Page 79 of Ink & Ambition

I scream and immediately Danika and Sydney are at my side, ready to fight whoever they need to fight to protect me.

“Geez, Mars,” my big brother smiles at me from my doorstep. “Can’t say I was expecting that reaction.” Arden laughs before stepping forward and pulling me into a hug. I hug him back before pulling away, looking into his eyes.

“What are you doing here?”

“What, a guy can’t visit his little sis while she’s away at school?” I squint my eyes at him but decide to interrogate him later, instead pulling him into the apartment.

“Hey, Arden,” Sydney says with a smile, as he pulls her in for a polite hug. When he turns his gaze toward Danika, his grin falls.

“Danika,” he says.

“Arden,” she replies.

I roll my eyes, pushing him past them and into the rest of the apartment. I grab his bag from his shoulder, noticing the heaviness of it.

“How long are you staying?”

Arden looks around. He’s come to visit me at school before, but he hasn’t seen this apartment yet. We only moved in here last year and Arden was too busy with work to ever come out and see me.

“Just a day or two,” he says noncommittally. Once he notices the movie on the screen, he immediately grabs the remote. “You, ladies, have a problem.”

Much to our protest, Arden turns the TV off, throwing the remote onto the couch. “It’s Saturday night, you’re young and in college. Why are you not out on the town?”

Danika crosses her arms and juts out her hip. “For once, I agree with Peepants.”

“We arenotstarting that,” Arden warns Danika. She just scrunches her nose at him. “Brat,” he mutters. His lovely nickname for my best friend. I truly have no idea how they haven’t killed each other yet.

Sydney, having not had the pleasure of growing up with Arden and Danika fighting as if they were the siblings, looks adorably confused. I lean in to explain. “Cause he peed his pants once when we were camping in the woods.”

Sydney smothers her laugh with the back of her hand.

Arden looks at his watch. “It’s 9:30. You have fifteen minutes to get yourselves all pretty and then we’re going out.”

Danika doesn’t need to be told twice, running right into her room to change and swipe on some makeup. Sydney is still laughing as she walks to her own room, much more slowly.

I only look over at Arden. “Is everything okay?” My brother hits me with a smile that is supposed to convince me that nothing is wrong but I know him better than that.

“Everything’s fine, Mars. Let’s go, the clock is ticking.” Arden takes my shoulders and turns me around, shoving me into the only empty room which he deduced was mine. Clearly, something isn’t right, but he needs to blow off some steam before he’ll talk to me about it. So I let him push me into my room, closing the door to change and ponder what could’ve brought my brother seven hundred miles from home.

The bar is full of underage girls, many of which I have classes with. Cannons is notoriously lenient on IDs so all the undergrads will come here if they don’t want to go to another frat party.

Normally, I dislike the bar scene even more than the party scene but I was too excited to see my brother to care where we went. Arden got us the first round of beers, and Danika andSydney were making their way to the bar for the second time when I finally got a second to sit down with him.

“Alright, enough already. What’s going on? What are you doing here and why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“Do I really need a reason to come visit you?” Arden sips his beer, looking around my shoulder for a pretty college girl to make eyes at. I snap my fingers in his face to bring his focus back.

“A reason, no? A phone call beforehand, yes.”

Arden raises his hands in surrender. “You’re right, sis, I should’ve called.”

Satisfied for the moment, I take the last sip of my cold beverage basking in the glow of having my big brother out on the town with me.

“Round two, folks,” Sydney announces, handing me a fresh beer. Danika goes to hand one to Arden but pulls it back right before he can grab it. The staring contest that ensues is vicious and I have to look away before I see one of them burst into flames. My eyes glance toward the door where suddenly the large frame of a very tall, very familiar man takes shape in the doorway.

Sydney clocks him the second I do. “Did you tell him you were here?”

“Nope,” I reply, popping my “p”. I take a very long sip of my drink before turning my head back toward the people I actually want to spend time with. I’m hoping, with the crowd being what it is, Alex won’t be able to find me.

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