by Sosie Frost
“Nothing. It’s jello.”
“Why isn’t it set?”
“Think I added too much vodka.”
And I moved the little cup of it away from Mellie. “Good job, Tidus.”
Food smacked the plates. The girls stuffed their faces.
And conversation ceased.
I shifted the veggies on my plate, avoiding the ashen roast and bourbon glazed carrots that needed only a tumbler and ice cube to transform into my after-dinner drink. The silence fell, broken only by the clinking of forks against plates. The minutes dragged. My stomach twisted.
Why was it always so damned hard?
A lifetime ago, we’d have dinners like this every weekend. Our family. The foster kids we’d take in. Rem. Sometimes Emma. Kids from the town. Friends of my parents. The house was always alive and buzzing and full of…
What was it?
Warmth? Family?
Happiness?
Whatever it was, it’d ended with Mom.
I tapped Mellie’s plate and pushed a piece of broccoli towards her. She refused, but at least this was a familiar battle. Mellie, sly as she was, attempted to pawn her broccoli off on Varius.
“Cassi?” she said.
I replaced the floret with another. “Yes, sweets.”
She pointed to the table. “Your family?”
“That’s right.”
She poked my arm again, a pale hand against my chocolate skin. “You’re different.”
My brothers never saw those differences. The rest of the town did. Not that it mattered. I smiled at her.
“Well, they all came from my momma’s tummy, just like you and Tabby came from your mommy’s belly,” I said. “After my mom and dad had so many boys, they wanted a little girl. So they wished and prayed and…” I shrugged at the others. “Paid a tremendous amount of money in fees. And here I am.”
“Tried to send her back once,” Tidus said. “They’d only give us store credit.”
Varius winked. “Wouldn’t even replace her with a new model.”
“Oh, hush.” I pitched my dinner roll at his head, but stopped Mellie before she repeated the motion with the damnable broccoli. “What would you do without me?”
“You tell us.” Jules was the only one who ate the roast. “You were halfway to Ironfield before you…took your current position.”
Silence again. Rem tried to break it this time.
“Food’s good,” he said.
Jules didn’t miss a beat. “Couldn’t get some of your own at home?”
I dropped my fork. “I invited him. Can’t you guys just have a civil dinner for once? Give him some credit. He came back here—”
Rem waved a hand. “Cas, I got it.”
“No.” Enough was enough. “He’s doing good for himself now. He’s taking care of two little girls, and he’s doing it without complaint, which is more than I can say for the four of you who can’t spend ten minutes together without putting a new hole in the wall.”
Quint pointed his knife. “We fight because we’re family. And every problem in this family can be traced to him.”
“That was five years ago!”
“And it drove Mom to her grave. Dad went after.”
I couldn’t believe them. “You all spent the last three years avoiding anything and everything that had to do with this family and Dad. Coming home for Christmas doesn’t count. The rest of the year? You guys were nowhere to be seen. Who took care of Dad? Who looked after the farm? Who had to mediate conversations between you guys and our father because you were too pissed off to call him yourself?”
Varius helped himself to another piece of bread. “Great dinner, guys.”
Jules agreed. “So, did you bring Rem here just to berate us, or is your contribution to the night a case of indigestion?”
“Let it go, Cas,” Rem said.
Jules wasn’t about to peacefully transition into dessert. “We got rid of you once while you were sniffing around Cassi. Now you’re home again. What do you expect out of this…job?”
Rem didn’t back down. “I needed a nanny.”
“Is that all you got?”
For Heaven’s sake. “Enough guys. It doesn’t matter.”
“Sure, it does,” Jules said. “He hired you. Lured you up to that mountain. Now you’re spending your nights there too. All alone. All isolated.”
Rem nearly laughed. “I don’t need a mountain cabin to get laid.”
“No, not when you can fuck a nanny.” Quint scowled. “You hired her to get in her pants. We shouldn’t have let Cassi take the job.”
Oh, hell no.
“Let me?” My sharp tone wasn’t nearly the punishment they deserved. “Excuse me, but I am an adult—more than I can say for half of you. I can choose where I want to work, what I want to do, and who I want to sleep with.”
Silence.
Uh-oh. That was the wrong thing to say.
Rem leaned in, his voice low. “Take it back, take it back, take it back.”
Jules stood. “You slept with him?”
My stomach flopped. The food didn’t go with it, choosing to evacuate to my throat. “There are kids at the table.”
That meant nothing to my brother. “You slept with him?”
I had a split second to either deny everything and reassert my virtue or to sit in awkward silence as inevitably the image of me and Rem together spawned in each of my four brothers’ minds.
The results were predictable.
Their chairs scraped against the floor. My brothers stood. Rem clutched Tabby a little closer to his chest.
But it was Tidus who launched first, thrashing over the table, upending the mashed potatoes, crashing into the gravy, and flinging roast beef against the wall with a gooey slap. Quint dove for Tidus, holding him back before he flung the container of broccoli at Rem.
“You said it was over with her!” Tidus pointed at him. “Jesus Christ, Rem! You can’t keep it in your pants for a goddamned summer?”
“Hey!” I grabbed Mellie before her fistful of butter also splattered against the wall. “It’s not a big deal.”
Wrongo.
Tidus lunged again. Quint grasped only at his shirt now.
Rem stepped away from the table, voice low, baby in his arms. “You wouldn’t hit a man with a kid, Tidus.”
Tidus didn’t blink. “Cassi, take the baby.”
“Come on.” I pleaded with Varius. “Can’t you calm them down?”
Nope—not when Varius was equally pissed. “Was this your plan all along, Rem?”
“The hell do you think I am?” Rem’s jaw tensed—the first time he’d let himself get angry. Mellie crossed to his legs, wrapping her arms around him. He tussled her hair, but even she couldn’t prevent his voice from rising. “You all knew how I felt about Cassi.”
Tidus scowled. “You said you’d never touched her. I believed you!”
“I hadn’t.” Rem shrugged at me. “It just…happened. And I’m glad it did. You all know how much I…care about her.”
“I trusted you,” Tidus said.
“Yeah…” Rem stared him down. “I think I earned that trust.”
“Earned the chance to fuck my sister?”
“I earned a chance to be forgiven!”
Chaos erupted, and Mellie quickly learned no less than five new vocabulary words that would be sure to prevent her acceptance into any decent preschool. Tabby began to cry, her hands reaching back to the table where her forgotten sippy cup dripped milk onto a mashed potato stained carpet.
Rem shouted. Tidus yelled back. Quint reluctantly prevented a fistfight. Even Varius couldn’t keep the peace. He resigned himself to picking far-flung peas and bits of yams out of his dinner plate. Above it all, Jules cell rang. And rang. And rang.
“You don’t deserve forgiveness,” Quint said. “You set the barn on fire. We lost everything. Animals. Feed. Equipment.”
“I can’t undo what I did.” Rem stared only at a silent and seething Tid
us. “But maybe one of you could have a little understanding.”
“There’s nothing to understand,” Tidus said. “It happened. It’s done. None of us give a fuck about the barn.”
“Bullshit. That’s what this is all about.”
“No, this is about you taking advantage of our sister!”
“Taking advantage?” Now Rem got pissed. “We have feelings for each other. Always have. Always fucking will.”
“Hey!” Jules shouted, hand over the phone. “Quiet down.”
“You think you’re good enough for Cassi?” Tidus laughed. “How many drugs did you do as a kid? How many times were you arrested?”
“You tell me—you were there too.”
“Guys!” Jules pointed to his cell. “This is important!”
“But I never pretended to be something I wasn’t.” Tidus growled. “I never pretended I was a good guy. I never took in babies so I could convince myself I wasn’t a sack of shit. I never chased after a girl who was too good, too nice, too sweet for me. I knew better. I thought you did too.”
“People change,” Rem said.
“Not men like us. Especially not men like you.”
“Jesus Christ.” Jules threw a glass against the wall. The crash silenced everyone. He held the phone in his hand, covering the speaker. “Everyone shut up!”
His face had paled. He clutched the phone, nodding every so often with a grunt.
“Is he conscious?” he asked.
My stomach dropped.
Jules glanced over us, his eyes wide. The question reluctantly drew from his lips. “Is he gonna live?”
The fight was forgotten. The uneasy quiet turned my stomach.
And somehow—I knew what Jules was going to say.
My brother ended the call with a wavering breath. He met my gaze first, heart-broken.
“It’s Marius. There was a firefight. He was hurt. They’re flying him to a military hospital at a bigger base—couldn’t tell me where. He’s going into surgery.”
A long pause.
Heavy, terrible silence.
Jules answered the question none of us wanted to ask. “They don’t know.”
The weight of it all crushed us into our seats.
Another crisis. Another sleepless night.
We couldn’t handle another fight. Another emergency. Another funeral.
This family couldn’t survive another death.
Chapter Fifteen
Remington
“I hate you!”
Mellie had first declared it at eight o’clock when I’d asked her to go to bed.
She repeated it at nine o’clock when I physically placed her in said bed.
When she screamed it at ten o’clock, I gave up.
Night number seven of complete failure.
Couldn’t even put the kid to bed at a reasonable time. Couldn’t get her to eat her dinner.
Couldn’t get her to do anything but tear my heart in half.
Three little words.
How the hell did those three little words cut so goddamned deep?
She was just a kid. A three-year-old didn’t understand hate. Did she?
So why did it feel like a test…a goddamned Olympic trial.
On Tuesday, she’d loved eggs. On Wednesday, she wailed, pouted, and threw them to the floor. Took an ice cream sundae to calm her down. Yesterday, she’d liked her bath. Tonight, it was an unrelenting torture, as if I was scrubbing her skin off instead of the dirt.
How could a little kid grind down every last shred of patience? Mellie was thirty pounds of adorable cuteness and criminal deviant. A master of manipulation with a set of lungs on her that could be heard all the way to Butterpond.
I was out of options. Out of energy. Out of fucking patience.
With Cassi stationed at Walter Reed Hospital while Marius underwent his multiple surgeries, I had to deal with the kids myself. And I was failing.
I’d always thought myself capable. Give me an axe, point me at a grove of trees, and, after a time, I’d build a fire, create a goddamned house, and craft all the furniture I needed to survive.
Put me in a cabin alone with these girls for a week?
Chaos.
Nothing shattered a man’s confidence more than begging a damned toddler to eat her favorite grilled cheese sandwich.
Cassi had made it seem so effortless.
“Damn it! I hate you!”
Mellie picked up steam and a few vocabulary words. Great. I was rubbing off on her. How was I supposed to fix that? Timeouts did nothing. She screamed over stern lectures. If the kid wasn’t crying, she was fighting with me. Sometimes at the same time. Most times, right after she’d been beaming ear-to-ear.
I gave up. The child was unknowable. She fought with me through the night, and, as a result, Tabby hadn’t slept either. She started crying, her wails echoing through the house. That must have made me the biggest piece of shit outside of her diaper.
“What do you want?” I knelt before Mellie. “Just…tell me. What do you want?”
Tears streamed over her face. She spoke through four fingers in her mouth, garbling every word.
“Elsa watch eat I’m hungry why want to color.”
Fantastic.
“Do you want mac and cheese?”
She shook her head yes. “No.”
I couldn’t take much more. Wasn’t like I had the instincts, inclination, or basic human decency to handle the girls. According to Cassi’s family, I didn’t deserve Cassi and I sure as hell shouldn’t have fostered the kids.
Glad the Paynes saw it so clearly. I’d been deluding myself for the entire fucking summer.
“You’re getting mac and cheese.” If I bargained with a three-year-old, neither of us would win. “Then bed.”
“No!”
“Whatever.”
The pot clanged on the stove loud enough to shake the cabinets. I measured out the water and turned up the heat, hoping I could distract the kid with twenty minutes of TV while it boiled. No such luck.
Within a minute, Mellie had enough of the waiting. She trudged into the kitchen, dropped her doll on the ground, and reached for the pot.
“Mellie, no!”
I stopped her before she dragged it from the stove, but not before her hand touched the hot metal.
She screamed, flailing away from the searing pot. Her little hand flushed red, but I didn’t get to see it before she cradled it against her body, sunk to the ground, and started to cry.
“It was hot!” I yelled. “Why the hell did you grab it?!”
My shout terrified her. She rolled on the floor, screaming louder.
Was she trying to get away from me?
My heart lurched into my throat. Why didn’t it just make the final slice and end my misery then and there?
I hoisted the kid onto the counter and checked her hand. Red, but not seriously hurt. Still painful. What was I supposed to do for a burn? Butter? Worked on toast, probably not on kids.
Water first.
I stuck her hand under the faucet and forced her to open her palm. Her face had turned as red as the burn, and she kicked while I tried to help.
“Mellie, stop. Sweetheart.” I slowed the stream of water. “I know it hurts.”
“I hate you!”
“You gotta let the water cool it down.”
“I hate you, Uncle Rem!”
“I’m trying to help!”
“I want Mommy!”
Now that was a first, and it kicked me right in the gut.
Maybe I’d been wrong.
Maybe the kid did know what hate meant.
Hell, if she wanted to risk the drugs, the neglect, and the hungry nights to get back to her mom…
Christ, how bad of a parent was I?
That answer was easy. I couldn’t even last a week without Cassi. The kids were cranky, hungry, and fighting. Discipline didn’t work. They’d refused any entertainment. They no longer respected me.
Little hard
to demand respect from someone when I didn’t respect myself. Cassi’s brothers were right. Chasing her was wrong. I’d done it anyway. I’d seduced her, knowing she had unresolved feelings for me. Hell, I didn’t even try to mend her broken heart—just fucked her until she forgot about it.
She deserved to know the truth, but I was too chickenshit to give it to her.
And why?
Because then she’d be the one to leave.
It wasn’t just the barn that complicated us. The fire had destroyed more than an old building. It’d destroyed me. Burned friendships and bridges. Consumed futures and reputations. I’d never once redeemed myself for the lies. How could I?
Maybe the kids saw through the smoke. Maybe they sensed the real me.
Maybe they knew they were better off with Emma. Hell, she was out of rehab. Found a part-time job in town. I’d even talked to her, amazed by the clarity of her voice and mind.
Emma was getting better.
And I…
I was getting worse.
The cool water helped Mellie. I dosed her with some Children’s Tylenol and covered the burn with some gauze and about six different Barbie band-aids until she was satisfied. After an hour, she went to bed. I tossed the macaroni in the garbage, loaded the baby monitor app on my phone, and sat outside on the porch to drink a beer. I had second. Then I had another.
Around midnight, headlights appeared on the horizon. I hadn’t expected her until the morning. Cassi dragged herself out of the car, exhausted. Hair in a bun, sweats low on her hips.
Absolutely beautiful.
Her purse thudded onto the porch. “Hey, stranger.”
I’d planned to save the fourth beer to knock me out. She needed it more. I popped the cap and handed it over.
“How’s Marius?”
She sunk down on the swing next to me. Eager to cuddle or looking for answers? I wasn’t the right guy to comfort her. I did it anyway. Selfish. Desperate for her. Missing her touch, her kiss, her laugh.
All the things that should have never been mine.
She rested her head on my shoulder. “They amputated his leg.”
“Shit.”
“He’ll be in the hospital for a while, but…at least he’s alive.”
“What’s he gonna do?”
She hummed. “No idea. He can’t go back in the SEALs. He’ll be in rehab for months. And someone has to take care of him. Jules didn’t want to talk about it there. They had him pretty doped up, but if he heard us talking about eventually bringing him to the farm, he’d induce himself into a coma.”
