Quid Pro Quo: A dark stepbrother romance

by Nenia Campbell

  “It's like I said,” Nick told her. “I am so fucking done.”

  “Well—I'm not going to marry you. You can't threaten people into doing what you want. They'll despise you for it—they might even hurt you for it. I think your father could actually kill you,” Jay added nervously, remembering the way he'd slammed his fist so close to her face. “There's something seriously wrong with him.” And with you.

  “You both have four years to get used to the idea.”

  “Oh my God,” Jay said again weakly.

  “Marry me,” said Nick. “It solves all your problems. You'll have money. You'll have my last name. My dad won't mess around with you anymore. And your mom can go fuck herself when my dad's divorce lawyers drag her through the cleaners.”

  “You blackmailed me,” said Jay. “You threatened to drag my name through the mud in front of everyone in town. You forced me to have sex with you. You filmed me without my permission and you still haven't deleted the video—or were you planning on doing that as a wedding gift?” She drew in a painful breath. “What made you think I would possibly want to marry you?”

  His dark eyebrows angled down. “Are you going to refuse me again?”

  “Yes, I'm going to refuse you again,” she hissed. “Because this is stupid.” Her chest was rising and falling with her anger and she could begin to feel her palms sweating against his wool jacket. “It's stupid,” she repeated, her voice breaking, “and it's never going to be enough. You're going to try to own me and it's not going to stop until one of us is completely broken.”

  “And would that be so bad?” She felt his nails scratch gently down her spine and it nearly made her stumble again. “Would it?” he repeated, more softly. “It wouldn't even have to be violent, Jay. I think the right words would do it. I've seen how you come apart.”

  She could feel his breath teasing her lips and turned away, bowing her head towards the floor against that all-too familiar tide of shame.

  Yes, she knew better than anyone how words could shatter the soul.

  “Seriously, Jay. Marry me. I'm all you have. Men like Michael and Quentin look at you and see someone pure who needs protecting, but you and I both know that's not what you want.”

  What I want. Jay slid her hand out of his, placing it back on his shoulder.

  “You know what the really stupid thing is? I never really cared about Michael and Quentin never cared about me. I don't even talk with Angela and all of my old friends have moved on. I cared so much about what everyone thought that it paralyzed the part of my brain that should have been saying fuck these people, Jay, and I just—gave in to you. I gave you whatever you wanted until I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror and I don't know why.”

  She let out a breath.

  “Go ahead and tell everyone in Stanford and Hollybrook that I'm your little whore. I might be that—but I won't be your wife.” Jay tore at the chain around her neck, wincing as it cut into her flesh before snapping. She dropped it into his hand, closing his fingers over it. “We're done.”

  “Where are you going?” His voice was low. “People are watching.”

  “I don't know. Away from you.”

  The song ended and Jay stepped away from him, turning down the hall to where the bathrooms were. Feeling like she desperately needed a good, hard cry. There was a line, though, and so she kept walking, passing dark rows of empty offices with windows like blind eyes.

  I did it, thought Jay. I'm free. So why doesn't it feel good?

  Her throat felt raw where she had ripped the necklace off. Her heart, even more so.

  She had never felt less free.

  Jay paused at the end of a hall, standing between a conference room and a fire escape, wiping a few tears from her face. That was when she heard a sound—soft and quiet, like a muffled cry. “Is someone there?”

  The sound cut off abruptly and Jay could feel her heart pounding into the silence. Someone's here, she thought, staring into the darkness of the conference room. Something's wrong. She groped for a light switch, plunging the scene into a stark, sick, fluorescent tableau.

  It was Damon, and he had some poor woman bent over the conference table with his hand clapped over her mouth. Jay had never seen her before, but she had loose, feathery brown hair and glasses, which were all fogged up and sliding down her nose. When she looked up at Jay, her eyes were red. Like she's been crying, thought Jay. That sick fuck.

  Jay backed up, tripping as her heels got caught up in her skirts.

  “Justine.” Damon stepped back and Jay looked away but not fast enough. Oh my God, that's his cock, she thought, which was enough to send her running. Behind her, she heard him swear.

  She wasn't sure where she was going, only that she needed to be far, far away from here, and that someone—she wasn't sure who—needed to be told. A hand grabbed her arm and Jay was flung into the wall, back-first. She gasped, winded, throwing up her arms to cover her face when she saw something fly towards her.

  But Damon's goal wasn't to hit, but to entrap. Her body jolted as his free hand slammed against the wall, caging her in. “Justine,” he said, nearly snarling her name. “You've been busy.”

  Jay shot her knee into his groin. She heard him gag and curse, the hand on her arm convulsing. “Let go of me,” she cried out. “Let go—you rapist!”

  “No,” he rasped. “That's just a little game we like to play.”

  “She was crying.” Jay felt like she could barely stand. The hand wrapped around her arm felt like a fleshy manacle. “I'm calling the police.”

  “The police?” Damon grabbed her clutch with his free hand and threw it so hard that the clasp broke on the first bounce off the tile, spilling her things down the hall. “Who the fuck do you think you're talking to, little girl? I own the police. Nicholas grew up with Sheriff Van Hoff's boy and our money runs this town.”

  Damon ripped her away from the wall.

  “And speaking of Nicholas, I suppose I have you to thank for his revived interest in photography. Did you put him up to that, you little bitch?”

  “N-no!”

  “Did you think you would get away with it? You're worse than your mother.” He yanked on her arm, pulling it hard up her back. Fabric ripped and beads scattered. Jay went limp as she stumbled along next to him. “Don't fool yourself into thinking you hold any sort of sway here because you let my son bend you over a couch.”

  Oh God, no.

  “Tell me,” he said, in a calm voice that chilled her. “When did your Mrs. Robinson act begin? Was Nicholas underage when it did? I saw him take you into his room when he was fourteen. Did you touch him when he was twelve? You want to fucking come for me, Justine, and I will slap you with statutory rape charges so fast you'll be gagging on lawsuits.”

  “I didn't touch him,” Jay cried. “I would never—oh God. He was a child.”

  He was taking her back to that empty conference room. She began to kick and struggle, but he had some of her hair tangled up with her arm and she couldn't straighten up enough to really fight. Not without eliciting a sharp burst of pain that made her eyes water.

  Jay hit the table, rattling the plastic basket of pens and notepads in the center of it. Damon looked at her coldly and she felt her pulse throbbing so hard in her throat that it seemed on the verge of bursting out. She fumbled to hold her ripped dress closed.

  “What—” She groped behind her with her free hand, wincing at the soreness of her arms, and closed her fingers over the basket. “What are you going to do?”

  “You fucked my son, who then fucked me—so it seems only fair that I fuck you. God knows, I've waited for it long enough.” He reached for his belt buckle, breathing hard. “And you're going to be a good girl and do exactly what I tell you. You can even call me Daddy.”

  “No,” Jay said faintly.

  “You will,” he promised her coldly. “Because if you don't, I'll make sure the whole town knows just how fond you are of our youth. The younger the better—isn't that rig
ht, my dear?”

  Jay threw the pens at him with a cry and yanked the door open. I have to get away.

  She flew right into Nick.

  “No!” she cried, as his arms tightened around her, keeping her immobile. “Let me go.”

  “What's the matter?” he demanded. “What happened to your dress?”

  “Your father—” Jay gasped, as he released one of her hands. “I need to . . . oh.”

  Damon skated out into the hall in his polished shoes. “Justine,” he roared. “You get back here right now, or the whole town will know what you've done.”

  Nick didn't move and Jay found herself wondering if he was going to give her back. Just hand her over to his father like a discarded plaything because she wasn't any good to him.

  “My father did this.” It wasn't a question.

  She clutched at the ripped seams of her gown with her free hand, scattering more beads with her squeezing fingers. “Please . . .” she heard her voice crack. “Don't give me to him.”

  “Never,” said Nick. He shrugged off his coat, snapping it out to drape around her shoulders. The wild, vicious crack of it made her flinch and for a moment, his face seemed to crack too, baring glimpses of something raw, like the exposed soft tissue in a deep lesion.

  And then he walked over to his father and he swung.

  It was . . . awful. Jay had never seen someone get punched in the face before. It wasn't like the movies. It wasn't clean. There was a sick, wet sound. A crunch. Blood splattered onto the wet tile as Damon's teeth shredded his lip. Who knew the human face had so much blood?

  When her stepfather spat, Jay heard something solid clink off the tile. A tooth.

  She shoved her arms into Nick's jacket and grabbed his arm from behind with both of hers as he cocked his fist back for another blow. “Stop!” She hung onto his bicep, terrified at the resistance she found there. “Stop. You're going to kill him.”

  Damon crumpled to the floor like a heavy sack of flour and Nick let out a rough breath as he turned around. The knuckles of his right hand were covered in syrupy-thick blood. The sight of it made her gag. She could smell it. It smelled like old, dirty pennies.

  “You're crying,” said Nick. “He made you cry.”

  No, thought Jay. You did.

  Shaking her head, she turned from him and ran. She ran and ran and ran, telling herself that as long as she could get away, she would never look back.

  And for eight years, she never did.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  2017

  ▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

  He made you cry.

  Birds were singing in the trees overhead and the sun was hot and punishing, but for a moment she was somewhere else—somewhere sterile and cold that smelled of carpet cleaner.

  And blood.

  She was in Nicholas's lap, straddling his thighs. There was something seriously messed up about that: sitting in the lap of the man who had used her so badly, crying while he held her. Even on the verge of falling apart, she was mindful enough to recognize that.

  Something to add to the list of things to tell the therapist.

  It was a long list. She had never seen one. Therapists were expensive and she lived paycheck to paycheck. Anything that wasn't covered by her insurance, she sought to treat herself.

  Everyone in that house had hurt her in some way. Damon, she had never trusted. But Nick—

  I fucked up. I fucked everything up.

  He still smelled exactly the same—grapefruit, and the clean smell of his own skin. It made her want to run even as it seeped her of any desire to. When his hand smoothed up and down her back, she pressed her face into his shoulder and then he stopped stroking her entirely and just held her. Cradling her in the same arms that he'd used to hold her down.

  I am never letting you go.

  Suddenly, she felt trapped—she pushed at him, expecting those arms to constrict around her like a cage. And for a moment, they did, only to fall away. When she looked up at his face, it was expressionless through the haze of her tears. Despite the gentleness of his hands, the seeming rawness of his words, she could detect no emotion from him at all.

  After a while, he said, “My legs are starting to burn. Let's go back.”

  Jay unfolded herself creakily from his lap, brushing dust and debris from her clothes. Her eyes were burning and the white-hot sunlight was only making it worse. She slid her shades down and stared resolutely ahead. But something had changed.

  Perhaps irrevocably so.

  They walked back down the trail in silence, startling a line of quail on their way downhill. Jay could feel Nick looking at her: quick, assessing glances. She wished she could read him as well as he seemed to be able to read her, but whatever he was feeling, he hid it well.

  Overhead, a red-tailed hawk circled lazily, looking for prey. They were the largest types of hawks and Jay found it fascinating that their eye color changed as they got older, from gold to brown. She loved red-tailed hawks, and had ever since picking up the Animorphs books as a kid, intrigued enough by the animals mentioned inside that she'd started going to the library to check out books about them.

  She remembered wishing so badly that she had something special that set her apart from everyone else. A secret that nobody else knew about. She glanced at Nicholas, and her stomach sank when their eyes met. Be careful what you wish for.

  Nicholas turned on the AC as soon as they were in the car. As he backed out of the dusty lot, Jay took a last look at the hills. It had been a dry spring and everything was brown. In a certain slant of light, they could sometimes look like glowing sand dunes. The city wasn't like that; living there could leave you starved for the sight of trees.

  He drove fast—faster than she would drive, if it was her behind the wheel. She always went the speed limit; he seemed to add 10MPH by default, confident that he wouldn't be pulled over.

  In this town, she thought, he probably wouldn't be.

  She rubbed at her face. Her cheeks felt stiff and chapped from crying and when she checked herself out in the side mirror, she could see that her eyes were bloodshot.

  “Are you hungry?”

  The question made her instantly defensive. Part of her wanted to refuse as a matter of pride but having her stomach growl after lying to him would just add further insult to injury.

  “I don't want to go inside anywhere right now,” she said, after a moment.

  She saw the brief flash of his sunglasses. “You don't have to. I will. What do you want?”

  That's a good question. She leaned back against the seat as the cool air washed over her heated face. “Something unhealthy.”

  He stopped at Bubble Trouble, the boba cafe she'd used to go to all the time with her friends in high school. Jay was surprised that it was still open. The paint job looked pretty faded and it seemed to sag a little under its own weight. Jay knew how that felt.

  She must have dozed off because when she was opening her eyes, she could smell hot, oily food and Nicholas was getting back into the car, shoving his wallet back into his pocket.

  “What did you get?”

  He'd taken his sunglasses off and his eyes looked even paler than usual with the pupils all shrunken from the sun. “Sweet potato fries and an oat milk matcha latte for you.” He popped the glasses back on. “Deep-fried octopus and a Fruity Pebbles smoothie for me.”

  She glanced at the rainbow drink and then at him, mildly surprised that he would order something so juvenile. It seemed unmanly. “Lots of sugar,” she said.

  “I love sugar,” he said, in the same mild tone. “I'm twenty-seven and have nineteen fillings. I'm going to die a toothless old man.”

  Jay almost smiled, which made her angry. She tugged at a lock of hair that had escaped her bun and looked out the window, trying to discern what was new and what had stayed the same, just as she had on the way she had on the trip to the Afghan place. But her heart wasn't in it.

  After a moment, she picked up her drink and took a si
p.

  “Do you like it? I can go back and have them make it again.”

  “Don't do that,” said Jay. “That's such a waste.”

  Nicholas frowned. “It's a waste to pay for something you don't want.”

  “I like it,” she said, too quickly, because he looked like he was about to turn the car around. There was a strange, frenetic energy buzzing around him. Guilt? Anger? Shaking her head, she said, “I don't need you lecturing me about my spending habits.”

  “I'm just surprised you've gotten so comfortable,” he said. “You used to race around filling up the soap bottles with water to make them last. I thought that was so weird.”

  “You've never been poor,” Jay said quietly. “You don't know what it's like, knowing that you could lose everything you have in a single moment. There were days when a school lunch was the only meal I'd have all day. My mom used to bring me home bar food leftovers for dinner. If she came home at all. Sometimes she didn't and I'd wonder if she was ever coming back, and I was lucky if she remembered to buy the damn soap at all.”

  “I don't know what it's like to be poor. But I know what it's like to feel alone. My father made it clear from the beginning that his care for me was conditional.”

  You're so like him. Jay's fingers bit into her thighs repressively, no longer certain if it was true. At the very least, he no longer seemed to parrot his father's words. “You were so young.”

  “Children know,” he said, which halted her next words in her throat, because she could still remember all those sleepless nights back in the Tenderloin. Crying herself to sleep.

  Of course, she'd cried herself to sleep in Hollybrook, too.

  Watching Nicholas carefully, she said, “So he wrecked the company.”

  “Yeah.” She saw his fingers curl around the wheel, the slightest fraying of his control. “Nearly tanked it. The embezzling was bad. So was the sexual assault case. When I took over after his death, I thought I was going to have to sell it off piecemeal to a corporate raider.”

  “I'm surprised they didn't come after you.”

  “I was the one who supplied the prosecution with the photographs of his other victim—the woman at the holiday party, she was his secretary. My father told her he'd fire her if she didn't sleep with him. He had her coming by the house a couple times. That was how I got the photographs. I saw them. I thought she was another one of his whores.”