“What?”
“I said no. Whatever it is, find someone else.”
Frowning, he stepped back, placing his hand over his heart. “I’m hurt. Truly. I simply came here to see if you needed any help.”
“Is that so?” I smirked. “And why would you want to help me?”
“Well, shouldn’t you be spending time with your new husband?”
I winced internally at the thought of “my husband” racing off as soon as we had sex. Technically, I shoved him out the door, but he still walked away. Not that either of us knew we were married.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It must have been a hoax or something.”
“Right,” he huffed. “Because any normal daughter of Clara and Ben Parker would announce to the whole town she was married. How’s that going, by the way?”
I pretended to not know what he was talking about, taking my supplies with me to the farthest bathroom. “What?”
His footsteps hurried after me, along with the incredulous noise he made in his throat. “You haven’t talked to them?”
“No, I’ve been busy.”
“How is that possible? Whenever they find out something about me, I can’t hide for more than five minutes before one of them finds me. And then I get beaten. Tell me something, how come you never get beaten?”
“Because I never get caught,” I said over my shoulder, shoving open the bathroom door.
Staring down at the floor, I grimaced. My knees couldn’t take it today. Not that I was an old lady or anything, but I didn’t have it in me to do anything.
“Right, you never get caught. Except this time, you did get caught. Everyone knows! There’s no hiding it.”
“Well, what do you want me to tell you? Maybe I’ve disappointed them enough that they finally decided it was time to stop yelling at me.”
“Huh.”
I turned, looking at my baby brother as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “What do you think I have to do to get them to be that disappointed in me?”
“You? Never gonna happen, kid.”
His jaw dropped in shock. “What?”
“Face it. You’re the baby of the family. You can do no wrong.”
“But I’m always wrong,” he argued.
“Yes, but you’ll never do enough wrong to make them so disappointed in you that even an elopement would get you disowned.”
Sighing, he walked over to the bed that I had just made less than an hour ago and flopped back on it. “Well, that sucks. I thought eventually I would be able to get them really riled up, you know?”
There was no point in getting upset about the bed. It was already wrinkled, so I joined him, flopping back and enjoying the rest. “Well, you need to do something really stupid like me. Only then can you truly become a disappointment.”
He rolled his head to face me. “Um…hello? I nearly got a kid killed. He’s practically a six-year-old because of me.”
“Yes, but he also made the decision to get behind the wheel. You didn’t even cause the accident. Frankly, it was more of a minor incident on your part.”
He sighed heavily, turning back to stare at the ceiling. “So, there’s nothing I can do?”
“Not anytime soon. Plus, you’re a boy. Boys are supposed to make mistakes. Girls are supposed to uphold the family values and all that stuff. I was ruined from the moment I turned sixteen.”
“Ryder Lawson,” he murmured.