Stepbrother's Kiss (7 page)

His words triggered something unexpected in me, and as I lay over his lap, feeling his hand fall hard on my ass, I couldn’t help longing for him to slide his fingers into my panties touch me where I needed him most.

After three hard whacks, he rubbed my ass tenderly, then smacked it even harder.  Rubbed it again, soothing me.  Then give it a final hard crack.

“You may stand up,” he ordered.

I did as he instructed, then stared down at him. I felt blood racing to face, a combination of fury and animal lust.

Then he took my hand and guided it to his crotch, moving it up and down the fabric.  “Keep doing that,” he said.

“Raine—“

“You will call me Mr. Everly, understand?” He slapped me hard on the ass again, then in a swift move lifted me on his desk and did something I never would have expected.

He kissed me.

And then I did something I hadn’t planned.  I kissed him back.

I kissed him back because even though I hadn’t meant for any of this to happen, what I felt for him in that moment was potent, intoxicating and all consuming.

“Jess?” came a familiar voice from the doorway.

I turned around and Blaze was standing there with several of his friends behind him.

It took a moment for my brain to see through my haze of lust and make sense of what was happening.

Blaze and his friends had just walked in on Raine and I mid-make out.

I was wearing nothing but a black bra, panties, garter belt and stockings.

Raine had been kissing me and I was clearly kissing him back.

And Blaze looked furious.

“How could you?” he bit out, pain and hatred warring in his tone. “How the fuck could you do this to me!” Fury won out, and he grabbed a glass paperweight from a coffee table and threw it through the window, sending splinters of glass flying through the room.

“Blaze, calm down,” Raine said, raising a hand in protest.

“How dare you tell me to calm down.  You’re hands were all over my…” He trailed off and turned to me. 

“You’re fucking him too, Jess?” Blaze continued. “Really?  So what do you do, come to my room and fuck me?  Then come in here and fuck him?  At least tell me that he’s the one getting sloppy seconds.”

“It’s not like that—“

“So you two are…sleeping together?” said Raine, looking between Blaze and I.

“Oh, we’re together, but we’re certainly not sleeping.  Seems she fooled you too, huh Raine?”

“Blaze, will you just stop,” I said.  Then my attention was drawn to the group of kids from our school standing behind Blaze witnessing the whole mess.  There was more of them than I thought, seven maybe.  They must have all met here to head over to the party together. 

Fuck.

“That’s right,” Blaze announced to the room.  “I’ve been fucking my stepsister—who’s also been fucking our legal guardian, Raine Everly.  No, none of us are blood related.  We’re only connected by money and paper and our worthless name.  But my
sister
here sure seems to like keeping it in the family, isn’t that right,
sis
?”

“I’ve had enough,” I said, grabbing my dress and pulling it on.

“Why are you covering yourself up?  Why not take off the rest of your skanky get-up and let all the guys here give you a go?”

“That’s just mean, Blaze,” I said, trying to stop my tears from falling down my cheeks, not wanting to give him the satisfaction.
              “You know what mean is?” he said.  “Mean is being a cock tease for years.  For driving me crazy for years.  Then you finally give it up, and it turns out, you’ve been fucking another guy the whole time.”

“It’s not like that Blaze.  I wish you would just listen.“

“How was she, Raine? Was she good?  Did you like the taste of her sweet little pussy as much as I—“

A crack resounded through the room as I slapped him across the face.  “Enough!” I screamed, poking my finger in his chest. “Just…stop!” 

My voice cracked and my tears finally began to spill. I tore out of the room, running down the stairs. Then I pulled my car keys from their ring by the door and ran out of the house.

I had no idea where I was going, but I knew I would never come back here again.

I raced to my car, turned the key and peeled out of the driveway.

I would just drive, I thought. Drive and drive until I was far away from the state of Maine, from Raine, and most of all, from Blaze.

His words echoed through my mind, piercing my heart each time I replayed them. 

Huge gasping sighs tore from my throat as I drove. 

Then there was the flash of tail lights, the skid of breaks.

The shriek of metal crunching and twisting.

And then there was only darkness.

Chapter 11

I awoke in the hospital three days later.  Word about what had happened in Raine’s office spread like wildfire at the graduation party that night, and a social worker was called in immediately.

Since I was only a few days shy of eighteen and Raine could afford the world’s most elite lawyers, the state didn’t draw up any charges against him for his indiscretions with a minor. But he willingly relinquished his guardianship. 

The social worker visited me every day while I recovered at the hospital.  She told me that Blaze hadn’t tried to visit, though he’d been calling the hospital daily for updates on my condition.

              Mirabeth hadn’t left the hospital waiting room, and the moment my social worker gave her the okay to come in, she was at my bedside, crying and hugging me.

              In my severe emotional state the night of the crash, I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the road. The driver in front of me braked suddenly and when I tried to stop, I lost control of my car, careening off the road and slamming into a tree. 

              I woke up with twenty stitches in my scalp, a shattered arm, and extensive damage to my arm and shoulder from shattering glass.  The doctors told me I was lucky to be alive.

              I wasn’t so sure.

              When I first moved to Maine, I’d felt utterly alone in the world, but now, I was even more so.

              I’d lost Blaze.  And worse of all was the way I’d lost him.

              His cruel words echoed in my mind all day in a constant loop while I lay in my hospital bed, and even worse, the bastard never came to visit me.  To ask for the real story behind what he saw in Raine’s office. To ask me why.  To give us a second chance.

              I told Mirabeth everything.  I was tired of hiding my relationship with Blaze. Tired of bottling up my feelings and living a life of quiet isolation. 

              I cried on her shoulder and told her everything. 

              She didn’t offer any advice or judgment.  She just listened, handing me tissues and stroking my back while I cried.

              Then she told me that Blaze was in a bad state.  He’d moved out of Raine’s house on graduation night and she hadn’t seen him since, but she’d heard from others in town that he was on a horrible bender.  Even getting into a fight that landed him in jail overnight.

              On the day of my release from the hospital, Mirabeth informed me that Raine and my social worker agreed to make her executor the family trust.  My eighteenth birthday had passed a few days ago, and I was legally on my own.  Mirabeth signed the entire lump sum of my inheritance over to me before we even left the hospital.

              I stayed with her for the next few weeks while making travel arrangements, and then I left for Europe on my own. I visited the Sistine Chapel by myself.  I spent a whole day reading books and drinking coffee in a Paris café. 

I never drove the Autobahn or saw the red light district in Amsterdam. Those were Blaze’s dreams, and I would have felt sad doing them alone.

But I did spend some time seeing more of the United States.  I spent a year just hanging out in New Orleans listening to jazz, eating gumbo and wandering down Bourbon Street. 

Later I rode a bike through the quaint streets of Portland.  Ate Tex Mex in Austin.  Toured Pike’s Peak Market in Seattle.  Learned to ski in Aspen.  Watched the sea lions in San Francisco. Visited the rose gardens of Minneapolis. 

And while I did all these things, my heart slowly healed. For the first time, I figured out how to be happy by myself.  How to enjoy my own company, and be alone without being lonely.  How to talk to strangers and keep an open heart, and how to make peace with the past.

Of course I dated, and even had a few brief relationships, but never with anyone I ever felt truly passionate about.

Through it all, I kept in touch with Mirabeth, sending her postcards and letters. She once told me that people don’t send letters enough these days, so I set out to change that.

Mirabeth would send letters back, telling me about her new job at a daycare center.  She’d left Raine’s employ after everything that happened with me.  She said the house wasn’t the same without Blaze and I living there, and she felt like it was time to move on.

Her letters detailed the latest gossip about her friends or my former classmates.  She never mentioned Blaze, so I assumed she’d lost touch with him just like I had.

But I was wrong.

Two years ago, she casually mentioned that she’d been in touch with him for years.  She didn’t mention it earlier, she explained, because she didn’t want to bring up unpleasant memories. She wanted to give me time to heal.

She admitted that she’d been in touch with him off and on for years.  He’d had a horrible drinking problem, but now he was in a program and seemed to be getting his life together.  Oh yeah, and he was engaged.

Engaged.

I read the word over and over with trembling hands and a hammering hear. Then I screamed, and trashed my little New York apartment. 

Oh yeah, and Blaze was having an engagement party next month, the letter went on to say.
You should really come.
 
It’ll be good for you, honey.  It’s been a long time.  Blaze would like to see you again.
I
would like to see you again.

             
And now here we were.  Blaze was breaking off his engagement, or so he’d said.

              I hadn’t heard from him in two weeks, so I figured it was safe to assume that he wasn’t really going through with it.  He’d spoken in the heat of passion. In the cold light of day, he was a happily engaged man.

              And that was okay.  I was a single woman who wasn’t even thirty yet. I loved my art and had a good job, plenty of money in the bank, and a nice group of friends. I would get through this, just like I did before. 

              Maybe I would even get a dog and start online dating. Why not? 

              I was going to be fine without him.  Just fine.

              I only wished it didn’t hurt so much.

Chapter 13

Present day

The second I open the front door to my apartment building, my new dog Geno shoots out like a furry brown bullet. The scrappy little dachshund-beagle mix has no idea that I just rescued him from the local animal shelter’s kill list.  All he ever thinks about is running around outside and finding other dogs’ butts to sniff. 

              He’s bounding down the front steps when he breaks free from his leash, and then I’m running down the sidewalk to catch him.  “Geno!  Get your ass over here or I’ll take you back to the pound!”

              I see a man’s legs step in front of him, hands picking him up and tucking him under a large arm like a football. When my eyes rake up the man’s body and settle on his face, I see Blaze smiling at me. 

              I slow down my pace then. My dog is now reaching up to give Blaze a thorough tongue bath.

              “Sorry about that,” I say as I take Geno from Blaze and bend down to secure his leash.  “I just got him last week and we’re still adjusting. I wasn’t really going to take him to the pound.  It was just an idle threat.”

              “What’s his name?” Blaze asks with a half smile. 

              “Geno.  His former owner named him that, and he answers to it, so it seemed mean to change it on him.”

              Geno starts pulling me down the sidewalk, and Blaze stays in step beside us.

              “I never knew you were a dog person,” he says.

              “Well, when I was living in San Francisco I had a neighbor with a sweet French Bulldog named Mickey, and I used to dog sit when she went away, which was often. Mickey and I used to spend hours at the dog park. I got attached, and started wanting a little buddy of my own once I settled down.”

              “When you were in San Francisco, that was when you were taking graphic design classes, right? And dating that artsy fartsy nerd you met in the coffee shop?”

              I give him the side eye. “How do you know that?  Have you been stalking me or something?”

              “Mirabeth saved all your letters in one of her kitchen drawers.  I was staying with her for a short time—after I got back from my first stint in rehab—and I found them.  I read them all.  More than once.”

              I shake my head, annoyed. “I really wish she would have had more discretion. I didn’t even know she still kept in touch with you until recently.  If I knew, I might not have been so forthcoming in my letters.”

              “Then I’m glad you didn’t know, and don’t be mad at Mirabeth. I tried to get information about you many times before that, and she never gave away much at all. She was very protective of your privacy.”

              “She never talked about you,” I say coolly.

              “Did you ever ask?”

              “Nope.”

              “Really?  Why not?” he asks. 

I give him an even more pronounced side eye.

“Sorry,” he says.  “I just wondered if you thought about me sometimes, that’s all.”

“I didn’t let myself.  I needed to move on.”

“I get it, and Mirabeth did too. A number of times I asked her to tell you I said hello, and she refused.  She said you needed space and time to heal.  But when the ten year mark was coming up, I convinced her that enough time had passed, and asked her to invite you to the party.”

“The party celebrating your engagement to another woman?  How is that appropriate?”

“You came though didn’t you?  Anyway, I knew you were dating that dweeby hipster from the magazine, so I thought you’d be more likely to come if it was a couple’s event. You know, more casual.”

“Dweeby hipster?  You mean Miles?  I broke up with him almost a year ago.”

“Good, he sounded like a real douche, with his microbrews and his skinny jeans. You deserve better, Jess.  Anyway, Mirabeth finally realized that I was sneaking into her letter drawer about a year ago and started hiding them in a better spot, so I’ve been out of the loop ever since.”

“If you wanted to know about me, why didn’t you just get in touch?”

“Because I was a fucking mess.  I didn’t have anything to offer you.”

We walk down a street lined with brownstones in comfortable silence while Geno stops to sniff city trees and telephone poles.

“At least your career took off,” I said.  “Does your job have any connection to Rupert Everly and Son?”

“None whatsoever. I wanted nothing to do with Raine or his company.  So I managed to skate by at a third rate business school with a C average, then talk a good game while interviewing and land myself a job I was completely underqualified for.  But I got the hang of it before long, and I even managed to make the company some money.  All while drinking like a fish.  It’s amazing how easy it is to be a functioning alcoholic in the business world, Jess. “

“I would think that after seeing what happened to our parents—not just their death but how miserable they were before they died—you’d be disgusted by drinking.”

“You would think.  But after you left, I needed an escape.  And I got lost in it.  For a long time.”

Another silence stretches between us as we pursue our own thoughts.  I don’t even pay attention to where we’re walking now.  I let Geno lead the way.

“I’m sorry for the way things ended, Jess.  I’m sorry I was so cruel to you, and for the role I played in causing your accident.  I’ve hated myself for it every day since.  It was one of the things I’ve been working on since I got sober, coming to terms with the horrible way I treated you. I was the one who lost out, you know. You’ve had this great life since we’ve been apart, and I didn’t get to be a part of it.” I nearly jump when I feel his hand reach out and hold mine. “But I want to change that.  I broke it off with Lisa.  I want us to be together, Jess.”

I can’t bear to look at him.  I wasn’t expecting any of this, and it’s all too much. When I open my mouth to respond, my mind goes blank.

But my heart knows what to do, and I feel myself threading my fingers through his and holding on tight.

“Can I ask you something though?” he asks. “It’s one of the reasons I read your letters—it’s always killed me not to know.  But what was going on with you and Raine?  Mirabeth said you weren’t carrying on a relationship with him, that it was just a kiss.  If she’s wrong and you
were
carrying on a relationship, I can try to understand that and make peace with it—we were just kids, after all.  But I need to know the truth.”

“There was no relationship between us, Blaze. It was just a kiss.  And that’s the thing that’s haunted me most over the years—why I was stupid enough to kiss him back that night. I guess that before I knew what I do now, I didn’t realize you can be in love with one person and still feel attraction for someone else. So I was attracted to Raine, but I didn’t expect him to kiss me, so when he did…I kissed him back without thinking.  It was a stupid mistake, and I’m sorry for my part in what happened to us too.  For setting off the whole miserable chain of events.”

His hand squeezes mine even tighter.

“I wouldn’t call myself miserable right now,” he says.  “Would you?”

“No,” I answer honestly. “Not at all. When I’m with you, I’m happier than I’ve ever been before, and it scares the hell out of me because I know how painful it is to have it all ripped away.”

“I know, I’m scared too. But I think we’re worth the risk, Jess. Something keeps bringing us back together, and I don’t think we can be happy until we make whatever it is between us work.”

“How do we even start here? Do you move here to New York or do I move to be closer to you? Or do we date long distance and call each other every night? I don’t even know how any of this will work.”

“Well, why don’t we start here.”  He hands me a blank white envelope.  “Then we can make the rest up as we go.”

I open the envelope and inside are two plane tickets for Germany, and then two more for Amsterdam, and two more for Italy.  I look at him in confusion.

              “I know from your letters that you already visited a lot of the places we used to talk about going, but neither of us ever got to drive the Autobahn in Germany, or visit the red light district in Amsterdam.  And I know you’ve already been to Italy and Paris, and I’m fine with skipping Paris. I know you went there to read all day in a café, and to be honest, I’ve never been much of a reader.  But I’ve always wanted to see the Sistine Chapel.  I know you’ve been there before, but would you mind going again?  With me this time? I mean, we’d both have to take some time off work, but I can swing it.  I have a feeling you can too.”

              I’m so shocked it takes a minute for me to respond.  I nod. “Yeah…okay…I can take a leave of absence.”

“And you’ll show me Italy? Even though you’ve been there before?”

“Of course I will.  I’d love to go again—they have so many amazing museums I could show you. And gelato—oh Blaze, you’re going to love gelato.”

              “Venice!” he says. “Can we go to Venice while we’re there?  I’ve always wanted to see it, and I heard the whole city is slowly sinking.  We have to go before it’s gone forever.”

              “Yes, let’s do that!  I’d didn’t get to see Venice when I went to Italy—we can ride a gondola together.”

              “And eat pizza, of course,” he adds.

              “Obviously,” I say.  I lean up and kiss him, and he pulls me into his arms and kisses me back.  I can hardly believe he’s really here with me.  Blaze. My first kiss, my first love, my first everything.

              “Or maybe we can just get ourselves a fancy hotel room, order a whole bunch of room service, and hole ourselves up for awhile, catching up.”

              “I’d like that,” I say with a teasing grin.  “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

              He puts his hand on the small of my back, and we continue to walk through the city aimlessly, wandering our way to the future.