LITMIR.BIZ

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mind. Don’t answer that. You should be focusing on getting into a good school.” Not some idiot with a penis.

      Kenzie snorted. “Did you and Charlie swap bodies?”

      “No, I—”

      “Have never lectured me before. Do not start. I will not be held responsible for what I do to you.” She slid off the bed, all grace and condescension. “The men in this family need to realize the women do not need to be told what to do. Being far superior to the three of you lunkheads arguing all the time. All because you can’t just accept that people are different.”

      He hadn’t ever lectured her before. Usually they were too busy pulling pranks on Charlie or the like. But he was starting to see what his wayward youth had created, and he wanted to make sure she didn’t follow in his crap footsteps.

      She shouldn’t have to fight to do what she loved, and he trusted no man when it came to his baby sister.

      As for being one of the three lunkheads who couldn’t accept they were different... “I’d like to accept it. Surely you know that.”

      Some of her flip teenage know-it-allness slipped. “Okay, you’re the least lunkheadiest.”

      “Thanks.”

      Charlie appeared in the doorway, clearing his throat. “Mom told me to come get you two. Dinner is ready.”

      Kenzie shared a look with Dell. “Poor perfect Charlie. What a chore.”

      Charlie’s eyebrows drew together. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

      “Nothing,” Kenzie said in a singsongy voice, waltzing past him and down the stairs.

      Charlie frowned after her, then turned his frown to Dell. “Aren’t you two a little old to be ganging up on me?”

      “Ganging up on you? How could we gang up on the infallible?” Before Charlie could speak, Dell pressed on. “Give her a lecture on guys, would you? She’s not listening to me, but since you’re the paragon of virtue, she says she’ll listen to you.”

      “I doubt it.”

      “Well, so do I. It’s worth a shot. They were not just kissing in that damn barn.”

      Charlie grimaced. “She’s a smart girl.”

      “She is, but Jacob is a dipshit and Rylie got knocked up. I don’t want her to be next. Not that she’d listen to me tell her that.”

      “It is a bit of a miracle you don’t have any accidental progeny wandering around.”

      “Is it any wonder Kenzie and I gang up on you when you say such sweet things to us?”

      “I’m pretty sure you started it.”

      “Now who sounds like a kid?”

      Charlie let out an exasperated sigh. “I didn’t come up here to bicker with you.” He scratched a hand through his perfectly styled hair. “I just wanted to warn you that Dad is going to bring up the developer stuff.”

      Dell swore.

      “I know you don’t agree with it and I know you want to argue with him, and I even get why. But it’s a family dinner, and maybe you could let it go. This once.”

      “Let it go?”

      “Yes. I’m not saying you have to agree, just don’t argue. Mom asked—”

      “Maybe Mom should do her own asking. You don’t have to always be stepping in for them, Charlie. Last time I checked they could fight their own battles. And you’re over thirty. You could stop acting as though their opinion on everything matters.”

      “And you are getting rather close to thirty to still be acting like a child.”

      They faced off for a few minutes, and it wasn’t the kind of face-off he enjoyed, as with Mia. No, this was all tension and bad feelings, and he wondered if anything would ever change. Or would it keep getting worse? Until there was nothing left.

      “I don’t want to argue. I don’t enjoy this. But I love it too much to let it go. To sit down and be the dutiful son. It isn’t what I want, Charlie. I am not you.”

      “Because that is truly the worst thing you could ever be?”

      “No. Because it isn’t me. It doesn’t make you wrong or bad. It only means I can’t be something I’m not. I can’t pretend. And I won’t pretend this place doesn’t mean everything to me.”

      “More than your family?”

      “Maybe a piece of land can’t call you worthless, ever think of that?”

      “I never—”

      But Dell wasn’t interested in hearing what Charlie never said. Maybe he’d never said worthless, but they did their level best to make Dell feel it. So Dell went downstairs and sat at the dinner table with a smile plastered on his face, and every time Dad hinted around about developing, Dell shoved a bite of mashed potatoes in his mouth.

      It wasn’t any use, though. Family dinner was filled with tension, even more than usual. Charlie escaped the minute it was over, under the guise of business—because his business was so much more important. Kenzie had disappeared to do homework, taking Mom with her.

      So it was just him and Dad and pie, and the inevitable.

      “We’d make a good chunk of change going with a developer,” Dad said, no longer beating around the bush. “Your mom and I could retire.” Dad shoved a bite of cherry pie into his mouth.

      He thought of Charlie asking him not to say anything. Not to argue. But no one was here except him and Dad, and how could he pretend this didn’t mean everything?

      “You can retire by selling to me. I’ve got enough for my section of the farm right now. You sell your pig operation to Dean Coffey like he’s been asking, that’ll keep you for a few years while I make enough to buy the rest.”

      Dad shook his head. “Stupid,” he said through a mouth of pie. “Why can’t you get it through your head this place is nothing? Five years down the line you’re going to be surrounded by subdivisions and malls. You can’t hold on to this. Best let it go now.”

      “I don’t care what I’m surrounded by.”

      “Foolish.” Dad drained the rest of his milk, slammed the glass on the table. “You ever plan on settling down and having a family?”

      “Christ.” Dell shoved a hand through his hair. What would it take? He’d been having this fight for years, and he’d gotten nowhere. When did he give up?

      He looked down at the table. His grandfather had built it, and just as it belonged in Mom’s dining room, Dell belonged in this place. But maybe belonging wasn’t enough.

      “Well?” Dad prompted.

      “I don’t know. Not my concern right now. My concern right now is that this place belongs to me.”

      “You’re a damn fool, and I’m not letting you screw up by not seeing sense. I don’t want to be bailing you out in a few years’ time.”

      Dell pushed away from the table, his pie half-eaten. “Tell Mom I headed home.” He tossed his napkin on the table and walked out. There was no way he was spending another hour beating his head against the brick wall of his dad’s opinion. If everyone else got to escape, so did he.

      As Dell stepped out on the porch, the family’s German shepherd greeted him with a tennis ball.

      Dell hurled the tennis ball, smiled as Colby ran for it, tongue lolling out of her mouth as she raced down the hill. Nothing like a dog to cheer you up after a nice, tense dinner with dear old Dad.

      Was it always going to be this way? He couldn’t be someone he wasn’t and leave farming. He could go work for

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