Kaia thought for a moment. “You’re a dude. It feels strange—”
Axel growled.
“Fuck, fine. Can we go to sleep afterwards?”
“Yeah, cuz I got to be rested for when Mom and Reb get back from seeing Rule. They’ll be really sad. They have to leave him too and that’s not good. Rule’s chair is empty and everything. It hurts a man.”
“Emotional scars are hardest to heal, but Rule will be back.”
Axel sidled a glance at him. “Unlike your cousin, huh?”
Kaia flinched. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“It’s okay. How old were you?”
Kaia debated on answering him, but Axel seemed to have heard almost the entire conversation. He must’ve followed Kaia out of the room. “Ten.”
“Your family blames you?”
“Yeah.”
“How old was he?”
“Ten, too.”
“Did he know how to swim?”
“Not as good as me.”
Axel frowned.
“It was my idea. He was the cool one. I was the weird one. I wanted to dosomething cool, too.”
“You were the weird one, he was the stupid one. He didn’t have to go, especially if he wasn’t a good swimmer. What is wrong with growed people? First, Diesel’s parents. Now yours.”
“Not them. Just the entirety of the rest of my family. All my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I couldn’t even go with Mom, Dad, and Kayce during family get-togethers.”
“Then they shouldn’t have gone either.”
“That’s their family.”
“Don’t care.Theyareyourfamily. If any motherfucker told my mom and dad one of us couldn’t go somewhere, they wouldn’t go and Dad might shoot them for the disrespect. Your Mom and Dad wasn’t loyal to you.”
“Don’t talk about my parents.”
“Who else can I talk about? Not you this time cuz you were ten and weird. As little as you know now, I’m sure you didn’t know nothing then.” Axel sighed heavily. “I see the problem now.”
“Really? ‘Cause I sure the fuck don’t. I apologized and begged their forgiveness. They said nothing’s bringing their son back and I should’ve died.”
“And your mom and dad let that slide without a punch to their fucking mouths at the least?”
“Fights and violence isn’t the answer to everything.”
“Nope, but when words don’t slice it, then you find other stuffs to get your point across. But I wasn’t talking about them, although I willsay this. Unless you held that motherfucker under the water, it wasn’t your fault. When I’m in the pool, I don’t pay attention to a lot of stuffs neither. You probably started having fun and thought he knew to stay in the part where he could stand the fuck up if he got in trouble with the water.”
“It was dark. We jumped into the deep end.”
“Cuz he was stupid,” Axel insisted.
