Free PS03 - Tall, Dark & Heartless by R.L. Mathewson

she walked past Caine she did her best to ignore the bastard. Not once since he'd broken the shower had he spoken to
    her, which wasn't really a shock since he'd been ignoring her for years. It didn't stop it from hurting. The part of her that hoped
    he still cared for her, if even a little over the years, died a slow painful death over the past couple of days.
    He didn't care about her. She'd love to say that he'd never cared about her and just allowed her to hang around him when
    she was a little girl out of boredom, but she couldn't. There was no doubt in her mind that he cared about her when she was
    younger, but somehow, somewhere along the line she'd done something to ruin that and she had absolutely no idea what the hell
    that could be.
    Right now she didn't care. Right now she wished she was alone, because she sure as hell didn't find his presence
    comforting. Actually, it was even more painful having the one person who used to mean everything to her treat her like she was
    nothing. He used to be her entire world, the one person she could go to for absolutely anything.
    Her parents were kind people, but they'd taken their jobs very seriously. While most Sentinels craved having a family to
    take their minds off work, to have a little peace in their lives her parents hadn't. She'd been a mistake. After a hundred and
    twenty years her parents had an accident and she was the result.
    In the beginning they tried to make her the center of their world, but they couldn't. They couldn't pretend their duty wasn't
    the most important thing in their lives and even as a child she'd understood they helped people. That didn't mean that it didn't
    hurt when her parents left at a moment's notice, gone for days, weeks and sometimes months at time. She tried not to let it
    bother her, but sometimes it hurt knowing that she didn't rate very high in their lives.
    Sometimes they just simply forgot about her and forgot to ask one of the other Sentinel couples living in the compound to
    watch over her. That's what happened when Caine came into her life. The night before Caine came into her life, her parents
    answered a distress call in Massachusetts and simply took off, forgetting to make arrangements for their three year old child.
    She remembered waking up in the morning alone and hungry. After several failed attempts to reach food she'd left their
    suite of rooms in search of someone tall enough to reach her favorite cereal. When she found Caine stalking the halls with
    glowing red menacing eyes and fangs she knew he was the one to help her.
    When he decided to stick around he somehow turned into her closest friend and ally. If she needed to talk to someone
    she'd gone to him. Instead of crawling into her parent's bed, whether they were home or not, she grabbed her teddy bear, Mr.
    Tubby and simply yelled for Caine. No matter what he was doing or where he was in the compound he came to her. He'd scoop
    her up into his arms and take her downstairs to his subbasement suite where she'd sit on his lap, eat the cereal he kept for her
    and watched Disney DVDs until they both passed out. As much as she loved her parents, which she did, Caine was the one she
    could go to for anything and everything and he never turned her away. He kept his duties restricted to New York to makes sure
    that she was safe.
    Until the day she felt her world crumble beneath her feet. Instead of getting schooled at the compound she'd been allowed
    to attend public school with other humans. Some parents coddled their human children and wouldn't allow them to take part in
    the human world, but a few others, like hers, felt that since she was human she should live like one, and at least socialize
    among them. For the most part she'd enjoyed attending school with other humans. It wasn't until her senior year that everything
    changed.
    When she needed Caine the most he started to back away from her until one day he didn't even acknowledge her, leaving
    her all alone in the