Hooked: A Stepbrother Romance

by Iris Parker

  I looked down at Little Jerry’s hands, frantically massaging my thighs, and sighed. I didn’t even know where to begin….

  “What is it, Simon? The fame going up to your head? The women going down to your other head?”

  Of course, as a young man, I’d enjoyed the prestige that had followed my success. But women had been the least of my worries for years now.

  Well, every woman but one.

  I leaned back onto the raised headrest of the massage table, closing my eyes and trying my best to drown out Jerry’s rant. Immediately, my brain was assaulted with visions of Emilia. Her muscular legs as she tied her pink running shoes on in the morning, the small pit in the bed as she invited me to come jogging with her, the way she pushed her head back when I feasted on her luscious body every night after work.

  I wanted it all back, more than anything else in the world.

  If only that were possible.

  I groaned, covering my face with my arm and trying not to think about just how miserable the sexiest bachelor in England really was.

  She rang the doorbell as I was setting myself up for another sleepless night, one of the many gifts from Emilia, I guess. Not that I cared, as long as I still felt like we had a connection. I guess a shitty, painful thread is better than none.

  I opened the door, and there she was. Beautiful. Strikingly so. Tall, an hourglass figure that would have driven me crazy a year ago. Blond hair cascading on her shoulders. Funny how that works, when all I wanted was a petite brunette whose tits easily fit in the palms of my hands.

  She was smartly dressed, and intelligence sparkled in her eyes as she spoke.

  “A hooker for the hooker,” she said with a wink as I stood there like a statue.

  Courtesy of the team. Bunch of lovely assholes who worried for me, I guess.

  I panicked a little and ushered her in, praying for this to not be all over the tabloids the next day. That would be the last thing Emilia needed.

  If she still minded at all, that is.

  Beer was already on hand on the kitchen counter. American beer, she noticed. I had no explanation for her.

  At least not at first.

  She tried a bit, rubbed her beautiful ass on my cock a couple of times. Ran her lips on my neck. I can’t say I wouldn’t have taken the release. Maybe it would have chased away the image of Emilia.

  Permanently etched in my soul.

  But of course, I couldn’t.

  So we stayed there for hours, standing in the kitchen, drinking American beer. She ditched her heels and I poured my soul like I never had to any counselor.

  My dad, my mom, Jake, Argus, Emilia.

  Emilia.

  Emilia.

  And when I was done talking, I talked more.

  She listened without saying a word. Of course, this could all end up in the tabloids the next day, with a lump sum on her bank account. But at this point, it all felt too good to stop.

  And when I did finally stop, I was ready.

  Ready for the World Cup.

  Ready to accept.

  Ready to be the man I should have always been.

  Even if I’d lost Emilia.

  “I still think the grey suit would look much better on you,” my mother commented, propping the hotel room’s windows open and pulling a pack of clove cigarettes from her purse. “Especially for a press conference.”

  “You know you’re not supposed to smoke inside,” I scolded as I stood in front of the mirror and adjusted the lapels of my leather jacket one last time.

  “I opened the window.”

  “There’s a strict no-smoking policy, and you could easily set off the smoke detectors.”

  “That hasn’t happened yet,” she pointed out.

  “So you’re going to keep trying until it does?” I teased.

  “Grey really highlights the color of your eyes, you know. The jacket isn’t doing you any favors.”

  I took a deep breath and waited until the urge to begin a petty argument had left me before heading back to the bedroom, sitting on the mattress with a muted sigh.

  Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough, bringing with it the World Cup Final and an end to this sickeningly sweet mother/son arrangement. Evelyn would fly back home, and I’d finally be left alone to wallow in uninterrupted self-pity.

  Home.

  So close to Emilia, Johnnie’s, the rec center, and everything else I’d left behind. With a brisk shake of my hand, I tried to make the envious thought fly away, swatting in front of my face as if it was an annoying bug.

  Striking at phantoms didn’t work any better today than it had any other time I’d tried it over the last two months. I’d left her stranded, without a word of explanation, proving once again that I was just a worthless, unreliable punk.

  I rummaged through my suitcase and extracted the long, thin velvet jewelry box that had never made it to Emilia’s hand. A small, sad laugh escaped my lips as I opened it carefully, inspecting the delicate feminine watch inside.

  “It’s hers, isn’t it?” my mother asked, flicking her cigarette out the window.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The woman in the park. Bridget’s daughter. It’s her watch, right?”

  “Kind of,” I said evasively.

  “Why do you have it?”

  “Because I never gave it to her.”

  “You look at it every day,” she commented, absent-mindedly kneading her fingers together. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to throw it away at first, but I couldn’t bring myself to go through with it. It was supposed to be reassuring. A way to count down how long until we could be with each other again,” I sighed. The symbol of our inevitable reunion had turned into a cruel mockery, a reminder of the time we’d spent apart.

  Frustrated, my hand trembled as I faced the urge to smash it against the floor.

  Except, once again, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was the last piece of her I had, and the last piece of her I’d ever have.

  “Why don’t you give it to her?” Evelyn asked.

  I turned, staring at my mother as I struggled to comprehend the question. It was like being asked why water is wet.

  “I don’t deserve her,” I finally concluded with a shrug. “I would have hurt her.”

  “You certainly would have,” she said, sitting on the bed next to me and grabbing my chin in her hand, turning my face in her direction. “But not as much as you’re hurting her right now, I think.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said.

  “Yes, I do. You’re afraid that you’re not fit for the task. I understand, I just disagree. I also remember the looks she sent you that day at West Field, and I wonder if you didn’t rob her of the chance to decide for herself. Don’t you ever wonder what that decision would have been, Simon?”

  I opened my mouth, ready to protest even though I didn’t know what I was going to say.

  Then a sinking feeling overtook my heart.

  Don’t you ever wonder what that decision would have been, Simon?

  Before I could find the words, a loud knock on the door interrupted us. I inspected the watch again, my mother’s eyes burning into me as I finally looked back at her. She bore the beautiful smile of a woman who’d made peace, against all odds.

  The knocks on the door resonated again in the room and Evelyn’s eyebrows shot up slowly as if they were asking a silent question.

  Placing a wordless challenge on her only son.

  What if, I too, could make peace?

  The knocks intensified and the team’s assistant coach called out my name with urgency in his voice.

  I held my mom’s stare for a second and smiled back before breaking eye contact.

  It was time to go.

  And time to make decisions.

  I placed Emilia’s watch inside the pocket of my leather jacket and headed for the door.

  Being a great coach means more than being an athlete.
r />   You need to be a great man. You need to be able to shake off the panic, to keep your cool even when everything is going horribly wrong.

  Maybe that’s why, when I broke the news to my coach five minutes before a press conference, all he did was pat me on the shoulder and shake my hand.

  I hope that, one day, I can be a great coach too.

  “You’re late,” Shauna shouted, waving in my direction as I poked my head out from my office.

  “Hello to you, too, sweetie,” I called back, cutting through the crowded gym on the way to meet Adam. Shauna playfully rolled her eyes at me before swooping back around to continue chatting with her boyfriend Michael. Across from the couple, Theo was beaming a bright smile in my direction, his mere presence here today a testament to the miracles Marjorie Evans had worked throughout the fall.

  I backed myself through the double doors, now much easier to open, with a little curtsy to the Phys Ed student who’d agreed to help pick up some of the slack left by Simon’s departure.

  “Sorry,” I blurted as I entered Adam’s office, keenly aware of my tardiness.

  “It’s fine,” he shrugged. “We’re off-duty in a way today, I guess. Are you ready for the interviews?”

  I nodded slowly, hoping Adam didn’t notice the way I was biting my lower lip. I didn’t think I would ever be ready to offer Simon’s job to a complete stranger, but it needed to be done. Everyone at the center had gotten used to having a second coach to pick up the slack, and we could afford to hire one thanks to the second donation Simon had sent along with his letter of apology and resignation.

  “Just one thing,” I said, sitting in Adam’s large swivel chair and trying to force myself to stop thinking about Simon. It was always an impossible task, but doubly so with the question at hand.

  “Are we specifically requiring someone who can coach rugby?” I asked slowly. “It would really be a shame to waste all that new equipment.”

  “But?” Adam asked.

  “But it’s hard,” I explained quietly. Adam knew just how much Simon’s departure had devastated me. I’d been unable to hide it in the immediate fallout that followed. Adam had done his best to commiserate, handing me tissues, saying he missed him too, inviting me over for dinner with his family…two months later, the pain was still nearly unbearable.

  “We’ll see,” Adam said softly.

  “Thanks,” I said, my lip coming dangerously close to quivering.

  “I also have a question before we get started,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you see the World Cup Final?”

  I winced, wondering why Adam would ask that. He knew that I was avoiding everything related to Simon, including the Rugby World Cup.

  “I’ll assume that means you haven’t,” Adam continued, bending over the desk and tapping his keyboard to shut off the screen saver. “Read the webpage I have pulled up, please.”

  “I’d really rather not,” I pleaded, practically leaping from the chair before catching a glimpse of burly men wearing white rugby kits emblazoned with a red rose, the emblem of the English national team.

  Adam’s insistence this morning was weird, he’d been very supportive since Simon left. We’d never made things official, but practically everyone had at least noticed how close Simon and I had gotten over the summer. I’d even gotten a few crude questions from the girls’ team, asking if I’d “dumped” Simon.

  As if.

  “Emilia,” Adam stated with a slight reproach in his voice. Dejected, I sat back down and stared at the new flat-screen monitor that Simon’s money had bought us.

  England’s Tragic Loss, the article was titled.

  Okay, so they’d lost. Big deal, I thought as I skimmed the text. It took me a moment to realize that the tragic loss wasn’t referring to the World Cup, which they had in fact won thanks to Simon.

  The page went on to talk about how fantastic he was, how they never could’ve done it without him, extolling his virtues at length. I glanced over at Adam, throwing shade at him with my eyes, wondering why he was making me read this.

  Adam made a circular motion in the air with his hands, telling me to continue.

  I scrolled down the page, the breath catching in my throat as the true nature of the article finally clicked. It wasn’t about the World Cup at all, but rather Simon himself. Specifically, how much the English team was going to suffer now that he had unexpectedly retired.

  Simon had retired.

  “I’m not giving up on rugby, just competitive play. I want to branch out, exploring other projects, including one that’s very close to my heart,” the article quoted Simon as saying, going on to speculate about what those projects might be.

  I couldn’t read another word, my heart pounding away in my chest. I stood up, knees wobbling beneath me.

  “I don’t— What is—” For a second, it felt like my brain had simply forgotten how to work. Simon was quitting? He couldn’t be. Rugby was everything to him. Sure, coming back here and confronting his past had clearly unsettled him, but I never believed it had hurt him enough to make him reconsider his career.

  Simon was one of the strongest men I knew, not just physically but also emotionally. There was never any doubt in my mind that what happened to him here would stop him from getting what he really wanted.

  An absolutely insane, crazy thought settled in my head, and I struggled to silence it.

  There was no way in hell, was there?

  I told myself I was being naive, but the erratic pounding in my heart refused to calm down.

  “I’m not—” I began, but couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence. I looked at Adam, tears welling up in my eyes.

  “No, you’re not, sweetie” he agreed, opening his arms and giving me a hug. “It’s okay,” he kept repeating as the heartbreak from the past two months suddenly threatened to spill out.

  But today, I needed a heavy dose of reassurance, one I was unable to ask for. I needed the crazy thought in my head dispelled, and as quickly as possible, before I built a house of cards on top of it.

  Slowly, Adam pulled my arms from his waist and brought his hand beneath my chin. The look on his face was so serene that my heart rate felt like it came to a halt before picking back up with the giddiness of a young girl.

  “You know what to do,” he said, a peaceful smile etched across his face.

  That was all the reassurance I needed.

  Simon had come back.

  My mind foggy with the adrenaline pumping in my veins, I opened the door with trembling hands and moved down the long hallway, towards the small meeting room we’d set up to interview prospective candidates for the coach position.

  Legs shaking beneath me, I took a tentative step forward. My mind was screaming with impatience, my heart bleeding with pain.

  On the other side of the corridor, the kids were joyous and rambunctious.

  Could I ever reconcile how he left?

  I took a few more steps, the door to the meeting room looming at the far end of the hall. The walls were a bright, mint green, the fresh paint a reminder of all the renovation we’d been able to do thanks to Simon.

  My heart went into overdrive, its beating erratic and almost painful.

  The truth was, I’d already come to terms with his actions. I’d known him back then, seen the pain for myself. Now I knew the source of his struggle, and could forgive him for how much he had fought.

  I continued to walk forward, picking up speed until I was running. In no time, I reached the door and flung it open.

  Inside, Simon was sitting on a chair, dressed in the most dapper suit I’d ever seen him wear. His forearms were lying across his spread thighs, his bent head shooting up in my direction as I rushed into the room.

  I wanted to run into his arms, kiss him, and hit his chest until he hurt as much as I had, but the harrowing look on his face told me a very different story.

  The story of a man who was already in pain.

  “Emilia,” h
e whispered, his hands brushing across his face before finally settling into a prayer position beneath his chin. “I’m so sorry.”

  I stood frozen in front of him, unwilling to break the moment but yearning for more. It was high time I got answers to the millions of questions that had been plaguing my nights, and my days, for the past two months.

  He stood up and took my hand in his, bringing my fingers to his quivering lips.

  “I’m so sorry I left, Emilia. I was broken. I was lost. I was so afraid of hurting you again, so worried that I could never change. I convinced myself you were better off without me. I came here to make amends, and maybe help you heal, but all of a sudden I felt like I was fifteen again. I hated myself, and I couldn’t stand the thought of dragging you back into that.”

  His fingers were cold, but a tingling heat began spreading from where he touched me. Up my arm, into my chest, suffusing my whole body with golden warmth.

  “I never wanted to hurt you, but by trying to avoid that, I ended up doing more damage than I ever would have if I’d stayed,” he said softly.

  I nodded, tears welling in my eyes as I scanned the paleness of his face and the dark grey bags under his eyes.

  “The self-hatred has to go, Simon,” I croaked, my voice barely above the recently repaired air-conditioning.

  “What if it doesn’t?” he asked.

  “Then we’ll find ways to deal with it,” I reassured him, holding my hands up to his face. His eyes had been avoidant and repentant, but suddenly they locked onto mine with an intensity that reminded me of the old Simon, the one who had challenged me to the sexiest game of streetball ever.

  “I love you, Simon. You, the former thug, the ex-bully, the repentant lover, the wonderful coach, the wounded man. I love all of you.”

  “Emilia, I love you,” he cried out, his hands reaching for my own face and pulling me into his chest. Before I could breathe, his lips were crashing into mine. I wrapped my arms around his large back, returning the kiss and sealing our fates together with the unspoken promise of reconciliation and a beautiful future.