Bastard Stepbrother (Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance)

by Faye, Amy

  But this is a meeting with the District Attorney. And they've no doubt been digging into Mom's past, and they've no doubt found something, because I don't doubt for an instant that there's something to be found.

  I can't exactly not go, though. That's not an option for me, whether I like meetings or not.

  Mom's coming behind, sufficiently cowed for now. She's apparently moved on to trying to play the martyr now. I would feel bad if I didn't know that it was all an act. That it was always an act with her. She'd move on from this when she realized it wasn't getting her any more attention than acting normally.

  I go through the metal detectors, and then on the other side of the gate they hand me back my keys and my pocket full of change. I slip it back into my jacket pocket. Mom comes through a moment later, and we're in. I've been to the D.A.'s office once or twice; I know the way, but it's not totally familiar to me.

  The floors of the courthouse are too nice to be a public building. It should be carpet, I think. Instead, my heels click-click-click as I walk, echoing off the intricate wooden walls and the marble floors. Up a set of stairs and through a heavy oaken door.

  I give Mom's name, and they tell me to step right on in. The secretary guides us through the hall a little way and into a conference room. It's marked "Conference room 3," so I give it the benefit of the doubt.

  You'd have a poor conference here. It couldn't fit more than ten, and the table is only big enough for six, if they were feeling chummy. I take a seat beside Mom, who isn't looking around to find out whether or not I'm buying her solemn martyrdom act.

  Which is probably good for her, because I'm not buying it for an instant, but if she wants to do it, then she should do what she wants to do.

  I wait a long time in silence. Maybe five minutes. Sitting in silence makes time move slower than it should, particularly when you have no idea what they're about to come through the door and say to you.

  Deep breaths, I tell myself. Deep breath, in. Deep breath out. No problem. We're going to be fine. It's all under control, and there's absolutely nothing to worry about.

  After I've utterly failed to get control of myself, a woman comes through the door with a thick packet in a manila envelope.

  "Mrs. Logan? And you must be Autumn, I've heard your name once or twice around the office."

  I don't know how to feel about it. Mom looks at her expectantly.

  "Yes," I finally answer.

  "I'm Leah Kent, I'm an assistant to the District Attorney, and I'm responsible for your case."

  "Nice to meet you, miss Kent."

  "Thank you," she says. She flips open the packet. It's covered in densely-typed text that no doubt contains as much about my mother as I know myself. "Now, I've got other things to take care of today, so I hope you don't mind if I'm a little bit brief."

  "By all means." Band-aid ripping has always been my preferred way to receive bad news. Maybe because I get it so infrequently. Everything with Mom has always been a long, drawn-out affair so that she can make it all as dramatic as possible.

  "We're prepared to offer you a deal. Thirty hours community service, pay fifty dollars in restitution, and a class on shoplifting."

  I blink. I don't know why, but I'd been so prepared for things to go wrong that the idea of things not going wrong seems strange. I look over at Mom. She's got a look on her face like someone who's just been told that they can have a cookie after all.

  "I'd suggest you take it," I say softly. Mom nods.

  "Of course. What do I have to sign?"

  Chapter Thirty

  I don't know if it was prescient or what. But I was heading over to Tom's office with a bottle of scotch, and it hadn't occurred to me that I might run into them. After all, what were the odds?

  I expected to pass silently and unknown, like two ships in the night. Hours apart and besides that, hundreds of people went through that office every day. So color me real fucking surprised when I heard a voice.

  "I know you from somewhere, don't I?"

  She might not have recognized exactly who I was. But I knew the voice the second I heard it, even though I didn't see her. For an instant I considered not even answering. A few steps before I stopped walking.

  "Mom, come on. Leave him be."

  Hearing Autumn's voice somehow changed things a little bit. I don't know what it was, but something about her being there irked me. Something about both of them being there irked me. Here I was, just going to see an old friend.

  "Deborah," I said softly. "How have you been?"

  "God," she says. "You look really familiar. Have we slept together?"

  My jaw tightens. Ten years is a long time, and I don't look like I did when I was twenty. My hair's shorter, and I've grown more than a few inches. But the idea that a woman who had supposedly been my mother for years couldn't place me lit a little fire.

  Autumn, for her part, was so mortified that her mouth opened and closed like someone making a fish face.

  "You were married to my father," I say softly. It's easiest if I keep it simple.

  "Paul? You're Paul's son?"

  "No," I answer. I would like to leave. "Then. Huh. You're…"

  "Eric Warren."

  "Dave's son. Right. I'm sorry, I don't know how I didn't recognize you. How's Dave doing? I haven't heard from him in a while."

  "No, I guess you wouldn't have," I answer. I thought I was over it. It was just what it was. And everything was fine. She wasn't going to make anything any worse than it already was. But it doesn't feel fine.

  "What's wrong? You look a little weird."

  "I don't really want to talk about it right now, Deb."

  I don't know how much she remembers at this point, but I don't care. I just want to move on. I just want to leave. To say that she's starting to piss me off is an understatement.

  "No, I don't know. Something. There's something. Something I'm forgetting."

  "I'm sure there is. Autumn, I'm going to get going."

  "I'll see you at work," she says, evenly. She's starting to regain some degree of control over herself, which is good. At least one of us is.

  "Oh, now I remember," she says, as Autumn turns her towards the door. "I cheated on his father."

  I close my eyes and keep moving. It's only a few short steps before I can open it and walk away.

  At least she can remember some things. Ten years isn't that long, but I guess when you're constantly making a mess of things, it's not that short, either.

  So what if she only remembers half of it. I shouldn't remember it either. It's better that way.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I can feel everything in my gut twisting up. So… what? What was I supposed to get out of all this? He hadn't taken my calls all day. Nor the day after that. And he's avoiding me at work.

  So what the heck am I supposed to think? Well, that much is obvious. I'm supposed to think the truth—he's avoiding me, and it's because of something to do with that mess with Mom.

  I wish I understood it, but she clammed right up. Right the hell up. She's never been too careful with what she does, but she's very careful with what she says. What she lets slip to people. If she wasn't, then she'd have to face the consequences of her actions sometimes.

  I let out a deep breath. So much for the hopes I'd had of some kind of… relationship… thing. I shake my head. Whatever it is, I'll get over it. If he wanted me to know about it, he'd tell me about it.

  Since Eric hadn't talked to me about any of this, I can only assume that it's some kind of secret, and he's not interested in talking about any of it. And I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it, nor how I'm supposed to feel, so I'm going to do what I always do.

  I'm going to do nothing, and I'm going to pretend I'm not hurt and pretend that I haven't even God damned noticed that he's not paying attention, because if I do anything else I think I might lose my mind.

  Which is why, even though it's a Wednesday night, I'm sitting here in a bar and I think I shoul
d probably have packed up three glasses ago. Some part of me wonders how often my mother's done this.

  She never drank at home, but she somehow managed to always be drunk. And I never had much doubt that when she was out… well, I don't know. Maybe there was a time before that. Maybe there was a time that she was faithful to one of her many husbands for more than a year or so.

  How hellish must those years have been for her? She's so committed to the first spark of a relationship, it must be absolute hell for her to have to actually settle into something that feels like it might last longer.

  I can feel eyes on me. I know what I must look like, sitting at the bar—alone—and pouring my way through a bottle of something amber-colored. For the sort of people who would be on the look-out for a woman like me, I must seem like an easy mark.

  Lonely. Upset about something, and yet I'm not hiding myself in the back. Which means, fundamentally, that I'm making myself available on some level. They're not entirely wrong, to be fair. I guess maybe I am. At least then I wouldn't be completely ignored.

  They wouldn't want a relationship, of course. Why would they? But they would at least be upfront about what they wanted. What a relief that would be. What a change from what I've had to deal with the past months.

  A man with a tattoo on his neck, who looks like a singer-songwriter in a Portland bar, steps up.

  "What's your name?"

  For an instant I consider ignoring him. He'll go away eventually on his own. But then again, maybe ignoring things is what got me here in the first place. If I change my tactics, maybe I'll be able to start digging myself out of the pile of shit that my life has devolved into.

  "Autumn. Yours?"

  "Lou," he answers. It's like his parents decided, when he was born, that all they wanted from their boy was to grow up to be exactly who he was. "What are you drinking?"

  "I don't know," I tell him. "I forgot. But they keep putting it in my glass and I keep drinking it."

  He laughs, and I can't help but smile at my own joke.

  "I could buy you the next one."

  "That would be awful kind of you."

  He puts an arm on the small of my back. It feels sexual, and I don't doubt for a moment that he means it to.

  I don't stop him.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  At some point, I'm going to have to talk to her or let her go. Neither one seems like a good solution. If I had gotten over myself, stifled my anger like I'd been doing for months before, it wouldn't be a problem.

  But instead, I'd made it a big deal by reacting to it at all. She must have known that I left because of her mother. So that much wasn't a surprise.

  That I'd not want to talk to Deborah was no doubt obvious even before it had happened. But the way that I'd reacted? Only an idiot wouldn't be able to realize that it was because there was something there. I'd been able to deal with so many other scumbag in my life. One more shouldn't be any kind of big deal.

  And no doubt, she's realized that. There must be questions. Must be. And if I'm going to make this relationship work, even just as far as keeping her in the office, then I'm going to have to answer those questions.

  Which has been where I'm stumbling.

  I take a deep breath. Shannon's holding my calls. Thank God, too, because I don't know if I could actually take one right now. It's been three days and I still don't actually know if I could focus on the law if I tried. So far, I haven't had much luck.

  I managed it once. I could manage it again. But something in my gut tells me that I can't just leave things the way they are.

  Stand up, I tell myself. Get out the door.

  The only way out of this mess is getting myself to it. Sure, there's a risk. She could hate me when I go through the whole thing. She might not want to even hear it. But that's not really a choice that she gets to make.

  She needs to know, and after we've slept together, it's something she deserves to know. She's sitting in a room full of people, pouring through a dusty old book. The smell of the library reminds me of college, reminds me of my early days of doing this exact work while I was still working on my degree.

  I touch her back, and she reacts immediately, even if she tries to hide it. Her back straightens and she arches a little, her body unable to decide whether to escape the touch or to press deeper into it.

  "I need to talk to you," I say softly. "Outside."

  She follows me through the door. I don't look her in the eye, because if I did, then I'd have to deal with the confusion and uncertainty and perhaps even fear in them.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I managed to keep my frustration under wraps just long enough to make the hallway. Then he turns and stops and I shut the door behind myself.

  "What?" My voice might convey some of that frustration.

  "We need to talk."

  "We're talking."

  "I just wanted to tell you that—"

  "Tell me what? Tell me that you fucked my mother?"

  She'd thought it would work best to confess it to me. She always confessed once she was caught. It was easier that way. For her, at least. That way, she could always have the sympathy.

  First, because she had no way of knowing that everything was going to go to hell, in spite of her pushing it all off the cliff. Second, then, because she felt really sorry about how everything went to hell.

  "So you knew?" His voice is low and soft.

  "I don't know why I was surprised. You're probably a real lady-killer, huh? So why should Mom be any different?"

  He looks away from me, and his teeth press together hard. "Yeah, you think what you want, I guess."

  "Well? What am I supposed to think?"

  "Look, don't you worry about it. Think whatever you want to think. I'm not going to sit here and insult your mother to make you think one ounce better about me."

  "Lay it on me. You'd be surprised what I'll believe about her."

  I'm not sure who the hell I'm supposed to blame here. Because everything I've seen from both sides tells me, they'd both be guilty. Hell, I suspect she'd do it just for the fun of it, and he's got his thing for redheads, of course.

  On the other hand, my mother's never made a decision I didn't have to pay for in my entire life. And this seems like her style. But I'm not ready to make a decision, either way. She's an idiot, but I'm not going to lay down for this womanizing little—

  Not without being told what happened, and believing it.

  "I don't want to upset you," he says finally.

  "Too late. You can correct the record, or you can let me keep thinking whatever Deborah told me about it. Your choice."

  "She was having an affair. My father's best friend. I don't really know how long it was going on for, but… well, I wasn't going to let it continue. But God damn it all if I wasn't too stupid to go to my dad about it."

  He steps back away from me and drops his head, his eyes pointed right at the floor. A moment later, someone steps around the corner, sees the two of us, and walks through and into the records room.

  "You were saying?"

  "So I went to her to tell her to cut it off, and…"

  "She denied it, I'm guessing."

  "I didn't have any proof. You might remember in law school they taught about that. Proof's pretty important. But I'm twenty years old, and this is my mom, right?"

  "No, I'm with you. But uh. I'm with you. Mom needs to be trapped in a corner before she'll cop to it. So you didn't get her to. Right. Tell me when it leads to the horizontal bop."

  He winces and waits a moment to answer.

  "Yeah. So I'm in my—our—parents' room, right? Trying to talk some sense into her. Trying to get her to just. Not even confess, just agree to break it off. For my Dad's sake."

  "I'm with you so far. That seems like a far cry from 'and then I slept with her' though, so you'll forgive me if I don't see it yet."

  "And then—Jesus. I don't know how else to put it. Um." He closes his eyes again, and I can see how f
rustrating it must be, given his reaction.

  "Take your time."

  "She gets up off the bed, she comes up to me, starts talking about how I've been working out, shit like that, I don't know."

  I don't know how to feel at this point. I've never been on the receiving end of it, but I can imagine that my mother knows what to say to get what she wants. She's always managed it in the past. He takes a deep breath and lets it out in a huff.

  "So then I'm standing there, with my goddamned mother putting her hand on my hip. And I don't want to sound weird but she was, you know, she was good looking, and I'm twenty years old. Idiot kid. But even I'm standing there thinking that this is a big god damn mistake, and then her hand moves, you know, from my hip to my… hip."

  "Oh." I don't know what else to say.

  "I could have stopped her, but I didn't."

  "Oh."

  "So I went to my dad, finally. And now she's playing him against me. Says it's all my idea. I seduced her. Well, who's he going to believe? His wife, or his son? Given that one of them has never shown any signs of infidelity—you know, other than all of the ones that he's ignored—and the other is just a horny teenager."

  "Yeah." My gut sinks.

  "So I left."

  "I remember that part."

  "I figured you might," he says softly.

  "I don't know what to say."

  "You don't have to say anything. But I had to clear the air."

  "Well, thank you."

  "Yeah. You got it."

  "I'm sorry."

  "We're all sorry."

  My gut is doing flips. "Okay can I confess something too?"

  "Okay."

  "Stay with me till the end on this, okay?"

  "Yeah." His fingers tap out a dissonant rhythm on the wall behind him.

  "I went out last night. Kinda, uh. Freaking out. About everything."

  "Yeah."

  "And I was thinking about you, and how I kinda, well, I've always had like. A thing for you."