Layla

Suddenly, the food lost its appeal.

“Are you not hungry, Layla?” Dad bit out before putting a piece of steak into his mouth with more force than necessary. He didn’t even wait for an answer before he went back to glaring at Mark.

Deciding anything I had to say would just rock the boat and likely break the seal on the arguing, I kept my head down and pushed the food around on my plate. I didn’t even react to Mark shifting and jerking next to me every now and then.

“Can you pass the potatoes, please?” Tom asked almost robotically.

“I swear you put half the bowl on your plate earlier,” Mom pointed out but likely gave him them anyway. “I don’t know where you boys put all the food you eat.”

Boys—snort. They’d passed the point of being ‘boys’ years ago and were now overgrown Neanderthals.

“Could I get more peas and green beans?” Cole requested, prompting Ren to make his own.

“I’ll take some of those and some more sauce, too.”

“Potatoes over here, please,” Brett grunted.

“Me, too,” Dad added.

Not to be outdone, Gramps spoke up. “Me, three.”

The only sounds after that were from the kids who’d given up on glaring at Mark the moment they’d come into close contact with food and the knives and forks touching the plates.

And then the requests started up again. Sure, they could eat a lot normally, but even I had to admit this amount was unusual for them.

“Hurst, are you sure you should be eating that much? You know how you get when you overeat,” Grams murmured.

“Trust me, I haven’t eaten as much as you think.”

I was just lifting a tiny piece of steak when Mark jerked, making me drop my fork on my plate.

“Apologies. I didn’t mean to do that,” he murmured.

Mom’s horrified gasp distracted me from asking him if he was okay.

“What in the world?” She stood up, her chair screeching across the floor and making me shudder. God, I hated that sound. It was as bad as nails on a chalkboard or Bryony Smith’s voice. “Is that what y’all have been up to and why you wanted more food?”

I lifted my head to see her scowling at Mark. What the hell had I missed?

Grams stood up and glared around the table. “Who did that?”

From where she was, I could see that her focus wasn’t on Mark but on something behind where we were seated. Slowly, I turned around, expecting to see a sign or something outside the window.

Oh, how naïve of me to think my brothers were amateurs like that.

No, judging by the lumps of potatoes on the windows and the amount of peas and green beans on the floor—or stuck on the potatoes if they were lucky enough to have hit it—they’d been flicking food at Mark.

Turning back to the occupants of the table, it dawned on me that most of the men were seated facing us, apart from Dad, who was next to me at the head of the table but still had a clean line of fire at Mark.

Those pig-headed sons of bitches! No offense to Mom or Grams.

Mom leaned her fists on the table, then got back up again and walked behind us, so she was facing them all. Being the intelligent person I was, I followed her, even though it meant spinning in my chair until my knees were pressed up against Mark’s leg.

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen. First, you’re all going to apologize to our guest for flicking food at him.”

Gramps sat up straight. “But—"

“Oh, don’t you dare, Hurst Townsend,” Grams hissed, leaning down until she was only a foot away from his face. “You’re the one who’s meant to be setting an example, and the one you’ve displayed here tonight is…” she trailed off and looked at the kids who were all watching what was going on closely, even the one strapped into their highchairs. Finally accepting she couldn’t swear like she was just about to, she finished with, “Bad.”