Fade Back (A Stepbrother Romance Novella)

by Brother, Stephanie

  “You did… in bed.”

  “I remember,” Becka said, her voice low. “Thank you for… thank you for remembering.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to get a headache.”

  “I feel like I’ve had a headache for a month,” Becka smiled again.

  “Karen mentioned you hadn’t been feeling too great. Truth be told, I haven’t either.”

  “I know,” Becka nodded gravely, and hesitantly she reached out for Fitz’s hand across the table. Just like back in the tattoo parlor, he let her.

  “I guess I should be in better shape. I’m older, I’ve got the practice.”

  “I’m just learning now that isn’t how it works. I didn’t think I could get my heart broken. I didn’t even really think I had one to break. I know better now,” Becka spoke, her voice low with emotion. Fitz scanned her face but said nothing. “I want you to tell me how you feel, what you’re thinking,” Becka continued. “I can take it. I want us to work.”

  Fitz bit his plump lip and said nothing, before taking a sip of wine, the delicate stem looking so fragile in his strong tanned hands.

  “So I’ve only slept with four women,” he said slowly. “And that was my choice, and it’s stupid to get hung up on that now, I’m too old for that. But those four girls, well, the three before you… they were more like you. They liked to get wild. They weren’t stay at home types. It’s weird, right? That someone like me would keep falling for these party girls. I guess I’m just a sucker for cute faces with charisma. I don’t think I’m alone there.”

  Becka nodded and grinned with embarrassment, shrugging off the pseudo-compliment and topping up Fitz’s glass. “Please, go on.”

  “Well those girls, one by one, after a couple of years… I’d start finding things out. My last girlfriend… well… it didn’t take her a couple of years to get bored. It was only six months before I caught her in bed with my boss. And after I found that out, a lot more came out of the woodwork. It turned out she’d slept with half the guys I knew while we were together. When I confronted her about it, she… I don’t know what I was expecting. But what I got was a long, detailed list of complaints. I’m boring. I don’t want to go out. I should party more. Then the nasty stuff: we never said we were exclusive, you don’t have the right to tie me down, if this is love then I don’t want it, you’re sucking the life out of me. You’re dragging me down.”

  He paused and couldn’t lift his gaze above the starched rim of the table cloth. He allowed Becka to stroke his hand, and for Becka’s part, she tried to instill all the tenderness and longing she’d felt over these weeks into that momentary touch.

  Fitz went on. “I didn’t mean to. I feel like my need to be loved, is just too… too freaky. I guess it maybe stemming from my distant relationship with my mother… Well, you know all about it. I fall for free spirits and then I try to lock them up in a cage. And… you’re so like her, my ex. So beautiful and fun, and it’s just plain wrong of me to want to hold you back from all the experiences you should be having. So when this news of us being step-siblings hit, I just thought… it was my sign. That we weren’t meant to be, you know? There were too many red flags.” He breathed deeply and finally raised his eyes to Becka’s face. “And I’m embarrassed because… because I’m really just so attracted to you that I don’t know what to do.” His eyes were pleading, and Becka longed to fling herself across the table and lick the tears from his face. “But here’s the other thing. I say all that, and I know I’m wrong, but I’m still just… I’m still mad at you. For leaving without talking to me that day. It was just such an immature gesture. I’m mad at myself for being wrong about you. And expecting too much. And damn it, I just wish… instead of going silent on me you should have just come and talked to me. I don’t know how I’m supposed to trust you to do the right thing if the stakes are that much higher. I don’t know if I can get over all these obstacles, if I should keep fighting against the red flags.”

  “I’m sorry, Fitz. I really, really am.” Becka’s voice was quivering with nerves. “And of course, I didn’t know anything about your history, about those other women that, I promise you, didn’t deserve a guy like you. But I can guarantee you, I’m not like them. And I’m sorry I freaked out on you. Seeing those photos of your mom on your phone, my stepmom… It was just too much. It’s taken a lot of soul-searching these last few weeks to come to terms with who I want to be and how I want to get there. But one thing I was sure of: I want to get there with you. You’re the one for me.”

  “For now.”

  “Forever. Or at least as far into forever as I can see right now. I don’t need anyone else, and no one ever made me feel anything close to the way I felt with you. We barely know each other—as adults—and we’re learning. I’m learning for the first time, and you’re learning again, but we’re both finding out what it really means… to love someone.”

  They sat in silence for some time, and the waiter took advantage of the pause in an obviously heavy moment to ask if they needed more time with the menus.

  “Just the check please,” Fitz said softly, and for the first time that evening held Becka’s fingers in his own tender grasp. “Have you seen your tattoo yet?” he asked after their server had disappeared with his credit card. Becka shook her head, refusing to let the wine and emotional outpourings go too far to her head. Or at least, trying to refuse. She couldn’t help but get excited at the tiny glint of something buried deep in Fitz’s gaze. She knew she was getting giddy and tried to force her spirits down with the last few mouthfuls of wine.

  “No,” Becka eventually replied. “I want you to show it to me—like you did last time.” She was getting lost in his face again, but all of a sudden the reverie was broken by the hard buzzing of her phone against the table. Damn it. She should have turned it off, or at least turned it face-down. Because there, in glowing relief of the formerly dark window of the touch-screen, was her father, a photo of him spread across the display.

  Fitz’s face was crushed as he tried to look away but kept returning to the glowing phone on the table. Finally it stopped ringing and the stupid photo blipped out of existence. But it was almost immediately replaced with a text message, plainly visible in capital letters:

  “I hope you’ve regained your senses and put all that Jerry nonsense behind as we’d agreed.”

  Why did her father have this annoying habit of capitalizing his messages when he was pissed? And what the hell did he mean, agreed? She never agreed with him about anything that had to do with Fitz.

  “Agreed?” Fitz asked, his face pained, as if reading her thoughts.

  “Dad is tripping. I haven’t agreed with him on anything!”

  “Sure looks like he’s under a different impression,” Fitz muttered, before pulling on his jacket and striding out the door on his long, gorgeous legs.

  Becka wasn’t going to waste time freaking out now. She grabbed her own jacket and the credit card the maitre d’ waved vainly at her and ran after the man of her dreams.

  Chapter Seventeen

  She caught up to Fitz only a few steps from the restaurant, almost slamming into him.

  “I forgot my card,” Fitz muttered sheepishly, and Becka handed it to him. But she wasn’t going to let Fitz slink away.

  “Look, I know that was an awful thing to see. Like, literally the worst timing of all time. And I honestly, truly haven’t heard from dad in weeks, and even if I did, I’d be too busy screaming at him. He’s just trying to make our life hell.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t say ‘Okay, daddy’ and accept his conditions for your allowance or something?” Fitz muttered darkly, petulant as a child.

  “What? I don’t take money from him anymore. I’m twenty-two god damn years old and I have a decently paying job. Listen, I get it, you’re special, you’re a unique snowflake who understood love and loyalty and honesty more than anyone else ever has, and you don’t want to fight for love again, especially with all these red flags flapping in your face.
But I’m not you and I don’t care what our parents say. I didn’t know you, despite you being my stepbrother. But now I do. And I want to know you better.”

  “Look, this is crazy. You’re right, we don’t even know each other. I must seem a million years old to you, like some Leave It To Beaver, 1950’s relic. I know I might not fit your classic picture of a conservative kind of guy, but… but geez, I don’t know. I guess I’m just fucking shy and old-fashioned. And I don’t think I could ever be the kind of guy who falls into bed with anyone and especially my stepsister. I guess I can’t seem to shake it off like you did, and that just… It just makes me sad. And the absolute saddest thing is, seeing you here, talking like this, looking like this, and I just want to… I want to be with you. But I’m not sure we should be.”

  They were both walking at a furious pace, ranting under their breath at each other in the crowded streets. Neither spoke about where they were going, but once they arrived, it was clear to Becka this was where they were always going.

  The upholsterer’s shop window was dark, of course, and the stairwell smelled of someone’s spicy dinner. But Fitz’s apartment was as bright as before, and Becka followed him silently inside without speaking a further word. She unzipped her jacket and threw it to the wooden floors, hearing the sharp clatter of the metal of the zipper pull reverberate around the cavernous apartment like a starter’s pistol, a declaration of intent. Fitz stood before her, impassive, while Becka shed her dress, button by businesslike button. It wasn’t a striptease, not as such, but with Fitz’s fixed gaze and the warmth in the room, Becka felt herself starting to sweat. As she slid out of her dress and let it flutter to the ground behind her, she tentatively stepped towards Fitz. The scowl on his face egged her on. She was defiant and sexy, and she wouldn’t be written off: not now that she’d discovered so much, and needed so much more.

  “Show me the tattoo,” she demanded, her voice a hoarse whisper. “I want to see it.” She was only a few steps away from Fitz. She could smell the muskiness of his sweat, the fabric softener in his shirt. She honestly didn’t mean to, but her hand lingered over his hip, her fingers slid into his waistband, and she felt it there, hard proof that Fitz wasn’t as angry as he pretended to be. Or maybe he was, and he just had a funny way of showing it.

  He tolerated the slow exploration of Becka’s hand and didn’t protest when she took his and placed it over her now bare breast. As if by compulsion, Fitz’s fingers massaged her flesh and pinched her nipple, expertly bringing it to its most erect state. When their lips met, they were hungry, tongues probing and gulping down air as fast as they could. Suddenly, their hands were everywhere.

  Becka dropped to her knees just like she’d been longing to. She tore open a condom wrapper and slid it down Fitz’s shaft with her mouth, looking up into a face, at once grateful and commanding, visceral grunts already slipping from her. Determined not to waste another second, she stood and bent herself over the back of the couch, taking this position to protect her fresh tattoo once again. And Fitz needed no prompting. Taking care not to grip her too harsh, he steered his red-hot phallus into Becka’s sex, no inch of him the gentleman he once had been as he took her rough and hard. Becka, for her part, moaned in ecstasy, returning every frenzied thrust with her own, roaring like a wounded animal and begging him to ride on, ride harder, pound deeper and crueler, make her squirm, impaled by that stiff rod. Fitz had no mercy and rutted like an animal, the hard edge of his breath panting and straining as he worked his hips with more vigor, dug his fingers deeper. Becka, hopelessly turned on by the force, took her punishment and came so hard she wept, and Fitz followed suit a moment later, grunting and helplessly thrusting as he angrily spent himself inside her.

  When Becka, still gasping, turned around, she saw Fitz’s cheeks were wet with tears, and she kissed him, as tenderly and deeply as she could. He held her in his strong arms as though she were everything, the whole fragile Earth wrapped up in his hirsute grasp.

  “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he whispered, his voice anguished and so small in his broad chest.

  “No, never.”

  “Look, I think I’m just… I’m too close to this. I’m too fucked up by this whole concept of us being siblings.” He pulled away and Becka’s arms stayed up, reaching and pathetic as Fitz drifted over to the sideboard and gestured her towards a hall mirror. Becka moved, dream-like, and waited for Fitz to show her what she ostensibly came here to see.

  “It’s beautiful…” she breathed, looking at the colors dancing under the mirror’s spotlight, more vivid than she could have imagined a tattoo could be, her pert breasts flanking the design. “But…”

  “But it’s not finished.” And Fitz was right. The heart at the very center remained blank, and now that Becka saw it without the missing trace of scarlet, the whole image looked incomplete. “Maybe you need someone else to fill the last part.”

  Becka caught his eye in the mirror, and they were both in tears, their breath catching in their throats, but this time Fitz just looked away, turning his stricken face to the floor.

  “I’m not going to give up on you,” Becka whispered.

  “Well, maybe you should,” Fitz said back, his voice dull but just barely under control. “Listen… I don’t want you to go around making rash decisions and promises you can’t keep. You’re young, and you like to party, you said so yourself, remember? I’m not going to be the guy who forces you down when you want to come up, not with all these obstacles we have to overcome. But I want you to know that if you make up your mind, and you know for certain that you’re with me, then we need to be serious about it. If we’re going to fight our parents, I can’t get hurt like before, I don’t think I could handle that, not again. If you make your choice, I’ll be there, and I’ll be ready to fill that heart of yours. For now though, I think you’d better go home. Give us both some time to think.”

  Becka nodded, and said nothing, not trusting her voice to hold out. In her heart, she knew Fitz was right to say it, kind to give her this time to consider her choices and where they would lead. Especially given their precarious situation with their parents. She didn’t protest when Fitz handed her the dress, and she didn’t try to kiss him as she passed through the door. Fitz wasn’t so strong though, and he stole one final kiss, almost chaste and heartbreakingly sincere.

  Chapter Eighteen

  This time, Becka didn’t wallow. She didn’t mope. She applied for new jobs, she read about grad schools, she started planning the life she needed, without worrying about boys or parties or cool hip things. She thought about Fitz, of course, and she’d be lying if she said the memory of their last encounter, so hard and fast and brutal, didn’t make her want to run to his door and beg Fitz to take her again, their parents be damned. But that wasn’t how this was going to play out. She wasn’t going to pin all her dreams on one man, only to curse him when she didn’t live in bliss.

  Mick and Karen visited, and she was kept in the loop about Fitz’s hours, his appointment schedule, his down time. When Becka got home after their abortive date, her mind was a blur, and yet at the center of it, she remained supremely calm. She was going to weather this storm with the kind of resolve she should have had before.

  She thought she’d need longer to figure things out. She really did prepare to confront her soul in a thousand dark and terrifying ways: run through a gamut of self-questioning and emerge triumphant and self-aware at the other end. She was going to return to Fitz a wise and soulful woman. She was going to do yoga every single god damn day until she virtually levitated through all planes of reality. She was going to confront her dad and tell him to get the hell out of her love life, and to tell Eleanor to do the same. They could do nothing to stop them: their children were now adults, and their relationship wasn’t illegal. She’d be the most worldly, sage, and potent character Fitz had ever met.

  But then, only a few days into her journey of self-reflection, she caught sight of her tattoo as she got out of the shower, and it t
ook her breath away. In a physical turn Becka had never experienced before, her eyes brimmed over and spilled hot lashings of tears across her face. Bewildered and struck by an almost sublime feeling of bitter joy, Becka knew that the man who gave her this image, who made this feeling possible, was not someone she could easily let go. She didn’t need any more time for soul-searching and grasping, she knew exactly what she wanted and precisely where to find it. She was in love with a man so potently, so absolutely, that the mere reminder of his existence filled every nerve in her body with fireworks. She felt, leaning there against her bathroom tile and cringing, that she couldn’t find a better way to describe it, as though her body and her soul were having an orgasm at the same time. She knew the moment she felt the throbbing between her legs die away, and the inflamed pulsing of her heart remained, that she didn’t need to waste time. She needed Fitz.

  She didn’t consult with Karen or Mick or Jerome, and instead, for the first time, she trusted her instincts and let her heart lead her. That scrap of bare flesh on her body resonated to her real heart, only inches away from it, and she felt the space calling out to Fitz, pulling her across the city as dusk began to fall and into the arms of her one true love.

  When she arrived at the stairway leading down to Dickie’s Emporium, she felt exactly the same as she had that first time those long weeks ago. She couldn’t believe how much had come to pass, and how insignificant it would all seem when she and Fitz looked back on their life together years from now.

  The door was unlocked, but Becka knew he’d be alone. Mick and Karen didn’t stay late, their own little nod to anarchy in a consumer-driven society. Becka thought about how unsafe that was, to leave the front open with no one manning the desk. What if someone tried to rob them? Well, Becka thought as she stepped into the neon-lit gloom, strong-armed six-foot Fitz could scare them away! And she almost swooned in the foyer with excitement. Everything seemed more alive than usual, the fluorescent glow of the pink and aqua neons struck her as totally romantic, better than any shabby candle-light. The beaded curtain was the height of chic décor, and the couch looked plenty big enough for two. She found herself amending all her memories of this place one by one, from locations of awkwardness or confusion or murky lust, to bright spaces to be cherished, areas for the moments in which she felt truly and completely in love, even if she hadn’t really known it at the time.