Kate lowered her head and mumbled something that Eli didn’t understand.
“What was that, pumpkin?” Connor asked.
“Gross,” she said, a little louder, and a little crisper.
“Men are. Your life lesson for the day,” Connor said.
Seemed like it was Eli’s lesson for the day, too. Since he’d done a fantastic impersonation of a pig today.
“To be fair, Connor,” Kate said. “I appreciate a man’s ass in a pair of Wranglers.”
Connor looked like Kate had hauled off and slapped him with her meat-greasy fingers. “Sure,” he said.
“I just meant Jack’s attitude is gross. Sex isn’t gross at all.” Kate was looking mutinous now, and Eli’s blood pressure was rising because he didn’t need sex talk just at the moment. And he needed sex talk from Kate never.
“That’s enough,” Connor said.
“I mean, if a guy wants to look at my tits I’m not going to—”
“Did someone spike your Diet Coke?” Eli asked.
“I’m just sick of this overprotective crap you guys always pull. ‘Boys are gross,’” she said, in a bad imitation of Connor’s voice. “‘You’ll get cooties if you touch them.’”
“I never said that,” Connor said.
“You told me penises had teeth,” she said, deadpan.
Eli’s head whipped around to face Connor. “Did you really?”
“I don’t remember,” Connor said.
“You did,” Kate said. “I spent the next two years concerned for the health and safety of the inner thighs of every boy I knew.”
In spite of his mood, Eli laughed. “I’m sorry, that’s just funny.”
“Brothers are horrible,” she said.
“I know, but we’re also the best you have,” Eli said. Poor Kate. They were all she had, and they fell short in so many ways it verged on tragic.
“You’re good for some things,” Kate said. “Not as much for others.”
“The same could be said for anything,” Connor pointed out. “Badgers. Great for being kickass in the woods. Bad for sharing a shower.”
“Connor...” Kate groaned.
“Krazy Glue. Good for sticking things together. Bad for personal lubricant.”
Kate scrunched her eyes shut and stuck out her tongue.
“I rest my case,” Connor said. “Men are gross.”
“You’re gross,” Kate said.
“Your mom is gross.”
“My mom’s hygiene is open to interpretation because no one has seen her in nineteen years.”
“Sorry,” Connor said. “Bad joke.”
“Sure,” Kate said, looking dismissive, “but she’s your mom, too.”
“Barely,” Eli said.
She was the woman who had left them all to drown in chaos. His father slipping away on a wave of alcohol while the kids were left to pull themselves up from the wreckage of glass bottles, unwashed clothes and garbage.
To say that Eli had come out of it a little bit of a neat freak was an understatement. Order and control had become essential to survival, and bleach had been a weapon he’d employed early on.
If Connor had become the man of the house, Eli had become the housewife. No thirteen-year-old boy wanted that job. But they had Kate to worry about. And dammit all, worry didn’t even begin to cover it.
But Eli and Connor were both old enough to realize that if rumors about their dad’s drinking got passed around, there was a high likelihood CPS would step in. There had been too much loss for them to be split up. For Kate to be taken away from them. For them to be taken from the ranch.
And so they’d done whatever they’d had to.
School days had been torture for a while. He’d been in hell wondering if his sister was being cared for while he was trapped in a classroom, Kate in a crib while his father drank the day away.
Fortunately, Connor did more with the ranch as a fifteen-year-old than their father had ever done, and they’d earned enough money to put Kate in full-time day care.
So Connor would get up before school and do what needed to be done on the ranch, and Eli would get up and wake Kate. Give her a bath, wash and braid her hair. There was too much to do for him to allow chaos, too much at stake to ever let Kate look like she was less than lovingly cared for.
