Stepbrother Savior

  CONTENTS

  About This Book

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  Part One

  EXCERPT

  ABOUT

  IF YOU LIKED THIS STORY...

  Stepbrother Savior

  I’ve always had a thing for bad boys. But the problem with falling for bad boys? They’re bad.

  Nicole has never had the best taste in men. Her first forbidden love affair was with her uptight, soldier stepbrother—a teenaged crush that led to years of family trouble. After that came a string of losers and even more unhealthy relationships, like the one she has with Carlos, her possessive, abusive boyfriend.

  But when Carlos hits Nicole one too many times, she shows up at her stepbrother’s house in the dead of night, cold, barefoot, and bleeding. Because she has no where else to go, Jake takes her in. And what begins as one of his standard lectures about how she needs to get her life together ends in a heartfelt confession that will change their lives forever. Because Jake might not be anything like the guys Nicole is usually attracted to, but he protects what belongs to him. And he will live, die, or kill for the woman he loves…

  Reader Advisory: This is a short New Adult romance of approximately 13k words.

  STEPBROTHER SAVIOR

  Stephanie Brother

  Stepbrother Savior

  © 2015 Stephanie Brother

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.

  Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.

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  Part One

  I’ve always had a thing for bad boys.

  But the problem with falling for bad boys? They’re bad. Sometimes they’re really bad. Like my boyfriend, Carlos, who drove that lesson home to me by smashing me into a wall and punching me in the mouth because he didn’t like the way I was dancing at his club.

  It wasn’t the first time he hit me. The first time was just a little slap for being too flirtatious with one of the customers at his club.

  But, look. I’m just going to confess this, and it’s going to sound really awful. Pretty sick. But if I’m being honest, the first time my boyfriend slapped me was kind of hot. I was the tough girl in high school—I never fit in. And I was definitely not the kind of girl anybody would get jealous or possessive over. I guess I always wanted to be that kind of girl.

  Otherwise, I’ve got no other explanation for how turned on I got at how pissed off Carlos was at the mere idea of some other guy’s hands on me.

  And the sex we had the night he slapped me?

  Incredible.

  It’s fucked up. I know. But I guess I never thought it would get so out of hand. I never thought I’d find myself battered and bruised, crawling on the floor of my boyfriend’s apartment because I was too dizzy to get up and run.

  My head throbbing in pain, I waited until Carlos fell asleep into a drunk stupor, then snuck out of the apartment with just my wallet and the clothes on my back. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going—or how to get there without a car—I just knew that I was going. And that’s how I ended up on my stepbrother’s doorstep at three o’clock in the morning, bleeding, barefoot and shivering…

  ~~~

  So. About my stepbrother.

  Jake and I weren’t close. In fact, we were barely on speaking terms. Oh, there’d been that first summer in high school when our parents got married and we tried really hard to get along and be one big happy family.

  I’d been a sophomore, a loner with only a few friends while Jake was a popular senior who everyone invited to their parties. All the girls would sigh and swoon over his thick dark hair, earthy brown eyes, square jawline, and athletic bod. And since Jake was pretty much the hottest guy I’d ever met, I felt lucky to be in his mere presence, much less living in the same house with him.

  I crushed on him hard that summer; I’m not gonna lie. It might’ve been because he was a star running back, or because he got good grades, but I doubt it. Even as a teenager, I wasn’t drawn to jocks or pretty much any guy with an actual future in front of him.

  No, I think I had the hots for Jake because he was my stepbrother, which made it totally weird and wrong. And I think we’ve already established that when it comes to sexual attraction, I’m a little fucked up.

  Anyway, that summer, flirting led to a kiss—one amazing kiss—and boom. By the next morning, I was a persona non-grata. Jake was an uptight jerk from that day forward, never speaking a word to me unless it was to yell at me for skipping class. He also ratted me out to my mom when he found out I was smoking and using a fake ID to buy liquor. Jake wasn’t big on breaking rules. And I admit to being relieved when Mr. Law-and-Order joined the army and left home.

  In our town, that’s what guys did after graduation.

  They either joined the army or went to work at the plant.

  There weren’t a lot of opportunities in our town.

  It’d been a smart move for him to get out.

  I just couldn’t figure out why he’d been dumb enough to come back. But after four years of active duty, he’d rented a little house near the gym where he boxed. A little house which was also, fortuitously, close enough to the local strip club that I was able to walk there, barefoot, shivering against the cool autumn wind, my mouth swelling up where my crazy boyfriend hit me.

  Jake answered the door in nothing but his dog tags and a pair of jeans that he must have hastily thrown on, having been awakened by my frantic knocking. For a minute, I was scared he might have a girl over. Because Jake pretty much always had a girl over. But still wiping sleep from his eyes, my stepbrother didn’t look like he’d been entertaining women in his bed.

  What he looked like was both surprised and annoyed to see me. “Goddamn it, Nicole. It’s three in the morn—” He cut himself off when I stepped closer under the porch light, and he saw my face. Then something darkened in his already dark eyes. “Jesus Christ. What the fuck happened to you?”

  “C—can I c-come in?” I asked, my teeth chattering.

  Jake hesitated a minute, then backed up and opened the door wider to let me in. “Sure.”

  That he’d actually hesitated made me feel even worse than I already did. But I wasn’t too proud to get in out of the cold, even if he wasn’t going to roll out the welcome mat.

  “Sit,” my stepbrother snapped, so I dropped down onto the beat up sofa that used to be in my mom’s basement. He was still bossing me around like a kid sister and I was still obeying like a faithful hound, which brought me even closer to tears when he stooped down in front of me to get a better look at my face.

  Jake’s warm thumb traced my busted lip, and I grimaced in pain. “Jesus Christ,” my stepbrother said, again. “You’re bleeding. Are you going to tell me what the hell happened? And you’d better say you fell or that it was a car accident, because if you let some loser do this to you…”

  “Sure. I fell. We’ll go with that,” I said, bitterly, because I didn’t let Carlos do this to me, did I? Maybe I did, because I didn’t leave him the first time. And I suddenly felt more embarrassed than hurt or afraid, and wondered if it’d been stupid of me to come here.

  Jake narrowed his eyes. “Let’s get you to the hospital.”

  I shook my head.“No, I mean, nothing’s broken. I just…” I trail
ed off, shaken to the core, not knowing what to say. And I hated the way every word I did say sounded like I was going to start crying. I didn’t like to cry in front of people, and I especially didn’t want to cry in front of my judgmental stepbrother.

  “Who did this to you?” Jake asked, his hand clenching a bit into a fist. “I want a name.”

  “Why?” I asked, feeling my eyes widen a bit. What was he going to do? Go hunt Carlos down and give him a beat down? My stepbrother wasn’t just a boxer, but a soldier. And while it was true that my boyfriend had a wicked left-hook—I should know—I was pretty sure Jake could break his nose with one blow if he wanted to.

  I have to admit, the idea had a strange appeal. And not just because I was mad at my boyfriend and wanted him to pay. I guess I also wanted to feel protected—like someone had my back. Even if it was just my stepbrother. But I didn’t think he had it in him.

  And in any case, Jake crushed that fantasy by saying, “Because we’re going to call the police, that’s why. And they’re going to go arrest this guy. Which means I need a name.”

  “Wow,” I said, in slight disbelief that he thought I wanted Carlos in jail. A broken nose was one thing. But an arrest record?

  “Wow, what?”

  “Wow, you haven’t changed, Mr. Law-and-Order.”

  “Neither have you, Miss I-Can’t-Get-My-Shit-Together.”

  Those words slammed into me and I was in too much pain to think up a snappy comeback. Especially since they were true. My life was one big fucked up mess. And maybe I had nobody to blame for it but myself. So—to my horror—I lost my battle with stoicism and burst into tears.

  “Awww, Christ,” Jake said, getting a box of tissues for me, and awkwardly patting my shoulder. “Don’t. Don’t cry Nicky. I’m sorry. I’m an asshole.”

  Desperately trying to stop sobbing into my hands, I sniffled, “It—it’s fine.”

  “Nothing about this is fine,” Jake said, sliding next to me on the sofa. “You’re scared and hurt, and here I am blaming the victim.”

  “I’m not a victim!”

  “Yeah. You are. So why don’t you start from the beginning, and tell me what happened. And this time I promise to just shut up and listen and not to be an asshole about it…”

  ~~~

  He mostly kept his promise. As I stammered my way through the story of how I got a job serving drinks at the local strip club, and fell into bed with its bad-boy owner, Jake shut up. He listened. And he wasn’t an asshole about it until I got to the part where Carlos slapped me the first time.

  “And you stayed with him?” he asked, practically twitching with agitation, making a fist of the bag of frozen peas he’d fetched for me to press against my swelling jaw.

  “Yeah,” I confessed, in a whisper.

  I took the peas from him and held them against my face, feeling the need to explain. “I mean—he’s Latino. He’s hot-tempered. And I guess…I guess I thought it meant that Carlos loved me. That he loved me so much he couldn’t control himself at the thought of losing me to some other guy.” I swallowed and looked away, knowing I sounded like a complete idiot. “I know it’s stupid, but I want someone to feel that way about me. To be that passionate about me. And it felt like passion. It didn’t feel like abuse. At least not until tonight.”

  Jake clenched his jaw in total disapproval. “Well. Now you know. It’s abuse. And it ends now. You’re not going back to him.”

  That much, we agreed on. It was over with Carlos. Whatever love I felt for my boyfriend had been knocked loose along with a tooth or two. “We’re done,” I agreed. “But…I’ve gotta go back and get my stuff.”

  “The hell you do,” Jake said, leaning forward intently. “What you’ve gotta do is call the police.”

  Not this again. Seriously? Between the throbbing pain in my jaw and soreness in my heart, I just couldn’t deal with the thought of going over it all again. Especially not with some cop who likely remembered me as the daughter of a convicted felon and wouldn’t give two craps about what happened to me. “I—I just can’t. Not tonight. My head hurts so much I just want to curl up on your couch and close my eyes and sleep for a little bit. Would that be okay?”

  Jake frowned. “No.”

  Frustrated, I put the peas down on the storage trunk he was using as a coffee table. “Oh. My. God. I know we aren’t like, real family or anything, but I think even a complete stranger would let me—”

  “You can’t close your eyes and sleep on my couch because you might have a concussion, Nicole. And I should really take you to the hospital.”

  “I’m broke,” I said. “I can’t afford to go to the hospital.”

  Jake wasn’t having it. “Yes you can. You’re only twenty-two. You’re still on mom and dad’s insurance.”

  “There’s still a deductible,” I argued. “And the only money I’ve got is the tips I earned tonight before my boyfriend decided to beat me up.”

  “I’ll pay the goddamned bill,” Jake said, insistently. He earned an income from the garage where he worked fixing cars and probably still got paid for inactive duty. But he wasn’t rolling in cash, and I knew he was saving up and putting himself through college—something my mom always bragged about by way of encouraging me to do something with my life.

  “Look, I know I don’t have a concussion,” I said.

  “How do you know? Based on what? I’ve seen a lot of brain injuries in the sandbox and in the boxing ring. I know the symptoms. Do you?”

  Damn him.

  “No,” I admitted, with a yawn. “But if you know the symptoms, why don’t you tell me what they are?”

  “Tiredness, for one.”

  “It’s three in the morning.” I looked at the clock on his wall and groaned. “Four, now. I think it’s pretty normal to be tired in the middle of the night.”

  “Okay, smart-ass,” he said, reaching for me.

  Reflexively, I jolted away in fear. And Jake’s face fell, as if just realizing how badly I’d been traumatized.

  I guess I was just realizing it too.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” he said, his tone changing. Softening. Everything about him seeming to come a little unravelled. “I’m not going to hurt you, Nicky. I just need to look into your eyes to see if one of your pupils is dilated more than the other.”

  I nodded, feeling sheepish, letting him draw closer. He slipped his hand into my hair and gently tipped my head back. And for a moment, I remembered our first kiss all those years ago. The way it made me feel both excited and safe at the same time.

  “Do you feel dizzy?” he asked.

  Well, I hadn’t until that moment. But now that he mentioned it… God, he was good looking. Not just the deep, dark, intense brown eyes. But also the bare, toned, muscular chest. Any woman would be attracted to him. And I would have been, too, if my lady parts were working right. But the fact that this good looking, half-undressed man was looking so deeply into my eyes because another guy punched me was a mood killer for sure.

  “I’m ok, really,” I said.

  Jake stared down at me, intently. “Well, your pupils seem fine. I’d really feel better if you’d let me take you to the hospital to get checked out, but if you won’t go, at least let me take you home to mom and dad’s.”

  “You mean my mom’s. Your dad’s.”

  His eye twitched in annoyance. “You know what I mean.”

  “You already have a mother,” I said, realizing that I sounded kind of like a brat. But it’d always seemed so fake the way he just latched onto my mother. “Why do you call my mom that?”

  “Because she asked me to,” he said, a hint of annoyance returning. “Renee has always been really nice to me, even before she married my dad. So if it makes her happy to be called mom, why wouldn’t I?”

  Because it makes us sound like we’re brother and sister, I thought. And we’re not. Because it made things weird between us. Because…because my mom was the only blood relation I had, and deep down maybe I didn’t want to share
her. But all of that sounded petty so I just said, “I really can’t go home tonight. I can’t deal with the questions and everything else. I swear, if you just let me stay here until morning, I’ll curl up in a corner of your couch and you won’t even know that I’m here.”

  “You’re not sleeping on my couch.” Jake gave a shake of his head, forcing me to look him in the eye. “I’ve got a rule, you know. Any girl who stays in my house, ends up in my bed.”

  ~~~

  I awakened to the scent of coffee bacon—the two best scents in the world. Turning over on Jake’s pillow, in a tee-shirt and a pair of my stepbrother’s plaid pajama bottoms, I inhaled a little unsteadily, then blinked against the sun.

  Oh, wow. How late had I slept?

  Wrapping up in my stepbrother’s blue and silver comforter, I trailed out of the bedroom into the living room, expecting him to be long gone. Jake had been a perfect gentleman, insisting that I sleep in his bed while he slept on the couch. But he’d warned me that he’d have to be at work first thing, and said that I could just let myself out.

  But if the clock was to believed, it was already eleven and there he was in jeans and an undershirt, his back to me as he cracked eggs into a frying pan.

  Hearing me shuffle in, he glanced over his shoulder. “Hey.”

  I must’ve been feeling better, because God. At the sight of Jake’s tight ass in those low slung jeans, my lady parts fired on all cylinders. Did he have to be so hot? “W-what are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” he said, but then, before I could feel too stupid, he added, “I called in sick to work.”

  I nearly gasped. Jake never even skipped a day of high school, much less a day of work. “…are you sick?” I asked, because I couldn’t imagine any possibility where someone as upright and uptight as my stepbrother would ever call in sick under false pretenses. Even if it was just at the garage.