“Oh yeah. Think about it every day. Hey, I have a guest. Gotta go.”
“Okay, take care. Bye.”
I toss the phone, and it clatters onto the coffee table. I sigh heavily.
“You all right?” Skittles asks, shrugging into her shirt.
I’m never going to be all right, not when it comes to my mom. “Yeah.” I run my fingers through my hair. The tugs on the scalp seem to help clear my head a bit, but don’t do a thing to relieve the tension creeping into my shoulders and neck. I pull my pants on. “I’m fine. It’s just my brother.”
“The one who owns the club?” she asks.
“No, Edgar. The one back home.”
“Oh.”
I can feel the questions in her gaze. All the junk that happened in my family… And of course she read all about it. Or heard from that intestinal parasite, Tom.
Normally I don’t care that much what people think. I didn’t give a fuck when I was at UCLA—and ignored all the whispers that followed me around. But I don’t want Skittles to speculate or believe a bunch of Internet crap written by people out to make money off my family’s misery.
She’s going to have to know anyway, and it’ll be easier if she knows now rather than later. That way, if she decides she doesn’t want to touch my family with a hundred-mile pole, we wouldn’t have been too emotionally involved for it to hurt.
Except the idea of never seeing her again makes my spine go cold.
I take a deep breath. “After our lunch, I got a call from a hospital. My mom was there, apparently with chest pain.”
“Oh my God.” She places a gentle hand on my arm.
The touch makes me feel better, rather than like some weird circus freak show.
“Is she all right?” she asks.
“Yeah, she’s fine,” I say quickly, not wanting Skittles to waste any sympathy on my mother. “She’s done this before. When texting and calling don’t work, she does this. I fell for it a few times and went to her, only to have her tell me that I have to go to work for my father and fix her marriage.”
Her jaw slackens. “Working for your father will fix her marriage? What?”
“Dad really wants me at the company. She thinks that if I do that, he’ll be so grateful that he’ll do whatever I want in return. So then I’m supposed to ask him to make up with her, et cetera et cetera.”
Her hand slides down my arm and curls around my fingers. “I’m sorry.”
Her sympathy soothes, but at the same time the lid that I’ve been keeping on my bitterness comes undone. I can’t stop myself from saying things I swore I wouldn’t tell anybody. “It’s always been that way. I’m the son that nobody really wanted.” If my parents could, they’d have traded me for Katherine’s life in a heartbeat. And the fact that I’m angry about that makes me feel like a shitty person for not being noble enough to want to sacrifice myself for my sister.
Skittles flinches as though slapped. “How can you say that? Of course you’re wanted.”
That’s sweet of her to say. Maybe in her world-view, parents not wanting and loving their children is unthinkable. “What my mom really wanted was a daughter. She already had two sons when she had me. You know that my sister died, right?” Katherine’s death always gets mentioned in articles about the scandal.
“Some sort of hunting accident, wasn’t it?” she says, choosing her words with care. Everyone dances delicately around it when they want to talk about that. Unless they’re asshole reporters or something.
“Yeah.” I don’t elaborate because if she knows enough to bring it up, she’s already read all the details already. They’re in so many damned “articles.” “Until then, Tony, the one who owns the club, was her favorite. But afterward, I became her favorite because Tony’s the one who took our sister to the forest and…” Old sorrow ripples through me, and I can’t finish. Tony never meant for any of it to happen. When it came out, it only brought pain…to him and to everyone in the family.
“Her darling Harry.” The nickname still grates, leaving a raw wound. “That was me.”
“Being chosen as her favorite wasn’t your fault.”
“No. But it was my fault for indulging her. Instead of asking her to let it go or forgive Tony, I pretended like nothing was wrong and tried to cater to her whims. If I hadn’t done that, maybe she would’ve forgiven Tony before…everything. And she wouldn’t have done what she did.” I run my hand through my hair, although I’m not sure if I really believe I have that kind of influence over her. My mother is a very stubborn woman.
“What people said in the articles about your mom is nonsense, Court. If she’d done something so wrong, she would’ve gone to jail. You shouldn’t let it bother you.”
I shake my head, feeling the familiar nausea. “Not all of it is nonsense. She knew there was an attempt to murder Ivy—who’s Tony’s wife now, by the way—but she didn’t do anything. She claims she acted within the law, and she had nothing to do with the attempt. And she’s right. It’s not illegal to look the other way. But honestly, she did it to punish him. She did it because she wanted him to suffer. And that, I cannot forgive. And I can’t believe the role I played in it, being her favorite.”