Uninvited (Uninvited, #1)(43)

“You need to keep going,” he continues, saying more than he’s ever said before. For once, I’m the quiet one, and he’s the one with all the words. “Go to school . . . do whatever else it is you do.”

“I don’t have anything else,” I say through numb lips. No friends to hang out with. No job. All my extracurricular activities at school . . . voice, orchestra, student council . . . that’s gone. Ripped from me like everything else. “Just school. The Cage.” I laugh bitterly. “My friends . . . my boyfriend. They’re the ones who did this to me. So. Yeah. My social calendar is pretty open.”

“What do you mean?” His eyes lock on my face.

I lift one shoulder in an awkward shrug and then wince at the sudden sting in my neck. “I had a fight with my boyfriend. . . . Ex,” I amend.

“How’re he and your other friends responsible for this?”

“I mentioned the fight with my boyfriend, yes? Well, I slapped him. There were plenty of witnesses. Pollock knew all about it. That’s why he came for me. I’m obviously violent,” I mock, air quoting the word with my fingers.

“Why did you slap him?”

I stare at him for a moment. “You’re the first person to even ask me that.” To even care why.

“Why?”

I sigh and look away. “He was being a jerk.”

He places a single finger under my chin and forces me to look at him again. “Why?” he repeats evenly.

A single word, but it hangs between us, demanding the truth. Painful as the memory is, the words tumble heavy and hard from my lips, like marbles falling to the ground. “Since I turned out to be a carrier, he thought I should fall gratefully into bed with him.”

Sean says nothing as we stare at each other. The sensation of his fingertip on my chin makes me hyperalert of him, of our nearness. “I guess you probably think I’m silly to get offended over something like that.”

“No. I don’t.” He drops his finger and returns his attention to my neck. “Well, don’t even think about not showing up tomorrow. They’ll be watching for that. They’ll give you a break for one day, but they’ll come down hard on you if you don’t turn up tomorrow.”

Part of me wants to know what coming down hard means exactly. After getting imprinted, what’s left? What’s worse? Unlike a few other states, Texas hasn’t started implementing internment camps, virtual prisons from all reports.

I watch him in the mirror as he tends to my neck with efficient movements. Still, there’s a warmth to his touch. A gentleness I did not expect. “Did you have someone do this for you? Look after you when you were imprinted . . . ?”

“No. I did it myself . . . with a bunch of my foster brothers giving me a hard time through the bathroom door.”

“They made fun of you?” I frown. “That’s . . . not nice.”

He shrugs. “Just bringing some levity to it, I guess. Two of them were already imprinted. I was the third. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before the other two are.”

“You’re all carriers?”

“Marlene—” His gaze flicks to mine. “That’s my foster mother. She gets paid more for fostering kids that are carriers. And she’s not afraid of us. Her brother’s a carrier. He’s in prison.”

“I see.”

“No. You don’t.” He shrugs like that’s no big deal. “You can’t even wrap your head around any of it.” He glances at my bedroom. “How could you when you come from this?”

And he’s right. Naturally. Even though I’m a carrier—an imprinted one at that—nothing about his life makes sense to me. For starters, I can’t see how anyone would open her home to multiple imprinted carriers.

I moisten my lips. “Isn’t she frightened of letting you all into her house? I mean even with her brother . . . anyone would be.”

“True. Marlene isn’t anyone though. She doesn’t scare easily. Besides, since she took us in, no one has broken into her house. She says we’re the best security system around.” There’s that hint of a smile again.

He sets the washcloth down and stares at me. The proximity, our closeness, makes me nervous, but I don’t move.

“Why did you come here?” I finally ask. “Why are you doing any of this for me?”

He doesn’t answer for a while, just looks at me in that intense way, like I’m a bug under a microscope. “Because I know this is hard for you. Harder than it ever was for me.”

I frown. I don’t like thinking of myself as worse off than him—if that’s what he even means. It makes me feel all the more alone.

“How so?”

“You have more to lose than me.” He shrugs one shoulder. “I was a kid when I learned I was a carrier. I was already parentless. Poor. No future. Hard to hit bottom when you’re already there.” His mouth flattens into a grim line. “I was used to being nothing.”

A nothing who showed up here today when I needed someone most.

A nothing who marched into the bathroom when Brockman cornered me.

A nothing who picked me up when I was stranded and out past curfew.

A myriad of responses rush to my lips. “You’re not nothing.” You’re here.