He laughed with her.“It is good, is it not, Amélie?”She leaned close to him and kissed his cheek. His blue-black skin had the barest hint of sunb...rn.“Yes, Antoine.”She recalled their escape from the town, the connection to Captain Beauchamp’s pirate crew. Well, not exactly pirates. What was certain is that Beauchamp and his crew would go anywhere, deliver anything with their sloop, no questions asked. That included passengers, and through Antoine’s friends, Michél especially, they coordinated. " Hello, Allison," Lizzy said, rising from the bench to greet us. I stepped out of Allison just to be safe. "I didn't really have a chance to greet you properly last night. I'm so happy you're safe." She hugged her future sister-in-law tight, and there were tears in her eyes as she pulled away and kissed her forehead.It's a good thing I got out when I did because Allison was having none of that."You still haven't," she said, then grabbed the older girl by the head and kissed her soundly, "but. She worked herself ragged over the next hour and finally finished. She emailed it to her boss and let out a sigh of relief “finished are you?” came the voice of her college from the next cubicle: Gwen. “Yeah, you know I’m sure these books get worse every year,” Becca replied looking up at the Gwen’s beaming face. “Ah well, don’t worry about it. I’m taking you out tonight; there’s this little club downtown which sounds like our kind of place,” Gwen said, giving Becca a cheeky wink.“I’m looking. Hell-Raiser. Shortly, these calls regressed to a bi-monthly routine followed by a monthly call, which thereafter, became standard practice.I had long known that I was gay, but having grown up in a family where homosexual people were referred to as queers I was sure the word gay would’ve raised confused eyebrows. Strangely, I was never asked about my love life during one of my phone calls because I presumed that being the nerd I was, my family would not have been able to process the idea that I.