Page 55 of Blood Magic (Ariel Kimber 3)

I did not want to answer him. I didn’t know much about how he and Abel had lived before their parents had died in a plane crash, but I imagined it to be very different than how I’d lived with Vivian. Perhaps, if I had been raised differently I would feel differently. It wasn’t just that though. It was all I’d heard about the Council and how girls born witches were forced to live their lives. I would not ever bring another innocent being into this world. Not ever.

Quinton could talk all he wanted about how much time I had to change my mind, but he was wrong. Having a tomorrow wasn’t a guarantee in this life and I didn’t think it was smart to bank your hopes and dreams on having all the time in the world because it was a lie.

“You’re right,” Dash said in a quiet voice. “Kids are awesome. It’s the things people sometimes do to children that isn’t so awesome.” He held up a hand, silencing their protests before they could spew them out at him. “I know none of you would ever do anything to harm a child. Ariel knows it as well. Our experiences as children help shape us into who we are as adults and the worst experiences are often the hardest to forget. Forgiveness comes easy, it’s forgetting that’s hard. I don’t ever want to bring a child into a world that is capable of such horrors as I’ve gone through myself as a child. I think Ariel probably feels the same. It’s easy for you to not get it when you were raised by two people who loved you and thought the world revolved around you. They were perfect parents who would have never allowed anything to hurt you so long as they were here to stop it. I didn’t have that. Ariel sure as hell didn’t have that. You don’t understand what it’s like.”

Quinton was looking at Dash with big eyes and his lips were slightly parted. I understood where he was coming from because I didn’t think Dash talked about his past with his mother all that much and he’d just very openly brought it up himself in front of all of us.

Quinton’s surprised gaze swung my way and he lifted his eyebrows in question.

“Are you responsible for this sudden bout of sharing?” He asked in an amused voice.

I huffed, exasperated with him. “I thought we were going to get back to all things Rain Kimber. Don’t go blaming me for things.”

“Maybe we could start out with a dog,” Addison mumbled under his breath. “I’ll even get a small one if that’s what she wants.”

I felt my eyes grow round in my head. They were serious about this baby thing and they meant to have babies with me. That was most certainly never going to happen. Not in two years. Not in five years. Not in twenty. How would something like that ever work? There were seven of them and one of me.

Dash wrapped his arm around his middle as he started laughing softly.

“Your face,” he said. “You look so horrified now that you’ve finally worked out what it actually would mean to have children in the group. Priceless.”

“Shut up,” I muttered angrily.

Quinton burst out laughing.

From behind me, Tyson said, “She doesn’t want a dog. She wants one of those hairless cats.”

Abel scoffed loudly, and Addison burst out laughing.

“I could get her a cat,” Dash said in-between laughs.

“Christ,” Quinton choked out.

I hated them all.

Chapter Seventeen

At Tyson’s appearance the twins had given up on reading the letters. They’d lost interest and hadn’t come over to be put to work. When Ty sat down in the chair beside me they both got up and followed Dash back into the living room.

I hadn’t minded them bailing. I didn’t like that one of them had thought Rain to be nuts and figured if the one thought it the other probably did as well. The more they read, they crazier they would think him to be, I was sure of it. I didn’t know how I would react if any more rude comments were made about him. And I really did not want to be mean or rude to any of them because they’d said something about a man I had never met before.

I mostly looked through the pictures while Ty and Quint read through the letters. No more rude comments were made. They did both comment on the photos and how much Rain and I looked alike and about how identical our eyes were. I had to bite my lip from pointing out that Vivian and I had looked very similar as well. Neither of them mentioned her once.

It took them two hours to read through all of the letters and examine all of the pictures.

I didn’t re-read the letters, but I did look through the pictures again. Some of them I had only glanced through.

There were pictures of Rain and Vivian sitting across from each other at a table while playing a game of chess. I hadn’t known she’d known how to play chess. I’d never even known she’d known how to play Monopoly. There were other pictures of them standing together with their arms wrapped around each other in their bathing suits on a pool deck. Pictures of them sitting on a log in front of a campfire.

In the photographs they looked so happy together. I couldn’t understand how she could have done what she did to him. I couldn’t fathom it. I wouldn’t have been able to do such a thing to a person because I didn’t have a vindictive bone in my body.

What scared me, though, was that there were two sides to every story. Vivian was dead. Therefore, she would never be able to tell her side of the story. Rain seemed to have a love/hate relationship with her. I would never know if his side to the story was the truthful one. But, I did know Vivian. And the woman I knew versus the girl and teenager in the pictures baffled me.

What had happened to her to make her such a vile human being? I didn’t know and, honestly, wasn’t sure I wanted to know. It wouldn’t excuse her behavior. It wouldn’t excuse anything she’d ever done to me.

Even if the story he had to tell me was false, I still wanted to meet Rain and hear what he had to say.

I desperately wanted to meet him. What scared me was that I wanted him to love me in real life as he had seemed to love me in the letters. I didn’t want to be let down if I did get to meet him. I desperately wanted and needed him to be as fiercely loyal in real life as he had seemed to be in his letters. I didn’t want to be disappointed in him and I really didn’t want him to meet me and wonder why he’d wasted so much of his time and energy on searching for me.

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