Enemies With Benefits (Loveless Brothers 1)

“Uh oh,” Seth says, just as the sliding door opens again.

Violet and my mom step through, chatting about something, holding bottles of Cheerwine. They don’t seem to notice that we’re all totally and completely silent.

“We have Cheerwine?” Seth finally asks.

“It’s in the basement fridge,” my mom says breezily. “You’d know that if you listened to me.”

“What’s going on out here?” Violet asks, walking toward us.

She takes a seat next to me, then leans over and looks at Levi and Rusty’s game.

“Are those giant tube worms?” she says. “Cool.”Chapter Thirty-SixVioletTo my great relief, I’m having a lovely time. Not that I thought I’d have a bad time at Clara’s house, but I did have some concerns. It’s hard not to when you spend time with the mother of the man you’re banging like a screen door.

I’m coming to appreciate that phrase, by the way. It has a certain ugly, redneck charm.

Dinner is delicious. Eli made lamb, mint, braised brussels sprouts, and some sort of refreshing, crunchy salad that apparently his brother, Levi foraged all the ingredients for. I sit next to Rusty, who tells me all about bioluminescence and geothermal energy at the bottom of the ocean. I think I impress her by knowing that the gulper eel’s jaw accounts for a quarter of its body.

But most of all, I sit back and listen. There’s a rhythm to this family, a back-and-forth between the brothers that’s as easy and natural as the tides. One second they’ll give each other hell and the next they’re passing the gravy, all with the kind of ease that comes with living with someone for a lifetime.

I don’t have any siblings. My dad left while I was still a baby, so it was always just me and my mom, and now it’s just me.

When the meal’s over, I stand up and try to help clear the dishes, but Clara shoos me away.

“Hell no, Violet, you’re a guest here,” she says.

“Mom,” Daniel calls from the kitchen.

Clara rolls her eyes at me.

“I don’t know how I raised such a tightass,” she whispers. “You know, studies have shown that people who curse more are happier, smarter, and more creative than people who don’t?”

“The studies weren’t on six-year-olds,” Daniel calls.

“Go sit for a spell in the living room,” she says. “Where’s Eli? Eli, go give Violet a tour while we clean up before dessert.”

“Well, which is it?” he asks. “Sit, or a give tour?”

Clara just sighs exasperatedly and walks away.

“Give me the tour,” I say, and loop my arm through his.* * *“This flowerbed right here is where I broke my arm because Levi convinced me I could fly if I ate thirteen dandelions,” Eli says, pointing at a row of flowers around the side of the house. “I jumped off the roof. In his defense, I think he wanted to see if it would work as much as I did.”

“How’d you get up there?”

“There used to be a trellis on the side of the porch with some morning glories,” he says. “I was six and he was eight, so we were light enough to use it like a ladder.”

“With zero supervision, of course,” I laugh.

Eli just shrugs, grinning.

“There were five of us, one of my mom, and my dad was still working all hours back then,” he says. “Levi was practically considered an adult while he was in grade school.”

The tour of the house has been light on architectural details (“I think this was built sometime around 1860 or something like that,” Eli told me,) and heavy on memories of childhood incidents where one or more Loveless boys got hurt.

I have no idea how Clara’s maintained her sanity this long, let alone started an academic career late in life. The more I hear of the time that Caleb fell from a tree, Seth ate a slug, or Daniel somehow impaled his shoulder on a sharp stick, the more impressed I am with her.

Apparently Daniel’s never told anyone how he impaled his shoulder on that stick when he was twelve. To this day, he refuses, though Eli thinks Charlie knows.

“And way back there in the woods is the bootlegging shed,” Eli says, pointing off. “It’s kind of falling down now, though Levi keeps threatening to restore it.”

“Who bootlegged?” I ask. According to Eli’s very sketchy history of the homestead, it’s been in his family since it was built.

“Who didn’t?” he says with a grin. “Mostly my great-granddad Lowell, I think. At least he was the one who got into the most trouble, but then he married the sheriff’s daughter so it all worked out in the end.”

“Worked out how, exactly?” I ask.

“He stopped getting in trouble,” Eli says.

“He stop running hooch?”

“I don’t believe he did,” Eli says, laughing. “He died before any of us were born, but I’ve been led to believe that I’d have gotten along with great granddad Lowell pretty well.”