“Lane? Did something happen?” I questioned carefully.

He sighed and pushed a shock of dark hair out of his face, looking so much like our dad when he did that I had to chuckle. Lane’s head shot toward me and he frowned thinking I was laughing at him.

“Sorry, bud. I wasn’t laughing at you. You just looked like Dad then,” I explained which got me a small smile from him.

I actually looked a lot like Dad too with my dark hair and brown eyes, but that’s where it stopped. Everything else I’d gotten from Mom: her medium build and her facial features including an aquiline nose and wider-set eyes. People had always told her she looked like a blond Catherine Zeta-Jones, so I guessed that meant I resembled the actress too, but Dad must’ve carried the dominant genes because neither Lane nor I had Mom’s blond hair or green eyes.

We also didn’t get her selfish outlook on life, thank God. She’d left Dad when I was a freshman in high school which meant Lane had only been five, saying she couldn’t do the “family thing” anymore. So because Dad was a truck driver and was gone a lot, we’d moved in with Grammy right after, and by doing so, she’d helped by giving us a place to stay and we helped by keeping her young, or so she said.

Shortly after Mom left, we’d learned that she’d really liked credit cards, as in really liked them, so as soon as I was old enough, I’d started working at The Breakfast Nook, or The Nook as Jay and I called it, to help out because Dad was doing all he could to pay off her enormous bills. Grammy couldn’t help much because of her back surgery and her scant Social Security check once a month only went so far. So here we were ten years later, Dad was still working to get everything paid, and needless to say, we didn’t have a lot of funds to go around. I’d had to take two years off from school to help out which had killed me, but now that I was back at Hallervan, I was more focused than ever because I didn’t want to live this way anymore.

And that’s why Zeke Powers was an unnecessary distraction.

Lane cleared his throat then looked out the windshield and said, “Candice broke up with me.”

“What? Why?” That was a surprise. Lane was a heartbreaker and having a girl break up with him was definitely a first.

He frowned as he continued staring straight ahead. “There’s a dance this weekend and some of the kids are going out to eat before. She told me she wanted to go too and I know she expected me to pay so I had to tell her I couldn’t. She went all psycho on me and told me she couldn’t be with someone who was… who was poor. She said it in front of everyone.” He now hung his head in shame.

Shit. Shit!

It didn’t matter that I couldn’t have things. I could deal with it. But I wanted Lane to have everything, damn it, and that’s why it was necessary for me to stay focused and on track.

I nodded slowly a couple times knowing exactly what this Candice girl was. “Well, bubba, here’s the deal. Candice? She’s a bitch.” He turned to look at me again and I saw the shock on his face because I rarely cussed around him, trying to be a good example and all. “She is,” I stressed raising my eyebrows at him as I nodded again. “Any girl who would break up with you because of that is a shallow… bitch,” I repeated. I mean, how else could I describe her? “You’re much better off without her.”

He turned to face the front again and I looked over to see I hadn’t convinced him.

“Hey. I mean it. She sounds like a spoiled brat and will probably end up being some gold-digging, opportunistic, blood-sucking leech of a skank when she grows up.”

This got a chuckle out of him. Good. I hoped he was starting to see the light. I mean, I didn’t know this girl and maybe I was judging her unfairly, but what she’d done to my baby brother was uncalled for and of course I’d come to his defense immediately. That’s what family was for.

“Damn, Scar, Grammy’s gonna wash your mouth out with soap when you get home,” he said looking over at me with a grin.

“Now, see, I love that you’re smiling. And I love that you’re being funny,” I pointed out. Then I reached over and smacked the back of his head as I said, “But what I don’t love is you cussing.”

“Hey, I only said ‘damn.’ You said a lot worse,” he whined as he fixed his hair where I’d smacked him.

“And I’ve got ten years on you. Remember that,” I said cutting my eyes at him and making him chuckle again.