Playboy - A Stepbrother Romance (12 page)

Chapter 13

Cam

“There you are,” Marko said as I stepped back in. “Back into your outfit, please.”

I grinned, finding it funny that he referred to a pair of boxer shorts as an ‘outfit’. As I stripped back down, the other models whispered amongst themselves, giggling as I glanced in their direction. I flashed a polite smile at them and then headed back over to the bed.

“Not there,” Marko said. “I think we’ve got all the bedroom shots we need. Let’s try one near the windowsill over there. Jana, can you join him? I want you two facing each other. Cam, put one arm around her waist and turn your head left to face me, and Jana, I want your left hand on his shoulder as you look up at Cam’s face, and your right leg sort of hooked up around his thigh.”

“Okay,” I said, heading over to the window.

As much as I didn’t want to be anywhere near Jana after all the trouble she’d inadvertently caused for me and Anya, I had a job to do, and I needed to do it properly. Marko Schreiber could make or break a model’s career, and the
Aubé
campaign would really help in staging my comeback after all the crap I’d been through after being suspended from my racing gig and dropped from the Calvin Klein campaign.

Things were already progressing well with my comeback thanks to Anya’s hard work on my image, and this shoot would be the pinnacle of that. I knew she’d had help booking Marko from her friend Kara, but still—she’d been doing an amazing job. I had no idea how she fitted it in between all her college classes and assignments.

I took my place by the window, and Jana strutted over to me, her stilettos clacking against the hardwood floors of the studio. She gave me a seductive smile and then bit her lower lip as she slid her hand onto my shoulder, and I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. This girl just couldn’t take a hint.

When she’d come up to my apartment the other week while Anya was over, I’d told her to leave, and she’d thrown a tantrum and threatened to lock herself in my bathroom. I’d practically had to carry her into the elevator to get rid of her, upon which I’d quickly changed my passcode so she could never waltz into my place again.

“I’m glad I finally have a moment alone with you, Cam,” she whispered as Marko fiddled with his camera.

“Yeah? Why’s that?” I asked, affecting a bored tone.

“I wanted to apologize for how I acted the other week. I was just mad because I missed you so much. But I’m willing to show you just how sorry I am…”

She licked her lips, and this time I did roll my eyes. “I told you already, Jana. I’m not interested. Whatever we had in the past…that’s over now. You should move on.”

Her blue eyes narrowed, and her demeanor changed instantly. “Asshole,” she hissed. “You can’t just use me for sex and then ignore me forever.”

“I didn’t use you. We used each other, and it was wrong,” I replied. “I’m sorry for that, but it’s finished now. I’ve changed my floor passcode for the elevator as well, so don’t get any ideas.”

An angry red flush rose in her cheeks. “You’ll regret this.”

“Sure, Jana, whatever.”

I’d heard enough bitching from her about her supposedly crazy ex-boyfriend to know she was all talk and no action. In the past, she’d always ranted on about how she planned on getting revenge on him for whatever crazy stuff he’d allegedly done, but as far as I knew, she’d never done anything to him.

I slid my hand around her waist like Marko had told me to, and she stiffened, obviously still mad as hell.

“Hold on, let me just adjust the lighting,” Marko called out. “Wait…Jana, you’re suddenly looking all red. Where’s our makeup artist?”

“She went out to get a bagel,” an assistant said.

Marko sighed. “Forget it. Jana, come back over here, and Viola, you go in instead. Your right-side profile works better for this shot anyway.”

Jana yanked her hand away from my shoulder and marched away, but not before she shot me another contemptuous look. One of the other models—a slim brunette named Viola—headed over to me, and she smiled as she put her hand on my shoulder.

“Hey, Cam,” she said as Marko and his assistants continued to adjust the lighting.

“Hey.”

“You know, I’ve always wanted to work with you,” she said.

I stiffened slightly, half-expecting her to hit on me like Jana had, but she didn’t.

“You looked so great in that jeans campaign last year,” she continued. “I’ve always wanted to work with someone so talented.”

“Oh. Thanks. It’s the photographer’s talent, really. In that jeans shoot, I was hungover as fuck,” I replied with a grin. “He still somehow made me look good.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I get that. By the way, how do you know that girl who was here earlier? The one who dropped her notebook when we were doing the bed thing.”

“Anya? She’s my stepsister, and she’s working as my manager at the moment.”

“Oh, I see. I’m surprised she has the time for that, being Elune and all.”

“Huh?”

I knew I’d heard the name Elune somewhere before, but I couldn’t remember where.

“Elune,” Viola repeated. “My brother is obsessed with her channel.”

“Sorry, I’m not following. What channel? Are you sure you’re not getting her confused with that weather girl on ABC who looks kinda like her?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s an online gaming thing. I can’t believe you’re her stepbrother and you don’t even know! She’s pretty famous with all the gamer geeks, like my little brother.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Care to elaborate? She’s never told me about this.”

“Sure. Well, my brother plays all these MMORPGs. It stands for massive multiplayer online roleplaying games. Stuff like World of Warcraft. Anyway, he likes to watch other people play too. Some gamers stream themselves playing live, and your stepsister’s channel is his favorite. Her online persona goes by the name of Elune, and she’s pretty well-known. I still can’t believe you didn’t know!”

“Neither can I,” I murmured under my breath, turning my head to the side as Marko began to photograph us.

Wow. So not only did Anya somehow force herself to make time for college and an internship, she also made time to be secretly famous on the internet amongst all the gaming nerds of this world. It was so adorable, and I could scarcely help myself from grinning as the shoot went on, even though I was meant to have a serious expression plastered on my face.

Goddamn. Anya was the cutest geek ever.

I wondered why she kept it hidden from me and the rest of the family. There had to be some reason as to why, but I had no idea what it was. Perhaps she was embarrassed about it? Or maybe she thought she wasn’t good enough at the games to reveal her secret to the people who knew her. Either way, I was going to try and find out next time I saw her.

Something about this revelation made me feel strangely closer to her. I’d never lied to her about anything, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have secrets. Everyone had secrets.

And I’d just discovered a major one of hers…

Chapter 14

Anya

“I hate to say I told you so, but…”

Kara’s voice trailed off as she reclined on the beanbag chair in my dorm, and I sighed. “I know, I know,” I replied.

I’d just finished explaining everything that Cam had said to me back in Brooklyn, and Kara was still wearing a triumphant expression on her pretty face.

“I had a sneaking suspicion he was actually a decent guy,” she said. “It just never made sense to me for him to try so hard to get on your good side. Like I said the other week, there’s easier ways to get laid, so it had to be more than that. If any other girl rejected him, he’d probably just move on, but with you…well, you’ve rejected him a billion times now, and he’s still trying.”

“Yeah. I feel like a bitch.”

I really did. Cam had shown nothing but patience and understanding with me in the last several weeks, and I’d continually thrown that back in his face and refused to trust a word he said.

Kara shook her head. “Don’t feel too bad. I mean, I get it. You found it hard to trust him after thinking so badly of him for so long. And he’s right; everyone sees him as a playboy, and playboys usually can’t be trusted.”

“Yeah. Still...I shouldn’t have run away from him so many times. I should’ve given him a real chance.”

“Water under the bridge now. He’s obviously still keen on making it work.”

“Uh-huh.”

She narrowed her eyes. “So what’s the problem?” she asked. “C’mon, Anya, I can tell there’s still something up with you.”

I uncrossed my legs and scooted over to the edge of my bed. “Okay, so say Cam is actually this incredibly decent guy, and he really hasn’t ever lied to me before, and we decide to be together. What about our parents?”

“Oh. That
.
”

“Yes,
that
.”

“Well, is it really that much of a problem? You guys are both adults, and you’ve never lived with each other. Not in a ‘growing up together’ kinda way, I mean. So who cares?”

“I have a feeling my Mom will,” I said. “She’ll think it’s too much drama and too much opportunity for things to go wrong and make her new family awkward. I don’t want to make her feel like that. Not after what my Dad put her through before he died.”

Kara fixed me with an intense gaze. “And she doesn’t even know the half of it, does she? Regarding your father.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “No. But anyway, back to Cam,” I said, hastily changing the subject away from my Dad.

Before he’d died, he’d done some awful things behind my Mom’s back, and she’d never found out. I knew about them, but I didn’t like discussing them too much in case she somehow found out. She didn’t deserve to be put through any more pain, considering all the other things he’d done to her that she
did
know of.

“Well, I think your Mom and Pierce would get over it eventually,” Kara said. “If you guys prove that you’re in a solid relationship that’s gonna last.”

“So you think we should just wait a while and see how it goes before telling them?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not just my Mom and Pierce, though. What about the tabloids? If they somehow got wind of me and Cam dating, they’d go nuts. Remember the Carver story last year?”

“Oh, yeah. That was bad.”

Maddy Carver was a famous Broadway singer-slash-actress who’d been embroiled in a salacious scandal last year. She’d been in a secret relationship with her cousin, which sounded bad at first, but they weren’t even related. They were cousins by marriage only; he was the cousin of her sister’s husband. Cousins-in-law, I guess you could call it. The tabloids and gossip blogs hadn’t cared about that, though. They’d torn Maddy to shreds almost every day for three months, and by the time the controversy had died down, her career was in pieces.

I doubted they’d be any more lenient with me and Cam if we decided to be together.

“So…yeah. I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“I think you should just see what he has to say. He said he’d call you later, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well when he calls, tell him everything you just told me. Tell him you’ve thought about it all, and you think you can trust him now, but you’re worried about the ramifications of a relationship between the two of you.”

“Okay. Is it weird that I’m nervous? I mean, he already said he wants to be with me. What is there to be nervous about?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” she asked, flashing me an enigmatic smile.

“I guess I’m afraid he might’ve changed his mind in the last few hours. I’ve been such a bitch to him.”

Kara scoffed. “I bet you a million bucks he hasn’t changed his mind. He’s pursued you for this long.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Anyway, I’ve got to get back to my dorm. I have this stupid group assignment to work on,” she said.

“Okay. I need to get back onto Twitch.”

“Cool. Have fun! I might join you in a game later if I finish the assignment fast enough.”

With that, she left, and I logged onto my computer and turned the webcam on. After signing into my channel, I was inundated with messages.

Where have you been? Please tell me you’re playing tonight!

Elune! Can you join my guild?

Yay! You’re back!

After logging into my favorite game, I smiled and checked the Twitch log to see that over a thousand people were already online, waiting for me to play. The more people who watched, the more money I made, and while a thousand wasn’t bad, it was nowhere near my personal best. During one gaming session, I’d had over two hundred thousand people watching. Most of them were from Europe, Asia and Australia, because apparently, my accent sounded cool to them.

I joined a raid group in-game with some of my online friends, and we played for a couple of hours, defeating monsters and bosses. I narrated everything I was doing for my stream watchers, and soon, I had over fifty thousand viewers. Not bad.

We finished the raid a while later, and I’d just logged out of the game when there was a knock at the door.

Glancing over to it, I saw that Kara had dropped a small pink notebook on her way out earlier.

“Gimme a sec! I’ve got your notebook,” I called out, picking it up before unlocking the door and opening it.

It wasn’t Kara.

“Cam,” I gasped. “What are you…”

My voice trailed off as he grinned down at me. I’d been waiting for his call, but I hadn’t been expecting him to show up at my dorm in a million years. I’d never even given him the address.

“I found out where you were from your Mom,” he said, taking in my wide eyes and general surprised demeanor. “Told her we needed to go over some stuff for your internship.”

“Oh. Well, come in,” I said, stepping aside and closing the door behind him.

I sat down on the end of my bed, and he joined me. “So,” I said, looking over at him as my heart raced with anticipation. “You wanted to talk.”

“I did.”

It was only then that I realized he was holding a box in his lap.

“What’s that?” I asked.

He smiled again. “Remember how earlier I said I was willing to do anything to prove that you can trust me?”

“Uh…yeah…?” I replied, still confused as to what was in the box.

“Well, I brought you something,” he said. “Welcome to my past.”

He opened the box, and I leaned over it to see that it was filled with photos. Not the racy kind of photos I’d been expecting when he’d said ‘the past’, but childhood photos and school report cards. There were even a few old toys and Gameboy games mixed in.

“You want to show me your baby pictures?” I asked, raising my eyebrows as I picked up the first photo that caught my eye. It was of Cam as a toddler, and he was wearing overalls and boots whilst standing outside somewhere, holding a teddy bear.

Cam shook his head. “Not necessarily baby pictures. These ones.”

He reached down into the box and pulled out a selection of photos before showing them to me and explaining each one.

“See this?” he said. “This was me at the age of nine.”

In the photo, Cam was wearing a knitted sweater, oversized jeans and thick glasses, and he had the worst haircut I’d ever seen on a kid. Not only that, he had large buck teeth, and even though he was smiling, he looked uncomfortable with having his picture taken.

“I wasn’t the most attractive kid, was I? And this is me a while before that, when I was seven,” he said, handing me another photo.

I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing. It was Cam dressed in pale pink tights and a white T-shirt, practicing ballet.

“You did ballet?” I asked, unable to believe that the boy in this photo had grown up to be the Cam that I knew.

“Yep,” he said. “I was obsessed with it. I made my Dad buy me pink clothes so I could fit in with the girls in my ballet classes, because I was the only boy. I didn’t even like pink.”

“So why are you showing me this?” I asked, curiously gazing back up at him.

“Well, I just wanted you to know that not everything is how it seems. Everyone always assumes that because of my reputation now—and because I was born into a wealthy family—I must’ve always been cool and attractive. But I wasn’t. Until I hit puberty and got braces and contacts, I was…well, I looked like
that
.”

He showed me yet another childhood photo of himself. “See that teddy bear I’m holding?” he said. “That was my only friend as a child. I was a total loser. Not a single guy in school wanted to hang out with me.”

“So you weren’t always a big playboy, huh?” I asked, flashing him a mischievous grin.

He scoffed. “I’ll have you know, all the girls in my ballet class wanted to hold my hand…oh who am I kidding? I was a total geek. And not even the ‘cool’ kind of geek that’s so popular these days, like from that Big Bang Theory show or whatever. I was just a straight-up reject.”

“Oh. You didn’t really answer my earlier question. Why exactly are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Because there are a lot of people who would jump at the chance to hurt my reputation so they can steal the limelight for themselves instead, and right now, my reputation seems ‘cool’ to most people. If you leaked these pictures to the media, I might not seem so cool. That could hurt my career.”

“I actually think they’re kinda cute,” I said, looking at the photo of Cam in ballet class again. “I think more than a few other people would agree with me.”

He snorted. “Maybe, but most people will laugh and think I’m a total loser. When I start racing again once my suspension is lifted, how many fans are gonna support a racer who used to be into ballet? People in that scene prefer a manly-man to idolize, not some ex-ballet dancer who used to be in the Mathletes in school.”

I giggled, and he continued. “So here’s the deal. I’ll let you keep these photos, just so you have leverage over me. If you find out that I’ve lied about any of the stuff I’ve told you in the last few weeks, you can send the photos to the media. I won’t hold it against you. But I know you won’t need to, because I haven’t lied to you about anything.”

“You’d do that just to get me to trust you?” I asked.

Honestly, I’d never send those cute little pictures to the tabloids in an attempt to make him look bad, but it was the thought that counted. Cam obviously thought they could hurt his reputation, even though I disagreed with that, and he was giving them to me just to get me to believe in him.

He nodded. “Yes. I know it probably doesn’t seem like much, but no one has ever seen these pictures of me before. I’ve always been really embarrassed about them, and of who I used to be. I’d hate for them to get out to the media.”

“You really shouldn’t be ashamed of who you used to be,” I said. “You were just a kid! But I get it. I have secrets too—ones I’d rather people who knew me didn’t know. And Cam…”

“Yeah?”

“You didn’t even need to do this. I was actually going to apologize to you when we spoke next. You were right earlier, about everything. I’ve been a bitch, and I should’ve given you a chance and trusted you. I should’ve stopped jumping to conclusions about everything, but I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

He waved his hand. “It’s okay. Like I said, I didn’t give you much reason to trust me, given my reputation.”

“Well, I do. I trust you,” I declared, standing up and turning to face him.

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said, leaning down and putting the box under my bed. “And speaking of those secrets you mentioned earlier…I’m not the only one in this room with a geeky secret, huh?”

My eyes widened. “What?”

He grinned. “I know you’ve been hiding this for some reason, but you’re internet-famous, right? Elune?”

My cheeks turned crimson. “How did you find out?” I asked. “Oh my god, you haven’t told anyone like my Mom, have you? I don’t want her to know. Or anyone else I know, for that matter! Except Kara.”

He shook his head and stood up too. “I haven’t told anyone, and I won’t if you don’t want me to. Why don’t you want anyone to know about it?”