“I’m not hungry,” Caroline protested.
“Well, you need to eat something and build your strength back up.” I settled her down and sat next to her as I fussed with the blanket Colton had been sleeping under to cover her legs. “At least try, okay?”
After a reluctant nod, she glanced past me toward my roommate. Standing awkwardly by the door with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, Ten peered back. But as soon as their gazes collided, they jerked their glances away. Blushing madly, Caroline rested her head on the pillow and rolled to bury her face in it.
I stood up, took a deep breath, and turned to my roommate. When I gave him a single nod, he rounded up my brothers, who were more than willing to go get something to eat, and left the trailer house.
***
As Brandt and Colton sat
on the couch, on either side of a pale Caroline, chowing down on all the food Ten had bought them, I stepped outside for a minute to catch some fresh air. My roommate followed me not long after.
He blew out a breath and rested his back against the metal walls of the trailer house as he set his hands on his hips. “What’s that saying? Karma-sutra: fate fucking you in in all kinds of creative ways?”
I barked out a harsh laugh. “Yeah. Sounds about right.”
Ten joined in with a short chuckle, but it didn’t last long. Cursing under his breath, his ran his hand through his hair. “So, what happened in there was...shit, man. Is she going to be okay?”
“I don’t know.” Gazing at the rest of the homes in the trailer park, I sighed. They were all better maintained than ours.
“Where’s your mom?”
I turned to Ten. “Good question.”
He hissed out another curse and pushed away from the wall. “Well, this...this frankly sucks. No wonder you never told me about your home life. Or that your sister was fucking hot.”
“Excuse me?” When I slid him a sharp glance, he lifted his hands as if surrendering.
“What? Whenever you mentioned her, I always pictured some five-year-old in pigtails carrying around a blankie and teddy bear. And...she’s not five.”
“She’s not eighteen either,” I growled. “So back off.”
“Hey, I wasn’t disrespecting. The walls in that place are thin as shit; I heard her tell you what she just went through. I’m just saying, I’m not blind.”
“Well, you’d better turn blind around her.”
“Fine, whatever.” Ten lifted his hands once last time, telling me he was backing off. He let out a long, loud sigh and looked up at the sky. So did I. After a minute of neither of us speaking, he asked, “What’re you going to do about this whole fucked-up mess?”
Kicking at a large rock embedded in the grass, I tried to quell all the rising emotions. But the more I thought about what I should do, the more I wanted to tear the trailer house apart with my bare hands. “You know, I always wondered how bad I’d let things here get before I had to give up on Ellamore and come back home. But shit, this is worse than I imagined. How could I let things get this bad?”
“But if you leave school now—”
“I know,” I snapped, not needing the reminder. Pressing my hands to either side of my head to try to ease some of the pressure building inside, I closed my eyes. Except when I did, all I could picture were news reports with Aspen’s face splashed all over the covers of newspapers and screens of televisions with the headline Ellamore Sex Scandal Spreads from the Volleyball Team to Football.
“I can’t do that to Aspen,” I moaned, shaking my head. “I just can’t.”
“Then what’re you going to do?” Ten pressed. “Because you sure as fuck can't leave those three in there like that.”
“I know that.” I glared at him and growled, flashing my teeth. “But what can I do?”
“Well, what do you want to do?”
“I want to go into that pathetic excuse of a house, scoop up my brothers and sister, and take them back to Ellamore with me. I want to protect everyone I love.”
Ten flashed a sudden grin and dusted his hands off on his thighs. “Well, all right, then. Let’s do it.”
“What?” I blinked and gaped at him. “We can’t do that. They don’t...Their life is here. School. My mother...shit, I don’t have any kind of custody. It’d be considered kidnapping if I—”
“If you got caught.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “But I don’t see your mom anywhere. Do you really think she’d contest it?”
A seed of hope sprouted inside me. It’d be rough...but so worth it.
Shaking my head, I frowned at my roommate for even suggesting the idea. “I can’t bring three underage kids home with me.” Caroline would turn eighteen in two weeks, but still. “Where the hell would we put them in our dinky, two-bedroom apartment?”