Slade: A Stepbrother Romance (4 page)

~
FOUR ~

Slade

“Why
would that be my problem?” I asked, folding my arms. How did Kellan getting
involved with a bunch of druggies have
anything
to do with me? But even
as I asked myself that question, I felt the first twinge of guilt pulling at my
heart.

Fuck.
I was hoping it wouldn’t have gotten this far, that being a lewd bastard would
have made Iris turn tail and skedaddle way before now. I’d pulled out all the
stops, too—first avoiding her, then showering her with way too much attention.
Being rude, and being a pussy hound. I’d tried to be everything I knew my stepsister
didn’t like, and still she was here. Obviously, whatever Kellan was mixed up in
was serious.

Still,
I didn’t see what the hell that had to do with me. Not when I hadn’t even seen
the kid in seven whole years.

“
You
were his role model, Slade!” Iris said, the scowl on her face somehow making
her look even cuter. “Kellan looked up to you. Idolized you.
Worshiped
you. Don’t act like you don’t remember, or that you don’t care.”

“And
what if I don’t?” I asked, my voice rising as I felt the tones of truth in her
voice. I didn’t like that. The truth was rarely comfortable for me, and Iris
was already making me uncomfortable as it was. “That was years ago, Iris. He’s
gotta be out of his teens by now. He hardly needs big brother running back home
to clean up his messes. And even if he does, I didn’t ask to be Kellan’s hero.”

“But
you are,” she said, taking a step closer to me, trying to catch my gaze. “Or at
least, you used to be.”

I
turned away from her, desperate not to look into those eyes. I knew that the
moment I stared into them, I’d be trapped and there would be no way of
escaping. I had spent so long avoiding the idea of her gaze, or the way it had
filled with tears the day I took off on her. That look of betrayal was seared
into my brain, but stick your dick in enough hot, ripe pussy, and you can learn
to avoid such memories.

But
now she was here, after everything I’d done, so that she could save her
brother—
our
brother.

He
is
my brother now, technically
, I
thought, closing my eyes as I tried to gather my thoughts. But no matter what I
came up with, my first instinct was to run.

“Times
change, Iris,” I said, waving my hand, though I wasn’t sure if I was trying to
convince her, or myself. “I’m not just going to drop everything to help some
punk kid I barely even knew.”

Ugh,
those words stung the second they left my lips.
Okay, asshole. Dial it down
a notch.

Iris
sighed, rubbing one side of her forehead with her forefinger as she shook her
head. I could feel my heart sinking, but I couldn’t let her know how much I
cared—she had to get away from me. After all, I was the one who had betrayed
her. What the hell made her think I could fix everything now?

“He
needs you, Slade. He needs
both of us
,” she said, arms crossed over her
chest. She was so goddamn hot, and no matter how I tried to look at her, I
couldn’t stop imagining her with her legs wrapped around my waist, my cock
sliding in and out of her warm pussy.

No.
Stop that. That isn’t fair. Not to her, or to you.
Iris Walker was a prize I’d never win again, an opportunity I’d squandered. I
swallowed hard and banished those enticing thoughts.

“I
can’t help him, Iris,” I said, glaring out the window that overlooked the
hospital’s courtyard. “It’s not my problem. I stopped being a part of that
family a long time ago.”

“I’m
not sure what’s happened to you between then and now,” she said, “but the Slade
I knew wouldn’t have let a good kid like Kellan down like that. Despite what
happened between you and me, saving our brother is more important than an old
grudge. At least,
I
think so. After all, none of this would have
happened if it weren’t for you.”

I
risked a glance at her again. Her wide eyes, her parted lips—everything in her
expression was pleading for me to reconsider. But the longer she stared at me,
the more I saw the expression of hope slide from her face until her eyes turned
cold.

“You
can’t put all of this on me,” I told her. “Kellan is an adult now. He makes his
own decisions, and I can’t do anything to change it. I’m not his goddamn
father.”

“You
can help bring him back, Slade!” she cried, throwing her hands up. “Ever since
you left, he’s been on a slow road to nowhere, just spiraling out of control.
This is happening all because of what
you
did that day, and it’s time
you learned to clean up your mess.”

“Does
he know about…?”

“Us?
God, no,” Iris said, a note of resentment in her voice as she started to pace in
the confined space I’d caged her in. Iris felt much more mature than when I had
left, more of an adult than I truly ever thought she would be. I couldn’t help
but be turned on by how much she’d grown up. “At least, I don’t think that he
knows. Dad and Mom told me that they were going to keep it a secret, but I
think he knew there was more to you leaving than just a fight with your dad.”

“Of
course he knew there was more to it,” I scoffed as I turned my attention back
toward the window. “My father was always a terrible liar, and Kellan was a
smart kid—smarter than I ever expected, coming from a woman like your mother.”

Iris
made a sound from somewhere behind me, something between a growl and the
clearing of her throat. It was a clear enough message:
Watch what you say
about my mother
.

“Regardless,”
I began, waving her warning off, “I don’t see what I could do to help now. If
he’s really in as deep as you say he is, then I don’t think that
I’ll
be
able to save him. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Where do I start? Do you
expect me to ground him? Isn’t he, like, twenty now?”

“You
could show him that you actually care, Slade,” Iris said, grabbing my arm and
turning me back around to face her. “Maybe you don’t understand it, but Kellan
thought the world of you, and having you back in his life just might be the
thing that sets him straight again.”

“And
what if it doesn’t?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her. “What if I show up and
he
never
gets back to the person that he was? What if I make it worse?”

“This
is serious,” she said, glaring at me as she pulled her hand away like I’d
burned her. “Don’t you get what’s happening? Kellan isn’t just smoking pot or
hanging out with some ‘bad seeds.’ He’s throwing his life away. He goes out for
days at a time, and when he manages to stumble back home, he’s high out of his
mind.
Mom and Dad are
constantly worried, and when he’s home, all they do is shout at one another.
This isn’t some rebellious phase, Slade. If he doesn’t get straight soon, he
might die. And can you really live with that on your conscience, knowing that
you could have helped save your own brother if you’d been enough of a man to
accept responsibility?”

It
was certainly a fair enough question.
Would
I be able to live with myself
while the only brother I had wasted away into some junkie who would probably
die with a needle in his arm? Could I let that happen, knowing that there was a
chance—however slim—that I could stop it?

I
remembered the way that Kellan would always watch me, imitate the way I moved
and spoke. At first the kid freaked me out the way he’d just
stare
at
me, this goofy smile on his face while I played
Call of Duty
with my
friends. It wasn’t long after he saw me playing that he started to get into the
same games, and before I knew it, we were going against one another from
different rooms.

Kellan
would always tell me how cool I was for wanting to be a doctor, how he wanted
to do the exact same thing when he got to be my age. I’d be lying if I said
that I wasn’t flattered, and I
really
did like Kellan, and I tried
whenever I could to give him brotherly advice. But that was then. Things had
changed.

Everything
had changed.

The
fondness of those memories hurt in a way I hadn’t expected, my heart aching at
the thought of what my leaving had done to that boy—my own stepbrother. I knew
that I was an ass, but was I so much of an ass that I wouldn’t even lift a
finger to help someone who thought of me as their hero?

Who
was I to him now? Some prick doctor? A womanizing jerk who he used to call his
brother? It was exactly these kinds of questions I had been trying to avoid for
the past few years, questions I knew I’d have to face when Iris showed up at my
own figurative front door. Did I have the strength to confront the person I
was?

“I
don’t know…” I said, casting my eyes to the floor as I continued to weigh my
options. Was it better to let sleeping dogs lie? Or would it only make things
worse to leave a problem like Kellan’s untreated?

“Slade,
I’m begging you,” Iris pleaded, her fingers resting gently over top of my
bicep. It felt good to let her touch me. Too good. It was more than I deserved
from her. “I don’t think that I’ll be able to reach him without your help.”

“And
what if you’re wrong? What if this all blows up in our faces and Kellan gets so
upset that he goes off and shoots up so much that he ODs? What if I’m the
reason that happens to him? Do you expect me to live with that?”

“I
don’t know, Slade!” she cried. “I don’t know how any of this is going to end! And
neither do you. We either help him now, and have a chance at making him come
back around to the brother we knew, or we can do nothing, in which case we
know
he’s just going to keep doing that crap until it kills him.
I’d rather try and know that I did something than fail
because I did nothing at all. That’s what you’re doing by saying no, Slade—
you’re
killing Kellan.”

“Don’t
put all of this on me. I didn’t tell him to—” I began, but Iris held up a hand
to silence me.

“Remember
that quote you used to love?” she asked, looking up into my eyes, hers filled
with a mixture of frustration and sadness. “‘
All that is necessary for evil
to triumph is—
’”

“‘
For
good men to do nothing
,’” I finished, sighing as I closed my eyes as I
rubbed at my temple again. No matter what I said, she always found a way to hit
me right where it hurt, right in the few morals that I had left. “Yeah, I
remember.”

I
knew, deep down, that nothing good would come of going back home, seeing the
places I’d grown up and where I’d gone to school. I especially knew that
spending time with Iris would only lead to trouble, trouble that would end in
the two of us being hurt again. But at the same time I couldn’t deny that she
was right. I’d never forgive myself if I was the only person who could help
Kellan and I did nothing. It killed me that she still knew me so well, even
after this long.

“I’m
not sure I can take the time off,” I said, trying one last time to convince her
that I wasn’t the man for the job, even though we
both
knew that that
was a lie. “I just finished my residency, Iris, I can’t really afford to take
off now. I mean—”

“Forget
it,” she scoffed, shaking her head in what I thought was disgust. “Forget I
even came here, Slade.”

“Iris,”
I said, frowning as she started to turn away, “Hold on!”

“No!”
she said, pushing my hand away as I reached out to stop her from leaving. “I’ve
had it! Mom and Dad were right about you, and I was an idiot for even coming
here in the first place. I’ll figure out what to do about Kellan on my own, and
you can stay here and enjoy your new life. Alone, just like you like it.”

We
both stood there in silence, as if expecting the other to change their mind or
back down. When neither of us did, Iris pursed her lips. Her shoulders slumped,
like she’d suddenly took on the weight of the world.

“Just
forget I said anything,” she said, her voice a low whisper of rage as she
turned and put her hand on the doorknob. A jab of panic rushed through me. I
knew that if I let her walk out that door, I’d never see her again. Despite my
talk and all my bullshit, I knew that I didn’t want that to happen.