Page 126 of Hate Mates

“Do so!” I argue hotly. “There are things you don’t know.”

“Oh, yeah?” Freddie squints at me, curious and teasing. “You got a double life? A second family in France or something?”

In another show of my faulty brain-to-mouthfilter, I say, “My mum and dad are dead.”

It’s like time stands still as my declaration bounces off the walls of my skull and then echoes back at me again and again, onrepeat inside my mind as I come to the shuddering realisation that I’ve accidentally used the very worst thing to win an argument with Freddie.

Freddie’s eyes blow wide in shock, mouthing the words, “Holy shit,” although that quickly gives way to a resigned understanding as well so much of that fragile empathy he isn’t usually known for expressing.

Maddox and Alex are still staring each other down in the doorway, which means they heard what I said, and Maddox, despite his inebriated state, seems to have been impacted by it as profoundly as if he were stone cold sober. I can’t remember ever seeing such raw fear on my brother’s face before.

Freddie darts a look between us, seeming unsure whom he should be more worried for after this revelation, me or his best friend.

“Lex?” Maddox says in a hushed, thick voice, his distress so stark that it fills me with genuine dread.

Alex closes his eyes and releases a slow exhale. He already looks exhausted and somehow older, way older than eighteen, as if the news of our parents’ death bolted ten years onto his face. He nods, confirming the truth for Maddox, who makes a short, bitten-off noise of fresh grief and runs, scrambling out of the room and pounding up the stairs.

Freddie springs up from the sofa, announcing, “I’ll go after him.” He pauses to give me another significant look, his hand twitching at his side like he wants desperately to reach for me again, to take me in his arms and hold me tight, protectively against him like he’s done on the few occasions he’s allowed himself that weakness in the past. But he holds himself back and goes after his friend instead, leaving me alone in the living room with Alex again.

Alex is still standing there, head hanging and eyes closed, like he can’t bear to open them, as if his eyelids are too heavy for him.He crosses his arms, hugging himself, a defensive habit that we share.

I need to comfort him, to get up and go to him and try to take some of the weight off his hunched shoulders. I slide off the sofa and practically throw myself at my brother, wrapping my arms around his waist, holding onto him as tightly as I can. There are times when we need space, and there are times when we need to be held like everything will be okay, and this is one of those.

Alex lets out a sound, like a mix between a gasp and a whine, pure misery bubbling to the surface and forcing itself out of him in any way that it can.

I hold onto him just that little bit tighter and bury my face in his side, seeking the same comfort in his steady presence, the promise that even if my parents are dead, Alex is still very much alive. I’m not alone, neither of us are, and I want him to know that too.

Eventually, Alex drops his arms, putting one hand on the back of my head and rubbing his thumb in soothing circles. His other hand settles on my back, where he clutches my T-shirt in a loose fist, pressing me against him more securely. I know he’s crying, I can feel him trying to be quiet and unobtrusive about it, but it’s happening all the same. I’m crying too, dampening his T-shirt, and he just lets me do it.

I don’t know how long we stay like that, the two of us, breaking apart and holding each other together at the same time.

But that’s how things are from then on out. He’s my tether, and I’m his, and nothing is going to pull us apart, because we won’t let it. Alex won’t let it.

When the social workers threaten to take me away, Alex fights to keep me. When Freddie’s parents tell Alex he can’t raise me on his own, he tells them he can if he has to because no one else is good enough to do it, no one else loves me like he does.We’re a family, him and me, me and him. Alex and Roux. He’s mine, and I’m his, in a way nobody understands but us.

Nothing can tear us apart, nothing can ever matter more.

I think. I believe that, truly I do.

But when I’m fourteen, my nephew is born, and none of us could have foreseen the cataclysmic and effervescent wonder of existence that isRexley Nova.

TWO

Now: Freddie

Icould pretend this is about the mission. I could say that Director Snow ordered me to keep an eye on him because she, quite rightly, doesn’t trust any man with the last name “Nova.” Not after what his brother did to all those children. Not after what his brother did to her best friend.

But I’ve spent the last few years lying to everyone, including myself, about my feelings for Roux Nova, and I’m sick of it, of how those corrosive lies seep into the muscle hidden beneath my skin, like molten glass. When that shit dries, it’s like I can’t move without shattering the compacted sand and limestone encasing the soft tissue in my joints, exposing those self-deceptions for what they are, the freshly cracked shards cutting into me every time I allow myself the grace to forget.

I can’t reach that pain no matter how I desperate I am to relieve it, no matter how maddening the fierce, clawing urge to rip myself open and dig inside my body, nails scratching through wet flesh until the root of that anguish can be found and torn from me, one bloodied piece at a time.

All I can really do is own the agony he inspires. It’s the one thing he can’t steal from me, because it’s the one thing thatbelongs to both of us, not just him. He belonged to me once, and in some ways, he still does, though he would spit bile and bare his teeth at me for suggesting it.

When Director Snow told me to watch him, she and I knew it was a test. There could be no other reason for her to give that perilous an opening to me. It’s a risk, trusting that I’ll report back to her with honest intel rather than deceits meant to protect Roux if he does prove himself a traitor to our government. Again.

“I want you to keep an eye on our newest recruit, Agent Steivater, make sure he’s behaving himself,”Director Snow had said, her cool blue eyes raking me from head to foot with undisguised scrutiny. It was clear that she’s as unsure of me as she is of Roux.

“Roux hasn’t behaved for single day in his life,”I’d lied to her. The truth, as with most things when it comes to the Nova men, is murkier. Roux can follow orders but only when he chooses to, and his reasons for doing so vary wildly and without any trackable consistency, which makes him unpredictable at best, a liability to her at worst.

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