Free A Boy Called Cin by Cecil Wilde

the extent of Cin's knowledge about her, but he smiles over anyway when she glances at him.
    The next thing he knows, she's sitting down across from him.
    "Hi," She smiles brightly, showing off a row of perfect, blindingly-white teeth. "I'm Angela. You're staying with Tom Walford, aren't you?"
    So Tom hasn't gone completely unnoticed, despite what Cin assumes are his best efforts. "Yeah, that's me. I've seen you around. You're in the house across the street, right?"
    "Uh-huh. So are you, like, his nephew? Secret long-lost son? New PR minder?"
    Cin chuckles. "Not quite, no. I don't think he needs a PR minder. He's pretty good at not putting his foot in his mouth in public and he's excellent at apologizing when he does." Cin plays with his coffee cup. "He does it a lot more in person, but he's still very good at apologizing, so I don't mind."
    "So if you're not any of those things…?" Angela's clearly not going to let him off the hook about what, exactly, he's doing staying with a famous billionaire. He shouldn't really have expected that she would. If people knew about it, they were bound to be curious.
    "I'm just spending the summer with him. We're…" Cin pauses to decide how much of a lie to tell, and decides to go with a half-truth. "Friends. He came to an exhibition my work was in, and he likes it."
    That possibly sounds worse than 'I'm his fuck buddy for the summer'. Cin watches Angela carefully to see how she'll interpret it.
    "Right," she says, disbelief clear on her face. "Listen, you don't have to tell me, but that was a terrible lie."
    "I'm a terrible liar. But that was honestly true. Maybe just not the whole story."
    Part of him would like to just tell her, but that could easily bring media vultures down on their heads—on the heads of the whole town—and that's the last thing Cin wants. Tom specifically came to this place because it was a sleepy little town where no one would care that he was there and he could actually have a normal holiday for once in his life, and he'd trusted Cin to share that with him. Their relationship was going to have to involve keeping things quiet.
    On the one hand, Cin appreciates that. He doesn't really want to be a figure of national curiosity and he definitely doesn't want enthusiastic, bottom-feeding journalists digging dirt up on him, because there is a lot of that to be found and he really just wants to get college over and done with as quietly as possible. On the other hand, not being able to just respond with 'I'm here because Tom's my boyfriend' is frustrating.
    Angela doesn't seem interested in pressing further, so Cin turns his attention to the beach instead. It might be nice to find a slightly quieter one to go wandering on with Tom. He feels a little ridiculous, wanting horribly stereotypically romantic things from him, but Tom's sweet and warm and safe to be around. There hasn't been a whole lot of romance in Cin's life.
    "I'd better get back to my parents," Angela stands up from the table. "Whatever you two are up to, have a nice holiday."
    "You too." Cin gives a small wave as Angela turns away. How much more often would something like that happen if he was more serious with Tom? Angela might have just been a curious gossip, but more dedicated people with more to gain from finding out things about Tom's personal life were bound to come after him sooner or later, once it became common knowledge that they were together. Cin isn't sure he could deal with that.
    On top of that, it would mean that his transgender status became a matter of public record, whether he wanted it to be or not. It's only now occurring to him that that's the kind of thing that would put him at real personal risk. Tom's wonderful, but he's not Superman. He's not going to sense that Cin's in actual danger and come swooping in to rescue him, as much as Cin's sure he'd like to be able to do that.
    A seagull lands on the other side of the table and squawks at him. "I don't have anything for you," Cin