Page 42 of Enemies with Benefits (Finding the Right Brother #1)

I jerked when I felt a hand wrap around mine, and I snapped my head down to find big eyes staring up at me. Anger, which had been so hot and ready to flare at everything in the way a nuclear explosion would envy for its devastation, melted away as Micah grinned up at me. "You have to see this!"

"I...okay," I said, suddenly feeling the hot air inside me dissipate without so much as a sound.

It turned out to be a display that focused on seaweed and plants that grew underwater, as well as the ecosystem.

The swaying of the thick leaves was strangely hypnotic as Micah poked at things on the screen, clearly having figured out how to make the words on the screen shift to add more context for the curious.

He babbled away, and I still couldn't help but glance over my shoulder and see that Moira had dragged Jace off to see something else.

"Are you guys okay?" Micah asked after an explanation about one of the crustaceans that was allowed to roam the tank.

"What?" I snapped back to the conversation, guilt creeping in when I realized I’d missed the explanation before his question.

"You and Jace."

"Oh. Well...that's hard to answer, dude."

He frowned thoughtfully, staring down at the display. "I...get this."

"What's that?" I wondered, knowing his brain was going somewhere random and willing to try to keep up with it if it meant showing interest.

"The Mantis Shrimp," he said, leaning forward and poking his finger against the glass to point out a creature that was like a shrimp but far larger than any I'd had on a plate.

Its eyes were bulbous and bobbed with the water current, its chunky fists resting casually before it.

"They don't...keep it with other animals because it's always attacking them.

Like, did you know it can punch hard enough that it makes light happen because it's just that fast? "

"I did not," I affirmed, wondering what kind of force and speed something would need for that.

"Well, it does. And it does it because that's what it does."

"Okay. Hey, uh, Micah? You're doing that thing where you sound weirdly adult, just so you know."

"Okay. But...it does that because it has to. But I don't get why you and Jace fight like you do."

Now I understood where he was going with the conversation.

The shrimp made more sense. It was an animal doing animal things because it was an animal.

But humans were different. Humans could have many reasons why they did what they did, and they didn't always make sense, not even to the human doing it.

But in his mind, there had to be a reason for everything, and maybe that was true, but it didn't always make sense.

"People are...messy," I said after a moment. "We've got instincts. We're not much different than animals in a lot of ways. But we're also...harder to get."

"You mean like Mom?” he asked, leaning forward to peer at the shrimp as it continued to wave its fists lazily.

"Well...what's hard about your mom?" I asked carefully, knowing full well it was a trap, without him probably meaning it to be.

All too often, kids asked one thing, and you, as an adult, answered, not realizing they meant something else, but you just gave them way more information than they had before.

Which presented a whole new set of questions and answers.

"Like why she didn't tell me that Jace is my dad."

Okay. So. To say I wasn't expecting that was an understatement, and I felt every synapse in my brain suddenly fire. I was left to stare at the kid trying to act like he hadn't just dropped an atomic bomb, and trying not to dismiss it either.

"What...makes you think that?" I asked, feeling it was probably the safest choice.

Micah shrugged. “I don't know. I look like him, don't I?"

"You look like me too," I pointed out, wondering if I should call Moira and Jace over for the conversation or not.

"Well, you're my uncle ," he said with exasperation far beyond his years. "We're supposed to look alike."

"I...suppose that's true."

"And I look like Mom."

"You do."

"So I guess I should look like my dad too."

"I guess...that's also true, yeah."

"And I look a lot like Jace."

"O...Kay. Does that bother you?"

"I don't know, I mean...I don't think so. But if he is my dad...why didn't I know?"

"Uh—"

"But I'm kind of like him too, you know? Weird."

I bit back a laugh. “You think he's weird?"

"Well, yeah . He's weird like Mom is. Grandma, you, you're all...different than Mom is, but she's different like Jace is different. Kinda like Uncle Arlo, and a little like Uncle Eli."

"They're serious."

"Yeah, like I am."

"I see."

He turned to stare up at me, brow furrowed. “You see? You know...don't you?"

"I..." I was at a loss for words is what I was because I was definitely not prepared to have a talk with my nephew about his parentage.

Micah huffed crossly. “But why? Why didn't anyone tell me?"

There was no way in hell I was going to sell Moira out, even if I’d agreed from the start that she shouldn't have kept that information to herself. "Does it matter?"

Micah stared at me for a moment, blinking before his frown returned. "What do you mean?"

"Does it matter if he's your dad or not?" I asked, feeling slightly more confident in the question.

"Why wasn't he here before?" Micah asked, and I felt the careful confidence I'd had crumble in the face of what was a perfectly reasonable question.

All I had was some form of the truth without being brutal. “Would you believe me if I said it wasn't quite that easy?"

"You don't even like him," Micah huffed again, crossing his arms over his chest. "But you're sticking up for him."

I was, and I couldn't even tell myself why.

Maybe it was because Jace was a bastard bar none, except maybe me, but he didn't deserve to be painted as the bad guy in that situation.

Yet I couldn't paint his mother in a bad light, even if I thought she deserved to get some shit.

..but not from her son, who was old beyond his years but not old enough to understand and forgive how messy people could be.

At the same time, Jace had become more to me than just some fucker I liked to pick at.

I had taken my time realizing there was more to him than just the bastard I once couldn't stand and currently didn't know how to feel about.

"I'm standing up for him because it's the right thing to do," I said, searching the words and finding that, despite everything, that much was true. "Can I tell you something? Something you can't ask questions about?"

"I always ask questions," he rightly pointed out, but his grip around his chest loosened.

"I know, and that's not wrong, but you're asking about a very.

..difficult thing to answer, and I can't answer it completely.

No one in this situation can. But there's something I want to tell you, so you understand a little better, but I also think you're old enough to know you're not going to get the 'right' answer.

...even if there isn't a right answer here. "

His face screwed up for a moment, and then he sighed. “Okay."

"Promise?"

"Sure."

"Uh-uh, I want the words."

He sighed, shoulders slumping. "I promise not to ask questions."

"Good," I said, and knelt so we were face to face.

"Jace didn't choose not to be around. As soon as he had a choice, that's when you started seeing him around.

And ever since then, he's been trying to be a part of your life.

Now he's here, and he's still trying...okay?

He's trying really hard and maybe you don't know why, but that's a big deal, okay? "

"But…" he began, and frustration twisted his mouth and clouded his eyes.

I waited patiently, watching him with a small smile because I understood.

It was hard to deal with something you barely knew anything about.

After a minute, he let out a heavy breath, hanging his head. "I said no more questions. I promised."

"You did," I said. "And I'm going to promise you that in a few years, I’ll give you more answers when you come back and ask again. All I ask is that you keep going like you are, keep doing what you are doing. You like Jace, right?"

"Yeah," he admitted without hesitation, which for a thoughtful and introspective kid like him was a significant detail.

"Then just like him. He's not looking for you to treat him like your dad, not now, and maybe not in the future. It's up to you how things go between you two. You just...keep being you, alright?"

"Me, but not the question kind."

I laughed and relaxed when I saw him relent and give a smile back. “Okay, yeah, sure."

He cocked his head. “That's what adults do, isn't it?"

"What's that?"

"Be themselves with people, but not totally. Not even with people they love."

It was the simplest, most basic statement, but in the same way that a sledgehammer was taken to a wall of glass, it was simple in how it hit me.

He was almost nine, and he’d figured out something about being human that was true across all ages, something we all knew and yet lamented.

We could be ourselves only with select people, and even then, there was always something held back, some things we kept in check for.

..for what? Fear? Sorrow? Anger? Bitterness? Protection?

"I'm sorry, kid," I began softly, squeezing his elbow. "But yeah."

"That's...sad."

"It is."