Page 82 of Resist

“Given the state of my room, I’d say Mario and Luigi found a way to get repaid.”

Eli frowned, confused.

“The two assholes you borrowed money from,” she clarified.

“Shit,” Eli breathed.

It wasn’t an apology, but it was probably as close to one as she’d ever get from him.

“Mick’s really dying?” he asked.

She nodded.

“What are we going to do?”

Ainsley might be the younger sibling, but that was only in years. Maturity-wise, she’d always been the older one, the one left to deal with all her brother’s mistakes, the one to make decisions and pay the bills for their fucked-up family after Mick got sick. Eli was twenty-six, but he might as well be a toddler in terms of helplessness.

“I don’t know,” she said. She didn’t have the energy or the desire to take the next step. She was fine with sitting right here in this lumpy recliner, staring at the peeling paint, and breathing in the black mold she was certain grew behind the walls.

“You going to sell the bar?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said again.

Eli fell silent, running a hand through greasy hair that hadn’t seen a drop of water in way too long. “You going to keep the apartment?”

“Which word is tripping you up, Eli? I, or don’t, or know?”

His eyes narrowed, but only briefly before he sighed. She was in worse shape than she thought if Eli was pushing aside his go-to response to everything. Aggression.

He glanced around the apartment, his gaze fixed on the door to Mick’s room. “He’s really dying?”

“Yeah,” she replied in a softer tone. “Doctor said it could be days or even just hours.”

Eli scowled. Ainsley didn’t detect a bit of sadness in his expression. Not that she expected to. She figured the only reason her brother was still in the picture was because he’d seen her and Mick as easy marks the past couple of years. Once their father was gone, she doubted she’d ever see Eli again.

Her phone pinged. It was still clenched in her hands from when she’d read the Facebook posts. Glancing at the screen, she saw the text was from Coulton. He’d sent a happy Thanksgiving gif—the one with Monica fromFriendsshimmying with a turkey on her head.

Ainsley sighed and clicked away without replying.

Eli must have caught a glimpse of her screen. “You still dating that hockey player?”

Ainsley, who’d been blissfully numb, felt the first twinge of pain at Eli’s question, even though the answer to this one matched the others. “I don’t know.”

She didn’t have the brain or emotional bandwidth to figure out anything at the moment, not even her feelings for Coulton. She didn’t know why it mattered so much that he hadn’t been thankful for her. It was a stupid thing, really, but she couldn’t shake off the pain of being overlooked or grouped in with that new friends descriptor.

Eli remained there for a few minutes more, the silence between them lingering too long for his comfort. Ainsley had turned her attention back to the wall, her brain too tired to focus on anything else.

“Should I stick around?” he asked.

Ainsley lifted her gaze to her brother, surprised by his offer, when she could see he would literally rather be anywhere else in the world. She shook her head. “You don’t have to.”

“Oh. Okay. Yeah.” He hesitated. “Um. Do you have a few bucks I could borrow? I’m really hungry.”

Her gaze slid down her brother’s tall, lanky frame. His cheeks were more sunken in than she’d ever seen them and his clothes hung on him. She reached into her bag and pulled out her wallet, handing him all the cash she had. A whopping twelve dollars. “Here.”

“Thanks,” he said, taking the money from her. “I guess…”

Eli stared at her, and she could tell he didn’t know what to say. Clearly, he could see they were at the end of something…everything.

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