Page 76 of Can't Fight It

“Of course. She’s my little sister.”

She glances over at me, grinning. “Have you ever had to go into super protective brother mode with her?”

I stroke my beard, thinking about it. “With a few guys in high school. But she’s pretty good at taking care of herself. She doesn’t take shit from anyone.”

“I wish I could be like that.”

“You need me to lay the smackdown on someone?”

She laughs. “My own personal hitman?”

“Whatever you need.”

“Are Boy Scouts allowed to do that?”

I groan. “I was in second grade. And Danielle shouldn’t have told you about that.”

“Why not? It’s cute.”

Cute? Is she serious?

“Well, I’ll call on your services if I ever need you, okay?”

She parks in front of our building, the cold nipping at us as we make our way inside.

I strip off my jacket as soon as we get in and turn the heat up. “You want to watch another movie tonight?”

“Oh, I’d love to, but I have to study. I’ve got a test in Behavioral Genetics tomorrow morning.”

Right. That doesn’t sound hard at all. “Need help?”

She smiles. “You’ll quiz me?”

“Sure.” Not that I have the first clue about whatever her class is.

“Great.” She grabs her backpack and pulls out a binder that’s about two inches thick. “Everything for this section is behind the blue tab.”

Jesus, this weighs a ton. Opening it up, the whole thing is color coordinated, with a legend at the front that explains what each color means. “Are you always this organized?”

“When it’s important, yeah. I don’t mess around with my classes. If I do, I could lose my scholarship.”

“You can lose those?” I thought they gave you a bunch of money off the bat.

“I have to maintain a certain GPA for them to keep paying my tuition.”

“I wouldn’t stand a chance, then.”

“You’re too hard on yourself,” she says softly, taking a seat on the couch. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s see how well I’ll do tomorrow.”

I sit on the opposite cushion, facing her, and open the binder to the blue tab, my head swimming as I skim through her notes. Alleles, carriers, zygotes… What the hell am I looking at?

I randomly flip through the section and pick a paragraph on a page. “How do genes regulate protein synthesis?” What did I just read?

“They specify which amino acids will join together and in what order.”

“Uh…”

“It’s right, trust me.”

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