Oh Brothers

Chapter 40

Ara's POV

I lead Cole to treehouse and climb up.

"Where are you going, spider monkey?" Cole asks I glance back and see him standing on the ground with his arms crossed.

"Narnia," I quip back.

"Ara," he chuckles and I look back to see him climb up behind me.

I grin and pull myself all the way up. I take a few steps in and smile at the guitar where Cole sang to me only hours ago. This can be our spot.

I turn around and see him smiling at me, "what's up princess?"

I sit down on the ground, "I wanted to talk to you about what happened earlier and something you said."

Cole sits down in front of me, "shoot."

"Okay, so you said you would take the kids in, would you really do that?" I ask.

Cole shrugs," if if meant getting them away from that bitch, then yeah without a doubt, I would."

I beam at him. It's like the more I find out about him, the more amazing he is, "and you said you don't plan on going to college."

Cole shrugs again, "don't need it."

"Really?" I ask.

"Yeah, I'm gonna go into art and since my works just got into the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, which has been my artistic dream since I can remember, I think I'm decent enough without an art degree. I just need to paint, I don't want to waste thousands of dollars on education to do that," Cole replies.

I nod my head, "that makes sense. I don't know if I want to go to college either."

"What's your dream Ara?" Cole asks.

I mull this over, "I don't know."

"You have to have a dream, everyone has a dream," Cole says.

I nod my head, "I dream of... helping as many people as I can, mainly my brothers."

"You don't have some selfish deep desire?" Cole asks. Well, there's you, do you count?

I shake my head, "I think the selfish part of my dream is that I want to be the one to help my brothers in some way, I just feel like I owe the idiots."

"Okay," Cole nods his head and then shakes his head, "No. I'm still not buying it. There's got to be something else you want in the distant future or whatever."

I laugh and shake my head, "I'm a simple girl, Cole."

"What about a music based dream?" Cole suggests.

I sigh, "I love music. The feeling when I'm about to sing is like the feeling you get when you're about to eat ooey gooey warm chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven. It's an awesome almost addictive feeling.

"But I could never do it without my brothers. They make it how special it is. And the only one of them that wants to play music as a career is Jason but he's a solo artist, truly, so music isn't really my dream. It'll always be a part of who I am,I'll never give up singing and playing, but it is not my dream."

Cole thinks about this, "but if the boys wanted to, would you do it."

"Yeah, I would," I honestly reply, "but that's never going to happen."

Cole tuts back at me, "don't make such firm statements, you don't know for sure what's going to happen."

I shrug, "I guess, but realistically, Scott's going to take over for Gramps, Ry is gonna play probably football, Thomas is probably gonna play baseball and Carter wants to go into the secret service or FBI or CIA or whatever."