weight of my twelve-year-old sister on top of them, her limbs splaying every which way.

“Cleo,” I hissed, working to push her off. “You can’t crawl onto my boyfriends like that.” Get it out there, in the open, so Cleo could know everyone’s on the same page. “Especially now, since it’s the first time you’re meeting them.”

Cleo’s feet landed on the ground in front of the couch, and she straightened herself up, her eyes bugging out of her head when she whipped it in my direction. “Your boyfriends,” she repeated the words as if saying them for the first time, in absolute awe.

A moment passed. She let out a high-pitched squeal that hurt my ears. She also clapped, and then giggled as she glanced toward our mom. “I knew it! Didn’t I tell you?”

Mom stood by the door, holding it open. “Cleo, could you take the guys outside for a bit? I want to talk to your sister.”

The prospect of being alone with Black Sacrament was too much for her to handle. Cleo visibly swooned. I was starting to think my sister had a little crush on my boyfriends. She was still young enough for it to be cute, but let’s just say once she got older, she better have her own boyfriends picked out, because I wasn’t going to let her have mine.

No, these guys were mine, and they would always be mine.

The guys got up and wandered after Cleo. My mom held the door open for them, and then, once they were all outside, she shut it and turned to me. “You’re really seeing the three of them?” She wandered to the couch, slow to take a seat beside me. The guys had left their pops on the coffee table, and I was slow in dragging my stare off the metal cans, to my mom’s face.

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“They didn’t pressure you into anything?”

“No. They’re good guys. The whole demon thing is just for the stage.”

“And you’re happy?”

Unable to fight the smile on my face, I nodded once. “I am.”

She sighed and wrapped her arms around me, pulling me in for a hug. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t shocked. I mean, you’ve never had a boyfriend in your life before, and now suddenly you have three of them. Combine that with everything else that’s going on, and it must be exciting… but also scary. You know you can talk to me about anything, right? Call me anytime, just to talk? Even if I’m dead asleep, if I see it’s you, I’ll wake my ass up and answer. I’m your mom, Mags. I’m always here for you.”

“I know.”

Finally, my mom released me from the hug. “Please tell me you haven’t been seeing them since that onstage kiss. That was, what, seven months ago? I hope you wouldn’t keep something like this from me forthatlong.”

“Uh, no, it hasn’t been that long.” Not since the kiss, but honestly, after that onstage kiss, things had spiraled so fast I didn’t know what was up and what was down for a while there.

“Good. Now, you’re using protection, right? It’s hard enough with one guy. I can’t imagine three—”

My face burned. “Mom!”

Chapter Twenty-Four – Bishop

Cleo was like a mini-Angel, except her blond hair was darker, her eyes a bit of a lighter blue, and, you know, she was twelve. Nothing more than a kid, but the way she stared at us made me realize she knew exactly who we were.

This kid was a fan. A hardcore fan.

“I’m not allowed to take pictures with you, am I?” Cleo asked with a smile.

Priest chuckled. “How do you even know who we are?”

“Please. I’ve been listening to Black Sacrament since I was eight,” she proudly proclaimed. We stood huddled together near our car, which was parked right in front of the single-car garage, on the driveway. Giving Angel and her mom some privacy after that bomb had been unleashed.

Way to go, Priest. He’d said way too freaking much.

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