NOTES:
1. REBEL ONE IS NOW AVAILABLE IN E-BOOK AND PAPERBACK FORMATS! YOU CAN CHECK IT OUT (WITH A NEW COVER AND NEW PARTS!!) ON AMAZON! <333
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Annabeth
16 years old."Maybe this wouldn't have happened if you'd kept a better eye on him."
"Maybe if we had left like I wanted to..." I let the rest of that sentence hang silently in the air.
"But you didn't, did you? You didn't do anything."
"I bought a car!" I screeched. "I bought the fastest car I could find to escape in! I packed our bags. I wanted to go while you were busy recruiting more that night at Chad's!"
"Don't blame that all on me. You brought Q there on your own. You went to your chemistry classes with Max. You let Finn volunteer. And no, you know what? You're distracting me. This is about Alex. I lost my brother and I can be upset."
"Are you forgetting how much I took care of him, too?"
"Every time I've left Alex with you, he got into trouble."
My hand connected with his windpipe.
Cam fell forward, propping one hand on his knee to hold himself up. The other hand clasped onto his neck as he took in wheezing breaths.
I left, slamming the door on my way out. Cam's motel room was on the second floor and there were old, rickety metal stairs off to the side. Despite the fact that the stairs looked ready to crumble, I stomped down on them hard, trying to release some of my anger but it didn't work.
Walking down the sidewalk, I sat down on the curb to the parking lot and drw my knees up to my chest.
Footsteps came from behind me. The person skipped down the steps and then dragged their heels like they couldn't be bothered to lift their leg one extra inch. I knew it was Finn.
He sat down on the curb next to me and wrapped one arm around my shoulders.
"I don't want to talk about it," I said, shrugging his arm off of me.
Finn seemed perfectly content not to talk or touch me and instead found interest with something on the ground beside him. At some point, he had a sliver of a twig grasped in his hand and was poking at something on the ground. At another point, he'd found a rock and was scraping it against the sidewalk in concentration. A few cars sped by.
I didn't care about any of that because Alex was gone. Gone. And Cam was avoiding me. Blaming me.
In fact, Cam hadn't returned to the Casey house since Alex died. It has been a few days and I hadn't seen him except at the lousy excuse for a funeral. It was less a memorial and more of a strategy meeting on how to get revenge. There was no casket or body to mourn over. The night Alex died, the Caseys and Dacostas fought deep into the night. Cam held Alex's body the entire time. Jay had nearly had to knock me out to stop me from running after Callum and Scully, saying I was going to get myself killed. Finn tried to comfort both Cam and I but it was a mess, we were all a mess.
YOU ARE READING
Burned Ones
AdventureCameron Casey and Annabeth Taylor are about to find out just how deep a burn can hurt you. Together, they're being trained to take over the family business. Neither of them want the lives their fathers have planned out and they realize that sometim...