Disclaimer: I don't own The Covenant or the Flyleaf song "All Around Me" from which I got the titles.
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8. This Fire Rising Through My Being
After mandatory Family Dinner—after hearing his grandmother dementedly mutter about the days when Richard Garwin IV was still alive, before he let the Power drain him to a husk—Reid needed to get very, very drunk and dance and maybe, if he were lucky, screw. The old woman was a leech who latched on to him every time he went home, draining the life right out of him with her memories and her warnings and her randomly shed tears. Somehow, he'd ended up with her fair hair and his mother's eyes, but that didn't stop her from comparing him to his father and grandfather over and over again until he wanted to puke.
But enough of that—now was the time to party, and he saw a pretty little thing near Kate who looked like just his type. He didn't recognize her face. Must be new, and for a moment Reid wondered from where she hailed. But then he noticed the way her jean skirt hung, revealing the start of the smooth downward curve of her hipbones, and suddenly he didn't care if she was from Timbuktu.
She'd look even prettier on her back in the backseat of Tyler's truck. Tacky, yes, but what choice did he have since the state of Massachusetts took away his license and his grandmother his car? If the family driver hadn't been willing to drop him off on the edge of the woods, no questions asked, he would have had to walk to this shindig.