Step F*@K: Part Two (A Stepbrother Series Book 2) (7 page)

When I get back to the apartment, I close the door behind me and then stand there for a minute, back against the door, as though I’m trying to prevent someone from opening it, using myself as a human barricade. And in fact, part of me feels like I’ve been running all night, trying to escape something. It would be so easy to just stay here, to lock the door, crawl into bed, and not come out until tomorrow, or maybe two weeks from now. Sure, my mother would be pissed, but by then, Jai would be back in London, and I’d just have to skip all family functions, like Christmas and Thanksgiving, for the rest of my life, or at least until Mom and Zack got divorced.
 

Immediately, I feel bad for thinking this in the first place. I step away from the door and go and find Megan sitting on her bed, laptop in front of her, textbooks and piles of scripts surrounding her in stacks.
 

“Hey,” she says. “I thought I heard you come in. I am having
the
worst case of writer’s block.” She looks up. “How was the dinner? What’s your new family like?”
I pick up a pile of papers and move them to the floor so I can sit down on the bed. “I’ve got to talk to you. And you’ve got to be honest with me. Okay?”

She sets her laptop aside and gives me a concerned look. “Of course I’ll be honest with you. Is everything okay? Did something happen?”
“Yes. No. It’s not—”

“Wait. You’re not still freaking out because that guy was married, are you? Sweetie, don’t tell me you let that ruin your night. It’s really not a big deal. I mean, if you don’t want to sleep with married guys, that’s fine and very morally correct of you, but you can’t stress like this over something that’s already happened. And you didn’t know he was married. How could you?”

“Did you?”

“No. I had no clue. It’s certainly not going to say something like that in his profile.”

“So you had no idea who he was.”

“No.” She gives me a funny look. “What’s going on?”

“You’re telling me that before I started messaging with him, you had no clue, whatsoever, who Jai was. You’d never heard of him before.”

“No! Never. I thought it was pretty lucky on your part for him to be your first. You should’ve seen the first guy I ended up meeting online. His profile picture was like twenty years old or something, he was in his forties! And hairy. It was awful. But that really has nothing to do with
this
, and I really have no idea what you’re talking about! So will you please just tell me what’s happening? You’re being kind of weird.”

“Do you know who Jai’s father is?”
“I have no idea.”

“It’s Zack Carter.”

A confused look crosses Megan’s face. “Zack . . . Carter?”

“Yes. As in, the Zack Carter that my mother will be marrying tomorrow. At his lake house, apparently, they decided to change the location at the last minute.”

Megan’s mouth drops open. “Wait a minute. You’re telling me that
Jai
is going to be your
stepbrother
?”
“Apparently, yes.”

“Oh my god. No fucking way. Holy shit, Emma, I had no idea! Wait—did you think that I knew and
set you up
?”

She’s talking loudly, but instead of sounding upset or horrified, she sounds absolutely thrilled. In fact, she’s got a huge grin on her face.
 

“What is so fucking funny?” I snap. “And yes, that did cross my mind. I mean, I would hope you
wouldn’t
do something like that, because that would be seriously messed up, but it seems a little odd that you go and set up a dating profile for me and the first guy I end up meeting is, not only married, but also going to be my stepbrother.” I stand up. “And I’ve got to get out of this dress, it’s like a goddamn death corset.”

“No, no, no.” Megan’s laughing. “No way in hell did I know about that. But that’s so hot. Like, seriously—what are the chances? What are the chances that this would happen, of all the people that you could’ve met online? Oh my fucking god.” She clasps a hand across her chest and then falls back onto the bed, sighing dramatically. “I didn’t have anything to do with it, but I wish I did. I wish I could take credit for that. It’s so hot. You’re like living your own Harlequin romance.”
 

“Hot?
Hot
? It’s like incest. He’s going to be my
family
. I just spent all last night having sex with a future
family
member. That’s not hot at all, it’s repulsive. I’m disgusting. I’m like some sort of sexual deviant.”

Megan sits up and waves me off. “No, you’re not. And yes, he is
technically
going to be your family, but it’s not like he’s going to be your grandfather or something. He’s your stepbrother. And really, he’s not even your stepbrother yet since the wedding hasn’t happened, so you don’t actually need to be feeling bad about any of this. Unless . . .” She gives me a wicked grin, “unless it means that you’re planning on sleeping with him again.”

“No! No!” But I think about how it felt with him pressing me against the building, hidden in the dark shadows, like we were doing something really bad. Then I think about how good I felt after I told him off, but I wonder if that was just like a precursor, like a form of verbal foreplay or something. I squeeze my eyes shut. “No,” I say.

“I don’t know if I believe you,” Megan says in a sing-song voice.
 

“I have to go change.”

I go through the walk-in closet and into my own room. I peel the dress off, and it finally feels like I can take a proper breath.
 

“So what did he say?” Megan asks. She comes into my room and sits cross-legged on the bed while I rifle through my underwear drawer. I should just put some old ratty cotton underwear on, the kind I usually save for when I have my period and feel gross, but I pick out a black lace g-string and matching bra. I’m doing it for me, not for him, I tell myself as I slide them on.
 

“He didn’t really seem to care.” Regardless of how sexy my underwear is, after spending all of dinner in a death corset, my outerwear is going to be comfortable and decidedly un-sexy: black yoga pants and a t-shirt.
 

“That’s not surprising. Most guys wouldn’t give a shit about something like that. It probably makes him want to fuck you even more, if anything.”

I go back to the closet and get my gym back down from the shelf. I throw in some more underwear, a few shirts and tank tops, a skirt, two pairs of shorts, another pair of yoga pants, and my bathing suit.
 

“Are you running away?” Megan asks.
 

“No, the party’s continuing at the lake house, remember? I have to spend the next two weeks at Jai’s father’s lake house. It will be a good opportunity for me to let Jai know that I’m serious about what I said.”

“What’d you say?”

I give her the abbreviated version, leaving out the part where he was squeezing my nipples and making out with me.
 

“Wow,” she says when I’m done. “You really said all that?”

“Of course I did.” I go back to the closet and get the dress I’m supposed to wear tomorrow. It’s a dark, rich pink, with a snug bodice and a flowing skirt. I leave it on the hanger and lay it over the top of the gym bag.
 

“Don’t forget your shoes,” Megan says.

“The problem with people like him is that they think they can just use their looks to get whatever they want.”

“He is hot. And he’s got that accent, on top of everything else.”

“But it’s not right. It’s not right that he’s got a wife somewhere—”

Megan’s eyes widen. “Is she going to at the wedding?”
 

“I have no clue. She wasn’t at that dinner, I don’t think, unless she was hiding the whole time. She’s probably sitting at home in London, wondering what the hell he’s up to. Or maybe she has no idea. That would be worse—if she is just totally in love with him and happy and thinks that everything is perfect.” I sigh. “Kind of like how I was with Tom. In the beginning, anyway.” I sit back down on the bed. Being here in a familiar place, with just Megan around, the magnitude of everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours is really sinking in. I’ve done a horrible thing, and there’s still a tiny part of me that wants to do it again, that wants to be with him. I try to tell myself that this is a normal, biological response—of course your mind is going to want you to do things that make it feel good, whether or not these things are right or not. There’s nothing wrong with that—what
is
wrong is giving in to it when you know you shouldn’t. Like I’ve done twice already. I put my head in my hands. “This whole thing is such a mess.”

I feel Megan’s hand on my back. “It’s going to be okay,” she says. “Please don’t beat yourself up, over it, Emma. You’re really going to be all right. I feel bad. I shouldn’t have signed you up for that dating site. I just wanted you to . . . you know, have some fun, meet someone new. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” I lift my head and take a deep breath. “Just think good thoughts for me, okay? Think good thoughts that I make it through these next few days without doing something totally stupid.”

“You’re going to be just fine,” Megan says, with far more confidence in me than I actually feel.

“I hope you’re right.”

“You will. It’s a strange situation, sure, but it’s nothing that you can’t handle. But how was the dinner? He was there, wasn’t he?”

“Oh, he was there all right.”

She grins. “I wish I had been there! The sexual tension must’ve been crazy! Was he like sitting across from you, eye fucking you the whole time?”
“Will you please shut up? Just stop talking about it.”

“He was! Emma, this is so hot. I would
love
to be in your shoes right now, you have no idea.”

“Well, maybe you should go have sex with him. That would be better, because you guys aren’t going to be family.” But once the words are out of my mouth, I realize how much I wouldn’t actually want that to happen. How I don’t want to think about him with another girl. “This is so completely fucked.”

Walking into the lake house for the first time after so many years is a bit surreal. Dad heads straight for the kitchen to pour another round of drinks for everyone, but I take my bag and go into my bedroom. The inside of my lower lip stings. I stick the tip of my tongue into the mangled crevice. Christ, she got me good.
 

It’s going to be an interesting couple of weeks, that’s for sure. Normally, I’d be able to brush something like this off, forget about it in a matter of seconds, and get on with things, but for some reason, the whole situation has me feeling a bit squirrely. Not a sensation that I like or am comfortable with, mind you. I’m not used to getting mixed signals like this from a girl, though. Not at all.
 

I go into the bathroom. It’s connected to one of the guest rooms, and I’m not sure who’s going to be staying in there, if anyone, so I push the door shut before splashing cold water on my face. I pull my lower lip out and down and inspect at the wound, which actually feels far worse than it looks.
 

I’m agitated, which is not the condition I want to be in right now, and especially not over a girl. I pace in front of the window. I could go back downstairs, get drunk, come back up here and have a good wank and fall asleep, but I’m not particularly interested in being in anyone’s company at the moment. A small part of me is curious as to what this surprise is that Dad has for me, though it’s probably something stupid, like a new set of golf clubs.
 

At times like these, I wish I still smoked.
 

I get my laptop from my bag and go and sit on the bed. No way in hell am I logging back on to Sugar, but I do hop onto another similar site and in no time I’m chatting with a bird who goes by the name of
misstrix
.
 

Is that really you in the profile pic?
she writes.
 

Yes
, I type back.
Are those your real tits?
 

We could meet up and u could find out :D What sorts of things r u into?
 

All sorts.