AndGodI have to go to him right now.
Snatching the envelope and clutching it in my hands, I run after him.
He’s almost at the edge of the stage and I call out, “Roman.”
He stops then.
Slowly, he turns around and looks at me.
I know that I should let him go. I know that I shouldn’t have stopped him.
I know that doing this is foolish. And maybe I am that.
Foolish.
But I don’t care.
Staring into his piercing eyes, I hug the envelope to my chest and say, “If you call me Fae, then I get to call you Roman.”
Chapter Six
Tempest and I are awesome friends now.
Best friends even.
It didn’t take us long to become that. In fact, I think we became good friends as soon as we met at the game. But our friendship was sealed at her birthday party.
Which I made sure to attend and which wasn’t an easy thing to do.
I knew it wouldn’t be.
I knew my brothers would freak out. Already me going to that one party has created so much drama and now I wanted to go to another one.
But I was going and I wasn’t going to lie about it.
So I told them and, well, it didn’t go well.
Definitely not with Ledger, who kept grumbling about it for that whole week, pacing and stomping and cursing.
We had four family meetings about it.Four.
So family meetings are a tradition in our house.
Conrad established it long ago, so whenever there’s something that might be important– from where to go on vacation over the summer or Ledger getting a new truck toswitching from whole wheat pasta to spinach pasta – we all get a say.
I think it’s his way of keeping all of us in the loop and functioning as a family.
So that whole week, leading up to the party, there were long discussions over dinner where Ledger would just curse and say no to everything. Stellan, who would join us over the phone, would try to reason with him and tell him that I’m not a child and at least I didn’t lie like the last time.
While Shep, again over the phone, would make stupid jokes all the while siding with Ledger.
Until Conrad put a stop to it all and declared that Ledger would go with me.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you. I don’t trust where you’re going. So if you want to go, Ledge will go with you.”
That seemed to satisfy all my brothers and so that was how I went to Tempest’s birthday party, with Ledger – and some of his friends, who he invited along without even telling me – as my bodyguards.
Which was fine.
