Free Supernormal by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway

Or, ‘No, it’s not darker out there?’”
    “No,” Ashley said, and Cam nodded.  Just accepting it.  Again.  “We didn’t do too well on the beach last time.”
    “No,” Cam agreed.
    But his eyes were so blue, even through her sunglasses.  And she did like to walk the beach at night, every now and again when Brody let her.  Liked the way the sand slipped through her toes like silk.  So she said, “Okay.”
    “Okay,” Cam said, then nodded at the back door. “We should tell them.”
    “Brody knows.”  He would have stopped her by now if he thought it was a bad idea.
    She headed down the steps to the beach, and Cam went with her.
     
    They picked their way through the dunes, down to the open beach.  A breeze was coming off the water, cool enough to prickle her skin.  Brody lived on a quiet part of the island, set back from other houses, which meant the beach here was abandoned by this time of night.
    Or should have been.  Ashley held back when Cam made to head north.  “Can we go this way?” she asked, nodding in the opposite direction.  “There’s people back there.”  Ashley saw him raking his eyes over the sand.  “They’re down a bit.  I can hear them,” she confessed.  His eyebrows rose, and she added, “And smell them.”
    She expected…well, no, she hadn’t expected jokes, actually.  She didn’t know him, at all, really, but he didn’t seem the type.  So she wasn’t surprised when he simply turned around and strolled the other way.
    They walked in silence at first.  Ashley took care to keep a safe distance between them; she probably overestimated a bit, but best to play it safe, and if Cam noticed anything he didn’t say.  It felt strange to walk on the beach, slow enough that she could feel the fine grains of sand against her feet.  Cam had an easy, long-legged stride, and she had to concentrate to keep pace with him.
    She checked to make sure he wasn’t looking, twice.  Then slipped off her sunglasses.
    It took her a second to work her eyelids open.  The world gleamed silver in the moonlight, so bright and clear that even with the moon half behind a cloud her eyes watered.  She blinked rapidly until her eyes adjusted.  Every time, it still amazed her.  It was like she had been blind before.  Ashley glanced at Cam, and the moonlight made his hair look like fire, made the freckles on his skin stand out.  She hadn’t realized there were so many of them.
    For someone who’d made such a big fuss out of this, he was watching her quite casually.  “So that’s what you look like.”
    She shrugged, hooking her glasses through a belt loop.
    “I’d wondered.  You hide behind them all the time—”
    “I need them—”
    “Because your eyes are sensitive,” he finished.  “Hearing, too.  You’re wearing earplugs,” he said when she shot a look at him, “and you still managed to pick up on those people down the beach.”
    “You have psychic visions,” she tossed back. 
    He nodded, conceding.  “So.  Hearing, vision.  Sense of smell.  Speed, strength—”
    “I work out.”
    “—your hand healed—”
    “It was a scratch, I wasn’t—”
    “—you do know people don’t usually have pupils like that?”
    “ Stop.  Stop it.  Don’t try to figure me out,” she snarled, and turned on him.  “Why are you even here?”
    “My parents fucked.  Same as you.”
    Ashley tripped over her own feet.  “No, that’s—that’s not what I meant,” she sputtered.
    “Obviously.  Otherwise we’d be siblings.”
    She just said it.  “Aren’t you afraid?”
    “Well, I don’t like to think about it.”
    “Of me ,” she demanded.
    Cam quirked an eyebrow.  Christ, he looked like Meg when he did that.  “No.”
    He said it simply.  Like it was simple.  She couldn’t breathe.  “I hurt you.”
    “Maybe I like it rough.”
    “Maybe you’re an idiot.”
    “No argument there.”
    Ashley choked on a mixture of frustration and anger and