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He was a big, lovable dufus.
He’d dropped out of high school because he wanted to start growing marijuana long before it was legal, and he named his company, Kingpin Weed.
That’s not going to draw any attention to law enforcement, am I right?
The business never took off, and Rico spent his days getting high and called it research. Now he worked at The Daily Market for Oscar Daily. At least he was holding down a job.
Was he ready to take on fatherhood? Absolutely not.
But that had never stopped any member of my family from going there.
I let him pick me up off the floor and shake me, because I loved the hell out of him, even if I didn’t always understand him.
There was nothing fair about being born the offspring of Wendy and Rico Dumbass Senior. So, I’d always tried to have his back. Keep him out of trouble when I could.
“Hey. You can put me down now.” I chuckled, which was something I made a point not to do often, because I didn’t find life to be all that humorous. But I was a bit of a softy for my younger brothers, Rico and Zane.
“So, what are you? A real doctor now, Dr. Rose?” he asked. As he whistled, a wide grin spread across his face.
He had my mother’s dark eyes and blond hair. I looked more like my father, and I’d never minded that. But my brother was adorable, and he knew it.
“If you call me Dr. Rose again, I’ll shave your eyebrows off in your sleep.” I shot him a warning look.
I was officially Dr. Rose in the academic world that I lived in—a faraway place from Magnolia Falls, the life I’d always wanted to run from. But being called “doctor” in my mother’s home would be the equivalent of committing a crime. My mother hated that I’d pursued my education.
Hell, I’d always had an endless thirst when it came to psychology. Learning what made people tick. Maybe because I’d been pretty much solving problems for all the people in my life since… birth.
Or at least it felt that way.
I liked learning about what made people do the things that they did, the motivation behind both positive and negative choices, and the potential to forgive those who hurt you.
I hadn’t quite practiced forgiveness much in my life, and maybe that was because no one was apologizing for anything most of the time. For the bad situations my mother had put mein as a child. For the way she’d relied on me to take care of my brothers when I was only a little older than both of them.
So, I learned how to take my skills and make them useful.
I’d graduated magna cum laude from one of the most prestigious universities in California, and apparently, the world was my oyster now.
Well, it will be in eight weeks after I finish running Whiskey Falls and wait for my father to make a full recovery.
But I still had to figure out what my oyster was.
The University of Western California offered me a teaching position. I’d be a professor teaching two different introductory psychology courses, which should be the goal after all the schooling I’d gone through. I just wasn’t certain if teaching was in my future. I hadn’t had the time to think about my options because I’d graduated on a Saturday morning, and my father had had a stroke the night before. He’d been getting ready to get in the car to come attend my graduation ceremony when it happened.
It was fitting for the story of my life, really.
I couldn’t seem to leave this place behind. The only person I’d be willing to ditch graduation for was my father, and that was exactly what I’d done.
There wasn’t anything that I wouldn’t do for him.
“You already shaved off Zane’s eyebrows in middle school. I won’t challenge you there because I know you’ll do it.”
“Damn straight. Tell me what’s happening with Panda.” Yes, my brother’s girlfriend since middle school was named Panda. She’d been named Sally once, but she’d hated the name and changed it to Panda when she was fifteen years old, and no one questioned it, aside from the endless snide comments I’d made over the years.
He cracked open a beer and took a long pull. “She’s not preggers. She was fucking with me.”
I nodded. This was Rico’s and Panda’s love language.
Cheat. Lie. Fuck with one another. Repeat.
