Page 3 of Colin

“It’s just—” Jay bit at his lip, clearly still battling his emotions. “You’re my best friend.”

That stopped Colin short, something warm filling his chest. “Um. I am?” He’d known Jay washisbest friend, but with how popular the little vampire was, he hadn’t thought it was mutual.

“Yes!” Jay said emphatically. “You and Soren and Danny and Alexei. Oh! And Izzy—”

Ah, there it was.

“Izzy, as in, Jamie’s little sister? The thirteen-year-old?”

“Yes. We FaceTime.”

Colin bit back a smile. “So many best friends. How do you find the time?”

Jay waved airily, his fist clutching another handful of Skittles. “I need very little sleep. You know this.”

“Of course.”

Colin didn’t sleep much either, but it wasn’t because he didn’t need it. He just sort of…couldn’t…a lot of the time. Not since middle school. And he wasn’t a vampire like some people he knew, so he didn’t exactly bounce back the next day, full ofenergy. His brain was usually foggy, and his body fatigued easily (not that he was the pinnacle of manly strength to begin with), and the insomnia would probably shorten his life span in the end.

So bully for human weakness, he supposed.

“We’ll keep FaceTiming too,” he promised.

“You swear?”

“I swear.”

Jay looked skeptical, cocking his head like a little sugar-addicted bird. “You don’t always answer when I call though.”

“Well, sometimes you call me five minutes after we’ve just spoken.”

“That’s five extra minutes to remember something I wanted to tell you.”

That almost drew a laugh out of Colin. He was going to miss Jay, and he didn’t have a lot of people he could say that about. He’d liked the little weirdo from the moment he’d met him. Most people put on a front, either to impress others or to protect themselves or to have some sort of sense of control over their interactions. Colin couldn’t even blame them for it—he was the same way. But that didn’t keep it from being tedious and predictable.

But Jay didn’t put up that wall. He was just himself. And who he was happened to be kind and enthusiastic and better than most other people around them. His one big secret—his vampirism—he’d spilled to Colin within a few weeks of knowing him.

But Colin couldn’t go back just yet. Yes, things were better. Thanks to a neighbor being over for coffee at the time, his dad had gotten incredibly speedy intervention. Combined with great medical staff and a huge helping of luck, and a month later he’d gotten back most of his original function.

And yes, they’d caught the irregular heartbeat that had caused the clots that had moved to his brain in the first place, and he was on blood thinners now…but it was still new and terrifying, and Colin wasn’t going to be an entire state away if anything happened again while his dad was still recovering.

He was staying in Tucson.

He’d come back home.

If only home wasn’t such an absolute shithole.

Not his dad’s actual house. It was homey as ever, the same single story they’d lived in ever since Colin’s mom had passed away in middle school. And Tucson itself was pretty okay as a city, he had to admit (sometimes, with great reluctance, when absolutely pressed). There was the appropriate number of weirdos and actual community-focused activism and a decent music scene and all the other stuff Hyde Park was missing. It wasn’t Tucson’s fault it was the host of all Colin’s worst memories.

But opening the back door to the July sun had him remembering one of the key reasons he’d left.

This heat. This goddamn, motherfuckingheat.

Just the feel of it on his skin had Colin wanting to pack up all those newly opened boxes into his car and speed off back to the mountains. But he’d survived eighteen years of it; he was sure he could survive one or two—God, please not two—more.

He spotted his dad immediately, sitting in one of the patio chairs tucked into the shade, as if that could ameliorate the triple-digit temperatures currently plaguing them.

It was still a punch to the gut, the way he now looked twenty years older than the last time Colin had visited Tucson, the time before the stroke. His dad had always been strong, built tougherthan Colin, despite their other physical similarities. His dad shouldn’t be allowed to look anything less than formidable.

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