She paused and then continued. “I told him I was going to leave, and he just sniffed and said we could go, but he’d find us and kill us if we did that. I was terrified he’d go through with his threats. So I stayed. I tried to make sure he never hurt you. For years, I thought about getting us both away and finding somewhere to hide so that he couldn’t get to us, but then he disappeared and I didn’t even have to worry about it anymore.”
Her story made my stomach lurch, and I dropped my croissant, no longer hungry at all.
She looked at me for a long moment and then continued. “That’s why I’ve always tried to stress how important education is for you. I hadn’t finished my degree when I married him, and I had no real qualifications outside of the job I was working at the time, which was an entry-level reception job. When he left and I had to work again to support us, it was very hard for me to get back into the workforce after taking so much time off. I’m lucky I’ve already made it this far in just seven years, but it wasn’t easy having to spend time away from you to do it.”
I looked down at my coffee cup, and she squeezed my hand. “I never want you to go through that. That’s why I’ve been so tough on you when it comes to your studies. But you know I wouldn’t do it without a good reason.”
“I know, Mom,” I replied. I took a deep breath before continuing. “I think…I think I will accept the place Caltech offered me. I know it’s your dream school for me.”
She smiled widely. “So you’ve finally decided? That’s great, honey. I’m so proud.”
Truth be told, I still wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to go to Caltech, or even study engineering at all. I’d always been pretty good at math and physics, but that didn’t mean I particularly enjoyed it or wanted to spend the rest of my life doing it. My real passion lay in writing, and what my Mom didn’t know was that I spent countless hours creating all sorts of different worlds and scenarios for the characters I invented on paper. But that was a pipe dream. For every five hundred people that dreamed of being an author, only one or two ever made that dream a reality. Mom was right. I needed to focus on studying something sustainable; something that would support me if I ever needed it. Writing could just be a hobby for me.
Speaking of that hobby, with all the turmoil in my life at the moment, I was feeling quite inspired. I drained the remainder of my coffee, kissed my Mom on the cheek and then headed back upstairs to my room. I managed to get down a whole three thousand words on my laptop before my cell phone buzzed next to me at around lunchtime. It was Lana.
“Hey!” she said after I answered. “Are you still coming tonight?”
“Tonight?”
She made an impatient clucking sound with her tongue. “Cerie’s cousin is having a party, remember? You’re coming, right?”
Crap. With everything that was going on, it had totally slipped my mind.
“Oh, right. Of course I’m still coming. Can you pick me up?”
“Sure. I’ll be there at about eight. See ya then!”
I spent the rest of the afternoon writing more. When giving writing advice, a lot of authors said that it was best to write what you know, and I was really taking that advice to heart judging by the story that was coming to life on the pages of my word processing program. It was about a teenage girl who’d been thrust into a world of denial and mental gymnastics when she was forced to live with a sexy new stepbrother. Hmm, I wonder where the inspiration for that came from?
All jokes aside, there was one major difference between this story and my real life. In the story, her stepbrother was actually a nice guy deep down, and they were going to have a nice happy ending. There was no way anything like that was going to happen between me and Drew. I was going to keep my head down when he was around and try to avoid interacting with him as much as possible, and when college came around, he’d be out of my hair for good. I’d probably have to see him occasionally at events like Christmas and Thanksgiving, but I could manage that.
At seven, I closed my laptop and rummaged through my closet, looking for something to wear. It was quite cold tonight, so I settled on a pair of jeans, a cream-colored top and a black cardigan with a camel-colored scarf. Modest but stylish, and definitely warm.
My cell phone buzzed again just after eight with a text from Lana. At ur house. Come downstairs. Xx
I swiped on some tinted lip gloss before grabbing my favorite handbag and heading downstairs, and my heart sank as I saw Drew in the front yard, having a conversation with Lana. He looked even sexier than usual with his hair all messed up, probably on purpose, and they both looked up when they heard me heading over.
“There you are!” Lana said. “I just ran into your new bro. Did you know he’s going to be in some Australian magazine spread soon?”
Lana and Cerie had been completely and utterly shocked when they’d found out the hot guy from the club was my old childhood friend and my new stepbrother, and since then they’d developed some sort of wildly romantic theory that it was fate. Unfortunately for them, I knew better. It wasn’t fate or destiny or whatever. It was simply bad luck.
“No, I didn’t,” I said, throwing her a withering look that clearly said, ‘Don’t be nice to him, he’s a prick.’
She either didn’t notice my expression or chose to ignore it, and she grinned. “Drew isn’t doing anything tonight, so I invited him to the party. Is that okay, Soph?”
Drew flashed me a dazzling smile, and I suddenly wanted to charge across the lawn and slap the stupid grin off his handsome face. I managed to suppress the urge, and I didn’t want to look like a massive bitch by saying no, so I gritted my teeth.
“Sure. That’s fine.”
“Cool. Let’s go, then!”
Lana got into the driver’s seat of her Range Rover, and I was about to hop into the front passenger seat when she stopped me. “No, sit in the back with Drew. You don’t want him to be all alone back there, do you?”
She was incorrigible. Drew smirked and held the back door open while doffing an imaginary cap, and I glared at him as I climbed in. He squeezed in beside me, and he murmured in my ear.
“You look good. Although you’d look better without those clothes on.”
“Shut up,” I hissed as Lana put some music on in the front.
“Why? Am I making you…uncomfortable?” he murmured, sliding a hand over my knee.
“Uncomfortable like a victim of the bubonic plague, yes,” I said, slapping his creeping hand away.
“Are you an Egyptian crocodile?” he asked.
I scoffed. “Very funny, but I’m not in denial. I just don’t want you. The only one who’s in denial here is you thinking you’re fooling anyone with that ridiculous messy hair look. No one actually believes you just woke up like that this morning.”
“I did wake up like this.”
“Sure.”
He grinned and leaned even closer. “Say what you will, but my offer still stands.”
“What offer?”
“My offer to give you the best night of your life,” he said, stupid smirk still plastered to his face.
“That was never an offer. Besides, what exactly would you do? Have a competition with your penis to see who can disappoint me the most?”
His smile faded. “Whatever. Y’know, with that attitude, the only way you’re ever gonna get laid is if you crawl up a chicken’s ass and wait.”
Prick. I’d finally run out of witty comebacks, and he’d had the last word.
“Lana, can you turn the music up?” I called towards the front of the car, wanting to drown out any more of Drew’s bullshit. I simply hadn’t been born with enough middle fingers to accurately demonstrate my feelings for him.
The party was in full swing when we arrived, and Drew quickly made himself at home, finding himself immediately swarmed by horny single girls. Of course. I rolled my eyes and followed Lana into the house to find Cerie, and on my way I was stopped by a familiar face – Cerie’s cousin and the host of the party, Andreas Jakobs
en.
Cerie’s mother was part Norwegian, and Andreas had actually been born and raised in Norway before moving here a few years ago at age fifteen. At six-foot one with a slim figure, blond hair and a never-ending supply of pastel cashmere sweaters, he was the most stereotypical Scandinavian gay guy I had ever met, and he was also one of the loveliest people I’d had the pleasure of knowing.
He squealed when he saw me and hugged me before whispering conspiratorially in my ear. “So that’s your new stepbrother over there? The one with the tattoos? Please tell me he’s gay.”
I giggled. “Sorry. He’s straight.”
He wrinkled his nose. “You sure he’s not at least bi?”
“Definitely not.”
He pouted. “Damn. And are you interested in him?”
“Also definitely not,” I declared, maybe a tad excessively. “He’s my stepbrother.”
“Well, in that case, I have someone for you to meet,” he said with a grin. “Cerie and I met him a few weeks ago, and I thought he seemed nice. Ah, there he is now.”
He waved across the room at a tall brown-haired guy and beckoned him over.
“Dan, this is Sophie, the girl I told you about. She’s going to the same college as you in the fall,” he said before glancing back at me. “You are going to Caltech, right?”
“Yep,” I said with a smile.
Dan smiled and shook my hand. “Andreas has told me a lot about you. What are you going to be studying?”
Andreas interjected with a not-so-subtle excuse to leave before I could answer. “Oops, I forgot to put the ice out. Dan, make sure you take care of her.”
With that, he disappeared, and I was left alone with his friend.
“I’m going to be studying engineering,” I said. “What about you?”
“Same,” he said with a grin. “Maybe we can be study buddies.”
The look he was giving me suggested he wanted to be a lot more than study buddies, and to tell the truth, I was thrilled with the attention. Aside from Drew, it was the first male attention I’d had in…well, forever. I saw Drew narrow his eyes at me from across the room, and I ignored him and turned my attention back to Dan. I was allowed to talk to guys. It was none of Drew’s business.
We kept chatting, and after a while it felt like it was only the two of us in the room. Dan was a really interesting guy. He was smart, accomplished and pretty damn cute to boot, and I could see why Andreas wanted to set me up with him. I deserved a nice guy, didn’t I? All women did. We’d just exchanged numbers, and he’d promised to call me tomorrow to organize a hangout. That’s what people our age did these days, apparently. There was never any ‘dating’. It was just ‘hanging out’.
He was in the middle of telling me about the volunteer work he did at a local animal shelter when we were disturbed by Cerie and Lana.
“Hey guys!” Cerie said. “You’ll never believe what just happened to Lana.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Lana rolled her eyes. “Worst pickup attempt ever. See the guy over there in the grey hoodie?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I was talking to him, and he asked my name. I said it was Lana, and he leaned close and said, ‘you know, that’s ‘anal’ backwards,’ before winking at me.”
I stifled a laugh, and Dan grinned. “Sounds like a solid guy. I hope you gave him your number.”
“Oh, definitely,” Lana replied sarcastically before clapping her hands together. “Anyway, we had an idea.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, we figured that this is probably one of the last parties we’ll have before we all head off into the real world. So we may as well have one last high-school hurrah!”
“Go on,” I said.
She winked at me. “You know what that means. It’s time for Spin-a-Dare!”
I laughed and shook my head. “No way. Remember what happened the last time I got dared to do something?”
I shot a pointed look at Drew, and Lana giggled. “Aw, come on. Do it for me. Please?”
She affected a puppy-dog gaze, and I caved. “All right. Let’s do it.”
Five minutes later, a whole bunch of us were sitting cross-legged on the floor in a big circle, and Cerie grabbed an empty beer bottle.
“Okay, you all know the rules,” she said. “Whoever the bottle lands on has to complete a dare.”
“Er…I’ve actually never played this before,” Dan said from next to me. “Who decides what the dare is?”
“The person who spins the bottle. I’m going first,” she replied.
I smiled at her and then glanced across at the other side of the circle. Oh, of course. Drew was there. He arched an eyebrow and blew a kiss at me, and I narrowed my eyes at him, hoping that if I concentrated enough energy into the glare, a laser would shoot out and vaporize him. Cerie made a big show of spinning the bottle, and we all waited with bated breath to see who it would land on. As my bad luck would have it, it ended up pointing straight at me. I inwardly groaned, and Cerie’s eyes lit up with triumph.
“Okay, Sophie…I dare you and Drew to go into the closet upstairs and give us a nice old-fashioned Seven Minutes in Heaven.”
She couldn’t be serious. Dan looked slightly uncomfortable, and Lana grinned on the other side of me. “Go on,” she whispered. “You have to do it, remember?”
“I’m going to kill Cerie,” I said, not-so-secretly wanting to slap her. It was bad enough they’d done the whole ‘dare’ thing with me the other night when I’d first met Drew…well, met the new Drew, anyway. And look how well that had turned out. They knew he was my stepbrother now, and they were still trying to hook us up by playing stupid high-school games and forcing us together despite the fact that I’d just met a nice new guy. College really couldn’t start soon enough for me.
“I think this whole dare thing needs to go the way of the dinosaurs, Lana,” I hissed as I climbed to my feet, and she simply giggled along with Cerie.
“Ew…isn’t that her brother?” I heard someone say in a hushed voice.
“Stepbrother,” Drew corrected them, rising to his feet.
Andreas stood up as well. “I’ll take them upstairs and make sure they don’t come out until the seven minutes is up,” he said.
He linked an arm with me, and Drew trailed behind us, trademark smirk on his face.
“Lucky bitch,” Andreas whispered to me. “Don’t worry, I haven’t known Dan for all that long, but he’s a cool guy. He knows it’s just a game.”
He guided us into the master bedroom upstairs and wrenched the closet door open. Drew stepped in first, and I followed him, my heart pounding. Surely he didn’t actually expect for anything to happen in here. It was just a stupid party game that none of us had played since the ninth grade.
The closet was large and decadent, with a crystal light fixture hanging overhead. Andreas switched it on and then shut the door, leaving us in.
“Time starts now!” he called from the outside.
I stole a glance at Drew and realized he was staring right at me.
“You know, they’re gonna want some proof that something happened between us in here,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone.
I folded my arms. “Too bad.”
“Come on, they want a show, let’s give it to them.”
“Fine.”
I stood on my tiptoes and planted a kiss on his cheek, knowing my red-tinted lip gloss would leave a lip print on his face.
“There. That’s all you’re getting,” I said.
“Good enough for now,” he said, looking bored. ‘We’ll, we’ve still got six and a half minutes to go. We’ve gotta do something to fill the time. Why don’t you start by finally telling me why you were pretending to be someone else at Mint?”
I rolled my eyes. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
I chewed on my lower lip before replying. “It was like…I just wanted to be someone else for the night. I was meant to be breaking ou
t of my shell, or whatever other cliché you want to call it. So when I thought you were a total stranger, I gave you a fake name. It sorta just popped into my head.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t see why you’d need to be anyone else. The old Sophie is just fine.”
“Um…thanks,” I said.
“So why me? Out of all the guys in the club that night, why’d you pick me?”
I shifted uncomfortably where I was standing. “Er…it was a dare.”
“A dare? Jesus, what the fuck is up with you and your friends? Are you all stuck in the eighth grade?”
I didn’t respond, and he grinned. “Y’know, I totally knew it.”
“Knew what?”
“That you weren’t actually going out every night and fucking random guys with a fake name.”
“And how’d you know that?”
He snorted. “Because you’re way too uptight to be getting laid.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you walk around with a stick up your ass most of the time. Maybe if you pulled it out once in a while, you’d actually be able to go through with sleeping with someone, instead of just changing your mind and leaving them with blue balls at the last second.”
“Screw you,” I hissed. “I’m not uptight.”
“Sure, sure. You know, it’s really amazing that a girl with a personality like yours can’t get a date,” he said, the sarcasm in his voice all too clear.
“No, what’s amazing is that someone with a personality like yours can get a date. And for your information, I actually have a date for tomorrow.”
His smile grew wider, as if he didn’t believe a word I was saying. “Oh, really? With who?”
“Dan. I met him earlier.”
He snorted again. “That guy? Fuck off. I kinda know him. He’s a dick.”
Ugh. Of course Drew didn’t like him. No surprises there.
“You’re just saying that ‘cause you’re pissed that you can’t have me.”
I regretted the words the instant they flew out of my mouth. They were too harsh, fuelled by the last week of pent-up emotion and tension.
Dare: A Stepbrother Romance Page 4
