what had happened without everyone there.
Not like they didn’t know what happened.
The four of them left, leaving me there with Amelia still sprawled on the ground.
“I can’t believe he just did that.” She sighed, burying her nose into my dog’s fur.
Goddamn, I was jealous over my dog.
What a concept.
Looking over my shoulder, I glanced once to make sure that they’d made it inside, then looked back down at her.
“I can’t believe that you snuck out of my room, stole my favorite shirt, and then showed up here wearing it,” I replied.
She opened her mouth, closed it, then shrugged. “I… goodbyes are hard. And I had an exam that I forgot to take. It was due by four in the morning. No shitting. Seriously, I got home with about eighteen minutes to spare. I passed, but barely.”
My lips twitched. “You could’ve taken it at my place. All you had to do was wake me up and tell me.”
She blew out a breath, ruffling her hair, then sat back up.
King went with her, loving all the attention.
“I…” She paused. “I didn’t want you to kick me out.”
“I wouldn’t have,” I said simply. “I wouldn’t have let you in there at all if I didn’t trust you or want you to stay.”
She scrunched up her nose.
I gestured toward the gazebo that was in my parents’ back yard and offered her my hand.
She took it, keeping hold of King on the way up.
“She’s sweet,” she said as she turned my dog over like a baby in her lap and started to scratch her belly. “I’m in love with your dog. Can I come visit with her tomorrow?”
I grinned. “Just my dog?”
She pursed her lips. “If I say yes?”
“Then I’ll say no,” I taunted.
She grinned and looked toward the back door of my parents’ place.
“I can’t believe that we knew each other after all,” she said softly. “I’m sure you know all of my dirty little secrets now.”
I looked at her with amusement on my face.
“I was too busy being a bad kid on my own to worry about everyone else,” I admitted, smiling all out. “I’m sure you were great.”
She laughed then, taking my heart rate from manageable levels to I should probably see a physician levels.
“I did everything and anything that I could to put gray hair on my father’s and brothers’ heads,” she admitted. “Hence the job at the strip club, and the job before that. And the volunteering where I did.”
Just as she admitted that, Sam, Silas and my parents came out the door.
My mom had a platter of food in her hands and my dad had a couple extra bottles of beer.
When they got close, my mom put the platter of food down onto the table in between the swings and took a seat on the one opposite of us, her eyes missing nothing about Amelia and my closeness.
My dad handed off two of the beers, but paused when Amelia’s hands closed on one.
“Are you old enough to drink?” he teased. “I don’t want to corrupt you.”
“Don’t worry,” Silas said. “She’s long past being corrupted. She was an atrocious teenager.”
“I was the perfect child,” Amelia said with a straight face.
Sam and Silas both burst out laughing, their mirth more than obvious with their boisterous laughter.
“You?” Silas’ laughter died down to chuckles. “Amelia Rose, you were an awful child. I swear to God, if you’d been my first child, I would’ve never had any more.”
Sam snorted.
“You remember that time that she snuck out when she was fifteen and got a tattoo from that tattoo shop in town? It’d just opened. Had some guy named Earthquake doing the tattoos. He didn’t know y’all yet, and so he just saw this well-developed girl, thought he was going to get some, and did her a pretty little tattoo on the small of her back.”
I’d seen that tattoo.
It wasn’t small, and it wasn’t what I would call ‘pretty’ either.
It was actually really beautiful and well done.
“I pulled up on my bike and found her there.” Silas shook his head. “And I’m about to lose my shit on this man, but Amelia throws a fuckin’ fit because she wants the piece finished. So I allow it, even though I know that her mother is going to fuckin’ kill me. I thought she was getting like a fairy or a fuckin’ butterfly or something. It was a motherfuckin’ snake. Her mother hated it.”
It wasn’t a little snake, either.
It was a motherfuckin’ big one.
“What is it?” my mother