I frowned and stood up straighter.
“Sam’s sister?”
Sam had a sister that was really young. At least, way younger than him.
I hadn’t seen her in years, either.
I always remembered her as weird, though.
Always watchful, not talkative, and very, very standoffish.
She was good friends with Sam’s youngest girl, Phoebe, though, so she’d been here a lot when we were kids.
I wondered if she was still just as weird.
And she never ate anything. She’d always had to have special food because she was picky.
“Yeah,” she said. “Are you almost done with that?”
I looked at the ever-growing pile of wood that was at my feet and shrugged.
“I’ll finish this lot out,” I said. “Since Dad bitched out.”
“I didn’t bitch out,” my father said as he came around the corner. “I saw Sam’s dad and sister pull in a few minutes ago while you were getting your face put back together, and thought I’d run over there and tell them what I heard last week.”
I nodded once as I pulled back the ax and slammed it back down again.
The shock of the ax hitting the wood reverberated up the handle and into my hands.
My abs tightened and bunched, and a few more droplets of sweat fell off my face and onto the ground.
“Looks like you bitched out to me,” I said, pointing to his woodpile, and then to mine. “And I had to have my face fixed. What’s your excuse?”
My mother went to my father and wrapped her arms around his chest, pressing her face against his heart.
I felt something warm slide through me at the sight of them.
One day, I wanted what they had.
One day, I hoped to have it.
“My excuse is I’m getting old,” Dad said. “And why bother putting so much work into it when you’re young, able-bodied, and in better shape than me?”
My mom ran her hands over my dad’s still-flat belly, slipping it underneath the fabric on one of her sweeps down.
“You still have a six-pack, Jack,” Mom said. “And, just sayin’, but I can’t get enough of this silver.”
She ran her free hand that wasn’t underneath his shirt along my father’s hair that was indeed going silver.
Though, he liked to say it was going chrome.
I guess it sounded cooler in his head or something.
My father curled his arm around her waist and palmed her ass, giving it a very blatant squeeze as he looked down into her eyes with love shining in his.
I curled my lip up in disgust at the two of them.
“Can you please not grope each other when I’m around?” I pleaded.
Dad grinned wickedly at me. “Why? Do you think if you don’t see it that it won’t still happen?”
I gagged. “Gross.”
“Way of life,” Dad corrected, his eyes focusing on something in the distance over my shoulder.
I looked over my shoulder, ax on my other shoulder, and froze when I saw the familiar black curls swaying as someone ran across the parking lot of Free, a compound of sorts that was on the outskirts of Kilgore where my father started living the moment he got out of the military.
My heart started beating in my throat when I realized who it was.
Amelia.
Amelia, the girl I’d been unable to stop thinking about since two days ago when I’d discovered she’d left my bed in the middle of the night.
I watched as she ran until she got to the dog that was laying in the middle of the road—my dog.
King.
King was a two-year-old Corgi.
She was sweet, fat, and lazy.
And, apparently, she was cute enough to warrant Amelia running across the forecourt that spanned between all the houses.
“Ohh, aren’t you just the cutest thing ever?” Amelia cried as she dropped down onto her haunches in front of my puppy and scratched King behind the ear. “Yes, you are. Oh my God. I just want to take you home and love you forever. I’ll bet nobody will notice that you’re gone.”
I heard that as I walked up silently to where Amelia was crouched down.
I hadn’t even realized that I’d moved.
“I’d notice.”
Amelia looked up just as Sam and Sam’s father, Silas, made their way over to us.
“Amelia,” Silas said as he came to a stop beside us. “Why are you running away when I asked you about this ‘someone’ you were talking about meeting?”
My eyes flicked from Amelia to Sam, to Silas and then back.
She was running away when she was talking about me?
I smothered my grin.
Then offered my hand to Silas, followed by Sam.
“Hey,” I rumbled. “Your girl’s trying to steal my dog.”
Sam’s lips twitched.
Silas rolled his eyes.
“Did you know that when she was fifteen, Amelia tried to steal a dog from the mayor of Benton because he refused to stop leaving her in a car when he’d run into the convenience store?” Sam asked, turning slightly to Silas.
Silas rolled his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. She did steal it. She only put it back before the mayor got back to his car.”