Page 31 of Enemies with Benefits

"She might still say something."

"Yeah...maybe."

"Maybe," I said in amusement. He didn't seem bothered by the idea that his mom might say something later. Again, it was a sign that he’d been raised in a good environment. From my experience and my line of work, I knew kids as young as him, obsessing over the idea of their parents being mad about them in the future, was not a good sign.

God, I'd missed the chance to be a part of that, a part of raising a kid and proving that the fucked up shit my dad did, that his dad to him, didn't have to be passed down. That ugly, twisted chain could be broken by someone who had once been wrapped up in it and trapped. Damn you, Moira.

"So," Micah said, looking at me with wide eyes and wiggling his head like he was trying to shake something from me with his mind.

"So?"

"Ugh," he groaned in an eerily perfect replication of his mother showing her frustration and disgust with someone's bullshit. "Why do you hate Mason?"

"Who said I hate Mason?"

"I mean, I heard you guys. You don't talk like that to someone unless you don't like them."

"We were just joking with each other, some people joke like that."

"Well, yeah, Mason jokes mean all the time. He does it with Mom, and Dom, and Milo, and Elijah, and Arlo. But it's not the same. It's not...mean like that. Like, really mean. It's joking mean."

Clearly, he had not learnt how to express himself completely, though whether that was because of his genes or just because he was eight was hard to tell. He'd also neatly and efficiently caught me out in a lie, which was uncomfortable. I knew it wasn't thebest thing in the world to lie to a kid when it could be avoided, but how the hell was I supposed to tell him that his uncle was a bag of dicks sometimes and I'd always hated that about him? He clearly thought the sun shone out of Mason's ass, and I doubted he would take the idea that his uncle was anything but wonderful well.

I cleared my throat. “Well...your uncle and I just...we've never really gotten along."

"Okay...but why? Was he mean to you? Or...were you mean to him?” he asked, eyes narrowing at the last part, and God, apparently having a protective streak, had managed to find its way into his personality.

"Both," I said with a shrug. "We were mean to each other."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"How don't you know?"

"Because sometimes people just...don't know things. Not even when it's stuff they've done or did before."

He thought about that for a minute. "Yeah, okay. Sometimes I get really mad. And sometimes I yell at Mom when it happens, and I don't really want to, it just happens. I don't want to yell at Mom, I'm just...mad."

God, please tell me anger issues weren't genetic and he'd gotten that from me. “Right...well, that happens sometimes. Do you tell her that you didn't mean it and you're sorry?"

"Yeah, and she says she loves me and accepts my apology."

"Mmm, that's good. But just being sorry isn't enough. You've got to try to do better next time you feel like that, or you weren't really sorry."

"She says that too...and I try. I'm just not...very good at it sometimes."

I let out a sigh. “Well, we agree on that. It can be really hard."

"Do you get mad like that too?"

"Sometimes. I used to get mad like that a lot when I was younger."

"When you were a kid?"

"And when I was older than a kid. Got me into a lot of trouble too."

"Like, with the police?"