Page 52 of Wicked Games (Silvercrest U #1)

KILLIAN

After about an hour of cuddling and giving him a chance to recenter himself, I take Felix to see the doctor on staff and get someone to clean up the mess in my bathroom.

Xave and his mom have already gone home by the time Felix is bandaged up and feeling good enough to get something to eat, but we find the twins at the kitchen table with platters of food spread out around them.

They’ve showered and changed, and Jace has his hurt arm in a sling, but they otherwise look fine.

“Got enough for two more?” I ask as we come up to the table. There’s a ton of food out, but the twins can eat, and they’re not great at sharing when it’s not with each other.

I’ve been stabbed by more than one fork trying to steal the last of something without claiming it first.

Jax shoves a bite of what looks like a slider into his mouth and waves at the empty chairs across from them.

“How’s your arm?” Felix asks as we sit.

“All good,” Jace assures him. “Like I thought, it’s just a deep graze. I’ll probably have a scar, but it’s not on any of my ink, so I can’t complain.”

“Are you sure?” Felix presses.

“Positive.” Jace flashes him a grin that’s full of his trademark smolder. “And it’s not my dominant arm, so I can still take care of all the important stuff.” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively. “Plus, I’m a big fan of pain, so like I said, no complaints here.”

“All right there, Romeo, turn down the charm,” I say, not bothering to hide the jealousy in my voice.

I might like that Felix gets along with my family, but that doesn’t mean I won’t break Jace’s unhurt arm if he gets too friendly with him.

Jace grins. “Awww, you don’t want me flirting with your man? Your fault for falling for someone who’s so pretty.”

Felix’s cheeks go pink, then bright red when Jace winks at him.

I know he’s just fucking around, but I will knock him the fuck out if he doesn’t stop.

“What happened to your hand?” Jax asks, changing the subject and stopping his brother from pushing my buttons just because he can.

Felix looks at the bandages covering most of his hand and palm. “Had a moment in the bathroom.”

“A moment?” Jace asks.

“Yeah, one where I punched the mirror and almost stabbed myself with a shard of it.” He gives them a wry grin and gently flexes his fingers.

Both twins stare at him for a few beats, then slide their gazes to me, silently asking if he’s joking about it because he’s okay, or if this is still a serious situation.

I nod to let them know he’s mostly okay.

“Sounds like a dumb thing to do,” Jax says.

“Yeah, especially since you’re one of us now. We have a group rule about offing ourselves,” Jace adds.

“You do?” Felix looks between us.

I nod at the same time the twins say, “Yup.”

“That’s…morbid.”

“It is, but it’s also practical,” Jace explains and shoves some fries into his mouth. “If one of us ends up dead and it looks like we did it ourselves, then the rest will know it’s bullshit, and we need to figure out who the fuck did it.”

“Should I ask about the other group rules?” Felix glances at me.

“It’s probably best if we save those for another time,” I tell him.

“I’ll take your word for it.” He presses his leg against mine under the table, and I have to stop myself from grinning at him like a moron. “Have you seen my mom?” he asks the twins.

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 a parent, 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.”

“Yeah, you’ve always been a little shit,” Jace says affectionately.

“And a brat,” Jax adds.

“He’s not wrong,” I tell Felix.

He elbows me in the side. “Shut up,” he says as my phone vibrates in my pocket.

I pull it out and find a text from my dad.

Dad : I’ll be in my office in ten minutes

“What’s that face for?” Jax asks.

“I have to meet my dad in ten. Have you heard from your dad?”

Jace nods. “Talked to him on the phone and reassured him I’m not dying earlier. We’ll get summoned after he gets done dealing with the cleanup.”

I’m not happy about leaving Felix alone for even a few minutes after what happened in the bathroom, but I can’t exactly tell my dad no.

“Hungry?” Jax asks and waves at the food around them. “Dig in while K goes and gets chewed out.”

Felix plucks a sweet potato fry off a plate and takes a slider off the tray Jax holds out to him.

Satisfied that he’ll be safe while I’m gone, I press a quick kiss against his cheek and stand. It’s always better to be early when it comes to my dad.

Felix gives me a shy smile that makes my chest warm, and I lean down so I can whisper in his ear. “I love you.”

He tries to cover his grin with his hand, but the way his eyes light up at my words touches something deep inside of me.

Pissing him off is fun as hell, but his smiles are everything.

“You two are so cute it’s actually disgusting,” Jax says with a smirk.

“For real,” Jace agrees. “Next we’re going to have to deal with them passing notes back and forth with just their names written in giant hearts.”

“Can you imagine them on the phone together?” Jax asks his brother. “It’ll take them an hour to say goodbye with all that ‘You hang up first, no you hang up first’ bullshit.”

“I’m out the minute they start wearing color-coordinated outfits and talking about getting a designer dog,” Jace says.

“Same when they start calling each other nauseating nicknames like snookerdoodle and huggybear,” Jax adds.

I flip the twins off and give Felix another kiss. His cheeks are red with a blush when I pull away, but he smiles good naturedly at the teasing.

I’m in front of my dad’s office seven minutes after his text, and less than thirty seconds later, I see him striding down the hall.

“Killian,” he greets as he punches his code into the pad next to the door.

“Dad,” I greet back and wait for him to use his thumbprint for two factor authorization.