I hated imagining how things would be in a few days when she left me to go back to Arizona. How do you go back to being half when you know what it’s like to be complete? How does anything ever feel good again?
More than that, I hated myself for bargaining with her life when I’d been with Charon. How could I have made that promise to him, no matter what was at stake?
Part of me wanted to tell her what I’d done, but I still believed I would find a way to get out of the arrangement.
We spent an hour talking in hushed voices, catching up on five years of missed stories. We talked about everything and nothing. We didn’t mention our parents. They were like a dream we had shared a long time ago that neither of us really remembered anymore.
I also didn’t talk about Cade. For some reason he felt like a secret meant only for me that I couldn’t even share with Sunny. For one thing, she was a stickler for the rules, far more than I was. She would have been scandalized if she’d known some of the things that had gone on between me and the bad-luck priest.
Sunny might be one of the last true temple-pure clerics in North America.
At least she had been five years ago. If anything had changed since then, she wasn’t sharing those details with me any more than I was sharing my love life with her.
The funny thing was I think she’d have liked Cade.
I mean, they obviously knew each other in passing the way all of us did. But he was the kind of man who kept to himself. Up until our little cross-country drive this summer I had thought he kind of hated me. That was just the vibe he gave off.
I’d seen him smile more in the last three days than I had in a dozen years of acquaintance before that. I doubt he let people get close to him that often. I was so unaccustomed to seeing him happy I still didn’t fully trust it.
How could I explain all that to Sunny and make her understand?
You see, I know fraternization between clerics is forbidden, but there’s this grouchy guy who’s really mean to everyone and carries a cloud of bad luck everywhere he goes, and I’m sort of in love with him.
Of course, she’d jump for joy,
right?
Not so much.
As the morning sun turned the sky a pale-violet hue, I fell asleep for the third time that evening, curled up next to my twin sister, our fingers entwined and our legs wrapped around each other like we were back in the womb, and for a little while at least, nothing could touch us.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I knew right away Leo was going to be trouble.
Sunny and I met Leo and Sawyer—who had gone back to her own room to change first—in the Lucky Star lobby the next morning with a plan to grab some breakfast before the convention kicked off at noon.
The second Leo saw Sunny, his expression changed. He went a little…funny. All the smooth confidence and bravado was gone, and when he offered his hand to her as I introduced them, he actually stammered. “P-pleasure to meet you.”
Oh, Seth help me.
It seemed deeply unfair that in spite of us being twins, Sunny was clearly the one whose guy magnet worked better. Maybe it was the blonde hair? I didn’t think I was ugly or anything, but I could have been walking through the lobby naked and I doubt anyone would have noticed I was there if Sunny was standing next to me.
“You’re Tallulah’s sister?” Leo asked.
“Twin sister,” Sunny confirmed.
He looked between the two of us, like this must be some kind of test. “But…” He narrowed his eyes and stared at my face, then Sunny’s. “Look, I mean this as respectfully as possible, but are you sure? ’Cause, like…Tallulah is a lot darker than you.”
Sunny shrugged like she’d barely registered his disbelief. We were used to this by now. “Our dad was half-black. Grandma was black and our Grandpa was Italian. Hence Corentine. And then Mom was… What was Mom?” She looked at me for help. “It was one of those Scandinavian countries, but I can never remember.”
“Mom was Swedish. Really Swedish. Her parents moved to America right before she was born.”
Sunny tugged her hair, which she had braided before coming downstairs. “Hence this.”
“So you…” Leo pointed to me, “…are a black Italian Swede?”
“Sure. And you’re a half god. Let’s not bust open the DNA testing kits, okay?” I hated conversations like these so much, but they always seemed to happen more often when Sunny was around. I guess it was natural for people to wonder how we could be related when we were so different physically, but I also wanted to tell them to mind their own damned business.