Page 117 of Summer Holiday Lifeline

“Yeah.”

“Jet—”

“Think about it, though. We could⁠—”

“What, Jet? We could what?” He wasn’t going to examine the complicated twist of emotions coiling in his gut at what Jet was suggesting. Starting a program at the YMCA in Collingwood in two weeks meant not going back to Calgary for the start of the school year.

That was… Myles didn’t know what that was. Headily tempting. After all, Steven was here, and Calgary was a long way away. And for that matter, so was Bentley Priory.

“Isn’t it at least worth thinking about, though?” Jet asked.

“What about school? Your home?”

Jet scowled at him, then grabbed the basket and started shoving his own clothes into it. “Calgary sucks, Uncle Myles. I hate that house. Shelly hates that house. It scares her. And anyway, we should homeschool her.”

“Wait, what?”

“Or find a Montessori School or something. It’s better for her. She needs something better than regular school, and we can afford it.”

“Whether we can afford it isn’t the issue.” He’d been studiously avoiding what they could and could not afford. On his own, he had only a small military retirement income that paid the bills, but only just. The huge sum of money his sister had left him that came from the business their father had started, and she had taken over when he’d died, was something he had managed to avoid thinking about, as had the fact he would, at some point, have to decide what to do with that business.

“Where is this coming from?” he asked instead.

“I like it here, I guess.” Jet was being so nonchalant it was almost painful. “People are nice. Do you know not a single one of your friends here has asked me about my hair or make-up or clothes? The only ones back home who didn’t care were you and Mom, and Auntie Pat. Everyone else had a fucking opinion.”

“I didn’t know that, no.”

“Well, to be fair, Tris asked. But only because he wanted to know where I go this sparkly black eyeshadow I was wearing that day.”

“Of course he did.”

“But he’d look like a racoon in that much black. He’s too pale.”

“Of course he is.”

“Which I told him, and he agreed.”

“Because he would know.” The conversation had slipped into surreal somewhere along the way, and Myles was sliding down the slope with it.

“Plus, Steven’s here.”

And bam. There was the bottom of that slope. “I am not staying here because of him.” Even though he’d come tantalizing close to that thought himself more than once.

Jet literally snarled at him as he pushed past with the basket of laundry. “I wasn’t asking for him.”

“Shit.” Myles hurried after him. “Jet!”

Jet dropped the basket at the top of the steps and whirled. “What do you want me to say? I. Want. To. Stay… There. Good enough? I don’t want to go back to that hellhole where Grandpa was an asshole and Mom died and all my so-called friends shit the bed because they were bored and had too much money and not enough brains. I want to live here where people actually give a fuck about us.”

“I get that. But we can’t just abandon our lives.”

“What lives? You didn’t even have a job. And I hate that school. Shells is only in kindergarten. Grandpa’s house is a hostile pile of crap.”

“We can’t live in Lucky and Kreed’s attic forever.” He didn’t even think to address the idea the house itself was one of Jet’s main objections to Calgary. And not because he didn’t like the house, but because he felt like the house didn’t like them.

Which Myles couldn’t really argue with, in retrospect. Griffon’s Elbow had changed his mind about a lot of things, it seemed.

“We could sell the house there and buy one here,” Jet suggested, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.