If there were ever a tiger mom, Sean’s adoptive mother was the epitome.
There was a very long pause, and eventually his mother spoke. “I am calling to let you know I’ll be in town soon.”
Sean squeezed his eyes closed tightly and pinched the bridge of his nose. Not now. “What? Oh. That’s...nice.” Now? Right now? She always had the perfect timing...
“If that’s not a problem,” she said in haste. “Do you have some sort of trouble?”
“No, Mother,” he said and looked longingly at Owen, silently pleading for some help. Tell him that this emergency is way more important than his mother visiting. Give him an excuse to put off this visit. “What brings you down?”
“Work,” she said. “Temporary, but it might be a month or more. I can secure an apartment closer to downtown—”
“No, I wouldn’t hear of it,” Sean said, although he didn’t mean it. She knew full well he had a spare bedroom. She’d agonize over the cost of another apartment and would never let him hear the end of it if he didn’t invite her to stay. “Of course you should stay with me. The guest room is yours.”
Owen remained quiet, but his hands twisted at the wheel. He was displeased with this news.
Silence again on the phone. “Oh, I shouldn’t do that,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”
Within Japanese culture, it was really hard for her to do anything but politely decline at first and make him insist she stay. It was the same dance she had gone through with him since he’d moved out and she had come to stay.
If the timing had been a bit better, he might have even enjoyed her visit—as much as he could enjoy her constant criticisms. She wouldn’t understand the fuss he was making about a girl.
“Of course, Mom,” Sean said, feeling the regret drip through his body at agreeing to this. “Stay with me. When are you getting here?”
“There’s a cheap flight tonight,” she said. “I can call a cab. Or Uber.”
Tonight? Why so last-minute? Sean spoke through his teeth. “No, it’s fine. I can come pick you up. Text me the details?”
“Is something wrong?” she asked. “Why do you sound like your mouth is broken?”
Sean coughed and then spoke properly. “Sorry, Mom. Might be the phone reception.”
“I’ll see you tonight.”
The phone silenced, and Sean dropped it into his lap. He pressed his back against the seat in a stretch and leaned his head back. “Tell me I can just sleep at the hospital and claim I need to work overtime.”
“Isn’t that what you do most of the time anyway?” Owen asked. “But I agree. This isn’t the best timing.”
“She may not understand about Sang,” Sean said, rolling his head to look out the side window. Trees zoomed by, making him dizzy. “No, she wouldn’t understand. Not at all.”
“Because she’s sixteen,” Owen said.
“Because...yeah,” Sean said and sighed, closing his eyes. He knew this was going to be a problem. For another two years, perhaps, he and Owen would have to conceal their interest, hide their feelings about Sang to everyone else. She was close to them in age, so close that in two years, it wouldn’t matter.
But for the next two years, other people really wouldn’t understand it.
Not to mention that they were a part of a group of nine other guys also trying to win her affection and love.
Sometimes Sean wondered if it mattered. No one could know what they were doing. Another Academy group had a similar relationship: Lily, Liam, and a few other men had stayed together.
They stayed together by having a house in the middle of nowhere. They managed things by not telling anyone about themselves.
Was that their destiny? To hide?
“There has to be a way, Owen,” Sean said.
The corner of Owen’s mouth dipped, and his gray eyes narrowed at the windshield. “We’ll find out. But first, we have to get there and stop whatever is happening.”
The Return
SANG
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Kota called my name with such a desperate tone in his voice, so eerie that I’d never forget it.
A heavy twist of emotion had captured my heart that week. At camp, I’d been with a group of girls who had stressed me out. Being with them meant I was being torn away from a group of guys I wanted to stay with.
The guys, on occasion, also seemed to encourage me to go with them, as if pushing me into it.
However, by displaying what an emotional wreck I really was, somehow that had convinced a council to stay with my group.
The boys then fought over me. Enough that I couldn’t help but think they’d split over me.
I didn’t think I had any feeling stronger than the anxiousness I felt over the nine guys who argued about whether they could share a unique relationship with me.
Not until Kota called for me, in a panic, and I was rushed out of Victor’s home and into North’s Jeep.
Kota drove. His hands were tight against the wheel, his lips pulled back until his teeth were bared, clenched. He wore the same dingy jeans and a sweater he put on at the last minute before running out the door and getting into the car.
Nathan sat next to him in the passenger seat. His reddish hair was askew as his window was cracked just enough to let some of the cool air in to combat the sun beating into the windshield.
His hand was stuffed up against his face as he leaned his elbow against the door, glaring at the trees and traffic going by.
I was crammed into the rear seat between Victor and Gabriel. Shoulder to shoulder, they too stared out the windows on either side of them.
I could only look forward, at the miles closing in on returning to Summerville, to Sunnyvale Court, where my house was.
Where my father was.
The others were forced to stay at Victor’s house to collect laptops and supplies.
Just in case.
The fact that we had to prepare for anything made it difficult. I sensed it, even from the inside of the Jeep.
The silence.
The tight mouths.
The clenched hands.
They’d been in an argument and now had to work together.
My father was back, and from the way Mr. Blackbourne had described it, he was calling the school, asking for Mr. Hendricks or someone who could bring me back from school camp. That’s where I’d told my sister I’d be.
Kota had been the last of them to speak to me as we were leaving the house. “If he came home to check in and found you gone, he might be worried something had happened to you. Remember, he’s just as desperate to keep your background a secret. Now that your stepmother hasn’t been around to keep you at home, he’s probably worried about exposure. Especially now that you know, and you could tell anyone.”
It was dangerous that he was calling around for me. While they were capable of monitoring the calls and redirecting any call to designated Academy people who would say whatever we wanted, someone like Volto, or if one of Mr. Hendricks’s people were watching the house...