Page 86 of Ink & Ambition

I shrug. “Nothing, really. You’re here so we can do whatever you want to do.”

“I want to sit on the couch.”

“Excellent,” I reply, linking my arm through his as we walk back to my apartment to do just that.

“Basketball or football?”

I tuck my feet underneath my butt on the couch, balancing the paper plate on my knee. Arden answers, his mouth full of pepperoni.

“Neither, baseball.”

“What baseball teams are there in South Carolina?” Alex asks, shoving the last of his crust into his mouth. Reaching down to where he’s sitting on the floor, I place my crust onto his plate. Alex catches my hand and kisses my knuckles.

If Arden notices the exchange, he doesn’t let on. “None but I still like to watch. I’m a Yankees fan.”

Danika scoffs.

“Problem, brat?”

She hits him with a withering glare but doesn’t respond.

Alex apparently isn’t done with his round of twenty questions to ask my brother. “What about cars?”

“Couldn’t care less about them,” Arden responds, undeterred. He’d sit there and answer questions all night if he could. Itis actually a heart-warming sight. I enjoy seeing them bond, even though it only makes the questions in my brain about our relationship grow.

“What do you do in that factory in South Carolina?”

“I pack and load goods all day. Nothing fancy.”

Alex grabs my empty plate and gathers it with his own. He gets up from the floor and grabs the rest of the garbage on his way to the kitchen. “That sounds like it would get pretty boring.”

“It did.”

“Did?” I ask.

Arden coughs. “Does. It does get boring but there are perks to the job.”

“Like what?” Sydney asks from the chair across the room.

Arden takes the opportunity to flex his arms like a Greek god. “Got these amazing muscles to show for it.” He winks at Danika who feigns vomiting before she gets up to join Alex in the kitchen. Grabbing a water bottle for everyone, the two of them join us back in the living room.

“I don’t know what I wish I could do when I get out of college,” Alex says somewhat absent-mindedly.

“You don’t?”

“I don’t exactly have a choice. I’ve been groomed for my career since I was a kid. I’ll be next in line to run Prescott Cars.” He sounds absolutely miserable about the idea of going into business for his father and I don’t blame him.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to do that,” Sydney asks. Alex blows out a breath.

“It’s actually the very last thing in this world I want to do and I’ve been fighting like hell to avoid it since I was fifteen years old but it seems like you can’t avoid the inevitable.”

The mood has shifted suddenly, and all eyes are on the sad college senior who seems to be receiving a death certificate rather than a diploma when he walks down the graduation aisle.

But Alex, being the ray of sunshine that he is, turns it into a joke to lighten the mood. “Another inevitability is a full bladder,” he says with a chuckle, standing up from the floor to use the bathroom. The air is heavy as he walks out of the room but I know he’d rather have us on a different subject by the time he comes back. And I’m happy to supply that for him.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Alex

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