Chapter 11: Trust Fall

Warren's POV

What the actual hell is she trying to do to me? I swear, does she just look at all the walls I've put up and think "I'm going to tear down every single one"? Once again, I wasn't even intending to tell her all that stuff; all the insecurities I have about my home – its size, its décor, its untidiness, the general incomplete atmosphere I can always feel just at the edge of my awareness – and even about my feelings about my dad. How the hell does she get this stuff out of me? And then, after talking about Baron Battle, one of the most dangerous and hated villains in the last fifty years, what does she say? That she wants to know him. To know him as my dad, as the dad I see. How can she just put aside everything else she's ever heard about him and focus on what I've said? And why?

Between the thoughts racing through my head and constantly glancing up at Kaitlyn, I get absolutely no work done while Mom is cooking. I can't close my workbook fast enough by the time she asks us to clear the table to get ready for dinner. Kait stands awkwardly to the side, obviously wanting to help in some way, but I don't let her; I want to keep myself busy, so I set out all the place-mats, plates and cutlery. Kaitlyn jumps at the first chance to help that she sees, and darts into the kitchen as soon as Mom has brought the tortilla wraps and chicken out to the table, quickly picking up the lettuce, chopped onions and sour cream sauce and bringing them out. Mom and Kait then sit down while I grab us a glass of water each. The awkwardness from earlier starts to dissipate as we all start to construct our own fajitas.

Kaitlyn grins as I tip a good portion of onions onto the tortilla. "You got enough onions there, Warren?"

I glare at her. "Onions are the best bit. I don't skimp on them."

She wraps up her own tortilla – she really didn't put a lot of chicken in there; what's up with that? – and closes her eyes in bliss as she takes her first bite. "Oh my gosh, these are amazing."

Mom laughs while I smirk at her. "Told you."

Mom swallows her first bite before smiling at Kait. "So, Kaitlyn, how are you enjoying Sky High? Lab-tidying notwithstanding."

Kait's eyes practically flare to life. "I love it so much! I've never felt like I belong so much somewhere. All the classes are really interesting – well, most of them; history sucks – the teachers are all really dedicated and engaging, and I've made some of the best friends there."

"Sounds like you've really found your place," Mom beams at her. Kait nods in enthusiastic agreement.

"Anyway, what do you do as your cover, Michelle?"

Mom grimaces slightly. "I get paid so little as Shellshock that it barely counts as a cover anymore. But I work for the Maxville council, in the department that investigates, monitors and manages children's fostering and care."

Kaitlyn chokes slightly, quickly swallowing to recover herself, but her face goes stark white. "Really?" she asks, her voice thin.

I frown at her, but she clears her throat before I can interject. "That must be really rewarding; to give such children the chance at a new life."

"If only it was that rewarding all the time," Mom sighs. "The number of horror stories you hear about abusive foster parents or care homes is disgusting."

Kaitlyn makes a non-committal sound of agreement, more just picking at her food now. I narrow my eyes at her, trying to figure out what's wrong, but a tap on my leg breaks my concentration. I look to my left to suddenly find Qīng at my side, his paw on my lap and his eyes flicking between my fajita and my eyes.

"Oh my God, no, mutt," I berate him. "When has this ever worked for you?"

Kaitlyn and Mom are now laughing after having discerned what's going on, and I roll my eyes at Kaitlyn. "He does this every time we have guests for dinner because he thinks he can score some food through a pity party." I shake my head at the ever-hopeful dog. He pauses for a few seconds while we stare at him before licking his lips once, making us all start laughing again. I push his paw off me but give him a quick fuss on the head.

"You are so shameless."

Mom licks her fingers, her food already gone. "I'll feed him now, otherwise he'll never leave you alone."

"You're bowing to his wishes," I warn her, taking another bite of my fajita.

She snorts. "Oh, please, like I've never seen you sneak some food to him under the table when he makes those eyes at you."

My face flushes as Kait laughs at me. "It's understandable though," she calls out so Mom can hear her. "I'd be totally wrapped around the finger of someone with that face, too."

I'm smirking and speaking before I can stop myself. "My face or the dog's?"

She chokes again, but her face flares red this time. She's still red as she glares at me, so the effect is dulled somewhat. Our eyes burn into each others', and my scalp starts to hum. Qīng's food clattering into his bowl snaps me out of the fixation though, and I take another quick bite of my food.

When we've all finished, Kaitlyn doesn't give Mom a chance to even stand up before she's collecting up the plates, insisting that she washes the dishes. I shrug at the shocked but delighted expression on Mom's face, accepting that we're just going to have to let Kait have this one; I really don't think she's going to back down from this. Following her into the kitchen, I get out a sponge and washing-up liquid for her to use.

My attempt at working is just as pitiful as before dinner, mostly because I keep staring at Kaitlyn as she works, as if my eyes could somehow pick all the locks she keeps so carefully hidden. Mom's job made her panic. Why? Does it have something to do with how she lives? If her parents are dead, like I think they are, then she'd have been given over to someone for care. And the bruises she's had before, it's likely she's got them from her home. Was she worried my mom might have known her from her own investigations?

She sighs happily as she drains the sink and stares at her handiwork. Glancing at her watch, she grimaces, suddenly looking vulnerable, scared and resigned. As she turns towards the door, she sees me looking before I can pretend to be working, and plasters a bright smile on her face. She dries her hands and smiles at the two of us, Mom reading a book and me doing work (or trying to).

"Well, I'd better be off now. Thank you so much for giving me a ride and for dinner. It was so nice."

"Oh, honey," Mom turns to me, "why don't you walk Kaitlyn home? I'm not comfortable with her walking home alone in the dark."

"Me neither," I agree, truthfully but also to test a theory. I start to get up from the chair. My theory is confirmed; panic flashes across Kait's face for just a moment.

"Oh, no, you don't have to, really. I've lived here my whole life so I know which places to avoid. And I can look after myself now that Warren has started teaching me self-defence."

"Not well enough," I insist. "Besides, using it in practice is different to using it in an actual fight."

"No, please don't come with me!"

She claps her hands over her mouth at her desperate outburst. Mom is obviously taken aback by her intensity, but I just stare at Kait, saddened by her wide-eyed panicked expression, like a cornered animal. I hate that I made her feel like that.

Heaving a deep sigh, I run my fingers through my hair, meeting her scared eyes with my imploring ones.

"Kaitlyn," I begin quietly, "I don't ever want to force you to tell me something you don't want to. I just…. I just wish I knew what to do to convince you that you can trust me with whatever you're hiding from everyone."

Her desperation has evaporated, and she's instead retreated into a shell, her shoulders hunched – either from defeat or to hide herself – and her eyes downcast. Her face looks more tired than I've ever seen it, than even the day after my fight with Stronghold. The eyes that have always shone at me, sparkled and burned, are now completely hollow as she effortfully lifts them to look at me. Defeat in a theme of blue.

"It was never a question of whether you personally were trustworthy, Warren," she assures me. "It's just such a huge and ugly truth that's difficult to tell to anyone. But I know that look," she smiles grimly, without humour. "I know you've probably guessed a lot of it. And you're right; I can trust you. Maybe it's about time I stopped carrying this myself."

My heart swells in my throat as she carefully, deliberately, sits back down at the table, avoiding our eyes and still looking scared, but she's at least not running away. Mom pauses for a few seconds before clearing her throat.

"I have a few case files to look at, actually, so I'll just take them upstairs and leave you two –"

"No, wait, Michelle," Kaitlyn catches her hand gently as she starts to get up. "Stay. I'd…like you to hear this, too."

I can see my mom's heart just about melt in her eyes, but she still looks meaningfully at Kaitlyn before asking: "Are you sure?"

Kaitlyn seems kind of surprised about wanting my mom there, too, but she nods resolutely. So Mom sits down again, giving Kait a warm and immeasurably grateful smile. Kaitlyn fiddles with her clothes for a bit, rubbing the material of her sleeve between her fingers – something I've noticed she does when she's nervous – before she swallows and glances up at me.

"I'd like to hear your theories first," she says. "I want to know how much I sucked at hiding this."

Suddenly thrust in the spotlight, I flounder a bit at first, trying to gather my thoughts about Kaitlyn that had previously almost completely dominated my head-space. Then, as the theories come rushing back, the realisation that they're not exactly pleasant hits me, too, and I almost don't want to tell her, in case I offend her or something. But I just take a deep breath and push the discomfort down, meeting her eyes timidly and sporadically.

"Well," I mutter, "I won't tell you why I think all this because that would take too long, but I'm pretty sure your home life sucks." She snorts at that. "I think that you're being abused by the people who are caring for you – aunt and uncle, family friend, whoever – because your parents are dead."

A sharp intake of breath sounds from Mom as I say that she's being abused, but she doesn't react any other way. Kait just sits quietly and absorbs that, driving me insane with her silence before she bobs her head.

"Not bad," she intones. "Maybe your future cover should be a PI."

She fixes her eyes on the table as she takes a deep breath. "I've lived at a children's care home since I was five months old. The staff and the other kids there are…not great people. They quickly pinpointed me as the freak of the place, the weak one, so I became the punching bag for any violent tendencies and pincushion for any verbal punishment they felt like giving. Like I told you that first PE lesson, if I didn't expect the fight, I was stupid. Even now, if I go one day without even just being shoved into something, it's a miracle."

God, a care home. Not even a family member, just thrown into a bucket with the rest of the kids. Shit, that's so messed up. And "care home", yeah, right; that place is a cesspit. How can somewhere that's supposed to provide safety and security to kids have such blatant disregard for their well-being? No, not even just disregard or apathy, but actual hatred for their existence.

"A care home where you're abused," Mom echoes quietly, obviously considering how this is an offense to her profession and values on every level. She then carefully tries to catch Kait's eye. "And you live ten minutes' walk in that direction. You don't happen to live at Daisy Bank, do you?"

It's barely even a question, and maybe three second pass before Kaitlyn starts swiping quickly at her still-averted eyes as sporadic tears force themselves through her armour.

"Oh, sweetie," Mom whispers, her face drawn in deep sorrow, and she stands up to draw Kaitlyn into her arms. Kait's face crumples briefly before she sucks in a shuddering breath, clawing back some semblance of composure despite how much agony she must be in. And ain't that just the norm for her.

I frown slightly at my mom. "How did you know?"

She looks back at me, not pausing in stroking Kaitlyn's hair and unfazed by how she clings to her arm. "Daisy Bank has something of a reputation in the department. Carefully-hidden evidence of abuse, hard to find in the first place, that then mysteriously goes missing from police records or gets dismissed easily by local police departments; reports of staff, coincidentally ones that actually seemed to give a damn about the kids, being fired under dubious circumstances after working a month there at most. It's the dream of every single person in the department to finally get that place closed down for good, and the long-term staff prosecuted."

I shake my head at how messed up that is, but I look at Kaitlyn again, even as she still focuses on the table. "But couldn't you defend yourself in some way when they hurt you? Your powers would surely have helped."

She gasps out a bitter laugh, finally raising her head. Her eyes sizzle with all the rightful poisonous resentment of someone who should have never suffered this much for this long. "Warren, no one else there has any powers."

It takes me an embarrassingly long time to figure out why that's relevant, but my eyes widen when I do. "So, you had to hide yours. You've never been able to use your powers there?" I slump forward against the table, trying – trying – to even consider what it must be like to hide such an integral part of yourself. I can't stop the shudder that runs down my back. "Shit."

For once, Mom doesn't pick me up on my language. She just continues to hold Kaitlyn, holding her together as she steadily breaks open layer after layer of torment in her life. There's one last thing I need to know though.

"How did your parents die?" I ask quietly. The last thing I want is to make her hurt more, but maybe I could help her find solace in this somehow. Like if her parents were heroes and were killed on duty, then she could be proud of who they were and they would be proud of who she is now.

But she frowns up at me, confused, before spitting out another bitter laugh. She pulls out of Mom's arms to start pacing the room, her eyes flashing like Mom's electricity, lashing out like a cornered snake.

"Of course that's what you think, and I didn't correct you before," she mutters almost to herself, her venom now with a hint of hysteria. "Why would there be any other reason? I've suffered enough with everything else, after all." After a few more seconds, she stops dead in her pacing and whirls around to face me, her body almost vibrating with pent-up energy. Her eyes spear me in place with their challenge.

"Well, what if I told you that I don't even know if my parents are dead or alive? What if I told you they never wanted me in the first place? That, as far as I know, they were the ones who dumped me on Daisy Bank's doorstep when I was five months old? They left me there, with the clothes I was wearing and a single piece of paper with the name 'Kaitlyn' on. Nothing else. Not their names, no address, no phone number, no note explaining why they were leaving me, nothing!"

This isn't the Kaitlyn I know; the girl in front of me now is fractured and bleeding and furious about it. Her breath hisses in and out of her clenched teeth, a jarring contrast to her slicing shout a moment ago, and her fists tremble at her sides. I can only stare at her in awe, at this latest brief glimpse of who she is – whose existence she probably doesn't even admit to herself – and exactly what kind of unstoppable force is behind her.

But her anger fades quickly, as I've known hers to do; a short, powerful rage that tears into everything around it, then leaves behind silence and a destroyed landscape of pain and loneliness. I know that landscape all too well, and my heart scrunches in my chest in response to her face doing the same.

"My God," she whispers brokenly, her eyes suddenly filling with tears as she stares into the distance. "Sky High, the Paper Lantern and here are the only places I've been that have people who actually want me."

How she's only breaking down now is nothing short of a miracle. As if the weight of her whole life has finally become too much, her legs collapse under her, and Mom is immediately ready to catch her, cradling her head into her chest to muffle the heart-wrenching wails exploding from her mouth, as if the past almost decade and a half has been converted into pure unfiltered anguish. Without even thinking, my body is suddenly out of the chair and my arms are around Kaitlyn, crushing her to me much harder than I did on Friday while I fight off the stinging in my eyes. Mom and I cocoon Kaitlyn between us, both trying desperately to not let her shatter out of existence, even Qīng joins in, resting his head delicately on her lap. She clings to both of us at various points. I don't think she's wholly aware of who she's holding on to; I think she just knows that if she doesn't hold on to something, to someone, she'd be lost forever. And that right there is the bravest damn thing I've ever seen: that, in spite of how indescribably shitty her life has been, she wants to stay. Her first unthinking instinct is "I don't want to go".

Time evaporated away a while ago, so I have no idea how long we stay like that before Kait seems to gather up her broken pieces again, fitting them back together with every muted sniff and deep breath. Eventually, she doesn't need to cling to us for safety, so she just holds us to bask in the warmth of the two people around her, sometimes idly stroking Qīng's head. When she pulls back to look us both in the eye, the smile she gives is tired but genuine.

"I think I needed that," she says, her voice thick. "Fifteen years of trying not to think about everything that's wrong with my life and how bad it is... Actually facing the reality head-on, with amazing support around me," she smiles at us again, "has really helped."

"I'm really glad, sweetie," Mom gives her signature warm smile.

Kait's eyes start to fill with tears slightly again as she looks at my mom. "Michelle... Would it be okay if I came round here more often from now on?"

Mom runs her hand through and over Kaitlyn's thick brown hair. "You are welcome here any time you want."

Kaitlyn is the one to move this time, drawing my mom into a tight and grateful embrace. Mom strokes her hair again.

"What a resilient little star you are," she coos in Mandarin, and I can't help but smile; firstly, because she's only used that tone and spoken in Mandarin with me, which means Kaitlyn has obviously made an impression on her, and secondly, because Mom just chose the exact word to describe Kaitlyn perfectly, the word that I had been trying to find for weeks. A star, of course; incessantly burning, a bright pinpoint among a void of darkness and emptiness. And beautiful.

Placing my hand on her shoulder, I catch her eye meaningfully again. "Let me walk you home now?"

She chuckles weakly but sincerely. "Sure. It's not like you'll be so horrified by what you see that you run away. Not now I've told you what to expect."

"That's why you didn't want me to find out?" I raise my eyebrows before gently knocking my fist on the top of Kaitlyn's head once. "Dumbass."

She has the sense to look sheepish before gratefully accepting the hand I offer, using it to pull herself off the floor. With one more smile, she hurries to collect her stuff, tying her shoes with surprising purpose and speed.

"You eager to get back?" I remark, confused.

She pauses, as if only now realising that she's doing anything differently, then lets out a single laugh. "I guess I just feel like I'm more prepared for the battlefield back home."

Smiling in understanding, I raise an eyebrow. "What, like you've got a battle plan?"

She quirks a self-deprecating eyebrow at me. "More like I've actually remembered to wear armour before going there."

Once she has her shoes on, she fawns over Qīng for a bit, who drinks the attention up with his tail going mad, then gives my mom one last tight hug, thanking her profusely again. Then she grabs her bag, and I open the door and gesture for her to go through first. She smiles at me, and I throw a casual "Back soon" to Mom before following her out.

The journey is mostly quiet, with the first three minutes in total silence. But a number of questions crop up as we walk that I can't help but ask.

"I bet all the other kids at Daisy Bank go to the same school, because that would be easier. What have you said about you going to a different school to make them not suspect anything?"

Luckily Kaitlyn seems completely receptive to further questions, and she answers easily. "I told them I had to go to a school for kids with 'special needs', which of course they automatically assumed meant a school for dumbasses, their words not mine."

I can't help but laugh at that. "'Special needs'? Yeah, and they have no idea how special." A thrill goes through me at how easily we share a dark and secretive grin.

"But what about when you burnt your hands? How did you explain that?"

She shrugs. "I told them a kid at school dared me to hold my hands over a Bunsen burner for ten seconds for a packet of crisps. I said I was hungry enough that I went for it. That last part is important; as long as they think I'm suffering, they won't look too deeply into it."

Any good mood of mine disappears at that. The idea that the people Kaitlyn lives with are in any way satisfied if she's suffering is so disgusting that I have to take a few deep breaths of the clean night air to push down the nausea. Kaitlyn, in contrast, looks completely unfazed by something so sickening, as if it's a given fact of life that people would wish harm on her. The sheer wrongness of this girl living like this slices straight across the centre of my ribcage, pushing the air from me like when Stronghold punched me and leaving me with an untargeted desperation. Clenching my now trembling fists in my jacket pockets, I attempt to distract myself from the buzzing on my scalp with another question.

"One thing I don't get," I begin, "is the fact that the kids join in with abuse. Aren't they just as disadvantaged by the abuse from the staff? So why would they add to your misery? What do they gain from that?"

"Simple assimilation," Kait responds in that matter-of-fact tone again. She locks eyes with me as we walk. "Everyone at Daisy Bank became the same darkness that surrounds them in order to be able to process it and survive it. In complete darkness, anything that shines sticks out."

I stop walking, and so does she a few steps later, our eyes still locked. It all makes so much sense now.

"And that's why you're the main target," I murmur. She frowns in confusion, and I can't help but shake my head with a small fond smile; of course she can't see it.

"Did you hear what Mom called you back home?" I ask.

She shakes her head sheepishly. "My mind was kind of foggy when she spoke so I couldn't translate."

I shrug dismissively before becoming serious again. "She called you a resilient little star."

Kaitlyn blinks in shock, turning to the night sky to process this. Despite the streetlights, the stars blaze back as I look up, incessant and unwavering in how they shine against the dark void. Kaitlyn is still frozen as she struggles with the compliment.

"Kaitlyn," I call softly, "you never gave in to the darkness. You never became it just to survive. You've been shining your whole life, and no matter how much pain that brought you, you never let your light die. You just kept going. Kept shining."

Thirty more seconds pass before she lowers her awestruck eyes to mine again. "You really see me like that?" she whispers.

I close the distance between us, eyes not moving from hers, until the four inches between us feel like a velvet blanket of shared secrets. "You don't?"

The shake of her head she gives is barely perceptible, tentative, to not disturb the moment as the night holds its breath. "I never have."

My hand comes up of its own accord, resting delicately on her shoulder as my fingers play with a loose strand of her gorgeous hair. "Start."

Her breath catches quietly and her cheeks flood with colour, but she doesn't move away or break eye contact. Damn, her eyes are beautiful. If there were ever an ocean I'd happily drown in... Wait, are her eyes getting bluer?

Five houses around us suddenly have their sprinklers turned on, and Kaitlyn whirls around at them all, obviously panicking.

"Shit!" she whispers harshly. "Shit shit shit shit shit!" She quickly waves her hands at them, getting the water to die down and turning them off again before grabbing my hand and taking off running. It all happens so quickly that it's only when she stops us round the corner of the next block that I burst out laughing.

"Don't laugh!" she scolds me, punching me lightly on the arm while failing to stifle her own giggles. "What if someone had looked out of the window and seen that?"

"Oh no," I snicker, imitating non-super witness, "that girl can turn on our sprinklers. Whatever shall we do to protect ourselves?"

"Oh, shut up!" she laughs, hitting me again.

Her laughter dies as her gaze wanders further down the road, the joy fading from her face to be replaced by solemn resignation. Following her eyes, I spot a grim-looking building mostly hidden behind an unkempt hedge that looks more thorns than twigs. Even from here, the exterior looks like it's sucked all the colour out of the world, and the windows and doors look more like jail-cell doors, intent on keeping all prisoners and misery inside and all forms of happiness out.

"All the times I've walked past that with Qīng," I muse, "I always thought it was a crappy little hall or something; somewhere to hold temporary, cheap gatherings. I never would have thought people would actually live there."

Kaitlyn huffs humourlessly, already heartbreakingly subdued compared to how I know she is. She turns back to me with an apologetic expression.

"You should probably stay here and not get any closer; there'll be at least one person spying out the window, and if they see someone with me, they'll start asking questions."

I sigh, hating that she's right. "Sure, okay."

She smiles at me. "Listen... I honestly can't thank you enough for what you did tonight. Firstly, for giving me a lift and a decent meal, but also...for shouldering some of my brokenness." She laughs, delicately. "It was like a trust fall, but...less trite. More real." She meets my eyes again. "And thanks for not thinking any less of me because of my home life."

"For one," I smile back at her, "if I judged you for your home life, I'd be the biggest hypocrite in Maxville. And secondly, why the hell would I think less of you for surviving what you have? That'd be like criticising someone for getting a small cut after fighting off a rabid bear with just a penknife."

Her next smile is more like her, almost glowing with her warmth. She draws me into a hug I'm all too happy to return. Too soon, she pulls away, shooting me one last tired smile before jogging to her front door.

I mean to walk away, I really do. But a few seconds after she disappears behind the hedge, my feet are sneaking over to the building, keeping low as I step onto the property's lawn so I can stay hidden under a window frame. I can only hope the neighbours aren't watching, or at the very least don't report the shifty-looking teenager dressed all in black who's snooping around one of the houses. Fortunately, the window at the front is slightly open, so I can hear almost everything going on in the entrance hall.

"Where the hell have you been?"

I frown at the woman's pinched voice, like a poisoned knife put to sound. There's something off about the sentence and tone though, and it takes me a few seconds before I figure out what it is; whenever I would get home late, Mom would say something similar to me, but any anger in her voice was because she was worried. This venomous bitch sounds angry at being disobeyed. Oh, sure, forget the fact that a fifteen-year-old girl has come home over five hours later than she was supposed to, forget about how she may well have been in danger, what's really important here is the fact that she was inconvenienced.

"I got made to stay late because I messed up in chemistry," Kaitlyn intones, her voice flat. "I missed the bus, so I had to walk all the way back."

Obviously Kait has done this before, I know that. But I'm still stunned at how easily the lie slips out of her, and how well she lies, too. I've heard that the best lies are as close to the truth as possible, and that's exactly what she did; she did mess up in Mad Science, which is sort of chemistry, and she did miss the bus. She's obviously skilled at lying, which isn't surprising given how much she has to hide here.

I look down suddenly, gasping slightly as a thought occurs to me; despite how easily she lies, she's never once lied to me. She's withheld information about her home life and about whatever that "other threat" is at school, but she didn't even lie to me in that first PE lesson where she was about to say "I don't know anything about you". She couldn't even say that because it was a lie. She's always been truthful with me, despite how easily she could have misled me.

An unkind snort breaks my musings about another way Kaitlyn is awesome. "Of course, you screwed up. Dumbass."

I scowl at the unnecessary jeer, and it deepens as the insult isn't rebuked by the venomous one.

"Well, you're not getting any dinner, so get upstairs to bed."

Okay, I'm leaving now, before I do something stupid like throw a rock through the window or something.

I creep back to the corner, sticking to the shadows, before walking back more casually. As I pass the area where Kaitlyn set the sprinklers off though, I pause, staring at them.

Kaitlyn set off the sprinklers. She's said before that sometimes her emotions can manifest through her powers, and mine have done the same, especially when they were newer. What what the strong emotion she was feeling when she set those off?

Nope. Nope nope nope, not thinking about that –.

And how do you feel about her feeling that emotion?

I said, I'm not thinking about that.

Scrubbing my hands over my face roughly, I continue marching back home, trying to outpace the thoughts pursuing me. By the time I get home, I rest against the inside of the front door for a few seconds just trying to catch my breath. Qīng cocks his head at me, his infuriatingly intelligent eyes scrutinising my odd behaviour, and I just glare at him.

"Hi, honey," Mom smiles from the table, some of her files in front of her. "Kaitlyn get home alright?"

"Yeah, and got read the riot act inside."

Mom grimaces in sympathy, sighing with me.

"Hey," I begin awkwardly. "Just…. Thanks. For being so good with her."

Her achingly familiar eyes soften as she looks at me, and my throat tightens just slightly as she slowly gets up to pull me into her arms. She holds my face between her hands despite being three inches shorter than me, gently stroking my hair.

"She's a good kid, Warren. I'm so glad you found each other and can be there for each other."

I can't help but smile at that. "Yeah. Me too."

She beams back, then tilts my head down to press her lips to my forehead. "I love you, little spark," she whispers in Mandarin.

My eyes closed, my smile widens as my heart glows like embers in my chest at her long-standing endearment for me, and I respond in kind. "I love you, too, Ma."

As we both open our eyes, she winks at me, then bumps her head gently at mine. "Now get up to bed with you; it's quite late, and I know you like to read before you sleep."

"Yes, Ma," I sing mockingly.

She lets me go after one last kiss to my forehead, and I skip upstairs to my room. After quickly changing into my pyjamas, I climb into bed, but my latest fantasy novel remains on my bedside table as I stare up at the ceiling, too occupied by my thoughts to delve into any other reality. I wonder if I'll ever not be in complete awe about how much Kaitlyn bore all by herself. All that crap that she's gone through at home, and she would just turn up to school as if nothing was wrong. If I hadn't been putting the pieces together slowly, and hadn't been so damn nosy, she probably wouldn't have even said anything to me. She'd have just gone on carrying it all by herself and pretending she was okay.

But now I know. Now she's told me. How is that going to change us? It's going to be for the better – we'll probably be closer – but what will that actually mean for how we interact?

Will there be more moments like with the sprinklers?

Groaning, I flip over in bed and pull the pillow over my head, trying to ignore how fast and loud my heartbeat sounds in the silence and how hot my face feels. The sprinklers may not have meant anything. It may just have been a fluke. Hell, she could have been feeling comforted, safe, relaxed, anything other than –. I can't think about this. I have to stop thinking about this. It could ruin everything.

Wow, this might be the fastest I've ever updated, let alone updated the same fanfic! So, Kait has finally told Warren what's been going on with her. Big stuff! I hope you all enjoyed it, and also please leave a review; yes, I really like writing for the sake of writing, but only receiving 2 reviews for the previous chapter was really disheartening.

Fly on,

NitnatRide