Page 117 of Wrong For Me

Something like panic grips me. “What am I supposed to do with them?”

She rolls her eyes. “Play video games. Play cards. Ask whattheywant to do. It’s not that complicated.”

Easy enough for her to say. But I’m not going to act like a chicken—and give her any more reason to tease me for the rest of the night—so I go back to the living room to find the brothers.

They’re easy to spot. There aren’t many teenagers here so the fourteen-year-old boy stands out. He’s sitting at a video game console, his two younger brothers at his feet.

“Hey,” I say, feeling incredibly awkward. “Can I join you?”

He narrows his eyes up at me, suspicion lining his face. The two little ones pause their game to see what he’s looking at and when the youngest one faces me, my stomach drops. There’s a yellowing bruise around his eye.

“What are you playing?” I hear myself ask, on autopilot. Everything in me is telling me to run away, to hide, to put distance between myself and this kid with the big blue eyes and the ugly bruise. I don’t know what I’m doing, don’t know what I’m supposed to do or say. There’s a reason my focus in psychology is research, not direct patient work.

Shit, I’m terrible at knowing how to interact with people under the best of circumstances. And this is not the best of circumstances. This is pain. This is real, messy, hard life with all its complications and hurts.

“You gonna play, or what?” the middle kid asks, holding up a controller.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Since I can’t think of any way to escape without looking like an ass, I sit on the floor next to them and take the controller. “Mario Kart,” I say, nodding. “Old school. I like it.”

“I’m not very good at it,” the youngest one says. “I keep falling off the track.”

“You need to slow down on the corners,” I tell him. “Here, I’ll show you.”

“What’s your name?” the oldest one asks, his voice hard with a tinge of anger underneath.

“I’m Leo.” I hold out my hand and wait for him to shake it. He finally does, grudgingly. “And you?”

“That’s Kyle,” the littlest one says. “This is Brandon and I’m Andy.”

“Nice to meet you guys.”

Andy gives me a shy smile and my heart breaks. I want to believe he got that bruise horsing around with his brothers, but I know better. Who the hell would hurt a little kid like that?

I’m suddenly filled with a rush of gratitude for my mom. She had her problems, yes. She made my life way more disjointed and difficult than it ever should have been. But she also loved me. She always made sure I was safe. We might not have had a home, but no one ever laid a hand on me.

I have a feeling this kid can’t say the same thing about one of his parents.

“Are you here for school or something?” the oldest kid—Kyle—asks. He sounds aggressive, and I get it. He’s the oldest. He’s looking after his brothers.

“No. Why do you ask?”

He rolls his eyes. “They always have college students coming in here to doobservations.” Bitterness floods the word. “They watch us and take notes like we’re science experiments or something.”

Ah. I’d done plenty of observations in my undergrad. Not at a place like this, though. I can understand why he’s bitter about it—I wouldn’t want people observing me at the hardest time in my life either.

“Nah,” I say, relaxing a little. Maybe I understand this kid better than I thought. “I am in college but I came here with my friend. You guys know Miss Rose?”

Andy bursts into giggles. “Kyle is inlovewith Miss Rose.”

The teenager’s face goes bright red. “Don’t be so stupid,” he mutters.

“It’s okay,” I say easily, not wanting him to be embarrassed. “She’s really pretty.”

“Super pretty,” the middle kid—Brandon—says. “Kyle always wants to stand behind her when she’s teaching us yoga.”

“Dude,” Kyle groans, but I only laugh. Can’t blame the kid. If I’d met Rose when I was fourteen, I would have been obsessed with her too.