Beyond Bloodline - Unbreakable Bonds

twenty three

"Nicolas."

Nigel rolled his eyes at the chastising to watch his attitude and just plunked into the seat next to his twin, right opposite the woman and her son, Glenn. He'd be willing to believe anything but that he was actually biologically related to this moron, albeit a relationship that was cold from distance. He wanted to throw hands.

"You don't remember me, do you?" she said, a soft, persuasive smile on her lips. At least staring at her face didn't send his nerves spiking. Where his mom was sharp, life-threatening jagged edges, she was softer lines that made her warm eyes look overwhelmed with all the love it held. "I'm Ava, your mom's twin sister. I'm almost sad, you were inseparable from me as a child, always insisting to be held. Now, you don't even remember."

Nigel's lip curled at the thought-provoking image and her teasing smile. Anyway, he didn't remember. All his memories from his childhood post coming home from the orphanage had been locked away in the deep recesses of his mind. They weren't really memories he wanted to remember. Well, except the particular one.

"You've grown so big," she was still gushing, eyes crinkling at the edges until Nigel was sure she'd probably melt if she looked any softer. It was quite the sharp contrast from his mom who had that static frown stiffening her lips and whole expression. "I'm sure you must be turning a lot of heads turning at school."

The memory of Hayley slipping her fingers into his had the tip of his ears tinting lightly. Before he had a chance to refuse abashedly, his mom was rearing her ugly head. . . or mouth.

"Yeah, sure," her tone was clipped. "I'm sure that's a good explanation for the paltry grades he brought back last term."

"My grades were fine," Nigel turned on her, gaze burning with white, hot fury. "You hardly even looked at it."

"I'd seen enough," she said, lip curling at the end in disdain he blinked rapidly in the face off, trying not to let her words get to him. "You failed your AP honors. I didn't want to hurt my eyes any longer."

Nigel had gotten a B+, just short of breaking into the A ranks by a mark but why would she even care about that?

"I'm sure he's trying to do better this time around," Saxon said on seeing his aunt's unwillingness to touch her sister's temper with a ten foot pole, just taking a long drink of her orange juice. "Can we eat? The food would only get colder."

"Oh, sure," Nigel's tone was derisive. "I am trying to do better. Anyway, I'm pretty much satisfied with my results."

"That so?" her voice remained indifferent as she picked up her fork to start her meal.

"Very much so," he said, sneering. "At least my paltry is much better than anything your precious Saxon could ever have hoped to achieve with his grades."

Silence blanketed the atmosphere as Nigel held his mother's annoyed stare, her cheeks flush with slowly growing rage, the charged tension between them one not even Saxon was now willing to diffuse before the whole argument was turned on him instead.

"Okay," it was Ava's dragged out call that broke the silence instead. "I hear you're pretty good at basketball. Glenn says you're the captain of the team?"

Nigel was beaten to it again before he could even formulate a response, much less part his lips to deliver it.

"That's the best you could do?" she asked, turning up her nose at the extracurricular. "I'm not sending you to school to shoot hoops, Nicolas. If you're not going to focus properly on your schoolwork and give me my money's worth, then perhaps you shouldn't be bothering with an education at all."