Free All We Know Is Falling: Fall With Me: Volume One by Nicole Thorn

resolve will crumble eventually. I know her too well.”
    I glared at her and fought the urge to hit her with a pillow. Now he’d never give up. Not with my mother on his side.
    “Don’t you worry,” he told her. “I have no intentions of giving up on her. Not by a long shot.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter Six: Rumor Has It
     
     
     
    Hale walked into class looking…off. I’ll admit, I don’t know the boy well. But I could tell something was off. I knew if I flipped my powers on he’d be a mass of dark grey.
    He was down next to me without a word and stared down at his textbook. Even when class started and we were told to do the study guide, he stayed quiet. I started working and waited to see if he’d come to life.
    I flipped through my book and started writing down the too easy to find answers that I couldn’t care less about. Most of the stuff I just knew from memory. 
    Damn it…
    I shouldn’t care. I really shouldn’t. I kept asking him to stay out of my business and here I was, wondering his. If I asked, that would be crossing the line. So I wouldn’t.
    Nope.
    Not gonna do it.
    “What’s wrong?” I said quickly and quietly.
    He looked up at me and blinked like he was just now becoming aware that he was here. “What?”
    I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Are you okay?”
    His eyes narrowed in a non-aggressive way. “Why are you talking to me?”
    I smiled. “I often find myself wondering the same thing about you. Doesn’t answer my question.”
    “Sorry,” his tone dropped. “I just thought that…I thought you wouldn’t be talking to me. Now.”
    I still wasn’t getting it. “Why’s that?”
    “You really don’t know?”
    I threw my hands up in the air. “Jesus. If I did do you think I would be asking you? Answer the question. You spend a week bugging me then you shut down?”
    He took a few breaths and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ve done some things in my life, Rory, that I was hoping you wouldn’t find out about. At least not until you knew me a little better. Maybe not even then,” he said the last line to himself. “I’m quite the hypocrite,” he turned his head to me, “aren’t I?” He was smiling in a heartbreaking way.
    I offered the option, “Then don’t be.”
    He looked at me with knowledge that he had and I knew I never would, “I won’t be the one to tell you. You’ll find out,” his face was grim. “But I don’t think I can handle the look in your eyes when you find out.”
    This boy…was more frustrating than I could have ever imagined. All I wanted to do since we met was get away from him. And all he’s done was try and know me. Now I was showing that some part of me cared and he was shutting me down.
    I wasn’t sure what to do. I had so little experience with human interaction and I felt like I was an outsider. I was always just watching, never a part of it, and now I was. And I was lost.
    So I said the only thing that came to mind. “I don’t care.” He looked at me with a tense expression, so I elaborated. “What you did. I don’t care. Because whatever it is, I don’t think it’ll scare me as much as my fucked up stuff would scare you.”
    He smiled again, but it was clear what he was thinking. He didn’t believe me. But he didn’t know what I knew. He didn’t know what I was. What I was made from. I was a creature of evil. Nothing he did could compare to that.
    “Lamb,” his hand reached out but he didn’t touch me. “I’ve spent so much of my life living in fear that I’m numb to it now.”
    I shook my head. “If you knew me like you keep saying you want to, you’d know that a Lamb isn’t what I am.” I’m the wolf that kills it. Worse, I’m the snake. Like my father before me, I was a serpent. There was evil in me. There had to be. I lived in terror of the day it would show itself. And who I’d take