but with a quick look around, he came to see us instead of walking inside the center.
“Hope I didn’t interrupt,” Slate muttered, his eyes flicking to mine, then to my father’s, followed shortly by my mother’s.
“No,” Max muttered. “Take a seat for a second and let me finish my beer. We try not to take alcohol into the center. It sometimes scares the women and children. Though we don’t have any inhabitants right now.”
Slate nodded and went to the only available seat left on the porch, the one directly next to me, and took a seat.
“Anyway, Harleigh. To answer your question.” Dad opened his mouth and yawned. “I was able to find out it’s some training exercise that’s supposed to simulate a real attack on our US borders. They’re going down to the swamps of Louisiana. There’s a survivalist compound that they were able to acquire for a few weeks. They’re supposed to be blending into the surrounding towns and not scaring the shit out of people while they perform this mission. Your brother’s going in as a civilian.”
That’s when I burst out laughing.
“Dax doesn’t ‘fit in,’” I found myself saying. “Dax most certainly stands out.”
I was more than aware of Slate’s eyes on me, and I glanced at him out of the corner of my eyes.
He was studying my face.
“Why do you say your brother doesn’t fit in?” he asked curiously.
“My brother is what you would consider ‘beautiful,’” I admitted. “He’s also six foot four, weighs two hundred and forty-nine pounds, and has tattoos covering almost every inch of his arms and even one on his neck. He was almost denied entry into the Army because of them.”
“Meaning,” my father drawled, “that he’s going to stand out. He’s most certainly not going to be able to blend in.”
Slate shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s about normal nowadays. When I was in that might’ve caused a few people to go ‘hmm,’ now it’s just par for the course. It doesn’t surprise me about his almost denial, though. I had this one on my arm and they nearly said ‘hell no.’”
I looked at his arm and felt my lips twitch.
Every time I’d seen the tattoo, it’d cause my lips to twitch.
It was a sloth.
A really, really big sloth.
It started at his wrist—at least the tree that the sloth was hanging from did—and stopped somewhere underneath his t-shirt. The sloth took up the majority of his bicep as its clawed foot hung on from a tree branch.
“Not offensive, though,” my father muttered. “Which isn’t what Dax’s are.”
My lips twitched. “They’re not offensive, really.”
“You’re saying that a topless woman isn’t offensive?” my mother finally chimed in, still pissy about that tattoo.
My brother had gone one night on his seventeenth birthday to get a tattoo of a topless woman on his forearm. He’d come home, been proud as fuck about it, only to have my mother lose her shit over it.
It was hilarious, and I wish I could’ve taped it for nostalgia’s sake.
My mother, who was my height, ripping my brother, who’d been well over six feet at the time, a new asshole in front of everybody? Well, that was one for the books.
And something I’d cherish for my entire life.
“It happens, I suppose,” Slate said. “So…did you pull some strings to get him in?”
Max grinned. “I would have, but he ended up sweet talking his way in all on his own. Kid’s a charismatic little fuck when he wants to be.”
Slate snorted. “Must be nice. I’ve never had that ability. When I tried to talk my way out of shit, it always ends up digging my hole deeper.”
I turned to my mother. “Mom, you’ve met the neighbor that turned his sprinklers on me, right?”
My mother’s brows rose.
“Actually,” she said. “I have. I met him last night. But your father failed to mention the sprinkler part.”
Slate’s cheeks colored.
Let me repeat.
Slate’s cheeks. Colored.
Score!
“Your daughter also failed to mention that she was lying in his hammock, in his yard. When she had that pointed out to her, she gave him attitude,” Dad supplied helpfully.
I gasped. “Why must you take everybody’s side but mine?”
Dad’s eyes met mine.
“Baby, trust me when I say, being forced to be somewhere you don’t want to be, for a length of time that is irrationally long? It’s torture. Being home in your own environment is crucial to sanity. When he came home, he found you on his shit. What did you think was going to happen?” he asked.
I felt my stomach clench.
I hadn’t