So he could hear.Brat.
“Good news, Haz. Hiro let me borrow his.”
Haz said something else I couldn’t hear. I was about to put the phone on speaker myself.
“Oh.” Pip’s eyes strayed in my direction. His cheeks pinkened. “That’s his name. It’s what I call him.”
“Ghost has a real name?” Haz yelled so loud I heard it clearly this time.
“Did he think Ghost was written on my birth certificate?” I wondered.
Rett looked guilty and lowered the phone. “Was I not supposed to tell him? It’s hard to remember to call you different things around different people.”
Slipping my arm around his waist, I pulled him in. “Youcall me whatever you want, Pip. I’ll always answer.”
He pushed up onto his tiptoes, lips reaching for mine. I lowered my head?—
“Are you still there?” Haz hollered. “Kieran! I think your phone is broken!”
“You’re probably using it wrong,” he yelled back.
Giggling, Rett pulled the phone back to his ear but laid his other ear against my chest.
Now this is more like it.
“I’m here,” he said. “Yeah, I’m at Hiro’s. I’m staying with him for a while.”
I snatched the phone right out of his grip. “He lives here now. Permanently.”
“I knew you’d decide he was important enough to stay,” Haz replied.
“What?” I asked.
“That’s what he told me. You left because he wasn’t important enough to stay.”
I made a rough sound, and Rett tilted his head up to look at me. I pushed it back into my chest and held him there. “That’s not true.”
“I know,” Haz said. “Anyway, I’m glad you figured it out. I worry about him. Did you know he was homeless?”
“Yeah,” I said, clutching him even tighter.
“Of course you did. You’re the reason he isn’t now.”
“What?”
Whatever Pip heard in my voice had him trying to pull back again. Growling, I dropped my chin. “Stop squirmingaround and stay where I put you.”
“But I can’t hear.”
“How’s that taste of your own medicine?” I quipped.
“You know,” Haz said, drawing me back, “you left him all that money. It’s the reason he was able to get that apartment.”
It both pained and elated me to hear those words. Elated because I was thankful I helped him in some way. Pained because that hellhole he called home just wasn’t good enough, and I should have been there.
He needs a doctor.
“I gotta go call the doctor,” I said into the phone.
