Mom drops her hands to her hips. She taps her foot on the floor. And lifts a brow.
“Yeah.” He rips the box open. “I got it.”
He’s such a fucking sucker.
Pleased with herself, Mom comes around as he bends over the box and searches its contents. Wrapping her arms around his hips before he realizes she’s there, she makes him her little spoon, and presses her cheek to the middle of his back until his pretend-scowl turns to the peace and love I grew up knowing.
My parents don’t fight. Not real fights. What they do is bicker, they test each other, they send each other crazy, and then they take pleasure in hugging and making up.
“I love you, Leo.”
“Love you too, Sunshine.” He stands tall and spins in her arms so fast that her cheek touches his back one moment, then his chest the very next. “I love you so much that I’m gonna tolerate pumpkin spice candles for the next three months. And dead flowers in a vase, and weird shit on every surface.”
She closes her eyes and smiles. “That’s a lot of love.”
“Yeah.” He buries his face in the top of her hair and inhales. “And it’s really easy. Luke, go away. Mom and Dad wanna talk grownup stuff.”
“Fuckin’ sick,” I grumble. I’m sent into the attic to save a box of crap, and then I’m dismissed like I don’t matter.
Shaking my head and pretending like their love doesn’t thrill me, I move through the living room and out onto the front deck until a blast of heat smacks me in the face and reminds me it’s not fall. Not even close.
She’s in there fighting for spices and candles, when out here, it’s still ninety degrees, and the sun burns.
I stop on the edge of my parents’ porch for a moment, and simply stare out at the home I was raised in.
I grew up, not on a regular street with regular neighbors and a regular life, but rather, on an estate, with seven homes, a homemade skate ramp, a swimming pool, and a billion cousins all within spitting distance. Of those seven houses, one of which we live in, Dad’s best friend lives in another, his best friend’s brothers live in two more, with his baby sister, my Aunt Iz, living with one right across the street from us. Next door is my Uncle Aiden, and the house on the end is Uncle Jack.
This entire estate is made up of family, the best friend kind, and though all the rest of them have blood to bond them, there has never been a moment where the Harts felt out of place while living in a wonderland of Kincaids – as in, world-title-holding fight champion Kincaids.
Around here, family is family, and anyone who wants to argue differently will find their asses booted out and sent packing.
Glancing down at my watch, I study the time and frown for no reason except that it’s five o’clock and no one is here to play. I might be an adult now, but still, walking out onto the porch, my whole life, has meant playing with my friends. But now we’re all older, and we’re starting to leave the estate. New homes, new families, new adventures. The treehouses in the forest are going abandoned, and the go karts we built over the years lay stacked and forgotten in garages.
My brother and I are the younger cousins of the group, the twenty-one-year-olds, when many of the others are closing in on thirty, but despite the age gap, we were never excluded from the craziness. Perhaps, if you asked them, they’d say Rob and I were the ones who brought the crazy.
It’s not entirely factual, but we’re mostly okay with that reputation.
Stepping down off the porch when there’s no movement from any of the houses, I make my way to my two-door, beat-up SUV. It has a bench seat in the front, no seats in the back. The weather has wreaked havoc on this old thing, so the leather is torn and cracked, the floor is dusty and edging toward rusted out. But the engine purrs, and because I had off-road wheels put on the moment I bought it, I can take the Bronco places the law tends to frown upon, and Rob and I can have fun four-wheeling and defying death.
It’s what we do.
Climbing into the driver’s side and stabbing the keys into the ignition, I grab my phone and hit dial, put it on speaker, then tossing it to the passenger seat, I pull out of Mom and Dad’s driveway and head toward the security gate at the front of the estate.
“Yeah?” Rob answers with panting breath. The sounds of fists hitting muscle thud in the background, and beneath that, a stereo blasts and helps everyone train harder.
“You’re at the gym?”
“Nope. I’m at a ballet recital. You?”
“I’m at the house, but Mom and Dad just fought over fall decorations.”
“Dad asked you to leave?” he questions with a sneer in his voice. “Now they’re doing it?”
“Yup. They’re totally doing it, so I needed to skedaddle. You nearly done at the gym?”
“Nah, I’ve been working with clients all day. I had to wait for Bry and Ben to be free, so now I’m working with them. By the way; Bry’s being weird. He’s keeping secrets.”
“Get the fuck off the phone,” Bryan snaps from somewhere nearby. “I have places to be. You’re wasting my time.”
“He’s grumpy too,” Rob laughs. “I’m sparring with them both, since they’re heavyweights and annoying.”
“It’s easy to hit someone who’s annoying.”
Totally rational, it all totally makes sense. Never mind the fact Bry is our cousin and we love the hell out of him.
“Exactly,” Rob answers. “You coming over here?”
“Um…” I pass through the estate gates and onto the road while they close up behind me, and though I move toward town, I shake my head before I even consciously make the decision. “Nah. I’m not into it today, so I might head on over to the lake to work on the pier. Put some more hours in and get that bitch done.”
“I can come over when I’m done here. I’ll help you check out the beautiful women in bikinis.”
I snort and turn right, toward the lake, rather than left, if I was planning to go to the gym. “What the fuck was that judge thinking, huh? Here, delinquent, let me plop you into a sea of beautiful women. Do whatever you want while there, but make sure you lift a few nails while you’re staring.”
“She clearly had no clue who she was working with,” he grunts out. “Okay, I gotta go. Ben’s giving me the beady eye.” He laughs. “He’s grumpy too.”
“Ben’s always fuckin’ grumpy. You know where to find me later if you decide to come out this way.”
“Yup. I’ll be another couple hours.”
“Alright. If I don’t see you here, I’ll catch you at the apartment.”
“Deal. See ya, Pukey Lukey.”
I scoff. “Later, Fart. Fuckin’ lame-ass name, by the way.”
He hangs up, blocking my immaturity out easily – anyone would think he’s had practice at it – and so while he goes back to sparring with heavyweight champions, I head toward the lake and pull up on the dirt about thirty or so feet from the water’s edge.
Large stone cubes have been laid down as a perimeter, so we can’t drive closer to the water, and beyond those blocks of stone, grass grows, lush and green.
Killing the engine and snatching my keys from the ignition, I slide out onto my sneakers and take a look at the diamonds sparkling on the water’s surface as the sun slowly begins its descent toward the horizon. There are still a couple hours of sunlight left, but while it goes, I’ll be treated to a show of brilliance, of sparkling colors reflecting off the lake, and since there’s a gentle breeze, but not so much that it’s annoying, I intend to spend a couple hours baking and soaking up the vitamins that, two months from now when all of the trees have dropped their leaves and snow threatens, I’ll be dying for.