“Guess you two are crashing with me tonight. As such, I’m calling lights out in thirty minutes, so get your stuff finished up soon.”
Elle’s shoulders drop, and she looks up from her books. “Is it Dad?” Her tone is weary as she sets down her pencil and closes the book.
Sam offers a resigned, “What do you think?” then flops onto one end of my big sectional sofa, pulling a blanket over himself and closing his eyes.
“Did you talk to Mom? Is she okay?” She wanders into the kitchen and rinses out her coffee mug, glancing up at me over the running faucet.
“Pour me a cup before you dump that,” I say, nodding to the half-full coffee pot she’s about to empty into the sink.
Elle lifts an eyebrow. “Thought you said lights out in thirty. That should mean you too, big brother.”
I narrow my eyes at her, then sigh and nod. “You’re right. I’m wiped out.”
I move around the counter to prep a fresh filter and coffee for the morning. She stalls me with a hand on my arm. “I’ve got this. Go to bed before you fall over.”
Leaning back against the counter, I cross my arms as I watch her take over, filling the reservoir with water, measuring the ground coffee, inserting the filter basket, then setting the timer for the morning. She’s a regular grown-up now, which stuns me. At her age, I was still a clueless asshole with zero direction. Too bad Sam didn’t acquire whatever recessive gene gave Elle all that academic drive. His slow start along with her brilliant mind put them both in their senior year of high school at the same time even though they’re two years apart.
“Five a.m.? What the hell are you smoking? Tomorrow’s Sunday,” I say, staring at the timer on the coffee maker.
“I have the morning shift at the coffee shop. Gotta save every penny for college next year.”
“College, huh?” My question sounds about as baffled as I feel because it hits me how determined she is to succeed. My brothers and I didn’t have the best examples and never really applied ourselves in school, save for sports or art class, so the military made sense. It was either that or join a gang for our underachieving asses. Neither option was particularly safe, but at least one was less likely to land us in jail. “You’re smart enough for scholarships, aren’t you?” I don’t even bother asking whether Mom and Dad have anything saved. If Mom was in dire enough straits to let me take over part of this building, they don’t have any spare cash. Elle wasn’t exactly a child they’d planned for either.
“I’m applying for a few, but most of them aren’t a full ride, at least not if I want to get out of LA.” She crosses her arms and pushes her dark hair back behind her ear in a self-conscious gesture. “You’re staring.”
I blink and shake my head. “Still can’t get over how different you are. Like, grown up. I mean, you drink coffee, for fuck’s sake. You’re set to graduate from high school a year early. Should I be worried about, I don’t know, boys? Is it too late to ask?” I feel like an idiot suggesting it, but I am the oldest, and God knows our father doesn’t have the faculties to care what his youngest child is going through. If anything, he avoids her.
I’ve barely seen Elle for more than a day at a time on a few scant visits for the past decade. It’s like I blinked and she went from six to sixteen. I can’t help that protective instinct because she’s not much older than Celeste was the last time I saw her, and I remember all too vividly the trouble she and I got into.
Again with the lifted eyebrow, and now an eye roll. “I can take care of myself. Besides, Sam and I have each other’s backs.”
I relax and nod, glancing at my brother, who’s already snoring softly on the sofa. The pair of them are the closest of all of us. Our other two brothers, Marco and J.J., both enlisted right out of high school too. J.J.’s due to be discharged any day now, and Marco’s deep into some SEAL training mission fuck knows where. We all chose to join the Navy—anything but the marines like dear old Dad, though most of my missions as a Navy medic were covering a marine EOD unit, so I got a good dose of that life as it was. Sam’s the only one of us who hasn’t expressed any desire to enlist, and for a while I was worried that indicated he might choose the darker path and join a gang.
I will say one thing about Dad: he managed to avoid life as a gangbanger despite all the circumstances pushing him in that direction, and he clung to that shit like a lifeline. I like to think Mom was the reason he avoided joining a gang, but I have no idea if that’s true. To hear him tell it, he was the one who kept Mom on the straight and narrow, but I always knew he was full of it. Elle might be the only thing keeping Sam’s focus on self-preservation so far, and now he has the prospect of a career as a tattoo artist inspiring him to keep his shit together.
“No rest for the wicked,” Elle mutters, then sighs.
“Something you need to get off your chest, Bean?” I cross my arms and dip my head, peering into her face. Dark shadows ring her hazel eyes—the unusual color one of a multitude of qualities that set her apart
