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She stifled a laugh. “There’s a boy next door. I think he’s kind of sexy.”
I could relate. “Those men down there are my boys next door too. Looks like we have something in common.”
That was all it took for me to feel bonded to this family. An admission of loss, a cute eight-year-old, and girl talk about boys.
34
REBEL
I didn’t want to leave my father’s house, not after I’d realized what they’d been through. We drank the tea they offered, and though Kian and Vaughn were giving me evil side-eyes, I accepted when my father offered for us to stay for dinner.
“We’d love to.” I smiled at him happily.
Vaughn cleared his throat pointedly. “We’ll be pushing it to get back in time for the funeral if we don’t get back on the road…”
I waved my hand at him. “Plenty of time. We have enough clothes to last a week, thanks to Kian’s overpacking.”
He grumbled something about clean underwear not being the problem. It wasn’t like him to be so grouchy.
But I really wanted to stay. I’d barely scratched the surface with these people, and I desperately wanted to know everything about them. “Come on, please, Vaughn. Just a couple more hours and then I’ll drive through the night if I have to.”
Vaughn rolled his eyes. “Or you’ll pass out on the back seat again while we drive, but if you really want to, we can stay a bit longer.”
I put my arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “That’s why you’re my favorite.”
“I heard that,” Kian mumbled.
So I kissed his cheek too.
Over his shoulder, I caught Torrence and Sally-Ann exchanging displeased looks.
I quickly dropped my arms. Sally-Ann probably didn’t want to have to answer her children’s questions about why I was all over not just one but two different men. I could wait until we left to do that.
I clapped my hands together now that it was decided we were staying a few more hours. “So! Maybe we could get a tour of the farm before dinner?”
My father stood eagerly, motioning for us all to follow. “It’s a little muddy right now, so I hope you wore old shoes.”
Vaughn’s shoes had probably cost more than a month of rent on my old apartment, but he didn’t complain. The three of us followed the rest of my family outside into the cool winter afternoon.
Alice fitted herself to my side and slid her hand into mine. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to my horse.”
We took a path that led away from the house and through a couple of other buildings that housed tractors and various other farm machines. “This is so weird for me,” I admitted to her. “I’ve never been on a farm.”
“Never? Not even on a field trip or something?”
“Nope. I haven’t gone much of anywhere, really. I stick pretty close to Saint View.”
“That’s your hometown?”
I smiled over at her. “Yep.”
“What’s it like?”
I lifted a shoulder and spread my arms out, indicating the open sky and green pastures surrounding us. “It’s not as nice as this.”
“Saint View is a slum,” Torrence announced bluntly. “It’s full of prostitutes and crime and drugs and no-hopers.” At the last minute, he glanced over at me. “Present company excused, of course.”
Alice’s eyes were huge when she looked over at me. “Is that true? You live in a place like that?”