PULSE: A Stepbrother Romance (2 page)

PENNSYLVANIA

ONE MONTH AGO

”I don’t get
why you’re doing this!” I complained bitterly, scraping my worn sandals off my
heels with the toes of the opposite foot. “It’s not like I’m a teenager
anymore…I’ve been an adult for
years.
I can take care of myself, you know!” The sandals clattered against the tile as
I leaned forward, my elbows on the counter with my feet dangling against my
barstool.

“Perhaps it’s
time you started acting like one, then.” My mother’s eyes were mischievous as
always, but her lips were drawn down in a grimace. The contrast threw me off as
she quickly appraised me in a glance. “You’re always out doing
Heavens knows what
with boys, coming in
late at night…besides, it’s our wedding anniversary! I’d hoped you would have
been happy for us.”

She knew
damned well I only ever went out to the club with my girlfriends, but I knew
better than to try and argue the point. It never went well. “Mom, you
know
how badly I want to go to Paris!
I’ve always wanted to eat–”

“Yes, yes,
how did it go?
Eating French cheese,
sipping French wine, lounging in the rolling grass of Southern France…
did I
get it right?”

As she peered
in the refrigerator, she cast me another quick look with those wide eyes of
hers. My mother always looked like she was on the cusp of hysterical laughter,
always beaming with joy. It was no wonder my parents were celebrating their
anniversary in Paris. Unlike most of the young married couples from my
graduating class of high school, my parents
seriously
hit the jackpot on each other and they knew it. I’d never seen them bicker,
fight, or anything of the sort in my entire young life. Their love and
compassion for each other was almost sickeningly adorable, and I knew it was
one of those “lightning strikes” moments.

If only,
I thought to myself,
I wound up half as lucky as them.

“I’m really
sorry, sweetheart. Truly. I know that Paris means a lot to you. But your father
and I are really looking forward to this…and I promise that if you keep your
grades up, we’ll send you there soon. Maybe next summer! How would a month in
Paris sound as a graduation present, hmm?”

She tilted
her head slightly, with those wide, cheerful eyes. It was like talking to a
puppy…a wealthy, happy puppy that was determined to come between you and your
dreams. How do you stay mad at someone with that much infallible happiness?

“Fine. At
least I’ll have the place to myself all summer…” I grumbled to myself. It was a
perk, at the very least. I’d already started calculating the logistics of a
“Home alone for the summer” party.

“Well,
actually…” Mom started, her eyes suddenly tentative and cautious, “we wondered
if you’d like to have the Beach House for the summer? As a consolation?”

“The
Beach House?
” I suddenly sat up, my
dejection temporarily forgotten. The vacation home had been in my family since
the marriage – a glamorous building right on the edge of the ocean, down in
Pensacola. Some of my happiest summers had been spent there. “But I thought you
said you sold it?”

“Well, it
turns out that we didn’t have to, after all!” She laughed, pouring two glasses
of orange juice for us. As she tucked the pitcher back inside the fridge, she
handed me a glass and leaned against her elbows on the lower counter. “I know
how much you loved that place…just be okay with us taking our trip, and we’ll
let you stay at the beach house all summer. Get some relaxation in. Work on
that tan! Just, no boys alone with you there…”

“Mom…” I
started, giving her a half-hearted glare over the lip of my glass.
One
coy, misplaced barb per conversation
I could stomach, but a
second
was
bound to push my buttons. “You
know
that
I don’t—”

“I know, I
know
,” she murmured, glossing
dismissively over my rebuttal. “But there
is
one
teeny, tiny condition
…”

“A
condition?” I raised my eyebrow. “What, you don’t trust me alone there? I’m an
adult, mother! I’m going to college and I’m making responsible choices. I’m old
enough to take care of myself.”

“I’m
sure you are, dearie, but your father insisted…”

“…Insisted on
what?
”

“Well, you
see…it’s not that we–”

I heard the
front door, or at least I thought I did. We both paused, listening for any
other noises. After a moment, it was followed by footsteps in our general
direction. My gaze locked onto hers, my brow lifted again, and we both
stiffened up at the same time.

“Mom,
are you expecting anyone–”

I stopped as
I saw who had entered our home unannounced, pausing at the doorway into the
kitchen. With a motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm, a sly smile crossed his
lips.
 
His eyes slid from hers to
mine.

Him.

Sawyer Samuels.

The complete bastard who abandoned us…

“Little
Saffie,” my cocky asshole of a stepbrother chuckled as his grin widened. “Been
a minute, hasn’t it?”

“Not long
enough,” I murmured. Dread pooled in my stomach as I bit my lip furiously.
 
With his shaggy hair cut short and his
obvious muscular makeover, he was stupidly handsome. Even with his motorcycle
gear on, his build communicated all I needed to know – that Sawyer 2.0
had cleaned himself up. He was stronger, healthier, and all around built. It
would have been attractive, but the dumb grin on his face told me he was just
as much of a jackass as before, and my spirits plummeted. I started rolling my
fingertips on the countertop as I glared at him.

Brushing off
the remark, Sawyer paused to watch my gesture for a second, and then moved
towards the refrigerator. As I heard the clinking of glass bottles –
of COURSE the first thing he does is rummage
for a beer
– he called out to our mother. “Don’t suppose you’ve told
her yet, or should I break the news?”

The dread
compounded, and I turned to her. “Mom…why is he here?”

As Sawyer
ducked his head back from the fridge, popping the top off on the counter, Mom
turned to me with an uncharacteristically weary glance. “The Beach House…I
mentioned that your father had a condition.”

My gaze
flitted from her to him and back again.

“Oh, you have
got
to be kidding.”

“There’s been
some threats… An ex employee of your father’s… The police are looking for him
and it’s probably nothing but your father and I want you to be safe while we’re
away,” mom smiled weakly at me.

“
He’s
my bodyguard?” I practically
shouted.

“Sawyer’s the
condition.”

SAWYER

Chapter 2

NEW ORLEANS

FIVE
YEARS AGO

I
realized that I had made the right
choice when I saw the city. Carrying only fifty bucks to my name, I arrived
down in New Orleans – fresh off a Greyhound bus and far from the opulence
of my parents’ gilded little world. No longer would I be living under their
roof, sitting in their lap of luxury and feeling my brain start to rot.

Normalcy,
luxury, comfort.

These things
bothered me.

That’s a
major part of the reason why I left home at the earliest opportunity. I’d spent
eighteen years on this planet and I’d never seen what the world was
really
like. Screw endless bank accounts
and high-end meals; I was determined that I was going to
live
. My parents could keep their wealth
– their comfortable life of smooth edges wasn’t for me. What I needed was
to feel the jagged lines of this life; I craved the roughness of a life forged
out of the burning blaze of circumstance.

I meant to
carve my own way.

If I told you
it wasn’t an adjustment, I would be lying to you. But I was streetwise enough
to improvise. I’d sought out trouble during my early teenage years while my
father was dating my stepmother-to-be. It wasn’t out of any malice or rebellion
against the memory of my mom. I just needed to learn my limits, and that meant
testing my mettle through the occasion fight or pissing off the authorities.

I enjoyed
pissing people off…

Except
Saffron, after she became my stepsister.

I pissed her off
just
because
.

Through
observation on my first afternoon in the city, I learned quickly to stick to
the business district, perhaps the garden district if I really wanted to spread
my wings. The former had everything I really needed, whereas the latter clearly
contained nothing of any significance to me.

But I’m not
stupid.

So, I taught
myself the land.

As I sat on
one of the streetcars, themselves mobile landmarks of the old,
beaten-but-never-fallen city, I allowed my eyes to take in the prominent Garden
District. While we slowly chugged along St. Charles Avenue, I allowed my
disgruntled gaze to soak in the multimillion-dollar houses, standing proudly
three stories tall and boasting of their rich, exorbitant culture. My eyes fell
upon the parked cars lining either side of the street, and the occasion driver
desperately trying to snatch a small, inconvenient spot with anything less than
a twenty-point turn. Lining the street on either side were the large, majestic
oaks, stretching the tendrils of their pavement-cracking roots and cloaking the
entire area in shade. As we continued along, the expensive houses and their
accent treeline receded for the back-to-back universities of Tulane and Loyola.
They were beautifully sprawling fortresses jutted against the sky, overflowing
with students either carrying a direct line to Daddy’s checking account or
resigning themselves to decades of crippling financial debt.

The streetcar
carried me to the other end, but I remained on board. I was in hardcore
observation mode, determined to learn the immediate layout and any points of
interest to me. A small crowd of people stepped on and off the tram with each
stop, and we swung back up St. Charles Avenue headed the other direction.

I took the
time to learn common denominators between the people I saw. Various levels of
class and dishevelment greeted me; in this city, everyone from primped Southern
women to shaggy, unkempt street ruffians used this transit. Another
observation: with the exception of a pair who recognized one another, nobody
spoke. Everyone operated as if the entire streetcar was otherwise empty,
neither opening conversation nor even glancing at the others.

Good,
I thought to myself.
That’ll make it easier to blend in.

My firm grip
on my duffle bag relaxed; my shoulders released their tension. Every major city
carried veritable rot in its sprawling underbelly, from the disorderly and
desperate among the homeless to the alleyway muggers that vanished into the
crowds. I had been mindful of the risks to coming here. From what I had seen
since arriving, it appeared that I had overestimated. I could see now that by
playing it safe and keeping to myself, sticking to the safer districts, I was
going to be okay.

I was wrong.

PENNSLYVANIA

ONE MONTH AGO

F
lying down the interstate, I felt the
engine of my Suzuki throttling hard between my legs. With the slightest shift
against the handlebars, I leaned just slightly into a lane shift, and then
back, weaving between traffic as the sun began to descend in front.

This is what
I lived for.

Although I
could easily tell why I’d been seen that way, I never considered myself a
daredevil. Riding the open road and cage fighting were simply parts of my everyday
life, and I handled the same way that I did with anything else – by
throwing myself completely into it, feet first. I figured out every moment as it
came, whether it was dodging the next haymaker or popping between cars on the
interstate.

My confidence
came with inertia; its own momentum carried it forward. I never had the
patience for hesitance.
 
It had no
place in my life, and I was determined to keep things that way. I lived on
instinct. Reactionary. I was always in the instant.

 
A big rig was coming up on the side.

Only a moment
to decide.

I leaned into
the handlebars again.

For a brief
flicker, remorse popped into my mind. I understood how hard it was to slow
those huge things down, and I could only imagine that the trucker was cursing
me as he overcompensated on the brakes. But I was already weaving back into my
original lane again, freed from the tyranny of the speed-limit jackass cutting off
my passing lane.

I turned my
helmet towards said jackass, and I got the finger for my efforts.

Yeah, okay pal.

The passing
sign on the right told me what I needed to know: that the exit was finally
nearby, just two miles away. I allowed myself to wonder why I was even doing
this. Everything that I had experienced these last few years had come to
redefine me, fine-tuning my instincts and hardening my resolve – none of
which I could have done here. The life I had left retained nothing of use to me
– if anything, I might grow softer. Weaker.

I couldn’t
allow that to happen.

Something had
clicked in my head when my father called. Turns out he didn’t need private
investigators to find me. I’d become well enough known that google pointed him
my way. I hadn’t been prepared for the nature of the phone call.

Nothing about
coming back to Pennsylvania had ever been remotely appealing to me, but for
this… I didn’t have much choice. He still sounded surprised when I took him up
on his offer. If I’d have taken a minute to think about it, I might have felt
the same why. Why the hell did I agree to this?

Was it because of her?

Saffron
Samuels. Originally
Saffron Tate
,
before the marriage – and my father’s adoption of the scrawny little
teenager – had seen to that. We had only lived together a couple of
years, and it had been easily double, maybe three times that since I’d seen her
last.

Who the hell
would want to hurt her? Sure, Dad had a few corporate enemies, but that was
just business. Death threats against family were a bit more serious.

I slowed
down, letting the Suzuki’s throttle dampen as I turned onto the exit. Dropping
from eighty to forty in a couple of seconds, I put a knee down and leaned into
the wide curve, past the green light, and continued onward.

Not long now.

I remembered
my first assessment of the girl. It wasn’t favorable. She was shy, and
 
more or less stayed away until the
marriage was finalized.

Hell, I
didn’t even
know
about the girl until
Dad married her mother. But my father was so busy at the time that he barely
told me anything – electing to spend late nights at work, and when Ellen
entered his life, it was late nights with
her
instead. I didn’t particularly mind. My father wasn’t distant by any means,
but he picked a convenient time to be less than accessible, because I was a
teenager and there was oh so much trouble I could get up to while he was gone.

But I knew my
place, and I followed the rules.

Most of them.

Well, some.

He never
suspected, and I never planned on him finding out about the types of friends I
had over – or the fun we got up to. I wanted something new, something more
meaningful than what I had. They say sex can become an addiction…

It wasn’t my
only vice.

I was more
addicted to fighting. It was all about honing my body and learning my limits. I
pushed myself continuously, even without any real weight lifting. I picked
fights with the tougher guys around, and I got my ass handed to me more than a
few times before I started winning. I learned from every loss and came back
harder, faster, tougher. Soon, I was virtually unbeatable in a fair, one-on-one
fight – and I took on any challenger, just to prove my mettle.

And then the
twerp popped into my life.

Like I said,
I didn’t know she existed until the marriage. Apparently, she didn’t know
I
existed until the day she came back. I
remember her little outburst when she met Dad and realized that there had
been
a marriage. That should have tipped
me off, but I’d brushed it aside, because what kind of daughter doesn’t know
her Mom remarried?

Nobody offered
to clue me in. I thought that she’d been MIA for the duration of our parents’
relationship, maybe as some sort of silent rebellion. That’s why I chose to
mess around with her a
little
bit.

It was all in
good fun, anyway.

It wasn’t
until a few weeks after I met her that I found out what had
really
happened: she had been out of the
country the entire time. Studying a late year of high school in some British
city.
Bristol
, I think it was. Not
only that, but in today’s day and age, her mother had barely kept her updated
on anything – and barely responded to her messages. If I’d known
that
before, I would have recognized
that she had been locked completely out of the loop. Probably would have been a
lot nicer to her from the get-go.

But by that
point, I’d already settled on screwing with her. Inertia… It’s a bitch.

A couple of
more turns, and I was in the right neighborhood. I could already see the place
up ahead on the left… my family’s proud little hilltop, looking down over everybody
lesser.

Of course,
that wasn’t fair. My father had never been anything less than favorable towards
his fellow man, and my stepmother really rubbed off as being infallibly
appreciative of her new lifestyle. The two of them were a good fit, and they
visibly made each other happier…they even made each other
better.

As I pulled
up to the gate, I hesitated.
What if
they’ve changed the code?
It never occurred to me that it would be anything
else.

I punched in
the numbers – my birthday – and the gate electronically whipped
into gear, sliding open on its arc. With a quiet chuckle, I revved my engine
and peeled through the entrance and up the drive towards the house.

It was all
coming back now, all the old sights revisited. The trees that lined the long
driveway up, the very smell of the place. It brought back a flood of memories
as I meandered up towards my past, contained within that ridiculous house.

After another
minute of driving, the trees cleared, and the entire house came into view. The
landing was here, along with the carport.

All exactly as I left it,
I observed.

I entered the
carport and parked between the vehicles. There were three of them now –
hard to say what belonged to whom. My parents weren’t the type to go overboard
with cars. They had always settled on one apiece, at least when I was still
around. If that was still the case, then one of these in all likelihood
belonged to Saffron – which meant that she was home.

Removing my
motorcycle helmet, I slowly, steadily walked towards the huge front doors. It
was only when I reached it that I realized that I still had the thing tucked
under my arm.
It’s not like me to be this
absentminded,
I chided myself.

But I had a
lot on my mind.

The door was
unlocked, and I let myself in. I could hear voices nearby – from the
kitchen, by the sound of it. There was Ellen, with that unmistakable cheer, but
another voice…unmistakably
her.
Older
now, more mature, but still recognizable as my little Saffie.

I took a
brief sigh. The entire drive back, I’d ignored something in the back of my
head. It was only now that I was here that I could finally deal with the fact
that there was another reason entirely for my departure. While I was gone, it
plagued my mind in various levels of self-destructive torture. Some days had
been easier than others, but I’d been able to block it out during my focus on
the road.

It wasn’t
just my need to prove to myself that I was a man. That I could handle a life
stripped of luxury. That I could carve out my own place in the world,
independent of anyone or any
thing
else.
I could have probably done that on my own, here, and been a much better son to
my parents.

It was
arguably a far more important reason altogether.

It was that
stupid girl. I couldn’t bear the thought of someone hurting her…

It’s been five years,
I thought to
myself as I stepped into the kitchen, seeing the two of them for the first time
since I was eighteen. I summoned up every drop of strength I had and forced a
grin across my face.
If five years away
didn’t cure my stupid infatuation, then I really am doomed.