Page 66 of Unwrapping Love

To get to know her.

Not say she could figure it out on her own.

Not a wise thing to do to most teenagers, let alone one with a serious health condition that needed guidance.

In her mind, Sandy never got guidance either. Guess being told to figure it out on their own to learn from it produced two different results.

Sandy did everything she could to get the attention she craved and Saylor left to get away from the drama.

“I guess,” she said. “But if that was the case, wouldn’t you have stayed close to your family?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. He picked up his beer and took a sip. “Talk about crazy loudness. You saw it on the video.”

“That’s a holiday gathering,” she said.

“Is your family that loud at holidays?”

She laughed, then choked. “Oh yeah. But not in a good way. Sandy’s kids are terrors and they run and scream at everyone. My sister parents them the same way my mother did us. Hands off. And if Sandy is pissed or annoyed, frustrated, normally all the above, she just starts yelling.”

“Why keep having kids then?”

She leaned in and whispered, “Because she’s an irresponsible whore.”

She not only didn’t get a thank you from her sister for spending a few hundred dollars on gifts for her niece and nephews, but got a nasty text yesterday that it must be nice to live in California and just pick up your life without responsibility.

Sandy made her choices.

Saylor wanted to keep Rowan a secret from her sister as long as possible.

“Damn,” he said. “That’s bold.”

“It’s the sad truth. Why lie? My sister and I don’t have a great relationship. I know I brought it up before.”

“But you never explained.”

She shrugged. “Years of things building up. She wanted attention nonstop. She was mad that she thought I got a bunch of it when I was first diagnosed, but she’d been acting out for all eyes on her since the day she was born.”

“She’d never survive in my house. My mother didn’t have the time to give more attention to one over another unless there was a reason for it. And anyone who acted out got in trouble.”

“Did you get in trouble a lot?” she asked. “Tell me more about your siblings. It’d be nice to hear about a normal family.”

He snorted. “A single mother and eight kids isn’t normal. You know my father was in the Army. We moved a lot. I didn’t move as much as the older ones did. But I wasn’t born in the US.”

“Okay, I didn’t know that.”

“I just found out that I was an oops too,” he said.

She smiled. “Tell me about it.”

“My mother had most of the kids two years apart. Elias and I are barely a year. Guess the condom broke. Not that I wanted to know that, but when Talia found out she was pregnant, my mother confessed. That’s what happened to Talia. Or something like that.”

“They aren’t foolproof,” she said.

“Nope. So anyway, Talia had to call and bust my ass over that fact. Glad no one knew it when we were kids. It’d be worse then.”

“Sounds like there was a lot of picking on each other,” she said.

“There was. But not malicious. My mother wouldn’t allow it. Neither would West.”