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B y the time I realized I should call my boss to let her know I wasn’t dead, Griffith confiscated my phone. “This place is untraceable, so Teddy’s wards block tracking via cell tower pings. But we’ll leave the house eventually,” he said as he policed up everyone’s phones. Finnegan powered them down and pried open each case to remove the batteries while Griffith passed out burner phones. “Until the crisis is over, we use these only to call each other in an emergency.” He glared at me. “Anyone else you need to contact should be funneled through the Towpath.”

“Megan,” I said.

He winged up an eyebrow.

“She’s my boss at the botanical garden.” I ticked off the rest on my fingers. “My professors, college advisor, and the Dean of Biology.”

Griffith nodded his acknowledgment. “I’ll call Rosie, too.”

Foul temper flared inside me. “Do not tell my mother where I am.”

“Like she won’t guess? I’m surprised she hasn’t shown up already.”

I wasn’t surprised. At all.

“My boss,” Skip said.

The guild boss frowned. “Who is…?”

“Western Maryland Wellness, Tammy Fluharty. Her numbers are in the file I sent,” Finnegan said, bent over his burner phone. “Don’t forget to evac our housemates.”

“Bea’s stashing them with a protective detail at the Holiday Inn outside town as we speak.” When my eyes narrowed, Griffith shrugged. “So hunter teams can’t use them to get to you.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t close to my other roommates, but I didn’t want anything to happen to them, either. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Griffith sighed. “I’ll try to head off your mom, too, and make sure she knows she could be followed, which would endanger you. But no promises. Anyone else we should reach out to? Friends? Boyfriend?”

I shook my head. “Just my co-workers. Megan can talk to them and ask them to spread the word with classmates.”

“What word?” Jae said on his way down the stairs.

He’d ignored the clean clothes I’d left out for him, which was a shame because my father’s old clothing would’ve fit him better than me, barring the awkwardness of Jae’s wings. Personally, I didn’t see the problem. He magicked his wings away when not in flight, but after his shower, he’d pulled on what he’d worn when he’d portaled here. He must have invested time and effort in cleaning the bloodstains because the stiff patches and dark stains were gone.

“The word,” Griffith said to the demon, “is he will be absent from class and work indefinitely.”

Jae scowled. “That is many words. Not one.”

“He needs a better translation sigil,” the guild boss told Finnegan.

“Must be from a war-prone tribe. They don’t prioritize the ability to communicate effectively.” Finnegan glanced up from his phone. “His magic will reject mine. Maybe he can try something.” He jerked his chin toward me.

My eyes widened. “I’m a druid, not a sorcerer.”

“If you’d been brought up in a guild, you would’ve been taught basic alchemy. No sorcery required.” Griffith grimaced. “Water under the bridge. And a tomorrow problem. We’ll make it work for now. Just, yanno, add that to the list.”

“Got it.” Finnegan opened a note on his phone and his fingers flew.

Long metal tongs in hand, Skip darted from the kitchen. “Dinner’s ready.”

Though I’d eaten the steak Griffith had cooked for me, my stomach rumbled as loudly as Jae’s. Rather than setting the table in the dining room off the kitchen, Skip had stretched a blanket across the yard by the firepit, where he’d grilled cuts from the deer Jae had hunted. Skip had carried plates, knives, and forks from the house as well as the plums in the groceries he’d brought and a bowl filled with brownies. “Don’t,” I said to Jae when he reached toward a chocolaty square. Then I glared at my housemate. “Edibles, Skip? Really?”

“Yes, really.” Skip nodded. “Everybody needs to chill out.”

Snarling low and lethal, Jae flinched and scrambled from the bowl of pot brownies. His glare fixated on Skip, eyes gone hard and flat—the assessing stare of a predator.

I reached out to flatten my palm over his chest before he lashed those razored claws at my roommate. “It’s an expression that means be calm. The brownies won’t make you cold.”

Skip’s eyes rounded. “I would never,” he gasped.

“A better translation sigil takes priority over the show of force,” Griffith said to Finnegan, who still hadn’t put away his phone. “We can’t risk the demon killing one of you because he doesn’t understand slang.”

“Agreed,” Finnegan said.

“My dad’s grimoire may have something that’d help,” I said, trying and failing to quell the uncertainty in my voice.

“We’ve never had much use for translation sigils here in the mountains, but I’m sure Bea will have one suitable for Finnegan by tomorrow.” Griffith cut a piece of venison. Spearing it with his fork, he pointed it at me. “She’ll teach him and he’ll teach you.”

Finnegan nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You’ll have to draw and activate the sigil, though.”

“Jae did it before, not me.” I frowned. “He drew something on my stomach. Will the magic work if I’m the caster instead of him?”

“I made my mark because you did not.” The demon shrugged. “It will work.”

I was far less confident, but the rest of the meal passed with a mind-numbing focus on logistics. Turned out, hiding with a demon while being hunted by pretty much everybody was complicated, whodda thunk it. By the time we’d polished off our steaks, we had a basic plan for communicating, transportation, and tasks each of us would concentrate on until I was forced from my sanctuary for council testing.

“Three days,” I said under my breath. “Doesn’t seem like enough.”

“It will be, because three days is all we’ll get.” Griffith’s mouth pressed into a grim line. “That long only if I am extraordinarily persuasive.”

I glared at Jae, dozing in a boneless heap next to the still blazing fire pit. Not that I begrudged him rest. The stronger he became, the happier I’d be. “He could be gone in three days. Portal back where he came from.”

Finnegan adjusted his glasses, a nervous tic that irritated me by its familiarity. “You’d still be required to retest.”

True, but no one would try to kill me on my way to the test if he was gone, either. Well, no more than the usual violence, bloodshed, and general mayhem endemic within the magical community, anyway. Oh, wait. The Chicago Maces. They couldn’t be happy that the half-mundane son Teddy had sired before his gruesome death had turned out to be magical and was binding a demon. How embarrassing. They wouldn’t mind offing me to end the scandal.

And Teddy’s killer.

Whoever had murdered my dad would be super unlikely to hesitate at getting rid of me if they knew I’d recovered Teddy’s last grimoire.

I sighed. “If I survive long enough to be tested.”

Gathering the dirty plates and cutlery, Skip trilled a laugh. “Silly tests. How could they ever hope to measure your abilities?” He smiled at me. “No worries, David. You’ll do fabulously well.”

That’s what I was afraid of, but I nodded at the sleeping demon. “What about Jae?”

Finnegan blinked. “What about him?”

“Won’t the council want to test him, too?”

“I’d love to see them try.” Griffith chortled, beaming a rare genuine grin. “Your demon tolerates you and may be convinced to come to terms with a few others he deems useful in keeping you alive. But make no mistake. Demons do not consider humans as peers or equals. We are prey. No demon has countenanced what they consider human foolishness before, and I don’t see your demon being the first.”

Skip nodded, his features painted in solemn lines. “Agreeing to be tested would effectively recognize and acknowledge the council’s authority, which a demon would never do.”

Or an imp? I squinted at my roomie, who had his own secrets. “You were never tested, either.”

It wasn’t a question, but Skip shook his head before elaborating, anyway. “The Goddess, blessed be her name, arranged the necessary paperwork for me to live in this world. She is my lone authority.”

Scary thought, especially since I believed what Skip said was exactly true. “Then why couldn’t Anand fake my test results?”

Skip winged up an eyebrow. “Do you recognize the Goddess as your lone authority?”

I shuddered.

My roomie smirked. “Didn’t think so.”

“Testing is notoriously skewed toward humans. The results vary wildly for magical beings, so much so few non-humans bother to test and few are required to in most jurisdictions.” Finnegan eyeballed Skip. “I doubt they’d get an accurate measure of your magic, for instance.”

“Probably not.”

“You were flying under the radar, too. The fakes Anand set in place for you while you waited for him,” Finnegan said, jerking his chin toward me, “to come into his power won’t pass closer scrutiny now.”

Griffith clapped his hands together. “Skip reporting to council as David’s familiar is fortunate, then. They won’t pick fights with a god or demi-goddess over sloppy paperwork for a resident emissary, given the circumstances, as long as you’re in this realm legally from this point forward.”

I scowled, still unsure about claiming Skip as my familiar. Yeah, familiars were loyal helpmates to magical partners and claiming one was considered a rite of passage into adulthood to most, but familiars brought a lot of obligations with them. I would be responsible for Skip’s health, training, and well-being, but more concerning, at least to me, I would be answerable for any tangles Skip got into. If he broke the law, my neck would be in the noose for it, and as much as I liked the guy, he was a trouble magnet who viewed laws as suggestions that could be respected or disregarded at his convenience.

The problem was, if I didn’t register Skip as the familiar the Goddess Anand had gifted to me, serious shit would go down. Even more serious than a First Blood demon portaling into my place of employment, unmasking me as magical. If I rejected Skip, our regional council would have to report him to State, which would petition to involve National. For all I knew, an undocumented emissary could spark off war with Anand.

Also, one didn’t tell a goddess no. Not if you wanted to live long, anyway.

Jae stirred by the fire, blinking at me. His eyes didn’t shine a true bloody scarlet yet, probably wouldn’t for another day or two, but red sparks glinted in them. “I can kill him,” he said, voice drowsy with sleep.

Skip snorted.

I sighed, the weight of ten worlds crushing down on my shoulders. I scrubbed a hand down my face. “Yesterday, my biggest problem was getting a C in Biotech.”

“Check your dad’s grimoire.” Griffith laughed, his warm hand landing on my shoulder to give me a squeeze. “I didn’t know him until he and Rosie moved to Cumberland, but before then, when he was revealed to be a late bloomer…” He lifted a silencing palm. “I know, I know. You said he wasn’t genuinely a late bloomer.”

“I don’t think they exist.” I believed late bloomers were magicals who tried to masquerade as mundane and failed at it.

Griffith smiled. “The point is Teddy’s life was upended once too, and he was lightly precog. He also left his grimoire in his greenhouse, where you and only you could recover it.” He spread his hands. “Your dad may have written something for you. Just saying.”

My eyes narrowed on Dad’s grimoire, spine bowed and pages bulging with stems and brittle leaves sticking out every which way.

Maybe.

Arching to stretch the muscles of his back, the guild boss pushed to his feet. “That said, I believe it’s time for me to go.”

As unwelcome as his arrival had been, as much as I would’ve wished only hours ago to never exchange a word with John Griffith again, my stomach clenched a little at the man leaving. It felt like abandonment. I knew that didn’t make sense, that I was wrong. Griffith needed to return to town to set wheels in motion so I wouldn’t be arrested. In my head, I grasped that, but in my heart, I was still that ten-year-old kid who’d waited and waited and waited for his dad to come home. Then lost his mom a couple years later to a liquor bottle.

I wasn’t that little boy anymore, though, so I stood, too. “I’ll walk you out.”

“No, you sit,” Griffith told Finnegan when the younger man rose to follow the both of us. “Don’t act like you won’t text me nonstop. David and I need a few minutes.”

Anxiety thrumming, I walked him around the house to the front, where he’d parked his truck twenty lifetimes ago. The sun had dipped below the mountain ridges. Full dark hadn’t fallen yet, but I could feel it coming, twilight humming in my bones. Out here, street noises didn’t drown out the night’s buzzing insects and the furtive rustle of nocturnal creatures in the brush.

Despite what he’d said to Finnegan, Griffith didn’t speak, just walked toward his truck. He stopped well short of the innermost wards encircling this place, lingering on this protected side of them. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Well.”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I arched an eyebrow. “Yeah,” I responded, but truthfully, I didn’t know what to say, either. Thanks? I missed you? I wish to God I’d never needed to see your face again?

“Listen, we’ll figure it out. You’ll be fine.”

“Sure.” I snorted a laugh. “Like my dad was fine.”

Griffith winced. “I know how you feel about the magical community. With reason. But we aren’t all bad, David. You were raised among us until your dad died. You know magicals can be decent people, same as mundanes, and like them, there are more good than bad. Magicals murdered your dad, but mundanes kill each other every day. People are people. Deep down, we’re no different.”

“I never believed magicals were inherently bad. No better or worse than mundanes, anyway.” I frowned. “I think power, what we can do, is dangerous and the more power you have, the bigger the target on you becomes.” I swallowed, my mouth as dry as the Sahara. “The murder rate for magicals is high for a reason. And you know that’s true.”

“I’m still standing.” He grinned, a little lop-sided. “You’re every bit as tough as I am. In your way.”

But my dad had been tough, too. Idealistic. My heart hurt at my memories of how passionate my father had been about not just protecting the magical community he’d adopted as his own after leaving Chicago, but growing it, doing whatever he could to give every magical an opportunity to thrive. Kid or not, I’d known he was a crusader, recognized how determined he’d been to right the wrongs.

And when I was ten, they’d killed him for it.

“I’m not a coward,” I said, “but I’m no Teddy Mace, either.”

“Lord, I hope not.” Griffith chuckled. “I loved him. I miss him every single day, but Teddy cared about doing the right thing more than he did about being smart about it. Nothing I or Rosie said swayed or deterred him.” He shook his head. “I don’t want you to be as fearless as he was. You should be scared. That fear will keep you sharp. What I want from you more than courage, though, is brains. Bravery won’t keep you alive. Fear and brains might.”

I sat on the front porch step after Griffith left for town. No Jae to stress about. He dozed by the fire, letting the heat bake into him and heal as much as he could. I heard the fire spit and crack when Skip or Finnegan added logs so apparently, my roomies…friends…whatever they were…realized the importance of Jae strengthening. I didn’t want to talk to either of them. Just couldn’t deal with their betrayal, even acknowledging that I too had kept secrets, that I had lied.

I needed to think.

The life I’d been building was over. Gone. If Jae returned to the daemonic a realm in the next day or two, that wouldn’t change the fact that demons didn’t bind mundanes—my cover was blown. The only good news is I wouldn’t be evicted from the house I shared with Skip, Finnegan, and our two other roomies. Rather than living close to the university, I’d searched for a rental in West Virginia where restrictions on magicals were less limiting.

Maryland confined us to specific spaces, ghettos mostly, but West Virginia didn’t give a fuck. Outside metro areas like Charleston and Morgantown, magicals could live wherever we wished if we registered at the local police department so our homes could be marked. Maryland took public safety much more seriously, legislating strict laws that segregated us and protected the mundane population from random magic. That was their excuse for persecuting us, anyway.

I’d chosen to live in West Virginia because the rent was cheaper by a lot and because apartments in town had no yard at all. When I’d abandoned Ma to her liquor, the year I’d couch-surfed without a home had been difficult for me because I’d rarely been able to connect with nature to keep my druidic powers in balance. Once I graduated from high school and gained access to my inheritance, sharing a house in the woods in West Virginia had seemed the best option, even though my ruse as a mundane up to that point had been wildly successful.

Not anymore.

I could keep my rented room, but Frostburg State would suspend me as a student. Oh, magicals could attend college. Institutions of higher learning were happy to take magical money, including in prejudicial states like Maryland. They just demanded more of it. My tuition costs would triple and I’d be accepted as a student again only after I submitted to prolonged and expensive testing processes to prove my control over my magic wouldn’t imperil mundane peers.

States also mandated magical students must obtain insurance, which covered little when the flood of complaints from mundane students banking on a quick buck rolled in. That magical young adults were responsible for pricey deductibles for each alleged offense didn’t matter, only that mundanes earned enough from complaints that were never investigated to pay for their own schooling.

Magicals earned degrees. Very few. But some.

I wouldn’t.

Thanks to the trust Dad had created for me, I could afford to finish school, yeah. Would’ve paid for my masters and a doctorate, too. Unlike most magicals, I had cash aplenty if I unbent enough to access it, but what was the point? I’d never work in my field as a magical. I could work outdoors, but not in the research labs I’d set my sights on. Magic and government laboratories did not mix. Ever. By federal law, I couldn’t even be hired as a janitor at any lab receiving a penny in grants. Commercial enterprises would hoover me up. Big Pharma paid druids handsomely—I could live as a king, insulated from the hard knocks this world had in store for people like me, but I’d end as another cog in their money-making machine.

Work study grants funded my job at the botanical garden so, when FSU kicked me out, my paycheck would evaporate alongside my educational career, too. Megan hired magicals at the garden, but she had limited monies to meet expenses that grants didn’t cover, including staff salaries. I wouldn’t let her keep me on when those dollars were best funneled to supplies, specialty equipment, and real estate buy-ins to expand the park.

I rested my chin on a clenched fist and pondered the black void that was my future. No school. No job. No plans beyond the next three days and those, murky and ambiguous at best.

When I fucked up my life, the destruction was a vortex of absolute doom.

Above me, the stars winked to light as, sun fully set, inky black stretched across the sky. The rising of the waxing gibbous moon hardly dimmed the glittering expanse. The hooting of a lone owl reached my ears, that call settling something deep inside me.

At least I had this.

Teddy Mace had been reckless, took too many chances, and one of those risks had resulted in his bloody, gruesome death. But I couldn’t have asked for a better parent. He’d known I’d need a safe place and in his short years on this earth, he’d provided that. Everything beyond the wards protecting his territory—mine now—was fraught with peril, but here? I was okay. Here, I could listen to the chittering of crickets and enjoy the occasional flare of lightning bugs through the surrounding greenery. Sitting on these wooden steps, without a single inch of my skin touching the ground, I could soak in the power of my father’s legacy of magic, embroiled in the dirt. In this space, I needn’t struggle for my survival. Not yet, anyway. Maybe soon, but not tonight.

This night, I was a clean blank slate. What I’d written upon that slate before had been erased, and being mad about that wasn’t wrong. Anger was natural. But finding my new purpose and a fresh, if different, future was also up to me. Raging over what I’d lost wouldn’t help. This sanctuary gave me time and space to process the spectacle that had become my existence, but also gave me room to decide what came next. I owed my father for that.

Best dad ever.

Finnegan rounded the corner of the house and walked to the front porch steps. He settled beside me with a weary sigh. “I set up Skip in your old bedroom. The extra bedroom is packed full of crates, looks like books mostly. If there’s a bed jammed in there, I have yet to find it, so I’ll take the couch.” He handed my father’s grimoire to me. “Skip and I would feel more comfortable with a demon roaming loose if you and Jae bunked together. You two get your parents’ room.”

I rested the bulky weight of my dad’s grimoire in my lap. “He’s still asleep?”

“Demons rarely let their guard down enough to get genuine sleep.”

I stared at him, unblinking.

He huffed out a sharp breath. “Whatever passes for rest for his kind, he is still doing that, yes.” His shoulders drooped at my grudging nod. Then his glance flitted to the bulging book in my lap. He sighed. “You know I’m not from Cumberland.”

My forehead furrowed. Vaguely, I remembered that. Kinda. “You’re from DC, right?”

“Arlington.”

“You came here to go to school…” My voice trailed off as I realized the college cover story had been a ruse to sucker me.

“Yeah.” Finnegan shrugged, shoulders stiff. “My mom is mundane, same as yours, but mine came from old money. Hotels. She was a rebellious teenager, so when she got pregnant, the only surprise was she didn’t get an abortion. Maybe I was another stick in the eye to her blue-blooded family, probably was, but she kept me. She didn’t have to. She didn’t name my father either, until I was thirteen and then, only a name written on a slip of paper she handed to me when she kicked me out.”

I winced. “After you tested as magical.”

Finnegan nudged his glasses up his nose. “She was a socialite by then, married to a senator. They had a couple of kids together, two sons.”

My heart clenched. If today hadn’t happened, I would’ve reached out to him, tried to comfort my friend for the family he’d lost, but today had happened. Finnegan wasn’t my friend. He was a spy. Still, I ached for him. “Do you see your brothers? Any contact with them?”

He shook his head. “Not since I left the coast, but I saw them on the news when my stepdad ran for reelection last year. They looked happy.” He squared his shoulders. “Doesn’t matter. Point is, my mom gave me a name and money to travel, so I grabbed my bike and loaded up a backpack. Took a week and in the dead of winter, which was less than fun, but I headed west on the C&O Canal.”

I gulped. Did shitty parents realize when they kicked their kids out after magical testing that they weren’t old enough to drive? That even if they wanted to leave, they couldn’t? Not easily, anyway. “Was Cumberland your destination, or just the last stop on the trail?” I asked, but I knew the answer. He could’ve swung north after reaching the terminus of the canal towpath and moved on to Pittsburgh via the Great Alleghany Passage. Many did.

“Destination,” he said.

I braced myself, muscles growing taut. “You found him. Your father.”

Finnegan’s mouth thinned. “I did.”

The grimoire I clutched in my grip dug ridges into my fingers. “He sent you to spy on me, didn’t he?”

“I didn’t tell him who I was right away. The Towpath is set up extremely well for kids like me, rejects, runaways, and throwaways. The guild has rooms for us above the cafe downtown. Did you know that?”

I nodded. “I ran around the dorms with friends bunking there as a kid.”

“Well, they remodeled the old open floor dormitories into legit rooms last year. The point is, I had a roof over my head and food. The closest I came to sleeping on the streets was a tent on the C&O Canal on my way to Cumberland. The Towpath Guild saved me. It really did. After I arrived in western Maryland, I was paired with a mentor who oversaw my education and training, and when I was legally old enough to work, my mentor found me a job. I never needed to tell my biological father I existed. The family had earned a rep for producing illegitimate children like dysfunctional confetti and although my bio dad seemed to at least be trying to do better than his own father, he had demonstrably not unlearned that bad habit. So no, I didn’t tell him who I was.”

He fidgeted. “It’s important you understand that. I take after my mother, look nothing like him, and as sometimes happens, our magical signatures are nothing alike. He had no reason to guess I was his son.” He blew out a long breath. “I don’t think I would have ever told him if my mother hadn’t traced me to Cumberland.”

He flashed a cynical grin. “Election year. My stepfather’s political opponent noticed my abrupt absence from family photo ops, hadn’t bought the excuse the campaign had concocted that I was away at boarding school, and was determined to sling some mud.”

I grimaced. Forget the demon broiling by my backyard firepit. Politicians were the absolute worst. At least demons never pretended to be anything except ruthless psychopaths. Demons portaling here did what they had to do to survive. Nothing more, nothing less. They didn’t scrabble and scheme to build power. I hazarded a guess. “You didn’t throw your parents under the bus.”

I didn’t care about politics, but I figured I would’ve heard about a scandal involving a magical bastard stepson of a senator hidden away in a rural guild’s youth homeless shelter. God knew Griffith’s dad had generated plentiful gossip when the illegitimate children he’d fathered showed up in Cumberland and he’d been no mundane politician. “Even after what they did, you protected them?”

Finnegan’s chin jutted. “No, I protected me. Us.” He spread his hands. “The magical community.” Lips thinning, he fiddled with his glasses again. “When Mom’s chief of staff showed up in the mountains, John helped me strike a bargain with her and the senator.”

For the first time, Finnegan’s resemblance to his biological father was uncanny. The glint in his eyes was pure Griffith. “You agreed to shut up. For a price.”

“I cost them plenty. Enough to fund the Towpath’s homeless youth shelter for two years.” He chuckled, wicked and low. “ And a monthly stipend for me until I turn twenty-one.” He shrugged. “The senator hung onto his seat in Congress, the Towpath expanded services for us kids, and I got to not be destitute anymore. Everybody won.”

Especially John Griffith, who gained a son. “How old are you, really?” I asked, legit curious. Finnegan had presented himself as a college student when he’d applied for the available room in our rental three years ago. He’d looked a lot younger, but his ID had seemed legit and in all the time since, Finnegan had never acted like a kid. Not once.

“I’ll be eighteen in December.”

I flinched because, according to my mental math, Finnegan had been a whopping fifteen years old when Griffith had sent him to spy on me. “Mother fuck.”

Finnegan lifted his palms. “I volunteered.”

“You were a child!” I glowered. “Still are a child.”

“I wasn’t born here. You didn’t know me and would have never linked me to the Towpath or John.” He ticked a finger on one hand. “Two, it got me out of the shelter faster and frankly, three, our rental is a thousand times better than the bunk and a trunk we kids had in the Towpath dorm before the deal with my parents paid for renovations. I have a room I share with nobody, and thanks to the stipend from Senator Shithead, I can afford the little luxuries I took for granted until I had to leave them behind in Arlington.”

He held up four fingers. “I also negotiated tutoring and advanced training with my mentor in exchange for keeping an eye on you so, once I turn eighteen, my magic won’t be as weak. I can now anticipate a future in the fire service.” He laughed. “I already have a career in the fire service. The IDs John gave me are so impeccable none of the fire captains realize I’m still underage until December. I draw a salary. With benefits.” He glared at me. “Name any other seventeen-year-old with a union membership, health, life, vision and dental, and a 401K with matching employer contribution. I’ll wait.”

I gaped at him. “You are definitely John Griffith’s son.”

Finnegan smirked. “Well. That’s on the down low. Nobody else knows.”

I winged up an eyebrow.

“Please. He’d shout it from the rooftops if I’d let him.” He chuckled. “It’s just…” He jerked one shoulder. “I want to make it, or not, because of me, not because I snagged some breaks along the way after my mother knocked boots with a bad boy on a bender.” He glared at me. “Of all people, you should understand that living your truth under the long cast of a parent’s shadow isn’t easy. You can’t avoid the comparisons, for good or ill. I can.”