Page 16

“I just got here. It’ll be ready when it’s ready,” I snapped at them.

Disgruntled, they returned to the living room and proceeded to ignore me. They didn’t return until I shouted that the food was on the table.

Both my dads and three brothers gathered around the table.

“Hey, Beth, can you grab me a beer?” Jake asked as soon as my butt hit the chair. He was leaning back, a shit-eating grin on his face. So relaxed and at ease.

“You can grab it yourself,” I said, frowning at him.

Jake’s face dropped. “I was just asking a favor. What’s wrong with you? You don’t need to be so bitchy.”

“Don’t call your sister bitchy,” Pa admonished.

“I’m tired, I’ve been traveling all day, and I’ve been cooking while you’ve been sitting on your ass, playing games,” I pointed out.

“Jake, you can grab yourself a beer,” Dad chided quietly.

My brother glowered at me before pushing back, his chair scraping against the floor as he left the dining room, storming toward the kitchen.

“You know,” Dad said, turning to me with a frown as he ate the mashed potatoes I’d spent the last hour making for him, “you need to be nicer to your brothers. You are traveling a lot, but that is your choice. You were the one who wanted to go to school so far away, when you could have stayed near home.”

I bit my tongue. What did my choice to move away have to do with my brothers expecting me to wait on them hand and foot?

“Why did you even choose to go so far away? It’s ridiculous. Everything you need is right here,” Hayden said.

“She’s just putting off settling down because she’s a bitch,” Danny said.

I shouldn’t have taken the bait, but I was tired, and I couldn’t handle their needling so soon after arriving home. “So what ifI’m not ready to settle down yet?” I said. “I’m working a good job, I’m getting a degree, and I’m self-sufficient.” I shrugged.

“Are you dating?” Dad asked from the head of the table, a mildly perturbed look on his face.

“Some, the random date here and there.”

He paled a little at that. “Why are you dating all the way out in California when you’re going to be coming home once you finish college?”

“Because that’s what young people do?” I knew what my father was really getting at, but I didn’t want to get into it.

“But you’re coming home and settling down here, right? We are your family.”

“Mom left her home state to live with you guys,” I pointed out. I knew it was a mistake the moment I said it. Both my fathers’ faces turned red as I called them out.

“That was completely different.”

Danny frowned. “You’d really just abandon us, wouldn’t you?”

Fucking hell.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I sighed. “I haven’t even been here a full day. Can you knock it off for a bit?” I growled, getting up.

“You just got home. Why are you fighting with us?” my pa asked with a frown.

Like I was the one causing the fighting, not them?

“I’m not hungry. I’m going to get some sleep. Good night,” I said, leaving the room, only pausing to put my plate in the dishwasher. I knew full well that my family wouldn’t do the same, and I would have to take all the dishes off the kitchen counter and put them in the dishwasher the next morning.

Ignoring my dad calling my name, I made a beeline upstairs for my old room. The space was exactly the same as the day I’dleft it. It looked like the room of a little girl, all pink frills and bows.

I didn’t particularly like either, but my fathers seemed to think that was what girls wanted, so they’d decked out my room in all the frilly, girly things they could find. I liked pink…but that room looked like a doily had thrown up on it.