“And that’s a good thing, sweetheart. Otherwise, you can’t eat muffins.” Gray had fully boarded the dad train.
In the next few minutes, Jayden had gathered his first two gifts on that table, Lias had escaped inside to help Gray with something—presumably to get away from Darius and me—and I helped Darius bring out drinks and ice.
“How was he earlier?” he asked me.
“Lias?”
He nodded and set the last bucket of ice next to the porch steps.
“Not great. I’m gonna ask Ma to convince him to stay at their place tonight,” I said. “He gets worse when he’s alone.”
“Good plan. Is it really all about Evelina?”
“Yeah, I think so.” I followed him over to the grill, where he was ready to prepare our food. “My guess? He found her on social media or something. Maybe she’s happy. I don’t know.”
Darius hummed and poured lighter fluid on the charcoal. “He better figure shit out or ask for help before Ry and I get involved.”
No joke. With Darius’s background as a private military contractor and Ryan’s past in the Marines, nobody wanted shit to go that far. Lias would flip his lid if he realized they were digging into his private affairs.
“I really don’t wanna get involved,” Darius muttered.
“I’m working on it,” I replied. I pulled out my phone and wondered why I hadn’t connected to the Wi-Fi yet. “Did you change the password for the Wi-Fi?”
He knitted his brows. “You can’t go five minutes without uploading a selfie to Instagram?”
For fuck’s sake. “I wanna check my messages.” Maybe I got a little defensive.
He and Ryan were fucking always on my case.
What if Natalie had responded?
My brother smirked lazily. “If you want the password, you’re gonna have to seek out the younger generation of our household. Gray cares about that shit too.”
Asshole. Like Darius wasn’t spending his evenings doomscrolling YouTube for prepper videos.
Whatever. It could wait. At the sound of cars pulling in, we turned around and spotted the next guests to arrive. Our folks and Gray’s mom and stepdad. And brothers, I noticed.
“How many did you invite?” I asked. Darius hated having too many people on his property.
“Enough to feel sympathy for our septic tank,” he grumbled.
I laughed. “What the fuck are you planning on feeding us?”
“Food,” he shot back. “Not that you know what that is.”
There we go again.
I rolled my eyes.
Not long thereafter, the property had filled up with guests, I’d given up on their shitty Wi-Fi up here, and I’d dutifully ratted out our brother to Ma, who’d jumped straight into fussing and digging for information. A bunch of kids were running around too, so I stuck close to the barbecue area where they weren’t allowed.
It helped that I had a beer in my hand too, and Avery was here as well.
My only issue now was that Natalie hadn’t responded to me.
I checked my phone again just to make sure.
Nothing. But the connection was utter shit.
