BUCKED Box Set: A Bull Rider Western Romance (22 page)

Chapter Twenty - Noah

I sat
there on one knee, little black box in hand, in front of nearly a thousand
people, wondering what was going through that pretty little head of hers. Our
eyes locked and it was like the room stood still. Suddenly, it was just me and
Laci. My beautiful princess took a step toward me and mouthed the word. The one
I was praying to hear—only, I couldn’t hear it. But I knew it when I saw it.

“Yes.” She
nodded with a smile and tears in her eyes as I took the ring from the box and
slid it onto her finger. A perfect fit.

I stood,
pulled her into my arms, and kissed her.

Everything
in my life was about to change.

The
End

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STEPBROTHER
SUMMER

By
Alycia Taylor

Copyright
2016. All rights reserved.

 
Chapter
1

Ashley

I pressed my foot against the gas as the
light turned green, and felt the slight jolt forward as the car made its way
through the intersection.

I glanced at my GPS and sighed, thankful
that I didn’t have to rely on the directions to the beach house from my memory.
Because right now, I had no idea where I was. I figured that I probably should
know exactly where I was, seeing how I spent every summer traveling this way
from my family’s house, pressing my nose against the window, counting down the
moments until I was awarded my first glimpse of the beach. But everything
looked so different now. There was a large part of me that began to doubt I was
even in the right place.

Five
years is a long time,
I reminded myself. Plus, the last five
years in particular had felt like an eternity. Between the tragedy of my mother
dying, rather suddenly, trying to put my life back together afterward when it
kept changing faster than the shifting sands of the dunes I sifted through the
last time I was here, my existence was far from easy. And this summer was only
going to compact a whole host of feelings that I didn’t wish to have.

I dealt with my grief by
compartmentalizing it. I packed it away in a space inside my mind, just like my
father packed my mother’s things into boxes and stuffed them in the attic only
a week after she passed away. I supposed doing the same relative concept with
my emotions, I hadn’t actually worked through them. Instead, I had thrown
myself into school in order to compensate for the lack of stability within my
personal life. I had always been athletic and I did well in classes, but in
order to get through the shock and tragedy of my mother’s passing, I had simply
exited my own life, as per anything other than school and work. I lost touch
with friends and stopped doing very much. Even though emotions, friends and
attitudes changed, the only constant that remained was the lessons and
structure of school.

That hadn’t stopped just because my mother
died. The homework still mounted, the classes didn’t change, and throughout the
week, there was always a practice or game to attend for sports. None of that
stopped because I no longer had a mother, and that was what I needed in order
to get through it. I didn’t need a father who was always angry or depressed, or
friends and other family members who now looked at me like I was some orphan.
Even though my father was still around, in many ways, he was emotionally
unavailable. And even though everyone else was opened to giving me the space I
needed, or the shoulder to cry on, I didn’t want any of it. I didn’t want their
advice and I didn’t want their words of condolences. I just wanted my life to
go on. In many ways, I wanted to escape and pretend like nothing had changed.

So while it wasn’t perfect, life was still
better at school, buried up to my neck in papers, tests and assignments. I
worked far too hard on them just to pass the time, so that I didn’t have to
face my own reality.

When I went off to college though, it
truly provided me with the new world I sought. I had friends who didn’t know
that my mother had died and none of my teachers knew anything about me. I had a
chance to be a normal person again and I enjoyed every bit of it.

But all of that was over for now, and I
was having a hard time coming to grips with it. I wanted the safety of school,
not the memories of my past, coming back to haunt me.

However, I tried not to think about any of
that as I continued on. I glanced around the area that once was just a small
town, but had seemed to grow three times the size since the last time I was
here.

I glanced around as tiny fragments of
memories skated past my vision. There was the drug store that had been there,
probably since before most of the current locals were even born, and the movie
theater that my family used to go to when the weather was unsuitable for the
beach. Yet, all around the memories from a life that I could no longer begin to
fathom without tearing up, there was so much that had changed.

Maybe
it’s for the best…
I thought as I came upon the bridge that
would lead me back toward the shoreline.
I
have changed and my life has changed, so perhaps it is better that the beach I
knew is left in the past as well.

This thought, after the initial upset of
not knowing exactly where I was, despite the countless memories I had formed in
this area, actually brought me some peace. After all, as I had gotten older,
all that happened to the life I knew was either disappearing or disappointing
me when I learned the truth.

These past five years, all I had ever
wanted to do was get away. At school, I found that escape; but now, I was just
returning home from my first year in college.

Well,
this isn’t exactly going home,
I reminded myself,
feeling a seething sense of malice burning through my body as I stopped at the
next light. Years ago, I would have thought nothing about calling the beach
house home; but now, the closest thing to home I had was my dorm room.

Going to spend the summer at the beach
house with my father, stepmother and my meathead of a stepbrother, both of whom
I had only met once at my father’s wedding, was not my idea of a good time.
After all, they were not my family. Just because my father needed someone to
lay with on a constant basis and was okay with the baggage that she tugged,
kicking and screaming, did not mean I had to be okay with it.

My stepmother was all right, I guess. She
was a pretty woman, but nothing like my mother. She was younger than my father
and more materialistic. I cursed myself now, because I was the one who had
encouraged my father to get back out there and date. I thought it would help
both of us, since for the past four years he had been swallowed up in a plague
of depression that was volatile and began to affect his health. When he met and
married my stepmother, easily and without much consideration for how it might
affect my relationship with him, I realized that I was wrong, at least, about
the fact that his finding a wife might make my life a little easier. I didn’t
have to worry about him anymore, which was nice. But the way he acted around
her caused me to think that perhaps he had conveniently forgotten all about my
mother, like a bad dream, and that certainly was not okay.

My stepbrother was fun to look at, with
his overdone muscles and enticing tattoos, but he was almost unbearable the
second he opened his mouth. I didn’t care much for him from the moment I met
him. I was all but dreading having to share my sacred place with these
strangers, whom my mother probably wouldn’t even like anyway.

Plus, their existence would cause me to
have to eventually come to terms with the fact that my life was now completely
different. I hadn’t been able to make it over that hurdle in five years and,
therefore, I doubted very highly that this summer was going to change my
perspective for the better.

That thought was illustrated almost
cruelly when I made my way up to the beach house. I realized that, like a
solitary piece of my history frozen in time, although things had changed around
it, it had stayed exactly the same.

With this realization, I slowed the car as
I approached. I wasn’t quite sure how I was feeling. I was homesick for the
school I had grown to love, even though I had only stayed there for two
semesters. And I felt slightly sick at the thought of having to stay in this
house with these people, since I was fairly certain I would have the same
opinion I felt my mother would have of them.

On the way to the beach house, I had tried
to think about my father and convince myself that he had always done his best.

After
all, you were the one who told him that dating again would be a good idea,
I reminded myself.

However, as I saw the house in front of
me, unchanged by the years, though the tide seemed to go out on the beach that
I remembered and come back with an updated version, forgetting the house, I
lost all hope of the thoughts I tried to convince myself with the entire
journey here.

I knew now that it wasn’t going to be fun
to see the old beach house again and it wouldn’t be enough.

When I finally parked my car, with a great
amount of effort, and gazed up at the unchanged form of mockery, I was
convinced that what I truly wanted was impossible. I supposed then, as tears
filled my eyes, that not so deep down, I knew that getting what I sought from
coming back to this place wasn’t going to work. Seeing the ghosts of my past
before me without substance and without conviction just wasn’t going to work,
especially when I was forced to create new memories with people that were never
supposed to be there in the first place.

This
was not how my life was supposed to go…
I thought as I shook my
head in order to ward off the tears. I was angry and upset by the thought that
this certainly wouldn’t be the last time that I really wanted to do nothing but
cry hysterically, turn this car around and go back to the place where I felt
safe.

However, I knew that I couldn’t do that. I
owed it to my father, if nothing else, to give this summer a shot at being
good. After all, he had talked with me about it for months.

Despite my feelings on the subject, that
was all he seemed to want to talk to me about. He would ask briefly about
school, but after the typical father questions, he would delve into his plans
for the summer. Most of them included my presence, rather than my
participation, which aggravated me a little. I t seemed that all he wanted to
do was spend time showing his new wife all of the things he had fun doing with
his old wife; as though he was happy to be rid of the source of the
information, but thankful to still have the idea for the sake of fun.

I realized it wasn’t that way, though. I
knew he just wanted to get himself off on the right foot with his wife of six
months, but personally, I didn’t think bringing her back to the spot where he
and my mother had every one of their special moments and family vacations was
the right place to do it. Still, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that. I knew
that if he had a sense for how I really felt, my father would be devastated.

So instead of turning the car around and
heading straight back over the bridge, I wiped my eyes clear of any moistness,
took a deep breath and turned off the car. I didn’t get out right away, though.
Instead, I just sat there, and prepared myself to grin and bear my visceral
reaction to this idea for the rest of the summer, while I secretly counted down
the days until I could once again disappear into my studies.

However, for the first few tries, each
time I grasped ahold of the door handle, I felt myself become overcome with
emotion almost immediately.

Each time that happened, I would gaze up
at the house and realize that everything had changed about my life since the
last time I drove up to this piece of property and set foot inside this beach
house. The eerie unchanged nature of the house taunted me each time I looked at
it and so, it took me three tries to finally pull open the door.

The salty air had a nice breeze, but I
didn’t notice it as I took in a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves.

It was, however, in this moment that I
realized I had lost all hope of having any semblance of an enjoyable summer, as
I defiantly took a few long strides forward, ready to take on whatever emotion
or situation was about to come my way.

Chapter
2

Tyler

This
summer is going to suck…
I thought as I kicked it back on my
bed, listening to my headphones blaring. Even when I was alone, I kept up the
charade, just in case there was anyone around that would get the wrong idea and
actually want to show me anything. Between being away from my friends and not
knowing anyone here
,
I groaned and
rolled my eyes as I took in the unfamiliar scent of the old house.

It had its charms, I guessed, but
ultimately, it was like every other house that I had ever been in; the one
saving grace was that it just happened to have the beach as a backyard. “If I
have to be stuck here, at least we’re on a beach,” I grumbled to myself,
knowing full-well that I could use my charisma and downright charming demeanor
at any time to make new friends in this strange place.