was born into money, he had to rely on himself, not the family.” I shrugged. “They want to pass that same ethic on to us.”
She snorted. “They want you to struggle too?”
“Yeah. That sounds about right.”
She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Survival of the fittest. To be fair, it’s the only way Cain is going to get into college. He doesn’t study half the time. He’s more focused on swimming.” As well as boning the teachers to get As.
“Is he good?”
I nodded. “Better than me.”
She whistled. “You’re fast.”
“He’s faster.” My lips twisted. “Life isn’t fair.”
“No. It isn’t,” she agreed softly. “But you’re going to get a scholarship, right?”
I nodded again. “So long as nothing goes wrong over the next couple of years.” The threat of injury plagued all athletes.
She frowned at that, then shrugged. “You Gorgers, I’ll never understand you.”
I tipped my head to the side. “Gorger? I’ve been called a lot in my life, but never that.”
She shrugged again, and the move drew my attention to her collarbone. I’d never known clavicle bones could be sexy—today was a day for firsts. “To be fair, I’m no longer one to judge.”
My brow puckered. “What do you mean?”
“I’m Roma.”
Well, that explained her coloring. And, weirdly enough, the thought crossed my mind that maybe that was why she could sense how much of an ass Cain truly was.
Gypsies saw into shit, didn’t they? Read cards? Believed in stuff that most people thought was crazy?
“Family’s everything to my people. Even I couldn’t forget that rule.”
“I think you need to start at the beginning.”
“A Gorger is someone who isn’t Roma. For example, you. Your family. I don’t understand the way you do things because in my world, we’ll do anything for family.” A glimmer of sadness whispered across her face. “Including leaving everything you know behind to save someone from being an outcast.”
The way she phrased that told me she was the one who’d been threatened with exile. The harsh wording had me asking, “Why would you be an outcast?”
She licked her lips. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got at least two hours before I’m needed in school.”
“And you’re going to give me all one hundred and twenty minutes, are you? What about showering? Getting to your school? Can’t see your high school being anywhere close to mine.”
“No, but you can give me the cliff notes version.”
“There’s nothing abbreviated about my heritage.” She smiled, and I liked making her smile—it hit her eyes, turning walnut brown to amber. “My family lived their life to a simple set of rules. They asked themselves whether something was clean, užo, or unclean, mahrime.” She sucked in air, then blew it out sharply. “My father died when he was horseback riding. My mother, deciding she couldn’t live without him, killed herself. That’s a gross sin. My nanny, knowing I’d be considered mahrime by being tainted by my mother, knowing that I’d be an outcast among our people, moved away. She brought me here. Where we lived together until she died, and I was put into the system.”
My eyes widened. A part of me wanted to ask whether she was joking or not, but I knew she wasn’t.
This was real.
This was her life.
“Why would you be blamed for what your mother did?” I was struggling to understand what she could mean. How was it her fault that her parent had taken her own life?
“Our sins make a household, and the people within it, mahrime—unclean.” She shrugged like it meant nothing, when I knew from the shadows in her eyes it meant everything. “She made me unclean. Women are considered that anyway. Especially below the waist.” A breath whistled from her. “Long story short, some sins can be cleansed, but that one couldn’t be. And if I couldn’t be cleansed, then I’d be an outcast because no man would marry me. No man would want a mahrime wife. It would be unlucky.”
“You just blew my mind.”
“I told you it was a long story,” she rasped, her shoulders hunching.
I shook my head. “But wait, how can you say my family’s strange when your family—”
“My nanny gave up everything for me. She left friends behind to give me a chance at a new life. She left our culture behind, and she—”
When her words broke off, I prompted softly, “She what?”
“We don’t trust doctors. We certainly don’t trust hospitals.” Her chin jerked up. “She got sick. But for me, because she didn’t want to leave me, she went for treatment. That’s what family does for one