“No.” I found a half smile from somewhere. “But I was not kind at first.”
“Still walking, though, isn’t he?” Cam’s quip seemed to amuse him.
I let it slide and ploughed on with the truth. “You are worried my name is not my name.”
“Do I look worried?”
“About this? No, but when I think back to before...”Before the world caved in... “I think it was on your mind.”
A yawn snuck through Cam’s defences, splitting his face in half. “I didn’t want it to be.”
“Why not?”
“I trust you. The details don’t matter.”
“You are a good man.”
Cam folded his arms on Saint’s bed, slumped forward, chin on his wrists. “Think what you like. Don’t make it true.”
“Do you want me to explain myself?”
“Want? Maybe. Need? Nope. I don’t need shit from you except what you’re already doing.”
He needed mehere. By his side.
I would not be anywhere else ever again.
“I did not lie to you. My name is my name, but Mateo was not untrue when he told you I was dead.”
Distracted, Cam fiddled with the slender white earphone in Saint’s left ear.
I waited for him to focus, then dove head first into his open gaze. “My parents had to explain why I was not in school. They conspired with the vor to declare me legally dead. They had a funeral. A grave. If you read the records, I drowned in the Neva River.”
Cam shuddered. “He’d hate that.”
Saint.
I knew it.
“I did not drown, Cam. I am right here.”
“But they call you Alexei Ivanov. All of them. Sambini. Viktor. I don’t understand.”
“Is common name. Like John Smith. My identity was stolen from me, but my name... it means nothing.”
“It means something.”
“In the same way as a loaf of bread. Ubiquitous, no?”
“You sound so Russian right now.”
“I am tired. And more emotional than I have room for. It is hard to pretend when my brain is overloaded.”
“Skylar said Saint has a speech disorder.”
I tilted my head. “You did not know?”
Cam shrugged. “I never thought to call it anything. He’s so unlike anyone else, I guess I was ignorant enough to think it was just... him.”