Alistair's room is plain and as spotless as I last remembered it, but I’m more anxious since our purpose isn’t to do school work and I’m coming in as his girlfriend, not a guest.
“Do you ever feel empty in this house?” Alistair asks from behind. I look over—his feet are planted at the doorway, his eyes cryptic.
“Not with you there,” I tell him.
Alistair shoves his hands into his pockets and enters the room. “It’s been empty to me my entire life. Empty from the first time I set foot in with my contract parents.” He once told me that the contract ended when he hit age fourteen, and his guardians left him. From what I understood, he never truly had a family. He was an orphan his whole life.
“How did it even begin?” I ask, my heart grating. “If they weren’t your adoptive or foster parents,
