“What’s his problem?” Nathan, Sunny’s dad, asks.
“Beats me,” Levi muses. “He’s always grumpy as fuck on campus.”
Lana nudges him with her elbow. “Hey. Don’t talk about your uncle like that. He’s just trying to do the best he can.”
“You guys used to rule this fucking town. What happened?” Silas mutters, distracted by his own skills as he flips the knife up and down in his hand.
“Us,” Max mutters, and everyone looks at him, while the parents look flustered as hell.
“What do you mean?” his brother Elliot asks.
“It’s because we were born,” Max adds.
Maybe that’s it.
We all thought the dean was trying to hold us back, scolding us at every turn. But maybe … he was just trying to protect us.
“When I got pregnant,” Lana mutters, “Felix and I decided it would be safer if we all stopped the random murders. So he made a deal with the Bones Brotherhood.”
The jaws of all of us kids drop simultaneously.
“We would stay out of their business, and they would leave us alone,” Lana adds.
“Holy shit, so it’s true, you made a deal,” Silas says, flabbergasted.
“But everybody hates the Bones Brotherhood. Why would you make a deal with the people who can’t be trusted?” Elliot asks.
“It was the only way to protect you all,” Xavier’s mom, Penelope, says. “We were vulnerable. Babies are an easy target. We didn’t want to risk it.”
I swallow. “So you guys pretended they weren’t wreaking havoc in the city.”
“We retreated to our safe havens, our homes, to protect our kids,” my mom says. “Felix made that deal for all the right reasons.”
Everybody looks at him now, while he’s squeezing the palms of his hands like it’s annoyed him all this time that he’s had to carry the weight of this decision all by himself. “I fucking hate them too, but it was the only option.”
“With my dad gone from the corps,” Melody’s dad says. “There was no one from the police force we could trust. We needed to reduce the targets on our backs.”
“So that’s why you guys let Foley parade all over campus like he owns the place,” Apollo says.
“It was them, or the Bones Brotherhood. Take your pick,” his dad, Ares, says. “We made a choice. We live with the consequences.”
“Well, I’m grateful,” Cecelia says, smiling. “We’re still alive, thanks to you.”
Penelope and Felix share a burdened look.
“Some of us …” Aspen mutters, and Penelope grabs her hand in solidarity.
Atlas casually walks in with his hands in his pockets, and both Xavier and I look up at him.
“Where’ve you been?” his mom, Crystal, asks. “I texted you half an hour ago that it was time.”
“Sorry. I got caught up.”
I narrow my eyes at him as he sits down beside me. “Right … you sure you weren’t getting drunk with some girls at an after-party?”
He just smirks at me. “No, of course not. I’ve been busy studying.”
I lean in to whisper, “Is that why you suddenly disappeared after the wedding situation?”
