I almost felt sorry for him—almost.
“What you’re feeling right now? Imagine that a thousandfold. Then maybe you’ll begin to have an inkling of what we’ve been going through,” I said.
Lynne shot to her feet to glower at me before finally crossing her arms over her chest as if she didn’t know what else to do. “Are you pleased with yourself now, Joss? For causing havoc, something you do so well?”
Griffin went rigid beside me. Even Brady huffed in shared offense.
“No, Lynne,” I said, “I’m not fucking pleased. You guys, all of you”—I gestured around to encompass all of them, even those we didn’t know—“you’re fuckingassholes. You treated us like your stupid pawns in your little lab experiment game when we—” I had to stop to swallow the sudden tears rising up my throat and stinging my eyes. “We loved you,” I added, a thready admission I didn’t even know why I was fucking making. It only felt like yet another point of vulnerability I had no desire to flaunt in their ugly, stupid faces.
Faux Celia’s eyes misted over, as did faux Porter’s. “Oh, Joss,” she said, “all of you, we promise, weswear, we did it all because we thought it was the only way to protect you. We did it foryou. We did it because we grew to love you, every single one of you, and we wanted to offer you a chance at a real life.”
As one, all the pretend-parents nodded. Even Lynne.
A single tear tracked down my cheek before I swiped it away angrily. The very last thing I wanted to do was cry for these people. But my heart obviously hadn’t gotten the memo in time.
“Yeah, yeah,” Layla muttered with enough snark to make up for my temporary sappiness. I was so fucking glad for it. Not a single one of them deserved to see how much they’d hurt us.
“We’ve heard the whole sob story before,” Layla continued. “Save your breath. It still doesn’t excuse your behavior, not even close. What I want to know is what are all your real names? ’Cause I donotwanna keep thinking of you as the people you pretended to be. It’ll make me puke in my mouth. You so aren’t our parents.”
Before any of them answered, Tracy edged forward. “Um, I hate to interrupt—”
Layla pegged her with that angry stare. “Then don’t.”
“Well, we do have a lot of work to get started on, and I know you’re supposed to be elsewhere at ten.” She glanced at the watch on her slender wrist. Shiny gold with a smattering of diamonds to catch the light. Magnum clearly rewarded them well for their work and fuck-all for scruples.
Layla sneered at Tracy as if she were as culpable as the rest of them. “Then stop delaying us. We’re gonna get our answers one way or another.”
Porterexhaled so loudly that Bobo jerked his head in his direction. “My real name is Mark Malone.”
Layla’s jaw ground back and forth a few times. “And yours?” she asked not-Celia.
The woman cleared her throat and fiddled with the lapels of her lab coat. “Jacqueline Pawlyn. I go by Jackie.”
“And your real last name?” I asked Lynne.
She didn’t avoid my accusatory stare as she answered.
“Hopper.”
“Got it,” I bit out.
Layla, Brady, Griffin, and I looked at Hunt.
Our friend’s serious expression had turned morose. He waggled his lips to one side and then the other before finally nodding to himself and casting a look atAlexis.
“What is it?” he asked.
The woman who I might have once described as being adoring of her son smiled sadly, as morose as Hunt. “Marisa Dominguéz.” She pronounced the name melodically, with a perfect Spanish accent.
“So you really are originally from Spain?”
“Yes, my son.”
Hunt tensed his jaw and neck until tendon outlines strained his skin. “Don’t call me that.”
“But …”
He shook his head, and I looked for his usual turquoise to be swinging from his earring. He wasn’t wearing it. “You made me believe my dad died. I mourned him. Every day, I wished he were still alive.”
