Page 50 of Study Games

For me.

At what cost?

18

JAX

Ihadn’t told her about the twins. It never seemed to be the right time. The doc spoke to me afterward when I loitered outside her room and annoyed his nursing staff until he did, threatening to have me removed from the hospital. When that didn’t work, he talked to me frankly, and I knew I had a few days to get my shit–and hers–sorted before she came home to a bigger mess than what she left.

I didn’t want that to be what a semi-healed Waverly saw when she walked into her room, and had to deal with on campus.

So I took the hard route first, and headed back out to see my father.

If I survived this part, the twins were high on my list for round two, and then, then I’d get to see my girl, if she wanted to see me again.

Maybe deal with her brother somewhere in there, too.

But first, I was due for another long haul drive to the coast. Maybe drown my father while I was there.

Joking.

Nah, not really.

Preferably in a pool of his own blood.

That was the mood I left Waverly in and it didn’t dissipate with the miles as I walked in the back door this time, not announcing myself to security. That was the funny thing about growing up in a place; you got to know all the best ways to slip between security shifts, the black spaces along the cameras in the halls. And stupidly, maybe because he truly believed he couldn’t be touched, my father remained a creature of habit.

I’d take that weakness and make him choke on his pride, along with his last breath.

Even though I wasn’t a four foot high five-year old stealing the cook’s candy supply anymore, I still knew the best ways in and about the mansion. Which made sliding through the back door, where there were no guards and never had been, that much easier.

All the way to my father’s study where I paid a simple, albeit hefty, bribe to his regular whore of a masseuse. There I made him my hostage when I held my blade to his balls where her hand had been a moment before.

Oil made them slick, but at this range, I wouldn’t miss.

“The fuck?” He jerked up right, his papery face mask slipping horrifically, like something out of a comedy movie gone terribly wrong.

“Did you really think you could take the girl I loved and not find yourself at the end of this?” I flicked the blade he once used to etch his name into my ribs, the scar itching over tight, bruised skin.

Also courtesy of my father, if by default of several degrees of separation.

Though the beating the twins threw me was a different sort of cruelty than he usually doled out. That was a conversation for another time, however, and not one I’d be having with him.

“I think you’re a waste of genes and space,” Fabius Palmer spat from his prostrate position.

Globs of saliva projectiled forward to decorate his cherrywood floor already covered in oil and who knew what other accumulated fluids from his weekly fuckfest with his overpaid and mis-titled masseuse.

“Right back at ya, pops,” I mused, knowing the slang would rile him.

Even here, behind closed doors with a knife to his literal balls, I was supposed to be the epitome of the perfect offspring.

Only I’d never been what he wanted, and I had no intention of starting along that narrow path this late in life.

“So you think you can come in here and threaten me?” he continued while I studied the unsavory, flaccid sight before me and chose which vein to nick first.

“Yep.” I slashed the blade sideways.

Fabius made the most pure little scream I’d ever heard. I evened up the other side just to make him do it again, but it wasn’t as pretty this time.

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