Off-Record

Theo

There were exactly three things my father hated: excuses, wrinkled uniforms, and people who arrived late. At five forty-three on Friday afternoon, I'd already committed one and was dangerously close to a second.

“Shit.” I pulled into the driveway, grabbed my phone, and climbed out. Caroline had already texted.

Caroline: Still alive?

Me: Debatable.

Three laughing emojis appeared immediately. At least someone appreciated the gravity of the situation.

I had been perfectly happy making out with my girlfriend when Dad had reminded me that the woman he'd been screwing was coming to dinner and bringing her son. Somehow, this constituted an event. Apparently, she was Navy, and Dad was serious about her, but until tonight, he'd kept that part of his life separate from me. The fact that he suddenly wanted us around the same dinner table was freaking me the hell out.

I straightened my top before opening the front door. Dad was waiting in the hallway.

“You're late.”

One.

“Sorry, Dad. Traffic.”

His eyebrow rose. “That's an excuse.”

Two.

Two strikes in less than a minute….

“I know. It won't happen again.”

His expression softened. “They're almost here.”

The doorbell rang.

Great.

Dad headed for the door while I checked my reflection in the hallway mirror. Hair in place, shirt crisp, nothing remotely suggesting what Caroline and I had been doing less than half an hour ago. Good.

Whoever they were, at least they'd meet me looking like I had my shit together.

The woman on the other side of the door had dark hair, warm brown eyes, and the kind of easy smile that made it obvious why my father liked her. Dad changed the second he saw her too. Nothing dramatic, but his entire face softened in an unusual way.

“Theo, this is Rachel.”

“Finally.” She smiled and stepped forward to hug me before I had a chance to decide if we were there yet. “I've heard so much about you.”

That makes one of us.

“Nice to meet you.”

Then somebody stepped through the doorway behind her carrying a guitar case, and that was my first introduction to Eden Brooks.

Black hair fell across his forehead in unruly waves, long enough that my father would have developed an eye twitch if it belonged to me. Faded jeans, black T-shirt, battered boots, several leather bracelets around one wrist. He looked like he'd taken a wrong turn on his way to a concert and somehow ended up at our front door.

Rachel touched his shoulder. “And this is my son, Eden.”

His eyes landed on me. Green, and bright, and irritating for reasons I couldn't immediately explain. So was the slow grin that followed.

“Hey.”

Hey. My father was a decorated United States Navy captain, and this asshole walked into his house and gave us hey.

“Theo,” Dad prompted, and I remembered that apparently one of us had to possess manners. I stepped forward and held out my hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Eden looked at it, then at me, before taking it. His grip tightened. Mine did too. His eyebrow lifted, so I squeezed harder. He squeezed back.

Rachel glanced between us. “Are you two hand-wrestling?”

We withdrew immediately. Eden's mouth twitched, and I already disliked him.

“Nice shirt,” he said. “Are you gonna give us a lecture?”

I looked at his guitar case. “Are you gonna Kumbaya us after dinner?”

“If you’re lucky…”

During the tour, Eden wandered into my room, eyeing the trophies and diplomas. “So... Theodore, huh? Rough.”

“As in Theodore Roosevelt.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And Theodore from Alvin and the Chipmunks.”

“Look who's talking.”

“What? Eden was God's garden.”

“Yeah. Where the fucking apple that cursed humanity came from.”

Take that, idiot.

By dinner, things hadn't improved.

Apparently Eden had come straight from rehearsal. Dad seemed interested. I wasn't.

“What do you play?” Dad asked.

“Mostly guitar. Piano too. Some drums.”

“Nice,” Dad smiled.

Nice? Really?

Eden grinned, and of course he had dimples, because apparently God overdecorated the wrong people.

Dad asked about school next, and Eden shrugged. “I survive.”

“He does considerably better than survive,” Rachel corrected. “Which is fortunate, considering he's following me into the Navy.”

I almost choked on my drink. “You? Navy?”

His fork paused halfway to his mouth. “Why wouldn't I?”

I shrugged. “You don't exactly scream military discipline.”

“And you do?”

“Yes.”

His eyes traveled over me slowly before he nodded. “Yeah. Actually, you kind of do.”

I couldn't tell whether I'd been complimented or insulted.

“I'm looking at NROTC,” he added.

“Seriously?”

“That's generally how you become a Naval officer.”

Sarcastic asshole. “I know what NROTC is.”

“We're making progress.”

Dad covered a laugh with his napkin, which seemed like an alarming lack of parental loyalty considering he'd known the prick for forty minutes.

“You realize there's more involved than showing up with a guitar and improvising?”

Eden smirked. “And here I thought they handed out commissions for good hair and strong handshakes.”

“You'd be screwed on both counts.”

“Good thing I have a personality to fall back on.”

Dad put down his glass. “Enough. You've known each other less than an hour. I'd prefer to make it through dessert before somebody declares war.”

We made it through dessert, but as for declaring war... that ship had already sailed.

Months passed, and unfortunately, Eden didn't. Rachel became a permanent fixture in Dad's life, which meant Eden became one in mine. Sunday dinners turned into arguments, casual games became battles neither of us was willing to lose, and every family gathering seemed to end with an annoyance contest. He beat me at pool once and mentioned it for three weeks. I destroyed him at tennis and considered having the score engraved on something. He claimed I had a superiority complex. I informed him that superiority wasn't a complex when supported by evidence.

The worst part was discovering that beneath all the hair, sarcasm, and relentless determination to piss me off, Eden was smart. Really smart. He didn't seem to study. He barely seemed to plan. Yet somehow he kept succeeding, and I found this personally offensive.

Six months after that first dinner, Dad asked me to come into the living room. Rachel was sitting beside him, while Eden occupied the armchair with one ankle resting over his knee. Four people in one room for a scheduled conversation was never a good sign.

Dad stood. “We want to share some knews with you two.”

Rachel smiled, and then I saw the ring.

Oh, fuck.

“We're getting married,” Dad said.

I looked at him, then Rachel, then Eden. Eden was staring at them with an expression suspiciously similar to mine, but Dad was happy. Not polite happy. Not kinda happy. Actually happy. That pretty much killed my argument before I'd even invented one.

I hugged him, then Rachel. When I turned around, Eden and I looked at each other.

“Brother,” he said solemnly.

Oh-my-God…. “Don't.”

His grin returned.

I could survive this. We were seventeen. Graduation wasn't far away. Dad and Rachel could have their happy marriage, Eden and I could tolerate each other at holidays, and eventually we'd live on opposite sides of the country. I already knew exactly where I was going: San Diego, NROTC, a commission and, if I was good enough, Naval Special Warfare. That future belonged to me, and Eden Brooks had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Until Rachel opened her mouth.

“I suppose this makes the college situation easier too,” she said.

I frowned. “What college situation?”

Eden suddenly became very interested in his fingernails. Dad glanced at Rachel, and something cold slid down my spine.

“What?”

“Eden has been looking at programs in California,” Rachel said.

“No.” I turned toward him. “Which part of California?”

His lips twitched. I knew that expression, and I hated that expression.

“San Diego.”

“You're joking.”

“Nope.”

“You're applying to San Diego?”

“Already did.”

I stared at him. “NROTC?”

The bastard smiled. “Looks that way.”

For several seconds, I genuinely couldn't think of anything to say. Eden stood, grabbed his guitar from beside the chair, and passed close enough to clap me once on the shoulder.

“Cheer up, brother. We can study together.”

“I'd rather die.”

He laughed. “See? We're bonding already.”

I knocked his hand away, and he headed upstairs still laughing.

Six months ago, Eden Brooks had walked into my house as some annoying stranger I expected to tolerate through the occasional dinner. Now he was going to be my stepbrother, and apparently he intended to follow me all the way across the country into the one future I'd always considered entirely mine.

NROTC had been my plan. San Diego had been my future. And if Eden thought he was going to stroll into both, improvise his way through everything I'd spent years preparing for, and somehow beat me at my own game, he had no fucking idea who he was dealing with.

It was war.