Stepbrother Bestie (A Stepbrother Romance Novel) (24 page)

“No, Paul. You’re wrong. If this is about
Valerie in the way that I fear, then the only problem here is between you and
me.”

“You know, Diana, she could have written
this,” he answered, thrusting it with his hand.

“I did not!” Valerie hissed. “If I wanted
to leave, I would have just left!”

Her mother put her hand up to silence the
outburst before she looked back at her husband. “No, Paul. Again, she didn’t
write it either.”

“Oh and what are you? Some kind of teenage
whisperer? You’re pretty naive to think that they wouldn’t pull something like
that to tear us apart, just so they could be together…as gross as it is…” With
that, my father’s lips curled upward in disgust as he looked between me and
Valerie.

“No. I’m not naïve. I’m very observant and
just like I know your son, I also know my daughter. I’ve spent far more time
with them and don’t you dare say that their love is anything but beautiful!”

At this, everyone in the room gaped at my
stepmother. I certainly didn’t expect that.

“They are just doing it to spite us!” my
father insisted angrily.

“No. They’re not,” she answered. “I have
watched the two of them try to navigate their feelings for one another since
before we were even dating. While I hoped, for the sake of our marriage, that
things would go differently, I can’t say that I’m surprised. The only thing
that I could think of that did make me curious was the fact that they didn’t do
something like this sooner.” She shook her head. “Seriously, think about it.
You have been completely unfair to Shawn for years and he has tried to be good
until now. Doesn’t that say something for the kind of man that he is?”

“Yeah,” my father spat back, “He’s weak.
He couldn’t just pick any woman in the world. He had to go after your
daughter.”

I felt my teeth clench as I growled at him.
“I am not weak, Dad!”

At this, all eyes were on me. I hadn’t
meant to speak, but his comment
 
made me
so angry that I couldn’t help but try to prove him wrong.

“Oh, really? Then why are you always the
one to mess everything up for everyone. All you do is leave a cloud of
destruction in your path. You’re just like your mother! All she ever did was
build her life up, just so she could tear it apart. She had you and took off
and you brought Diana and me together, probably just so you could watch us fall
apart.” He narrowed his eyes at me and stared me down. “You’re not stupid, but
you are pretty conniving…” He smiled in a wicked way and took a few steps
toward me, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you.”

“Just tell us the truth!” I answered,
trying not to say anything that I was going to regret. Even though my blood was
boiling and my level of aggravation was skyrocketing, having all of those things
said about me that wasn’t true, I refused to stoop to his level. Now that all
eyes were on me the only thing I wanted to do was ensure that the truth was
spoken. That was it. “Did you write the letter?”

My father ignored me, continuing to taunt
me with his words. “You probably don’t even like Valerie. You are probably just
doing all of this so that you can make the world fall apart. You strive in
destruction and chaos. While the rest of the world burns, you think you are
going to rise from the ashes. Your mother thought the same thing, but look
where she ended up…”

I asked him again, “Did you mess with
Diana’s phone?”

“You’re pathetic!” he yelled.

“Answer my question,” I replied, trying to
stay level-headed as my father moved swiftly into my personal space. He was
crowding me profusely, and it was all I could do to keep from hitting him.

“Even if you did like her, she would
eventually figure out what a loser you are and she would leave you, just like
your mother left me!”

“Answer me!” I screamed, but just as I was
about to lose all control, I felt an arm push me back, while Diana ended up
between us.

“That’s enough!” she exclaimed, glaring
between me and my father, until finally, she stopped to focus on my father.
“You know what? I’ve had enough. Even if you don’t want to admit what you did,
I have had enough of this! I’m leaving!”

At that, the whole house grew deathly
silent and my father gaped at Diana, as though she was completely out of her
mind.

I backed up and eyed Valerie. For as much
as I didn’t want to be the cause of their unhappiness, it was Diana who had
made the decision and to that, all I could do in response was smile.

Epilogue

Four years passed. The divorce was final
and as I stood in front of the mirror, staring at myself as I reflected in awe
of what was about to happen and as far as we had come, I heard my mother come
in behind me.

She smiled as tears welled up in her eyes.
Her hand covered her mouth carefully as she tried to hold back the rush of
emotion she felt. Behind her, Shawn’s mother came in and beamed brightly.

“You look absolutely beautiful,” Cindy
said. “Shawn couldn’t have asked for a more perfect bride.”

In the four years since the two women
finally found the real culprit behind all of the lies and manipulation, they
first found common ground, and eventually became friends.

Shawn’s father had never admitted what he
did or his end goal, but eventually, his reason and even his admission ceased
to matter. Life went on for the four of us without him.

Even with all of the planning, all of the
memories and all of the excitement that had led up to this day, I still
couldn’t quite believe that it was here.

I was nervous and the jitters of both my
mother and my soon-to-be mother-in-law didn’t help. Still, I was happy that
they were there.

“Everything is going to be perfect!” my
mother answered. I could tell that now, even with all of the reservations she
had about the two of us going through with this at such a young age, she was
completely content and at ease with our decision.

She didn’t say anything, but I could tell
by the excitement in her eyes and that made me extremely happy.

“Thank you,” I answered, turning around in
a flash of form-fitting white. My long train was my mother’s idea, but now that
I was wearing it, I had come to enjoy the thought of having something
traditional; even though we weren’t such a traditional couple.

I smiled and took a deep breath, trying to
calm my frantic nerves.

“I think it’s almost time,” Cindy answered
as she stuck her head out of the door and then made her way to her seat.

My mother hugged me briefly, probably
afraid that she was going to lose it completely before she made her way back to
her seat also.

It had been a long road. In addition to
college and distance separating us at times, Shawn’s relentless, unsuccessful
attempts to have his father join back into his life had caused a few highs and
lows in the relationship, but we had persevered. And now, we were about to make
our love official.

A few moments later, the organ started up
and I began my walk toward my handsome groom. It was true, we were both young,
but after dating through the rest of high school and college, we knew what we
wanted so it didn’t make sense to wait anymore.

I smiled as I walked past the small
congregation. Every face in the crowd I knew, but there was one that was not
present, who I was certain would only be missed by one person.

Shawn’s father was invited to the wedding,
but he never responded, despite the calls that Shawn had placed requesting his
presence.

Still, even in his father’s absence, Shawn
looked happier and prouder than I had ever seen him before.

This year had been good for us, even
though things had not gone exactly as we had planned. Shawn’s father not caring
about getting back into his son’s life wasn’t the only hurdle, but we had made
it through and that was the important thing. After all, it was our life that we
were living.

“It’s just as I told you a long time ago,
Shawn…” I whispered to him as I made my way up to the altar and stood in front
of him, “and it’s even truer today than ever before.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.” He smiled and
swallowed hard before turning toward the priest.

“No matter what, we’ll always be friends
forever,” I replied, smiling softly.

Then, just before the music officially
stopped and the ceremony began, I heard Shawn whisper, “Yes, but starting
today, we officially become so much more.”

At that moment, I couldn’t have been
happier. I turned and smiled, realizing that was the moment when it all sunk
in. This was finally happening and it was then that I started to look forward
to our tried and true happily ever after.

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.