Page 152 of Feed Your Fiends

“Would you?”

He nods. “Look, Gant, I don’t bring up Marisol because I know it’s triggering for you, but I want you to know that I always appreciated the way she treated me.”

I turn to him and take in his bloodshot eyes that are so dehydrated from his latest binge. Suddenly, they’re turning slicker.

“You see the way the Beaumonts treat me. How politely Aria and Étienne’s parents tolerate me with tight smiles and careful words. The same applies to anyone in the upper circles and even those who touch the circles, like Principal Cardot and some of Beaulieu's more famous staff members. They hear the Pierrot name, see my mother, and I’m already written off, but Marisol was always good to me. Maybe that’s because I never took ballet for her to critique me. She was strict with ballet, but as your friend, she welcomed me. Remember when we first met? She was the only parent who didn’t shy away from my mother during pickups.”

Blind.I was so blind, and hindsight is twenty-twenty, isn’t it?

Because something dawns on me.Eight.Eight is the year I remember my mother becoming my mother. It was also a pivotal year for Hale because that’s when he became my best friend after leaving Hungary and transferring to my primary school. He hadn’t said that he was from Hungary, though. He’s said he was fromSzabolcs-Scatman-Bereg, and I’d been too ignorant to give a damn about what that meant past some obscure region in Europe.Hale could barely speak English, just Romani. I knew that. What I didn’t know was that he spoke Hungarian to a lesser extent. No one would befriend him, and my mother encouraged me to.

She’dencouragedit.

I thought she was teaching me empathy because she felt bad for the foreign kid whose mother was so busy with her rising club and local fame with the aid of reality TV,AKA trashyTV. Hale seemed to be more of an afterthought, which meant he was always available and willing to indulge me in my fuckery.

We had play dates. Then, sleepover after sleepover. Then holiday after holiday. Christmas after Christmas, I could suddenly remember because my mother was suddenly there, and little Hale would laugh and tell me how lucky I was to have a mum who made time for me. His mother was always working, always fighting for the respect she never got. The clashes of cultures meant that his mother was different,other, and Hale had liked feeling the same through me and the horsemen.

“Marisol helped me relate to stuff my mother couldn’t because of her upbringing. She explained things about the school and the plays and the events. She guided my mother, and she helped my transition to be so much smoother.”

While our mothers weren’t besties, they weren’t enemies, either. My mother never commented about Hale’s mother’s fashion sense or businesses. To my mother, she wasn’t this punching bag the other mothers took turns at. She was just Hale’s mother, and that was that.

“You’re the only one who’s ever said that about her. She was horrible to most people,” I say matter-of-factly because while I’d never viewed my mother with rose-coloured glasses, I had when it came to her relationship with Hale.With me.If it weren’t for Hale, we never would’ve had a relationship at all. She’d used me to get to him.

Elle’s words sting my ears.‘You’re not special.’I’d never believed that until now. Because now everything is crystal clear.

“But never to me,” Hale says.

“You were special.”

And now I know why.

Silas’ hair provided a match from the strands I’d pulled from Hale’s head when I ‘crowned’ him in our family photo. So Silas is his father and Hale’s Sylo and my half-brother. And my mother had known all along because she bought Hale and his mother here to be right at her side in the shadows, but bringing them had taken some time and a considerable amount of money. After all, Hale’s mother was poor originally. Who gave her the start-up money for her club? Marisol had done the same as I did with Hale via my investment.

“She was a good mum to you, Gant.”

“Was yours?” Of course, I knew some intricacies of Hale and his mother’s dynamic, which always felt like a wild aunt raising her nephew. Is that why my mother chose her? Would someone far more responsible ignore her pleas to be around her son?

Selfish.She chose a free spirit, someone who’d allow her closeness to Hale. Not the best mother for Hale because she wanted to be his mother in her own way.

“My mother loves me. She always does what she thinks is best. Even if it’s the worst decision imaginable, it wasn’t her intent.”

“Like trying to force you away from us?”

Because she had tried, the more involved Hale became in my circle. She didn’t like our‘uppitiness’as much as our parents despised her crassness.

“She knew everyone’s parents looked down on her. It took her forever to believe that you didn’t look down on me. She cared about your mum, I think.”

“I think so too,” I agree.

He pats his pockets and glances up the ramp. “Damn. I forgot it.” But he doesn’t elaborate on whatitis. “I need to see if the girls have arrived. Bart’s about to start his announcements about the jewellery line.”

I watch him leave, but don’t rush to follow him.

“All that time spent together was for him,” I say when the doors shut, and I stare through my mother’s split eye. “I think you two deserve each other.”

I turn on my heel.

“And I’m going to reunite you. Tonight.”

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