“Did you like Mom being gone?” Ryder asked.
“Of course not!”
“Then don’t do nothing to make her mad,” Axel said in exasperation. “How many fucking times I got to say those same words? Aren’t you fucking tired of hearing them?”
“Stop saying those motherfuckers and I won’t hear them anymore.”
Axel thumped his head. “Listen to me and I don’t got to say them again. A man gets bored saying the same fucking thing. I know you’re almost twenty,old, but this isn’t the Middle Ages, where you’d have at most two years to live. This is the modern time. Look at Dad. He’s lived so long, he might hit a world record.”
“He’s fifty! People live into their hundreds.”
“In what fucking world?” Axel demanded.
“Yeah, no, C.,” Ryder called. “Maybe a hundred twenty tops. Besides, Axel’s about to turn eleven. Fifty is old to him.”
“Uh huh,” Axel agreed.
“How the fuck did we even start talking about this?” CJ shouted, slamming his hand on the floor.
Turning on the phone’s flashlight, Axel shined it in CJ’s eyes. “Do you want to go blind? ‘Cause we’ll tie you up and hold your eyelids open and torture you with this fucking light.”
CJ squeezed his eyes shut, biding his time until the little fuckheads left him in peace.
“By the way, if you tell Dad what we did to you, you got to tell him why we did it,” Axel said. “The light’s off. You can open your eyes again.”
CJ popped one eye open, then the other one when he saw Axel told the truth. “For Mom?” he asked dubiously.
“Becauseof Mom,” Axel corrected. “A warning to remember not to fuck up and break our family.”
“I was fucking leaving. Diesel and I got into an argument.”
“Yeah, because you always think about Reb.”
“She’s my sister.”
“Ours too, fuckface,” Axel said. “But you need to remember Diesel’s broken too ‘cause of his Mom and Dad. He don’t need you talking for him and making him look bad by accident. ‘Cause Diesel does a lot, so it’s easy to make him look bad.”
“Are you defending that motherfucker or not?”
“I’d die defending any of you,” Axel said stoutly. “Diesel’s a special case, though.”
“Your favorite.”
“Oh brother. I don’t know why I try with you weird motherfuckers. Jealous of each other. Diesel spends time withme, greenie meanie. You’re either with Harley, Rebel, Dad, or Mom.”
Greenie meanie? What did he mean by that?
“You know?” Ryder said when CJ asked for an explanation. “Green with envy.”
“You don’t need a fucking answer for everything, Axel.”
“Says you. If a motherfucker come at me and I don’t fucking answer, then he’ll think he won.”
“Letting things go is the better part of valor.”
“I don’t know no Valerie. And it could be the worst part of her. How does that make a difference to me?”
Once Ryder and Ransom stopped laughing, CJ released an annoyed breath and said, “Valor. Like the knights of the Middle Ages?”
