Misfits Like Us (Like Us #11)(36)

I laugh with Xander. Kinney tries to maintain a cool face, but her lips upturn too.

“They’re all ours, Lo,” our mom says proudly.

I smile more.

I wouldn’t want to be anyone else’s but theirs.

“You would birth superheroes,” he agrees, drizzling hot sauce packets onto his taco, and my smile teeters. I’m not so sure I live up to X-Men Pixie status or a hero label. I do feel more like the imposter in the car.

“Lady Loki is a villain,” Kinney argues.

“She’s more like an anti-hero, isn’t she?” Xander considers from the backseat. He leans forward, closer to us while chomping on a Gordita Crunch.

I slurp and nod. “She has some good in her.”

Kinney drops her phone on her lap. “No, she’s a badass villain who creates illusions to screw with people for fun.”

“Sounds evil to me,” our dad says, unfurling a soft taco for our mom. On another stop in traffic, he holds the taco to her lips. “Here you go, love.”

She sinks her teeth into the tortilla. Sauce dribbles down her chin, and he wipes it up for her too. She’s blushing, and he even plants a kiss on her cheek before giving her a wet willy.

“Lo!” she squirms, laughing.

He grins, looking over at her lovingly while he eats his hard-shell taco too. They share the kind of dreamy, soul mate love that feels destined for few. It’s the stuff I like writing in my fics.

Before Kinney reaches for her phone again, I nudge my sister’s arm. “Why do you want to be evil so badly?” I mean in the literal sense. She’s always trying to be tough and growly, like it’s a death sentence to be soft.

“Villains are more interesting. Loki. Emma Frost. Scarlet Witch. The Hellfire Club.” She thinks I meant in the fictional sense. “Nothing is better than them. Heroes are bland and blah.”

“Bland and blah,” our dad chimes in with a taco raise.

Xander laughs again. “Dad, you can’t say Cyclops isn’t one of the best characters. You love him. Mom loves him.”

“Yep,” Mom nods, then slurps. “But Scott Summers has seen villain periods, too.”

Dad cringes. “We are not unearthing the Phoenix Force/Avengers vs. X-Men era. Not in my car.”

“My car,” Mom corrects.

“Lily’s car.” He extends an arm over her gangly shoulders. “The desecration of your car isn’t happening on my watch, love.”

“I kinda like those comics,” I mention.

Dad does a double-take at me, his arm dropping off Mom. “I’m sorry—did Pixie just say she likes evil Cyclops?”

“Luna,” I smile while slurping, sort of biting the straw.

He intakes a breath. “Who are you?”

“Your oldest daughter.” I wave.

His smile is softer. “Ah, that Luna. I remember.” He turns forward to wipe up hot sauce off his fingers. “She is a good daughter.” He says it like it’s ancient fact from Tatooine. The earnestness in his voice fills my heart tenfold.

“And the best writer,” Mom smiles over at him. She’s always asking which of my fics she should read, and I’ll send her links to some on Fictitious. Like all my family and security, she knows my username, so she could easily find all my stories. Even the smutty ones. But she wants to give me space in case I want to keep my writing private from them, and I appreciate that too.

I love my parents more than humanly possible.

I guess that’s why disappointing them feels like death, and acting against my dad’s wish to protect me from all evils feels like a knife through my chest. I think trudging through hardening cement would be easier than to knowingly hurt them.

“You really liked that Cyclops in that era?” Xander asks me, his forearm perched near my headrest.

“I was rooting for him to be redeemed.” I shrug, nibbling at my Crunchwrap Supreme.

“Some people stay bad, Luna,” Dad says, his tone sharper than before.

“Can’t everyone be considered a villain and a hero though?” I wonder. “Everyone is both. We’re all just gray, flawed characters on different planes of existence.”

“I think so,” Mom nods, flicking on the blinker and taking a right turn. We pass a Wawa, and I try not to think of Donnelly in security’s SUV.

“No,” Dad shakes his head. “Like your mom said earlier, there are periods of time where people can be true villains.” Severity narrows his amber eyes, the same color as mine. “I’ve been a villain.”

Mom tenses, and the car strains with my dad’s seriousness. This isn’t the first time he’s reminded us of his past like a forewarning of what not to do.

“I wasn’t this in-between person,” he tells me. “I did shitty things to the people I love most, and the fact that I loved them shouldn’t have given me a pass back then.”

“What’d you do?” Kinney questions, frowning. “You always say alcohol made you mean—”

“Alcohol didn’t make me mean,” he clarifies quickly. “I was bitter, resentful, and ugly even when I was sober, but alcohol didn’t help.”

“But you never say what bad things you’ve actually done.”

He has told stories to me and Moffy, maybe not to her yet.