Page 81 of Last Man Standing

“Why are you alone in a room with my son?” Mom’s words bite like vicious lashes of a whip. “He is a child, and you have no business spending time with him unless he’s with one of us.”

“I sneaked in.” Cackling, Koda swings from the light like he’s not afraid of breaking his neck. “She was in the bathroom, so I climbed up and was gonna surprise her.”

“Get. Down.” Arabella Aster: warrior. Arabella Jameson: mother. The second has always scared me far more than the first. “Now.”

“C-Carefully!” Scarlett squeaks out as Koda releases the light and belly flops unceremoniously to the middle of my bed.

Pens go flying into the air, raining back to the floor with noisy clatters. Drowning in blankets and pillows, he pops his head back up again and shows off a wild, Jameson-patented ‘I’m a prick and I know it’ grin. “That was fun!” He scrambles to his feet. “I’m gonna do it again.”

Mom and Scarlett charge forward to grab him at the same time, but Mom’s feral snarl has Scarlett bouncing back again. She scoops Koda off my bed and sets him on his feet with a heavy thud of his dirty shoes on the carpet, then she snatches his hand in a vise-like grip I remember from my youth. “You needn’t speak to my son,” she seethes. “My oldest may have decided you’re worth his time and trouble, but my youngest is still a minor, which means I get to decide who he interacts with.”

“Mom…” I grumble as tears soak Scarlett’s eyes. “Chill.”

“Shut up, Sebastion!” She whips Koda around and faces me. “Don’t act like women haven’t always made you stupid. It clearly runs in the family.” Shaking her head, she stalks across the room and drags my baby brother in her wake. “First your father. Then your brothers. I expect better from you, Koda.”

Scarlett’s breath comes out on a choked sob, her chest bouncing with her efforts to keep the sound in. But when our eyes meet, she loses her battle with herself and spins on her heels.

My mother stomps through my bedroom door and slams it shut.

Scarlett stomps into my bathroom and wishes she could slam something.

“Fuck’s sake.” I charge across my room and into the hall, and zeroing in on my mother a single second before she tugs Koda into the kitchen, I stride their way and surprise the woman who is so rarely surprised. “He’s five years old!” I snarl loud enough to make her jump. “He’s a kid, and he was having fun with the new person inside his home.”

She releases his reddening hand and spins back to face me. “Get her out of my home, Sebastion.”

“Dad told me to be understanding.” I stalk across the kitchen and fist Koda’s hair, gently tugging him my way until his arms wrap around my thigh and his little sniffles bounce against my leg. “Be patient,” I mock. “Be compassionate. Your mother made sacrifices and blah blah blah.”

“Blah blah blah?” She growls. “Are you serious right now? You survived your teen years without a single disrespectful, backhanded bullshit remark tossed my way. But now, at thirty years old, you’re starting?”

“Yeah, because for thirty years, I considered you the perfect example of female strength.” Probably gonna get my ass shot today. “So fuckin’ brave! So strong and smart and formidable. I was awestruck by how badass my mother was. But I don’t see that bravery anymore.”

Her nostrils flare with the fury scorching inside her veins.

“This woman in front of me, the warrior I have always, and will always, defend, looks more like a coward.”

Her lungs stutter and seize. “A coward⁠—”

“You gave up your life for mine. You traded everything you ever knew, and went searching for something better. Something safe. You died, because you wanted to live. But this…” I study her stricken face. Her shaking body. “Screeching at a woman who isn’t your enemy is not how a ruler conducts herself. Barking at me because I’m no longer a child you can control is not how a leader leads. And hurting Koda because he’s five and likes to climb shit is not the mother I remember from my youth. Definitely not the mother I grew up worshipping.”

“Stop,” she growls through tight teeth. “Now.”

“This isn’t living! At best, it’s surviving. In reality, it’s terrorizing a child and destroying the legacy you worked so fucking hard to create. For the first time in my life, if war loomed and someone asked me who I would fight for, my answer isn’t you.”

Horrified, her eyes widen and glisten.

“I don’t trust you to know who your enemy is anymore, and I won’t march on your orders when I’m pretty fucking sure you’d have us march toward the wrong people.” I comb my fingers through Koda’s hair and mourn the hero worship today robs him of. When I was five, I was convinced Arabella Aster was everyone’s hero. The strongest. The bravest. The most gracious. My baby brother doesn’t get that same assurance. “Being unkind to a guest is not strength, and clinging to this world we exist in, separate from the real world, stopped being about bravery a long time ago. Now, it’s about cowardice. You’re not conquering, you’re hiding.”

“Sebastion!” Dad’s deep rumble catches me by surprise, that same I’m disappointed tone tapping at my back until it almost puts me on my knees. I serve my parents, not out of fear of an enemy that no longer exists, but out of loyalty and love for the people who gave me life.

Like Serena has always wanted my approval, I’ve always wanted my mom and dad’s.

Drawing a deep breath, I snap my lips closed and drop my chin to my chest. I tug on Koda’s hair and wait for his eyes to come up to mine. “I’m sorry for shouting at Mom. We don’t do that, do we?”

With a trembling jaw, he shakes his head from side to side.

“It’s okay that you wanted to play, though. And in any other world, with any other person, it would be okay to want to be friends with Scarlett.”

“I got her in trouble,” he sniffles. “Then I got you in trouble. Then I got Mom in trouble.”