Forbidden by Syrie James, Ryan M. James Page A

further—just as he was dying to change the subject. “I like to keep that information private.” Alec hoped his tone sounded casual.
    “Why?”
    “Because I live by myself.” He was grateful that he could at least answer that question truthfully. “The administration is okay with it, but I thought it’d seem strange to others if a student was listed without any parents or guardians.”
    “How’d you pull that off? I thought it was against the law for minors to live alone.”
    “I’m emancipated.” He’d told this story so often over the past month—to school administrators, his landlord, the guy he’d bought his car from—it was starting to feel as if it had really happened. “Last year, I moved to northern California to live with my uncle Gregory. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a raging alcoholic, so I petitioned the court to let me live on my own—but he still pays my tuition.”
    “Wow. That must have been hard. But don’t you have any other relatives you could live with?”
    “Not really, no.” It was the perfect opening: He could slip in a few tidbits to address his previous mistakes. “At first, after my parents died, I lived with my grandfather in Spain—but he’s an anarchist, and they threw him in prison. Then I stayed with an aunt who’s a missionary in Korea, but her boyfriend wasn’t too keen on having me there, and neither was the aunt with seventeen cats in Edinburgh.” That should tie things up nicely—if she buys it .
    Claire frowned, sliding to another table, where she began de-gumming its underside. “Brutal. I don’t envy your family reunions.”
    He laughed.
    “But at least you have some family,” Claire continued. “I don’t know where any of mine is. My mother is the only relative I have.”
    “Really? Why? Is your mother the black sheep of the family? Did she run away and join the circus, or marry someone they didn’t approve of?”
    Claire shrugged. “I wish I knew. She refuses to talk about it. All I know is they got married, had me, and then he left.”
    “Do you even know who your father is?”
    “Nope. I like to think he was a Nobel Prize–winning scientist who had to return to vitally important, top-secret work, and then died rescuing his lab workers from a fire. Or the emperor of some small island nation forced into hiding when a coup took over.” She sighed. “But the truth is, I think he’s just some deadbeat who knocked up my mom at seventeen and bailed.”
    “I’m sorry. I know how hard it is, growing up without a father.”
    “How old were you when your parents died?”
    “Ten.” The truth, again—although age ten had been so long ago for him, he could barely remember it.
    “Now it’s my turn to say I’m sorry.”
    “It’s okay.”
    Claire fell silent once more as they continued scraping. Alec felt her eyes on him, and he sensed that she was drumming up the courage to ask him something else.
    “By the way,” she said hesitantly, “about Friday …”
    He froze. “Aye?”
    “I haven’t thanked you properly for the whole … saving-my-life thing.”
    “Oh. That.” His heart pounded. “Don’t even think about it.”
    “I can’t help thinking about it. Alec, what you did, it was amazing. You saved us . But then you left without a word. I get that you like your privacy, but why did you disappear like that?”
    Okay , Alec thought. Still a harmless enough question that he could deal with. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told the police when they called me. I just didn’t want the attention.”
    “Because of what you did?”
    Alarm flickered through him. “What?”
    “That scaffolding was going to hit us—we were all toast. But I saw you raise your arm as if you were pushing it away, and the whole thing wavered and crashed off to the side. Then you lifted us to safety and vanished like a superhero in a comic book. How did you do it?”
    Well. There it is , Alec thought. She did see, after all—and she certainly