Page 81 of Look at Her and Die

“I’ve been working at Starbucks for a year now, Searcy.” She rolled her eyes. “Why do you think I get so mad when y’all make me work at the diner?”

I opened my mouth and closed it.

I didn’t know what to say.

“These are people that I work with!” she cried out. “Why would I think I couldn’t trust them? I’ve worked with them for months!”

When she put it like that…

“I even babysit on the side,” she went on. “I mean, I have a fuck ton of experience.”

I winced.

“I don’t want to live this life, Searcy. I don’t want to be stuck at home like you, taking care of kids that aren’t mine.” She threw up her hands. “Would I love to be a stay-at-home mom? Of course. But I want to be a stay-at-home mom when I want to be, not when I’m a child myself. It’s terrible, I know, but I resent Kent and Anders because they feel like chains holding me down. And honestly, Searcy, you enable our mother. You don’t give her any consequences for her actions. You just got added as a legal guardian, and bam, you’re taking care of us when you can barely take care of yourself. You’ve given up every single thing you’ve ever wanted in life to take care of us, and that’s stupid. That’s stupid! You should be able to live life how you want to live it. You shouldn’t have to question whether or not Mom is going to be at the diner. The best thing you ever did was hire that girl to work at the diner. Now Mom has the help she needs, and she’s responsible for paying her. Meaning, she has to work. I fucking cried when you told Mom you wouldn’t be coming in anymore. For the first time in forever, you actually did something for you.”

I sat back, stunned.

“How do you take your eggs?”

Gunner’s words were like a bucket of ice water over my head.

“Uh,” I said. “I’ll eat them however you cook them.”

“Good, because I made them all over easy without asking.” He set a plate of bacon and eggs down in front of Calliope. “Eat.”

She took a bite of her bacon and said, “This is disgusting to say, but penis has the same texture as bacon.”

I would never look at my bacon the same way again.

“I think that you might’ve been too hard on your sister,” Posy said in the dead of night.

I was lying across his chest, naked, and he was stroking his hand up and down my bare backside.

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“I think you’re judging her for not being you,” he pointed out. “When, in reality, you should’ve judged her for her. Not everyone has a selfless, give it all personality. And that’s okay. Your sister is allowed to be selfish. Nobody should have to sacrifice like you’ve sacrificed. At least when I got Scottie, Dad had set her and I up pretty well. He left me a business. A house that was livable. And, just sayin’, he passed away. Your mother hasn’t died. Your mother is still here, more than capable of cleaning up after herself. She owns a business, she needs to run it. She shouldn’t be relying on you to take care of your siblings. She shouldn’t be disappearing for weeks on end with no contact. You shouldn’t have had to get guardianship of your siblings to make sure that you could take them to the doctor or do the parent-type things when she’s gone.”

I blew out a long breath.

His hands tightened on my butt for a short second before he said, “I hope that doesn’t hurt your feelings.”

“No,” I revealed. “I’ve been thinking about it for years, to be truthful. I hold so much anger and frustration inside, but it’s obvious that Calliope doesn’t bother. She was forced to work just like I was. Like Koda was. Like Kent. We didn’t have a choice if we wanted to keep the lights on.”

“And she shouldn’t have had to do that. No kid should,” he elaborated. “Even Scottie, who was a farm kid, didn’t have to do that. She got to go to school. If she wanted a day off, she took it, and Dad didn’t give her any flack. Because children shouldn’t be forced to work to keep things running.”

I pressed my face into his chest.

“Sometimes I hate my mom,” I blurted. “Like, not just hate. Loathe. I resent her for taking my childhood away. I resent her for keeping me here when I should’ve been able to fly free. But…I love my siblings. I don’t resent them. I love them. Even Calliope, in all her teenage angst glory.”

“Calliope would probably like y’all more if y’all didn’t represent everything that she hated,” he observed.

“You’re probably right.” I laughed as I crawled up the length of his body, hovering over him in a way that my hair curtained his face.

“You know what else I’m right about?” he asked as his hands went to my hips.

“What’s that?” I teased, my bare breasts teasing his chest.

His dog tags glinted in the moonlight that was pouring in through his open curtains, catching my attention.

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