Page 56 of Firestorm
Chapter 18
Aiden
Life wasn’t fair.That was something I’d accepted as a child.
Plenty of people had normal parents with normal childhoods, and yet, I didn’t.
It’s not like I’d ever wanted for anything. My family Chain was wealthy. My days had been filled with activities and playdates. I had countless toys and games. We had a theater downstairs, and a bowling alley in the basement. But I was missing one big, crucial thing. Something even the poorest of family homes had in abundance, but my home lacked completely.
Love.
As a kid, I’d often wondered what it would be like to haverealparents. The nice kind. The kind that liked you, that wanted good things for you. The kind that cared when you were sick. The kind that cared, period.
My parents didn’t care.
My family Chain was made up of two men and two women, with my mother being the Key. I wasn’t actually sure which man was my biological father, though I suspected it was Finn. He had some red in his beard, and even though that was common in a lot of men, I liked topretend that’s where my flaming red hair came from. It certainly hadn’t come from the natural mousy brown my mother bleached into a fried, yellowy-white color.
I stared at the ceiling in my dorm room, ignoring her droning as she scolded me over the situation in Health class yesterday. I wasn’t even involved, but someone made damn sure to call her. It was sickening how many people were so eager for me to get my ass kicked. It was also sickening how common that fact was –everyoneknew Lucille Brandt would whip her son against a post if she so much as dreamt that he’d done something wrong.
My mind wandered to Skye, as it had been frequently, and I almost sighed while I remembered the fight from Health class. When she cocked back her fist and punched Landon right in his stupid mouth…I shivered.
Meeting a girl like Skye Aria had me changing everything I knew. From the first moment I’d seen her in class, I was sucked in. The way her long, dark hair fell over her shoulder as she glanced around the room. The way her piercing silver eyes widened slightly when they landed on me. The way she smirked at me before sitting back so I couldn’t keep drinking her in.
She was unlike any woman I’d ever encountered before, and there was a strange warmth in my chest that seemed to radiate through me every time I was close to her. Sure, she’d sort of run from me when I couldn’t resist the urge to touch her silky hair, but…
I blew out a breath. I was a completely different person since meeting her. It was…weird.
For one, I never kissed girls. I never evendatedgirls. I never bothered getting to know them. Sex was a way to scratch an itch, to get release. I could never see how sex could be anything deeper. It’s all I was taught, all I’d known.
But meeting Skye? Taking her on a date?Kissingher?
I was losing myself. Fast. And…I didn’t hate it.
She was beyond beautiful. I’d never had such a visceral reaction to a woman’s appearance before. Then hearing her voice as she teased me, right after she scoffed at Landon? I was a goner.
I wanted to be different. Ineededto be different for her, although it didn’t make sense to me. I’d barely drank. I hadn’t taken any pills. Hadn’t even smoked. My nearly full pack of cigarettes seemed to glare at me from their lonely place in my trash bin.
I was planning to have a few drinks tonight at the party, but only if Skye did, too. I didn’t want to get so wasted that I forgot how the night went, but I also didn’t want to look like a loser in front of her. Skye insisted that she wasn’t a party girl, but I didn’t believe her for a second. She was way too hot to never have been to a party before. I was sure some guy had convinced her at some point…although the thought of Skye with someone else had my hackles rising.
“You’re so lucky I can’t just teleport to that school and smack you upside your head for this,” My mother hissed through the phone.
I sucked in a sharp breath, my mother’s grating voice bringing me back to the moment. I looked around the empty room, thankful once again that my roommate wasn’t here to witness this tongue-lashing.
“I didn’t do anything, mom,” I muttered. “He was mad at one of my friends. That was it.”
“Lena Iykos is breathing down my neck about this, Aiden!” My mother shrieked into the phone, and I pulled it away from my ear with a wince.
Something roiled inside of me. A mixture of indignation and anger spiked through my veins, and the crackling feeling of static rolled down my arms. Without giving it a necessary second thought, I lashed out. “Well, you should have told her to get her facts straight. I didn’t touch Landon. I wasn’t even the one sparring, I was just in the damn gym when it happened.”
Mother was quiet for several seconds, and I almost regretted my words. There was no doubt in my mind I’d pay for that outburst, but she’d been right about one thing.
I wasverylucky she couldn’t teleport to the school. I was very luckyno onecould teleport around this school, actually. If there was an affinate capable of teleporting, Lucille Brandt would have scooped them up without a second thought.
Luckily for me, and everyone else on the planet, teleporting was notan affinity that existed anymore. It was heavily debated whether or not it had even existed in the first place. MyHistory of Affinitiestextbook taught me that teleporting affinates may have been the targets of the very first inquisition, back in the stone ages.
Yeah. I’d actually been studying. Skye read that textbook like it was a bible, and I wanted to impress her in case she ever wanted to discuss the reading.
My mother’s voice had me almost launching into the air. Once again, I’d completely forgotten I was speaking to her. “Aiden, sweetie…you’re so right. What was I thinking, letting that woman berate me in that way?”
