Blood Ties (Book 3 of The Blood Bond Series)

23. Scattered

Quinn was wasting time talking to a good friend from high school. She'd thought Adam would be home sooner, and she was starting to get anxious. Having no clue as to why, she checked the time and figured that her friend, Emily, would be out of class by now.

Em was an old friend whom Quinn had known since childhood. They'd gone to different middle schools when they were kids, but since Emily's parents, the Sanchezes, worked on the Swain's fields and helped tend the horses, they'd played together as children more than any of her classmates.

'In Los Angeles?' Emily whined. 'Jesus, Q, why all the way out there? It was bad enough you were already a few hundred miles away. I feel like I'm never going to see you again.'

Quinn sighed, missing her friend terribly. "I know, but I felt I needed a change. I'm glad, actually. Things weren't going all that well with Marc, and you know he'd hover if I stayed there. Plus, UCLA has a great drama program, almost as good as NYU." Out of all her friends, she wished that Emily could know about this. She trusted her the most out of anyone, and only wished they were able to chat more often.

While Quinn had gone off to New York to study drama, Emily had stayed around Virginia, opting for a 2-year course in automotive services. While her parents had worked the Swain's farm, she'd been more interested in the farm equipment and had spent some of her free time with Quinn, crawling under tractors and getting a good look at some of the older automobiles that were tucked away in rotting barns and next to silos on the Swain's property. Animals were cute, but smelly and a ton of work because they had personalities just like people. Machines didn't work that way. Yes, they were a pain sometimes to take apart or rebuild, but they always made sense and didn't talk back to you. Once you knew what you were doing, changing out a battery or messing with an intake manifold was second nature.

Emily had wanted to climb beneath oily undercarriages while Quinn had to milk the cows, so she'd stuck around Virginia and decided on a very different career path from her friend. Art, in any form, was open to interpretation, while being a wrench was the furthest thing from that. There was no manual that told you how to learn acting; it was all guesswork and opinion. Yes, there were certain things that needed studying—music, accents, dance, but everything else was up a person's individual take on the content. And no two people ever worked the same.

Closing her eyes, Quinn tried to come up with some reassurance that she'd see her friend eventually. She knew that explaining her current situation would be near-impossible, because she'd barely accepted her circumstances as fact herself. One day, Emily would be gone from this world, and they'd have long since parted ways. Emily was her best friend, even to this day, but she didn't believe she would ever understand why her friend never seemed to age. She would look like she was 35 even at 70 years old.

She came up with the next best thing and explained that seeing each other—at least for now—wasn't going to be a big deal. "I...well, I'm sort of seeing someone right now. An L.A. native, and I can guarantee it won't be a problem coming to visit you whenever I get the chance, though probably not as much until after I graduate. I...it's an odd situation."

'How so? He have a private jet or own Amtrak or something?'

It was so on-point that Quinn flinched. "Yes to the first, and no to the second. I don't know who owns Amtrak, nor do I care. And besides, it would take days to get to you by train. I looked it up once for Marc when he had to go to Chicago for some seminars. It takes about a day to get to Chicago, and then another 2 days from Chicago to the West Coast." She shrugged as she sat back in the couch and curled up. "I was curious about the latter."

'And now you're living in the lap of luxury. Is it with the boyfriend? What's his name? Is he a celebrity? God, please tell me it's Anderson Telmer. If there was anyone it could be, that's who I'd drop everything for. Yum!'