by Joey Bush
“I’d like to get to know both of you better,” I said, glancing from Jaxon to Bob. I had been so looking forward to this vacation, but sitting at that table the only thing I could think about was that I wanted to go straight back to the campus and pretend that nothing had ever happened.
I felt sick in the pit of my stomach and wondered if there was any way I’d manage to keep from losing my dinner before it had a chance to settle in my stomach. I thought of everything that had gone on between Jaxon and me. It was so incredibly stupid—that we’d ended up having sex together not knowing that either of our parents knew each other. It was like a nightmare. I thought bitterly that if it weren’t for the fact that Jaxon was his son, I could have liked Bob well enough. He seemed nice, and he was definitely easy on the eyes, in an older-guy way. Mom was happy with him.
Even if it weren’t for the fact of Jaxon now being my step-brother, I would have been shocked at the fact that Mom had gotten married so suddenly. I tried to remember if she had told me anything relevant to the current situation when she had started dating Bob. All I could remember was that she had gushed about how hot the guy was, how sweet and kind he was to her, how he bought her little things here and there, and how his house was amazing. I didn’t think that she had told me a thing about her new boyfriend having a son; but then, I had started tuning Mom out when she would talk about the guy, figuring that like most of her relationships it would fizzle out eventually and there was no point in paying too much attention. Leave it to me to have ignored possibly the most important information. All I knew was that the campus was too far away for me to make an excuse to go back—and even if I could convince my mom, it wasn’t like I could stay away for the entire holiday. She’d be hurt—and the truth would come out. I couldn’t break that kind of news to her.
CHAPTER 2
How I managed to get through the dinner, I will never know. Jaxon mostly kept quiet—though he would chime in every so often whenever Mom or Bob directed a question at us. We both pretended to be interested in getting to know each other, continuing the stream of stupid, inane comments about our lives and everything in the immediate vicinity. “This is really good chicken,” was one of my lamer attempts at keeping up the incredibly awkward conversation. Jaxon asked how badly it had been snowing as I’d driven up. Bob asked me if I had had any trouble finding the place, mom repeated over and over again how perfect the house was for a family get-together.
By the time all the plates were cleared and I’d somehow eaten dessert, I was more than ready to get some time to myself. “Hey,” I said, interrupting Mom and Bob in the midst of a conversation about what they wanted to do for family bonding. “I think I’m really just…exhausted from that long drive. Where is my room?”
“I’m so sorry,” Bob said, standing quickly. “It’s down the main hall, the third door on the right. I had Maria put your bags in there when you came in.” I nodded, looking around at the huge place. I wasn’t even sure if I knew where the main hall was. How many rooms were in the place? And then—to my horror—I wondered just how far away Jaxon’s room was from mine.
“Bob, she only just got here!” Mom laughed. “She doesn’t even know where the main hall is. Here, let me show her.” Mom took me by the arm, all smiles and joy as she led me through the living room area where I’d met my new family. She was talking a mile a minute, telling me how nice Jaxon had been ever since he’d arrived earlier in the day, how excited she was to be spending the holiday all together, how much she hoped I’d love Bob and my new brother. “You know, you used to beg me to get you a brother all the time when you were little,” Mom said, and I gritted my teeth, smiling as she grinned at me. “It took me a while, but I got you one, baby girl!” I laughed, forcing myself to keep up the look of excitement in spite of the fact that everything Mom was saying was just making everything worse inside of my head. If she knew, I thought, she’d be horrified.
Mom opened the door to my bedroom and I nearly froze in place where I stood. “It’s great, isn’t it? I knew you’d love it.” Mom was saying something to me while we just stood there, but I could barely hear her. The room was better than great—it was kind of amazing. It was bigger than my room at home—almost as big as the entire dorm room I shared with three other girls at school. There was an enormous bed against one wall, covered in thick, fluffy blankets and huge pillows; I had my own bathroom on the opposite side of the room, and my bags were in front of an open closet door that extended back into a wall for an improbable distance. There was a tiny fireplace, a big flat-screen TV, a desk—every comfort I could imagine.
I finally convinced Mom that I was perfectly fine, that I just needed some time to myself to decompress after the two-hour drive and how tired I was. The moment she left I closed and locked the door behind her. For at least ten minutes I stood there, just staring at the incredibly luxurious room and trying to figure out just what the hell my life had come to. I turned on the TV and flipped through the guide until I found something on ESPN that I could at least pretend to watch without getting completely distracted, then I sank down onto the edge of the bed. I was exhausted—my nerves were completely and totally shot—but at the same time, I wanted absolutely nothing more than to get back in the car and drive back to school. Or maybe wander around the incredibly huge house until I was completely exhausted and passed out.
What I wanted most of all was to somehow be able to forget the entire terrible day had happened. I stared at the TV, the color and light dancing across my eyes, the noise of the commentators filling my ears with meaningless babble. I wished that I could just start completely over. Go back in time and keep myself from sleeping with Jaxon—or maybe keep my mom from meeting Jaxon’s dad. My stomach churned and I felt like I wanted to throw up. I felt like I wanted to punch something. I felt like I wanted to find the nearest door and just run out into the snow and keep running until I couldn’t see the house, until I couldn’t see any of it, just totally lose myself in the woods or somewhere and pretend like nothing at all had happened.
It would have been easier if I could have decided how I felt about the whole situation. I was horrified—I was angry—I was confused. Why did Bob and my mom have to meet? Why did Jaxon have to flirt with me? I couldn’t think of who was to blame for the incredible pile of messy crap that I was suddenly forced to deal with. I wanted to be mad at everyone, but every time I turned my mind onto one or another of my family members, I couldn’t actually come up with any specific reason to be angry with them.
It would have been so easy if I could have just blamed my mom. If she hadn’t married Bob, this whole situation wouldn’t matter; Jaxon and I would have just been two people in college who’d had sex, and it would have been meaningless. But how could I deny my mom happiness? She’d been unhappy for so long, and really, she had gone to so much stress and trouble for me, I’d be the worst kind of petty, horrible person if I wanted her to trade in her happiness just so I wouldn’t have to deal with the awkwardness of having inadvertently slept with my step-brother. Had he been my step-brother when we’d slept together? That didn’t seem likely—the wedding was pretty recent, and Jaxon had been avoiding me for weeks.
The wedding. I tried to be angry at Mom for getting married so suddenly—to a guy she’d only been dating for a handful of months—but at least, I thought, she and Bob seemed to love each other a lot. It may not last, but she was a grown woman, and it was a done deal. If they got divorced, as much as it would hurt mom, at least it would make things less uncomfortable with Jaxon and me. But I couldn’t even wish for that outcome. Mom was happy; I wanted her to stay happy.
I couldn’t be mad at Bob either. I barely knew the man, but if I could give my mom credit for being a grown woman who knew her mind at least fairly well, I had to give Bob—who had apparently managed to live successfully—the credit for being an intelligent guy with his own interests at heart. He had loved my mom enough to want to marry her. Whether it worked out or not, I couldn’t go around telling people
they couldn’t get married because I might have slept with their kids. I couldn’t hate either of them for doing what made them happy when I’d done the same thing; I’d be an enormous hypocrite.
I wanted to be mad at Jaxon. I really did. The way he had snubbed me, the way he’d deliberately flirted with me and led me on and then slept with me and shut me out—only for me to find out that he was now my step-brother—it would be so easy. But I had to admit that if he’d had knowledge that his dad was dating my mom, and then that they’d gotten married, it only made sense that Jaxon wouldn’t want anything to do with me after that. I didn’t want to have anything at all to do with him. I wanted nothing more than to spend my entire holiday avoiding him. The house was big enough that I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be that difficult; and anyway, I had brought my gear with me, and I had plenty of warm clothes. If nothing else I could hit the slopes or I could go walking or do anything at all to stay away from Jaxon. The sight of him—the thought of him—turned my stomach.
I sat in bed, staring at the TV without really watching it, trying to decide how I was possibly going to get through the whole ridiculous holiday weekend without being forced to say to my mom, “Hey, so, you know how you wanted to introduce me to my new step-brother? I already know him. Biblically.” It was a complete disaster. There was absolutely no one I could tell about it, either; as far as I knew, no one in the frat knew that Jaxon and I had slept together, and I pretty much wanted to keep it that way. I wasn’t close with my roommates, I didn’t have any other siblings I could confide in, and I definitely couldn’t tell my mom about it. Who do you even talk to about something like that? I thought wryly that the school psychologist would probably be a good start.
I groaned in the darkness. It was hopeless. The only thing I could do would be to completely and totally avoid Jaxon. He had snubbed me at school and I had been hurt by it, but it was easy to see now why he had. I would just do the same thing I’d been doing and pretend that he didn’t exist. I’d stay away from him and eventually the awkwardness of the situation would go away on its own and I would be able to stop thinking about how good the sex had been and how much it sucked that I clearly couldn’t even hope to ever have sex with him again. Even if Mom and Bob got a divorce, how weird would it be to have sex with someone who used to be your brother—even if it was only by marriage?
It wasn’t fair. I was sure that Jaxon probably didn’t mean anything by the sex, but why would he have even done it if he knew that we were going to be siblings? I had to assume that Jaxon was just as weirded out by the situation as I was, so he couldn’t have known anything about our parents when we’d ended up having sex on the couch. Or maybe he was just ashamed of the fact that he had knowingly slept with a girl that he knew was going to be his step-sister. How long before the holiday had our parents gotten married? And why hadn’t mom told me?
I turned over onto my stomach, staring at the TV. The harder I tried to forget about what had happened between Jaxon and me the more it came back to me. It was too easy to remember him taking off my shirt, pulling my bra away from my body, sucking on my nipples until I was soaking wet for him, more than ready to take whatever he had to offer. I shivered in a mixture of disgust and remembered desire as the sensations and the facts came back to me in flash after flash. Jaxon finding my clit with his fingertips, rubbing and stroking me until I gushed on his fingers, hot and ready and soaking wet. “Fuck, Mia, you’re soaking wet. You’re so fucking hot, girl—so hot and wet, fuck.” I could hear his voice in my head, barely above a whisper, as if it had happened only the day before and not weeks.
All I had to do was close my eyes for a second and I could see him naked—the scattered brown hair on his chest, the muscles rippling underneath his skin, the deep cuts of his hips, the sight of his hard cock standing up, proudly erect. If he’d known then that we were going to be siblings, that his dad was going to marry my mom…he couldn’t have known. I couldn’t believe that he’d had any idea that it was going to happen. But it was almost the very next day when he had started to snub me. It didn’t make any sense, but it made all the sense in the world.
What in the world was I going to do about it, other than just avoid him entirely? It was a big house, and there was plenty to do. As long as I could avoid any stupid “family time” events that Mom cooked up out of her need for us to all be one big happy family, I thought maybe I could bear it. It was only a few days, and then I’d be back on the campus and Jaxon and I could go back to pretending like the other one didn’t exist.
I remembered how angry he’d been when I’d confronted him about the way he was being such an asshole to me. He’d told me to completely forget anything had happened, and I’d tried—but I hadn’t succeeded. Maybe if a little more time passed, I’d be able to do it. I had to hope. I couldn’t deal with how incredibly awkward it was; especially when it was difficult not to remember that Jaxon had made me come so hard I’d been willing to put aside my scruples of wanting to stay single and uncommitted in any way just to get another chance at him. God, I thought, burying my face in the blankets. I’d been such an idiot the whole time. But then, Jaxon could at least have told me what the hell was going on. Maybe he hadn’t known at all; maybe he’d just brushed me off for reasons of his own and it was just convenient for him that our parents had gotten married—though it sure as hell didn’t seem any more convenient for him than it was for me.
I’d just have to make the situation work. I’d do as much as I could away from the house, keep myself busy and out of Jaxon’s way. He would probably be just as anxious as I was to avoid being alone together. That should, at least, make it easy. If only our parents didn’t push too hard.
I had been sitting in the dark with the TV for maybe an hour when my peace—such as it was—was interrupted by a knock at the door. “Mom, I told you I’m fine, I’m just tired,” I called out. With my luck she had gotten out a stack of board games and would want me to partner up with Jaxon against her and Bob at Pictionary or something.
“It’s not your Mom, it’s me.” I groaned as the familiar voice came through the door. Jaxon. What the hell was he doing at my door? He spends weeks completely avoiding me and pushing me away and now he comes to my door. The very last thing I could have wanted in the entire world.
“Jaxon, go away,” I called out, turning away from the door.
“I want to talk to you, Mia,” Jaxon called back. I cringed, realizing that I’d seen about a handful of people in the house other than Mom, Bob, Jaxon and me. Any one of them could be within earshot. Mom could be just down the hall. I didn’t know anything about the house. I wanted to tell him to go to hell, that he was the very last person in the world I wanted to talk to right about then, but it’d be too obvious that we knew each other already if I said that.
“I’m tired and I feel sick to my stomach. I just want to sleep,” I called over my shoulder. “Please just leave me alone. It was a long freaking drive to get here.” I heard a dull thud.
“Mia, I know it’s a long drive, I made that drive myself.” I sighed, clenching my teeth. Why was he doing this? He had been just fine with ignoring me. I would not have thought that I would ever be at a point where I preferred him going out of his way to pretend I didn’t exist—but that was before. As hurt as I had been, I was more than ready to bring ignoring each other back into style.
“Jaxon, I don’t feel like talking. I really don’t.” Another thud at the door.
“Come on, Mia. Just let me in. Open the door.” I buried my face in the thick, fluffy pillows on my bed and groaned out, lifting my head and letting it fall into the soft cushions over and over again.
“I am not going to let you in, Jaxon,” I called out. “Just leave me alone, will you? I’m not going to talk to you tonight. I’m going to bed.” I could feel Jaxon’s presence lingering outside of my room for a few more moments and I wondered if he’d go so far as to actually talk to me through the door—or at least try to. If he did, I’d have to open th
e door and let him in just to avoid anyone at all knowing what we were talking about.
“Fine!” he called. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I rolled my eyes and buried my face once more in the pillows. I was as tired as I would have been spending an entire day boarding, or staying up all night to cram for a test. All I wanted is to go to sleep and wake up to find out the next morning that I’d been horribly mistaken and that my new step-brother was some other guy, that I’d been so tired that I’d hallucinated the whole thing. Plenty of guys in the world could be named Jaxon, right? I barely remembered to turn the TV off before my sense of bone-deep exhaustion overcame me. I didn’t even take off my clothes or change into pajamas. I slithered under the covers and closed my eyes and willed the morning to be at least a little bit better than the evening had been. Maybe, if I wished for it hard enough, the whole stupid thing would have just been a dream.
CHAPTER 3
I woke up early the next morning, my head aching and my body feeling as though it was made out of lead. I took a deep breath and turned over in bed, looking out through the window; it was barely dawn outside, the sky still steely gray. I’d gone to bed so early the night before that I didn’t even mind being awake before the morning was really started. I sat up in bed and looked around my room. It was just as nice as it had been the night before—just as luxurious, just as comfy, just as strange compared to the tiny room I’d had with my mom and the tiny dorm I lived in at school.
No one would be up yet, I thought idly, picking at imaginary lint on my pants. I needed to think. I needed to get out of my room and out of my head and do something. I remembered my mom going on and on about what a great home it was, how Bob had thought of everything—every little comfort. My new step-father was definitely loaded, I thought, looking around at the TV, the desk, all of it.
