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I smiled. “How many?”
“Forty-eight.”
My brows lifted. “Seriously?”
His grin deepened. “Seriously. Mom likes to travel.” He crinkled his nose. “She only stopped because of me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got sick of always moving around. I just wanted things to be regular for when I hit high school, you know?” He heaved a sigh, but it didn’t flow right. Hitched, somehow, in the middle, in a way that had me studying him until he mumbled, “Just didn’t realize that high school was so slow.”
“Explain,” I demanded.
He arched a brow at my brusque command, but as I chided myself because he wasn’t a soldier, but my son, he murmured, “I had a tutor/nanny. Her name was Nina.” He smiled. “She was cool. Really smart. She taught me until I was ready for school, but she taught me too much. It’s too easy now, so it’s boring.”
I hummed. “You’re like Conor.”
He perked up at that. “I am?”
“Yeah. He was always an overachiever. Got bored all the fuc—” I cleared my throat. “Got bored all the time. Used to get into a lot of crap. Hacked into NASA one time.” I tapped my nose. “Don’t tell your mom. I told her Conor didn’t manage to gain access to it.”
Shay’s mouth rounded. “Huh? NASA? Like the space agency?”
Laughing, I told him, “Only one space agency in the U.S., isn’t there?”
“Well, it depends if you count SpaceX.”
“I don’t.” I winked at him. “Although Conor might have hacked into there by now.”
“That’s so cool!”
“Is it?” I grunted. “We jerked his chain something fierce for that.”
“Why?”
“Because he did it because he could. Little show off.”
“How much younger than you is he?”
I shook my head. “He’s older. By two years.”
“I met Conor. He brought us here. No way he’s older than you.”
This time, I chuckled freely. “Trust me. Everyone says that.”
He eyed my grin a little oddly, his head tipping to the side as he stared at me. “You really love your brothers, don’t you?”
“Of course.” When he didn’t automatically reply, I pressed, “That surprises you?”
“No. I just… I’ve never really been around a family like that before.”
“What do you mean?” I questioned, sitting up slightly. He eyed my grimace knowingly as my body protested the move, and when his gaze cut to the drugs on the table, I heaved a sigh, reached for the water Aela had placed there earlier, and grabbed both.
When I’d taken the meds, his reward was to respond. “The only family I’ve known isn’t like that.”
“What family do you know?” He said it like he meant people in particular, not the family of friends.
He hummed, his attention turning to the TV. “My great-grandparents. They used to live in Ireland.”
