Page 136 of Wicked Games

Jace nods. “About ten minutes ago. She came in and made a face at us, dropped a few comments about us eating all her food, and flounced away.”

Felix snickers. “Flouncing is the perfect way to describe how she walks when she’s all huffy.”

“Have you not seen her yet?” Jax asks.

Felix shakes his head, his smile slipping a bit.

We’ve been home for hours, and her son was almost shot in the head, but of course Jasmine is nowhere to be found. I’m not surprised considering how uninvolved in his life she is, but I try to keep my irritation to myself. Felix has enough going on right now. He doesn’t need me to start harping on his mom on top of everything else.

“Your mom is an uncaring, gold-digging bitch,” Jace says in his typical blunt way. “And her being an uncaring, gold-digging bitch has nothing to do with you, okay? Her failures and shortfalls aren’t on you, so don’t feel bad about someone who doesn’t deserve to have you waste even a second of your energy on them. Making you isn’t the end of her responsibilities as aparent, and if she can’t do the bare minimum of being a parent, that’s not a reflection on you. It just means she’s a shit person. Got it?”

Felix smiles, and most of the tightness leaves his eyes. “Yeah, thanks.”

Jace winks and shoves another handful of fries in his mouth.

“You still look sad. Why?” Jax asks, giving Felix a piercing look.

“It’s nothing.” He shakes his head.

“What’s nothing?” Jax asks.

“I just…”

“What?” Jace prompts. “Don’t be shy. We’re all family here.”

“I just want to say I’m sorry for my mom. For all the shit she’s done over the years.” He glances around the table nervously. “And I get why you guys hated me for so long. I mean, I’d hate me too if I was in your position.”

“We didn’t hate you because of what your mother did,” Jace says seriously. “We never actually hated you.”

“You didn’t?”

He shakes his head.

“We were dicks to you because we’re dicks to everyone, but we never blamed you for any of that shit. Or for any of her issues. Remember what I said just now,” Jace reminds him. “You’re not responsible for her shortcomings or failures.”

He sneaks a quick look at me.

“I don’t blame you for any of that shit, either.” I take his hand in mine and lace our fingers together. “I hated having a living reminder that my mom is dead and her supposed best friend was so damn good at comforting my dad through his grief that she’s now my stepmother, but I never hated you.”

He squeezes my hand and lets out a quick exhale of relief.

The way Felix came to be my stepbrother will always be a sore spot, but not because of him.

Our mothers met and became close friends when Felix was ten and I was eleven, and they stayed close until my mom was killed by a distracted driver when I was thirteen.

After she died, Felix’s mom immediately swooped in and pretty much took over my mom’s place in Dad’s life under the guise of helping him deal with losing her. After two years of her “helping” him, they got engaged, and less than a year later, they were married.

That didn’t just piss me off, it pissed the twins off just as much.

The thing about my family tree is that our branch can look a bit like a wreath when it comes to exactly how the twins and I are related. Our dads are brothers, and our moms were identical twins. The two sides of our families have no relation to each other, so we’re about as related as we can be without being actual bio siblings or things getting hinky and moving into incest territory.

It’s why we grew up like brothers, and the twins lost more than just their aunt when she died. They lost their second mom.

Jasmine and my aunt were also friends. They weren’t nearly as close as she was with my mother, and my aunt has really struggled over the years as she watched her former friend take over her twin sister’s life.

Between losing their second mom and watching their mother suffer so much because of Jasmine, the twins have almost as many reasons as me for hating her. It makes sense he’d think we also hated him after the way we treated him over the years.

“That’s a relief,” Felix says. “And it’s not like I’m innocent in all this. I antagonized the shit out of you guys, especially when we were younger.”

---