Stepbrother Outlaw: The Novel (Dark Steamy Stepbrother Romance)

by Craft, Lana

  The last thing Eden saw before she passed out was darkness. It was vast, endless even, and it scared her more than the idea of dying ever had.

  When Eden finally awoke, she found herself in a hospital room with an IV in her arm and tubes up her nose. A machine beeped beside her. She tried to focus her eyes but the strain associated in doing so was too much for her to bear, so she shut them, feeling her chest tighten as tears collected in the corners of her eyes.

  Eden wanted an explanation but no one was available to give her one. The hospital was quiet and her room appeared to be isolated from the rest of the corridor. There was no noise leaking in under her door, not even footsteps, and for a brief moment she began to relent herself to the fact that she might have been forgotten about.

  The worst part of all was that she couldn’t remember any of the details on what had landed her here. She usually had at least a few flecks of memory left after a blackout, but now there was nothing. She couldn’t remember even a single solitary detail that would explain why she felt as though she had been hit by a bus. It was as if her brain had short charged on itself.

  Eden sat up and adjusted herself in the tiny bed, groaning as a sharp pressure twisted its way through her abdomen. “Ow,” she mumbled, gripping the edge of the plastic bed frame for support until her knuckles flushed of color.

  Something wasn’t right. She felt light headed and her tongue was heavy and dry against the inside of her mouth. As she began to sweat, she gripped hold of her hospital gown, biting down on her bottom lip as she pulled the starch fabric upwards and bunched it up around her stomach.

  Eden couldn’t believe her eyes. There was nothing there. No bruising. Nothing that would explain the wrenching pain she felt in her gut. She cursed under her breath as a single tear slid its way down her cheek and reached up to rub it away as she took in her surroundings.

  The room was small, sterile, and smelled heavily of bleach. As though on cue, the door in the corner swung open and a man in a white doctors coat and baby blue scrubs entered. He was whistling along to the tune of a nonexistent song and approached the isolated sink across from Eden, pressing his clipboard beneath his left arm as he washed his hands. As he pulled wad of paper towel from the dispenser, he took notice of the fact that she had been watching him all along.

  “Oh good!” he exclaimed, approaching the edge of Eden's bed and adjusting it so that she was sitting up. It was then that she noticed the nametag attached to his coat.

  His name was Dr. Sunji Odom. Eden started to speak, but he held out a hand to stop her before she could. “Your voice may be quite hoarse, that’s normal,” he assured her, inserting a thermometer into her mouth before she could object.

  Eden nodded against it, allowing him to continue his examination. Once all her vitals were taken, he slid into the empty armchair beside her and hesitated as he flipped through the paperwork attached to his clipboard. Every now and then, he looked at Eden over the frames of his wire glasses and offered her a sympathetic smile.

  “Okay,” he said in a heavy Middle Eastern accent. Eden braced herself for the worst. She might not have been afraid of the grim reaper but that certainly didn't mean she wanted to meet him anytime soon.

  Dr. Odom ran a hand over his beard as his eyes darted over the paperwork in his hands. When he finally looked up, the expression on his face was one of slight confusion. “Ms. Winters, do you understand why you’re here?”

  Eden shook her head. Wasn’t that kind of obvious at this point?

  “Well,” he continued. “I’m going to give it to you straight. You overdosed. On—” he paused, licking his fingers and flipping the page. “A combination of cocaine, sleeping pills, and—”

  "Liquor." It was the first word to leave Eden’s mouth since she awoke and it carried a heavy burden. “Lots and lots of liquor.”

  Dr. Odom nodded and raised an eyebrow before clearing his throat and continuing to speak. “So you remember?”

  Eden shook her head. She didn’t remember anything substantial, but assuming alcohol was the final substance that did her in was as good a guess as any based on her past transgressions.

  “Alright,” Dr. Odom said, standing up. “Well the good news is that short term memory loss is normal in situations like these, even more so when multiple drugs are involved.” He paused to let his words sink in. “If you've noticed, your stomach may hurt. That's because we had to pump it."

  Eden exhaled a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair. “That explains it,” she managed.

  A sad smile worked its way across the Dr. Odom's face. He removed his glasses, folding them before sticking them into the pocket of his jacket. “You’re a lucky woman,” he said. “If your fiancé hadn’t found you when he did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

  Eden’s heart sunk and her stomach tightened. She could hardly process what he had just said to her. She accepted the plastic cup of water that was handed to her, taking a slow sip. “You’re confused,” she said after a few moments, finding her voice. “I’m not…I mean I don’t have a fiancé.”

  Dr. Odom paused in the doorway and looked down at his clipboard, then back up at Eden. He approached her bed and held out the paperwork for her to look at, pointing to the name scribbled on top.

  Patient checked in by: Trent Levitt. Fiancé.

  “He filled out the paperwork and everything,” Dr. Odom explained as Eden’s disbelief settled over her. She had dealt with fans doing crazy things in the past, but this definitely took the cake. “If I’m not mistaken, he even rode with you in the ambulance.”

  What the fuck?

  Eden swallowed hard as the room began to slowly close in on her. She could hardly string two coherent thoughts together, let alone speak. She didn’t know this man. He wasn’t her fiancé. She had never even heard his name.

  “If it wasn’t for him you wouldn’t be alive right now,” Dr. Odom added, but Eden couldn’t concentrate on anything he was saying. That word, that single word, continued echoing inside her head, pushing up against the flimsy boundaries of her memory.

  Fiancé.

  “I’m not engaged,” Eden finally said, finding her voice. “I don’t have a fiancé.”

  Chapter six

  Trent wasn’t sure he had ever seen a woman as strikingly beautiful as the one passed out in the bathtub before him. Her skin was soft and flawless but for a few bruises and she had a natural blush to her cheeks that most women would have killed for.

  "Hey," he whispered, reaching out to gently shake her awake. She was stark naked and her skin was clammy to the touch, but he remained courteous, not looking at any one part of her body for too long at a time.

  After downing an entire bottle of liquor in less than twenty minutes, Trent had just come into the bathroom for a piss. The woman's presence took him by surprise, but only momentarily. As bad as it sounded, it wasn’t the first time he had stumbled upon a naked woman asleep in a bathroom, but those were stories for another day.

  Trent sat down on the lid of the toilet and gathered up the woman’s clothing from the floor. "Who are you?" Trent questioned, reaching for the leather purse on the ground beside it. He opened it up and rummaged through it, looking for a wallet or anything else he could use to help identify her with.

  The bag was overflowing with pill bottles and Trent frowned as he read over each label. The names were long and complex but their intention was simple. They were just your run of the mill uppers and downers.

  Jesus Christ, Trent thought, there was an entire pharmacy stuffed away in there. When his hand grazed something he thought might be a wallet, he pulled it out, opening it up and sliding out the woman’s license. It had long since expired, but it gave him the answers he was looking for.

  Her name was Eden. She stood just over five foot seven and weighed a meager 120 pounds. Her eyes were brown, her smile was perfect, and she was beautiful. Trent still didn’t recognize her though. Not by a long shot.

  The address on he
r license was a Calabasas one. Whoever this Eden was, one thing was for sure. She was a long way from home.

  Trent was Sergeant-of-arms of the Savage motorcycle club. Their clubhouse was on the south side of the city, in an area called Watts. It wasn’t as dangerous or impoverished as Compton, but it was hardly the Ritz and Carlton a girl from Calabasas was probably used to.

  Trent held Eden's license up to the light and squinted at the picture. There were a few noteworthy differences between her appearance when it was taken and the way she looked now. For starters, she looked much younger and healthier in the photo.

  Beginning to feel intrusive, Trent slid Eden’s license back in her wallet and looked over at her. She might have looked different now, but the natural beauty that radiated in the picture was still there.

  Hell, Trent thought, with this being LA she was probably some kind of model. He looked up and noticed the foam bubbling from her mouth, trickling its way down her chin. She wasn’t sleeping. This was something else entirely.

  Trent jumped to his feet, pushing back the shower curtain and lifting Eden by her armpits. Her pulse was weak but it was there. He wiped at the foam as more surfaced, pushing its way through her clenched teeth.

  Fuck.

  Trent paced. He knew she needed to be taken to a hospital before her condition worsened, but he only had his bike. That meant he’d have to call an ambulance. Normally it wouldn't have been that big an issue, but tonight, the club was having a party in celebration of his fortieth. Alcohol was flowing by the gallon, controlled substances were being passed around like candy, and the entire place was packed from wall to wall with people, way past capacity.

  Calling an ambulance would attract attention, and attention would attract cops. That’s just the way it went.

  But Trent had no other choice. As he stared down at Eden’s unresponsive body, he knew it needed to be done. He couldn’t risk her death being on his hands, much less conscious.

  With that, he fished his phone from his pocket and dialed the number, knowing full well that it meant a few of his brothers would be spending the night in a cellblock.

  “911 what is your emergency?”

  Trent cleared his throat and turned on the water, adjusting the nozzles so that the shower kicked on. It was a last-ditch effort but he braced himself anyway, hoping it might help stir Eden awake.

  “Sir?” the monotone female voice repeated.

  Trent sighed and raked a hand through his dark hair. “Yeah, my uh—” He paused and glanced down at Eden, saying the first thing that came to mind. “My...fiancé overdosed,” he continued. “At least I think so. She’s in the bathtub and she’s unresponsive. I found a bunch of pill bottles. I need you to send an ambulance right away. I’m at 375 Lennox.”

  An ambulance arrived less than five minutes later with two squad cars in close succession behind it.

  Trent could hear the commotion and opened the door to find a pair of paramedics pushing their way through the crowd, through swarms of people who had caught wind of what was going on and were attempting to flee. He stepped aside and pulled back the shower curtain to reveal Eden, allowing them to rush past him.

  Trent felt bad that he hadn’t thought to cover her but the men didn't seem fazed. As they went to work in hoisting Eden up onto their stretcher, he stepped aside to give them room and entered the hallway to find a cop putting a pair of handcuffs on a prospect whose name he couldn't recall.

  His partner was going around the clubhouse asking people who the property owner was, but everyone remained tight-lipped, shrugging their shoulders instead.

  Trent stepped outside for a smoke but when one of the paramedics asked him if he wanted to ride in the ambulance with his “fiancé”, he was taken momentarily off guard.

  “Well?” the man asked again, an impatient look working its way across his face. “Look, we really need to get her to the hospital…”

  “Alright,” Trent interrupted, killing his smoke and flicking the butt to the ground. Before he could contemplate the repercussions associated with what he was doing, he climbed into the back of the vehicle, taking a seat on the ledge beside Eden’s stretcher.

  They had her connected to a dozen different machines already, which beeped loudly and muffled out the noise of the pissed off partygoers that now littered the street.

  The last time Trent rode in the back of an ambulance was in 2001, shortly after September 11th had shaken the entire country into a period of mourning. On a cloudy Monday morning, he entered his father’s home to find him passed out on his kitchen floor.

  The doctors said it was a heart attack.

  After the funeral, Trent got the hell out of dodge. He didn’t have it in him to mourn the loss of a man he despised. His father was a brutish man with a bark worse than his bite, but the things he would say carried just as much of a punch as any fist could.

  It was why every woman he ever married ended up coming to her senses and leaving him. And it was why he had died alone.

  Trent drove west until the bright lights of Hollywood anchored him the way it had with Blair. For what felt like an eternity, he searched for her, but he never found her and eventually he stopped looking entirely.

  As the ambulance bumped along the road, Trent reached for Eden's hand and relaxed a bit when he felt how warm she was. At the hospital, he followed the paramedics though the emergency room doors, taking a seat in the waiting room when they rolled her away.

  A nurse approached Trent with some paperwork a few seconds later. When she was gone, he read it over, feeling his hands begin to sweat. He didn’t know the answer to a single question being asked. He only knew what was on her license.

  Her name was Eden. She was twenty, moderately tall and petite, at one point she had lived in Calabasas, and she wasn't an organ donor. But why would he know anything substantial about her? They were strangers, Trent knew that, but that didn’t mean he could fight the uncanny sense of obligation he felt towards her.

  After writing down what little he did know, Trent handed the clipboard back over to the nurse and settled into his seat. The next few hours passed in a slow blur. He made three different trips to the vending machine up the hall, using up all the change in his pockets, he drank cup after cup of stale coffee, and he lingered near the exit and thought seriously about leaving.

  When a doctor surfaced from the private room where Eden was taken and made his way over to him, he stood up and gave his hand a brief shake.

  “Hello, I'm Dr. Odom," he said, looking down at the paperwork in his hands. "You're the fiancé, I presume?"

  "Uh." Trent nodded and cleared his throat. “Yeah...I am,” he spoke up, hardly even believing himself. "How’s she holding up? Is she alright?"

  "Yes," Dr. Odom responded. “We have her stabilized if you’d like to follow me.”

  Trent hesitated before following him through a set of swinging doors and down a small hallway.

  A few seconds later, they entered a dimly lit hospital room and Dr. Odom reached forward, pulling back the curtain to reveal Eden's sleeping form. “You saved her life,” he spoke up, patting Trent reassuringly on the back.

  Saved her life.

  The words echoed in Trent’s head as he stared down at her. She really was beautiful, even like this, with tubes up her nose and her mascara running down her face.

  That wasn't why Trent was so captivated by her though. What really got him was how much she reminded him of Blair the last time he ever saw her.

  Chapter seven

  “Ms. Winters? Ms. Winters are you awake?”

  Eden’s eyes snapped open. She didn't know how long she had been out but it felt like an eternity. Dr. Odom was standing beside her bed. He handed her a glass of water and she took a quick sip, adjusting her eyes to the light.

  “Can I go home?” Eden heard herself ask, but her voice came out ragged and her throat felt like sand paper. It was then that she noticed the presence of a third person in the room. Someone she didn’t recognize who
still managed to feel vaguely familiar to her.

  In her defense, Trent certainly didn’t look the part of a doctor. He was scruffy and weathered, but handsome all the same, with dark hair that hung in his face, framing the most intense pair of blue eyes Eden had ever seen. Try as she might, she couldn't take her eyes off of him. “Who is that?” she finally questioned, feeling her voice crack as she looked back and fourth between him and Dr. Odom.

  Dr. Odom stopped what he was doing and looked over at her. He furrowed his brows, taking a step towards Trent and whispering in his ear. Eden could barely make out what he was saying but she managed to capture the gist of it.

  “It’s okay,” she heard him say in a low voice. “It's only short term memory loss. If she doesn't seem to be getting any better in a few days, give me a call and we'll schedule an MRI.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a card, handing it over to Trent, who slid it inside his wallet as he followed him out into the hall.