“Is he gay?”
Sam’s brows twist in puzzlement. “No. What makes you think that?”
“I was just trying to figure out if you and he—”
Sam laughs. “No. I told you, he’s my brother.”
Relief floods me. Down, girl. He’s still not yours. “How did you meet?”
Sam’s face sags and, for a moment, he looks thirty years older, weary from whatever happened in his young life. “I was wandering in the Santa Cruz mountains, lost, and he found me.”
“What were you doing in the mountains?” I picture a lost Boy Scout, but it doesn’t fit.
“I was a runaway. Figured I could survive there on my own. But I was starving. Half-crazy—I’d been alone so long.”
“How long?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. A few months, maybe. Jackson saw me, and I ran. He chased me down. I fought him. I didn’t want to return to civilization,
