Page 19 of Dance of the Phoenix (Cloak of the Vampire #3)
Logan
My life could be split in two: before Aileen Henderson—and after.
When I was a mere thirteen-year-old boy, my altruistic parents decided to join the foster care system. Being young, but not too young, I understood what it meant, and I did not like it. Not one bit.
“Am I not enough?” I asked Mom once, tears in my eyes, a few days before the fateful phone call that would change my entire existence. “Why do you need another child?”
“Logan,” Mom said softly, pulling me close for a tight, loving hug. “You’re enough. You’ll always be enough. But your father and I ... we always wanted to give you a little brother or sister. A sibling to be there for you when we’re not.”
My shoulders slumped as I hugged her back. “I don’t need a sibling,” I whispered. “All I need is you.”
Back then, I didn’t understand my parents’ concerns. I’d been their “surprise” baby, born to my mother when she naturally conceived at the ripe age of forty-seven. They loved me and cherished me so much, so they never wanted me to end up alone at a young age when they died.
It was a pessimistic thought, inconceivable for a little boy who’d known nothing but love and happiness his entire life.
My opinions as a naive child fell on deaf ears, and four days after that conversation, Mom’s phone rang. We were in the kitchen, and I was eating breakfast before heading off to school. I saw Mom answer the phone, and her eyes widened as multiple emotions filled her face.
Shock. Hope. Exaltation.
Intuitively, I knew. But when Dad sent me off to school with a kiss to my forehead, while Mom was still on the phone, I refused to believe what my instincts were telling me.
Normally, I was a model student. I liked school.
I liked studying and hanging out with my friends from the soccer team during breaks.
I especially liked playing soccer after school, with Coach Cohen never failing to lift my spirits and tell me I was bound to become the next soccer superstar. The Ronaldo of America, he called me.
That day, I could not concentrate in any of my classes. I couldn’t answer my teachers’ questions, to their surprise. Even the coach’s normally uplifting words in the after-school soccer training, preparing us for the upcoming regionals, couldn’t help me because of the state I was in.
When I finally came home, I remember standing outside, staring at the wooden front door of our New England historical town house, terrified to set a foot inside and find out if I was right.
So I took a different approach. Sneakily, I headed toward the kitchen window and hid beneath it, out of sight. I could hear murmurs from inside—the house walls were not very thick—and that made my heart leap. Then, I put my hands on the outer ledge and pulled myself up, peering inside.
What I saw made me momentarily freeze.
A girl my age was standing there, face inscrutable, as she listened to my parents talk to her in low, soothing voices. I could only see her profile, but that was enough to make my heart stop in my chest.
Up until that moment, I had never been interested in girls. I was barely out of the “ew, girls” stage as it was. Before, they had just been in the background, harmless and not worthy of my attention.
But the moment I saw that girl, with her brown wavy hair gliding down the slope of her back to her curvy waist, my body reacted before my brain could compute what was happening.
All the blood rushed south, causing an irritating, uncomfortable feeling in my body.
Flushed, I wriggled around, trying to get rid of that sensation, but then I saw her turning to look at the window and I got a full view of her hauntingly beautiful face. Heart shaped with high cheekbones, lush, peach-colored lips, and stunning hazel eyes that, I belatedly realized, had found mine.
I let go of the ledge and crouched down, my heart pounding in two places at once: my chest ... and the aching tightness between my legs.
Since I wasn’t a complete idiot, I finally realized what was happening to my body and had to take a few more minutes to calm down. Then, when I felt like I could breathe, something akin to compulsion drove me to enter the house and head to the kitchen, where I got the view of her back.
My mom said, “There you are, Logan. Please meet Aileen Henderson, your new foster sister.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the girl who turned around to look at me.
And with a parched throat and dry lips, I approached her and offered her my hand. “Hi there. I’m Logan. Nice to meet you.”
Then she took my hand, her skin touching mine, gave me the faintest, smallest of smiles that made the painful tightness reappear in my pants, and said, “I’m Aileen. It’s nice to meet you too.”
And from that moment, I was a goner. She caught me hook, line, and sinker.
For the first time in my thirteen years of living, I had a crush. And it was on my new foster sister.
Little did I know that was the beginning of my misfortune.
From the moment Aileen set foot in my school as the new girl, she was the object of many rumors—especially since everyone knew my parents were the ones who took her in.
I was quite popular at school for being the star soccer player and also a straight A student, along with good looks I was unaware of at that time, so the fact that it was my family who fostered the new girl was quite the news.
Unfortunately, that put a target on Aileen’s back.
“She’s so scary,” I heard one of the girls, Olivia, say during an English class.
Aileen was sitting on the other side of the room, looking outside the window, and thankfully couldn’t hear what was said about her right behind me.
“I heard from Jenna that she overheard the principal talking to Mrs. Travers about how that girl’s parents were in jail or something. ”
“Oh my God.” The other girl, Danielle, gasped. “So she’s, like, a delinquent? I know it’s a public school, but shouldn’t she be in, like, juvie or something?”
I couldn’t help but get angry. In the past week, I’d avoided Aileen at all costs—not because she did something.
It was rather because my body’s reaction whenever she was around terrified the shit out of me .
But I did hear my own parents talk, and I knew that Aileen’s father was in jail, leading to her current situation.
And it irked me, those stupid girls talking shit without an ounce of understanding about how the world worked. While I wasn’t that much better, I at least knew, from the few meals I’d shared with my new foster sister, that she was the last person I would call either scary or a delinquent.
So I turned around to the girls behind me and whispered, “Why don’t you mind your own business?” And, because I couldn’t help it, I added, “Also, she didn’t do anything, so why should she be sent to juvie?”
Both girls blushed and looked away, mumbling something incoherent. Scowling, I turned back around and glanced at Aileen. She was no longer looking outside the window. Instead, her eyes were on me, as unreadable as usual but perhaps with a bit more warmth than before.
When we returned home that day, Aileen caught me before I went into hiding in my room. “Thank you,” she told me, her unique voice, lower than most girls’, reaching parts of me that threatened to wake a bigger, more physical part of me.
Desperately trying to get ahold of my own emotions, I pretended to be oblivious and said, “For what?”
“You know what,” Aileen said, shooting me a small, faint smile that hit me right in the gut. “I just wanted to thank you.”
I nodded, deflated, and said, “You’re welcome,” before turning around and attempting to head back to my safe haven.
But Aileen’s hand caught my wrist, drawing me to a stop and forcing me to face her again. She was about my height back then, before I had my growth spurt, and so our gazes linked in a direct line.
Her hold on me loosened as she stepped closer to me, invading my space. Then, before I could do anything, she pressed her lips against my cheek.
Frozen, all I could do was feel . I could feel her body a hairbreadth away from touching mine.
All my thoughts—my entire being, really—were hyperfocused on the spot where her lips made contact with my skin.
The fruity smell of her shampoo tingled my nose, making me want to lean into her, close the small distance that was left between us, take her head in my hands, and kiss her.
But before I could act on those instincts, she let me go and stepped back, giving me another look I couldn’t decipher before she walked away.
After that, in the privacy of my room, my sexual awakening reached its peak.