Page 40 of Mistle-Ho

“Don’t thank me. Thank yourself.” I shift off my knees, pushing up onto the couch beside her. “I’ve seen your bathroom. I know all the work you put into looking the way you do.” I can’t resist lifting my hand to her face again, curving a section of hair behind the shell of one delicate ear. “But to be fair, you look just as good without all that.”

One of her eyebrows angles and the hint of a smile teasing at me flattens into a serious line. I know she’s pleased with my compliment, but Alexis gushing out emotion isn’t ever going to happen. She’s reserved. Serious.

Al’s eyes narrow. “You’re stalling.”

She’s also not afraid to call me out, but she’s calm when she does it. Collected. Nonreactive. She doesn’t feed the beast that lives inside me.

My chin tips in acknowledgment and agreement. “I am.” Letting out a long breath, I lean back against the sofa, scrubbing one hand over my face. “I don’t like to talk about this shit.”

Alexis tucks one leg up, turning to angle her body in my direction before resting the side of her face against the cushion next to me. “What shit?”

I swallow hard. “My parents.”

Al’s eyes move over my face for a few seconds, reading whatever she sees there before responding. “I always wondered why we never met them.”

My jaw tries to clench but I force it to relax. “You never met them because they’re not like your family.” I huff out a bitter laugh at the understatement of the century. “At all.”

“Yeah, well.” Alexis gives me a sad smile. “Right now my family isn’t much like my family either.”

I slide one hand onto her bare knee, giving it a gentle squeeze. “It’ll be okay. You guys love each other and everyone in the situation has good intentions.”

Again, Alexis studies me before responding. “Does that mean your parents didn’t have good intentions?”

That’s putting it lightly. “My parents were pretty much always out for themselves.” For a while, I didn’t see it. Not with my dad at least. I thought he was trying to help me through a shitty situation. Offering support and an explanation for the unraveling happening around me.

But his reasons for taking me under his wing were completely self-serving. He wanted me on his side. Wanted someone to tell him his words and actions were all justified and understandable. More than that, he wanted a kindred spirit. Someone who felt and thought exactly as he did.

“My parents were never happy together. I don’t know if they ever even liked each other. I think they only got married because of me.”

Alexis scoots a little closer, bringing her bent leg to rest against my thigh. “Is that why you were always over at our house? To get away from them?”

“Pretty much.” My free hand toys with her hair, giving me something else to focus on as I lay out the framework of my shame. “By the time I was a teenager, my mom had fully checked out. She was done with my dad and acted like she was single.”

Al’s eyes widen. “Your mom cheated on your dad?”

My fingers tighten around her knee and I force them to relax, pulling in a slow breath. “All the time, and it made him lose his fucking mind.”

One of Al’s hands comes to rest over mine. “I can imagine.”

She can’t though, and I wish I could promise she never would.

“The more she did it, the worse he got.” I close my eyes against the memory of how entrenched I became in their misery. “When I was learning to drive, he would take me out at night and we would go past all the places she liked to hang out.” I don’twant to continue, but I have to. Alexis deserves to know why I am the way I am. “Then we started following her. I knew it was wrong, but he was my dad, and he was so fucking miserable. I thought I was helping, but I wasn’t. I was just feeding it.”

And I’d continued feeding it for years. Yeah, it happened less and less, but it still happened. Every time I saw him, I would indulge his ranting. Listen as he spewed. Never once did I tell him he was wrong. Not a single time did I cut him off or tell him what a fucking embarrassment he was.

Because deep down, I knew chances were high I was exactly the same.

“Oh my God.” Al’s brows pinch as she stares at me, finally grasping just how fucked-up my formative years were. “That’s awful.”

I let her words sink in. Let them remind me why this can never be what I want it to be. “I shouldn’t have done it. I know that.”

Al’s head bobs back, eyes widening. “What? You aren’t the one at fault here.” There’s a hint of anger in her voice. “You were a kid. Your dad was taking advantage of that and using you for his own unhinged purposes.” She leans close to me, the soft curve of one tit pressing into my bicep as her fingers wrap around my hand, gripping it tight. “Your dad should never have put you in that position. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And you probably did the best thing by never bringing him around, because if I knew what he’d done...” Her nostrils flare, eyes flashing. “Well,” she scowls, “I probably would’ve told my mom, because she’s way better at violence than I am.”

The scenario she’s suggesting easily plays out in my head. I can only imagine my dad’s face if Babs ever went after him. “She can be pretty vicious, can’t she?”

While Alexis has never paid much attention at our matches, her mother does, and I’ve witnessed Dan holding Babs back aftera ref made a call she didn’t agree with. I’ve seen her take on high school wrestling coaches and parents from the opposing team who got a little too mouthy.

Alexis smiles, the expression filled with fondness. “She’s kinda like a Chihuahua when she’s mad. More likely than not to bite you, and she will absolutely tear your ankles up.” Her expression hardens. “And if she knew what your dad was doing, she would have taken his down to a nub.”

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