Everyone stops to look at him. Colton’s eyes are wide.
“Your carrot,” my mom says slowly, pointing her fork at a piece of carrot lying on the table beside Colton’s bowl.
“Right,” he says, huffing a nervous laugh. “Bell!”
The cow trots over upon hearing her name, her cowbell jingling softly. She snatches the softened carrot from Colton’s palm.
Oakley groans under his breath. “Y’all gotta stop giving my cow a taste for people food.”
“Oakley, you play chess?” Noah’s uncle, Walter, asks from the table next to ours.
Oakley turns his way. “Can’t say I do. Why, you looking to kick my ass?”
Walter chuckles, and the next thing I know, someone is pulling an old chessboard out from the game cupboard in Oakley’s living room. After that, our impromptu family dinner turns into a game night. As Colton and Ash duke it out in arather brutal game ofJenga, I start collecting dishes to bring into Oakley’s kitchen.
My mom finds me before long, her tone gently accusatory. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“I’m fine.”
She heaves a sigh, forcefully pulling the plates from my hands to load into the dishwasher. “Go. Sit.”
Not about to get into an argument, I plop down in the living room, tiredness weighing my limbs.
My mom hums softly. “Lawson. You understand why we care, don’t you?”
I turn my head to see her better, my neck stiff still but not terribly so. “Of course I do. Doesn’t make it easier to accept being coddled.”
She huffs, grabbing a cutting board to clean. “You, my son, have always been stubbornly independent. Probably comes with the territory of being firstborn. You’re so set on it, you see everyone here showing up for you and assume it’s because we think you need help.”
“And that’s not it?”
My mom grabs a towel to dry her damp hands before joining me in the living room. She sits opposite me, expression serious. “Lawson, dear. It’s because we love you. Yesterday, we got a call that you’d been in an accident. That your truck flipped, and Oakley was with you at the hospital. We’re here because we need to see for ourselves that you’re okay. It has nothing to do with your capabilities and everything to do with our love for you.”
I pull in a slow, steadying breath. There’s probably some merit to what my mom is saying. I have always been independent when it comes to my family. Partly because I felt a responsibility growing up to look after my brothers, all of whomare younger than me. And once they were grown themselves, breaking that habit wasn’t easy.
I know my family loves me. That they want to be there for me. And I can’t begrudge them that.
But the Darlings have always been a loud bunch. Not just in volume. But in opinions. In actions. They’re loud with their love.
Telling them when it’s too much has never been an easy thing for me.
Before I can explain that to my mother, the door opens at the back of the house. Remi and Jackson walk in, catching sight of our mom and me in the living room.
“All right?” Jackson asks.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Would you get Dad and Colt? We gotta talk.”
Jackson’s eyebrow pops up, but he turns back around to do as I asked. Remi’s frown accompanies him into the living room.
“It’s nothing bad,” I assure him, signing simultaneously.
He sits beside me on the couch, eyes pinging our mother’s way.
It doesn’t take long for Jackson to return with Colton and our dad. Everybody settles in the living room, the silence heavy for a moment before I break it.
“First, I want to say I’m sorry. I realize yesterday was scary for all of us. I don’t even want to think about how I’d feel if it were Wendy in my place. That must have been hard for you, and I never meant to scare you like that.”
Remi huffs, his eyes moving from my hands to my face. “As if it was your fault, Law.”
