When he had four minutes left on the clock, I had filled two garbage bags, and I was in the middle of filling his sink with hot water and too much soap. If he couldn’t bother to do the dishes himself, I’d come back up here next week, ’cause he couldn’t live like this.
Not everything fit in the sink, but it would have to do. I wiped down the surface to the left of the sink so the clean dishes could dry there at some point.
The front door opened again, and he came back, dragging a towel over his head.
“You don’t gotta do that,” he muttered. “I was gonna pay one of the?—”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” I interrupted him. “You have to get your shit together, Lias. And before you do, don’t treat your staff like butlers. You take care of your own home.”
He scowled. “Did you miss the part about my paying them?”
“Or—here’s an idea—you don’t let your employees worry that they’re going down with your sinking ship,” I replied. “You’re their boss. Act like it.”
He was quiet all the way down the mountain, where I essentially started over. New dirt roads, new mountains, endless valleys.
We were still good on time. We’d get to Darius’s early because I’d known Lias was the way he was. Actually, I’d thought he’d be more difficult.
“You know I wanna help you, right? We all do.” I threw that out there for the hundredth time. “But since you won’t tell us anything, I’m gonna start guessing that you think you deserve to feel the way you do.”
He kept staring out the window. “Maybe I do.”
I didn’t believe that for a second. We may have our problems, but I couldn’t imagine he’d done anything to deserve years of punishment. He took after Jake. Loyal to a fault. Always there when you needed him.
“You found Evelina, didn’t you?”
He flinched at the mention of her name. “I don’t wanna talk about her.”
Yeah, that much was clear.
So be it. I’d snitch on him instead. Willow and Ma could take over. Elise was too nice, and Darius, Ryan, and I hadn’t had much luck.
“I’mma tell our folks you wanna spend the night at their house tonight,” I said.
“The fuck?” He scowled at me.
I smiled. “Good luck saying no to Ma. Pop can drive you home tomorrow.”
Not only would this motivate Lias to put a smile on his face for the party, because we never wanted to worry our mother, but it wasn’t going to work. She’d see through him. Two birds, one stone.
CHAPTER 7
Ethan Quinn
As predicted, we were the first to arrive at Darius’s slice of heaven. The homestead he’d built at the foot of a cliffside, where he could shut the world out, spend his days growing his damn tomatoes and other vegetables, and, last I heard, raise chickens.
It was a small farm in the middle of the forest, and it was evidently Gray’s dream come true as well, seeing as he’d moved up here faster than someone could say zombie apocalypse.
I parked in the tree line next to Darius’s truck, and before Lias could climb out, I grasped his shoulder.
He met my gaze with a flat stare of his own.
It fucking pained me to see him this way.
“Talk to Ma,” I urged him. “Or me. Or any of us. Whatever it is, we can figure it out, whether we help you get over her or hunt her down.”
He nodded with a dip of his chin and said nothing, so I considered the topic dead for now.
We grabbed our gifts and left the truck, and we started our trek toward the house. Past the greenhouse, their little potato field and planting beds, and across the rushing stream.
