Charged: A Stepbrother Romance Novel (With FREE Bonus Novel Heated!) Read online

  “Do you want me to juggle some apples?”

  “No, I don’t want you to juggle some apples. I want this whole thing to go away. I want it to be a fucking dream.”

  Philip separated himself from Isabella so he could brush the tears away from her face with the yolk of his thumb and look her in the eyes.

  “Look, you were there when mom died, I’m not going anywhere, I promise. We are in this together, like always.”

  Isabella managed a smile.

  “I’m going to be different”, she said. “Bitchy, demanding, moody.”

  “I thought you said you were going to be different?” Philip joked, and then hugged Isabella tightly so she couldn’t slap him.

  “I have to take fucking medication, Philip. I hate taking medication.”

  “If it makes you better.”

  “I’ve read what it does. It numbs everything. It’s going to take away what makes me me.”

  “Honey, I’ve known you for ten years, you can’t take away what makes you you. That would be impossible.”

  “I hope you’re right”, Isabella said. “Jesus, I hope you’re right.”

  “Whatever happens, it happens to us, right? It doesn’t just happen to you. Got it?”

  “Got it”, Isabella said, even though she was thinking ‘I’m the one with Schizophrenia, not you.’

  Chapter 18

  With some money from her parents, and a little bit that Philip had someone managed to cobble together from one of his money making schemes, they found a cheap flat in Coney Island, thinking that being close to the beach would be better for Isabella, packed up their items and were moved, with a little help from Philip’s dad, the summer they both turned nineteen.

  It had been a turbulent year. Isabella had changed medication three times, finally settling on something that seemed best at controlling her mood swings. At times, she seemed like a completely different person, while at others, she seemed as normal and as lucid as she always had.

  Upon advice from her medical team, and despite being offered scholarships to two Ivy league universities, Isabella reluctantly decided to defer until she was in a better place mentally to be able to cope with the strains of moving away from home and taking on a four year course. This affected her much more than she initially thought it would, and unable to both continue her studies or work, she found herself sitting at home and slowly going mad again through boredom.

  “I’m rotting here”, she would complain to her parents, who were doing everything they could to support her. “And you don’t give a damn.”

  The initial medication made her fat and angry. When it was finally changed she did nothing but spend all day crying and smashing up everything that she owned. She threw plates, kicked a hole in her television and broke her window with a shelf full of school books, she had someone managed to wrench off the wall.

  Through all of this Philip stood beside her. She would hurl insults at him and tell him they were finished. She would cry all night and blame him for her illness. She told him she hated him a hundred times and on a particularly bad night held razor blades against her wrists and told him she would kill herself.

  After Christmas she spent a week in a psychiatric hospital for rehabilitation, during which time she was put on her third different series of medication and which finally gave her some much needed stability. The mood swings stopped, but they were replaced by the numbness she had spent so long trying to avoid, and an apathy that, albeit infrequently, resulted in bouts of depression that would leave her bed bound for days at a time. Philip wanted her put on a different medication again, but Isabella and her parents refused. She could take the depression and the apathy, the lack of appetite and the slovenliness as long as she felt mentally stable. As long as she wasn’t violent or angry or lying in bed crying. As long as the voices stopped.

  She didn’t feel herself, but Isabella had long since forgotten what that really meant anyway. Philip was worried that he was losing her completely, but the doctors said she was showing signs of improvement, and they promised that although the bouts of depression that she was experiencing wouldn’t ever go away completely, they could be certain that over time, and with proper attention, they could be reduced significantly. According to Isabella, it was a satisfactory price to pay, even though Philip wasn’t completely convinced.

  With all this going on, Philip was yet to find a job. It was a source of constant worry for Isabella, especially after they had moved in together. As far as she was concerned, her illness, which was what she called it, having never been in favour of the word ‘condition’, or of simply using the word schizophrenia, was under control. It was being treated in the best way it could be, she felt better than she had done in months and she wanted to think about her future, and their future together, which was why she agreed to move in with Philip in the first place.

  “I told you so.” Philip said, the boxes and bags not even unpacked.

  “What did you tell me?”

  “I told you we’d move in together.”

  Isabella flopped down onto the couch. It was balmy so close to the water, and it was making her tired.

  “You told me you’d buy me a house overlooking the park”, she said sarcastically.

  “Gotta start somewhere”, Philip mused.

  “Honey, sit down for a moment”, Isabella said, her tone changing.

  Philip moved like a shot to the couch. He knew that tone and knew it was best to give Isabella his undivided attention. Isabella took Philip’s hand in hers.

  “Promise me you’ll look for a proper job now.”

  “Honey”, Philip groaned. “Do we have to talk about this now? We haven’t even moved in yet. Little by little, no?”

  Isabella pulled her hand away from Philip’s. She might have been less irascible now under different medication, but Isabella had always had a potent temper and sometimes Philip struggled to work out who was really responsible.

  “I don’t know why you’re so set on not getting a real job. How do you think we are going to continue to pay for this flat if you don’t? My parents said they’d help us out for a while, but only until you get yourself sorted. It’s not like I can, not yet anyway. Look, I don’t care about the big house overlooking the park, I never did. All I want is to get through this and concentrate on the future.”

  “That’s what I’m doing”, Philip protested.

  “Fucking around on computers all day long?”

  “It’s coding”, Philip said, almost apologetically. “I reckon I’m close to something too.”

  “Why don’t you ask your dad again, I’m sure he’ll take you in, even if just for the weekend.”

  “Honey”, Philip complained.

  “I mean it. I can’t fucking cope with this if we haven’t got money coming in.”

  Isabella was up on her feet now. Suddenly she felt stressed and she didn’t know why. Suddenly she was hotter than she had any right to be. The doctors had said to be careful around change, and there was nothing bigger than moving house, especially for the first time. She could feel an episode coming on, but whenever they came, they were like unstoppable forces. She’d have just as much success reversing the polarity of the earth.

  “Fuck”, she said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  It had been a long time since she’d felt like this. A long time trying to convince herself that nothing was coming even though she knew it was. It was like watching a tunnel waiting for a train to come out of it, knowing that one would definitely come but not knowing at what time.

  “Honey, stop”

  Isabella folded her fingers into her palms and pushed them against her temples. Philip was up quickly to try and calm her down, but he too knew that once it had begun, there was little else he could do but let it run its course. Seeing her like this was the most painful thing he had to go through. It was scary for him, which meant it had to be absolutely terrifying for Isabella. There was no predicting the outbursts, how long they would last or how strong th
ey would be. In the first month she had five. In the next six months just three. This was the first since she had changed her medication and seemed to be finally on the road to stability.

  “Argh”, she screamed. “Fuck. Argh. Fuck. I wish you would just fucking listen for once. Just fucking once in your life stop being so fucking selfish selfish selfish me me me and think about us. Is that too much to ask, huh? IS THAT TOO MUCH TO FUCKING ASK, PHILIP?”

  Isabella punched her fist against her head for every word in her last sentence. She was digging her nails into her palms so fiercely she’d already drawn blood.

  “No honey, that’s not too much to ask. Please calm down, please.”

  Isabella’s breathing was ragged and staccato, as though one of her lungs might have had a hole in it. What terrified Philip the most, however, was the detached look sunk so deep in her eyes. The eyes he knew every single nuance of. In these moments, rare as they had been of late, she wasn’t herself. He didn’t know who she was, but he loved her all the same.

  “It’ll be fine-”, was all Isabella heard of Philip’s final attempts to calm her down, before the rest spiraled away in a dark web of confusion. She remembers nothing of punching him so hard she fractured his rib, kicking holes in every single box he’d spent hours packing and carrying to their new, third floor apartment, telling him she hated him, everything that he had ever been and everything that he was ever going to amount to, collapsing on the ground and sobbing so utterly and so completely that she ended up almost vomiting and then finally, when all of her energy had been sucked from her body, being carried to the bed in which she woke up in, completely confused, several hours later.

  Philip was alongside her when she did, sat propped up against a stack of pillows, the weight shifted onto one side and away from his damaged rib.

  “I want to make a baby”, was the first thing that Isabella said, a wide smile and a shower of tears following it.

  Chapter 19

  It didn’t happen that night, or at any point in the following week, but as soon as Isabella got the idea stuck in her head she couldn’t think of anything else. She was obsessed, blinded by what she thought would be the perfect solution to her rapidly decreasing health and immediately desperate to conceive and begin a family. After the moving in incident, there was a period of relative calm. It was what Philip would refer to as ‘the eye of the oncoming storm’ to his closest friends, where Isabella seemed placid, focused, finally on the way to stability and happiness even. The truth was, she was far from being any of those things, she just got better at hiding what was really going on.

  Without any way to support the child, Philip thought it was a crazy idea, but he loved Isabella with all his heart and just the idea of having a family of their own seemed to have such a positive effect on her, he was ready to begin much earlier than he had originally imagined. If having a baby was what Isabella needed to get better, than a baby they would have. Philip knew he would spend the rest of his life with Isabella, and a family had always been part of that plan. He may not have had a permanent job, but they had an apartment now, paid up in advance for six months by Isabella’s parents, and the more he thought about it, the less reason he had not to indulge her. Besides which, since Isabella’s diagnosis, they’d rarely been intimate and whenever they had, Isabella hadn’t really enjoyed it. Philip was desperate to change that, and making a baby seemed like the perfect way to begin.

  “I love you”, Philip confessed, while he kissed along the delicate lines of Isabella’s clavicle. It was a sensitive area for her, and one Philip loved to exploit. They’d had the best month in ages. Perhaps the best month in the whole of their ten year relationship. For the first time in what seemed like months, Isabella seemed more like herself. She was up early in the morning, she was going for walks in the park, she was cooking and reading again, she was even thinking of doing a series of short evening courses. It was a complete transformation to what had come before and Philip couldn’t have been happier. She hadn’t fallen pregnant yet, but it wasn’t for the want of trying. They were fucking like rabbits. In that one month, they must have fucked more than they had done in all the time leading up to it. Isabella was insatiable, full of wanton desire and ready at the drop of a hat.

  “I love you too”, Isabella said, smoothing her hands across Philip’s chest. They’d both got thinner. They were eating less, exercising more, trying to be more healthy. Philip had always been active and physically fit, he’d always had a muscular torso, but now it was even more defined. Just looking at him made her want to melt. She never thought she’d ever feel emotion as strong, but when Philip held her, touched her or looked at her the way he did, she felt love burning inside her so strongly she thought it would devour her completely. She wanted to tell him and knew she had to, but she wanted to wait until after they’d conceived.

  “What?” Philip said, seeing something in her eyes. Isabella smiled.

  “You were right”, Isabella said. “I was just thinking.”

  Phillip kissed along the top of her chest, moving slowly towards her already erect nipples. She’d become so much more sensitive since she’d stopped taking her medication. ‘It’s easy’, the voice told her, ‘let the toilet swallow the pill instead of you.’

  Philip took her nipple into his mouth, flicking it delicately with the tip of his tongue, careful not to be too rough.

  “What was I right about?”, Philip said, when he’d satisfied his urge enough. Isabella was tense. She could feel each touch like a lightning bolt flashing through her skin. She’d never been this sensitive, not even before the diagnosis, not even their first time. It was like her body was revealing itself to her, little by little.

  No-one needed to know, not even Philip. It was a secret between themselves, and she’d never felt better. Finally she could feel again. Ok, the voices had come back, but she was a big girl now and she knew she could control them. Everyone had voices inside their head anyway, it wasn’t such a big deal.

  Isabella squirmed around underneath Philip’s multiple kisses. She was naked but for a cute pair of panties she should have thrown away a long time ago she’d kept because they were comfortable to sleep in. It was morning, it was a weekend, she was in bed with the man that she loved, they had the rest of their lives in front of them and Isabella was convinced that today would finally be the day they would make their baby. Everything seemed perfect.

  “That I’d marry you.” Isabella said between squeals.

  It was a white lie. White lies weren’t bad lies if good things happened because of them. It was better without medication anyway, if anyone knew that better than her it was Philip. Philip had seen her before all of this happened. He knew exactly what she was supposed to be like. Fuck the doctors.

  “Fuck them.”

  “Fuck them?” Philip repeated, pulling away from Isabella momentarily.

  Isabella pulled him back to her. “Fuck anyone who says we can’t”, she improvised.

  “I thought you weren’t ready for that?” Philip said, too involved in the moment to catch Isabella’s slip.

  “You give me a baby”, she said, “I’ll do anything that you want.”

  “You mean you won’t anyway?” Philip said playfully.

  Isabella put her leg up on his shoulder. “Within reason”, she said, and then put the other leg up on his other one.

  Philip cocked his head, impressed by her confidence. Impressed by what seemed like the new Isabella, or the return to the old Isabella, or the Isabella mark 2.0. “It’s like that is it?”

  “Hurry up and fuck me, Philip”, Isabella demanded.

  “That I can do for you, honey”, Philip said and quickly whipped off her panties.

  Isabella had always been sexual, it was the medication that had numbed her desire. They’d first fucked as soon as they managed to find time alone together, both just turned eighteen and completely clueless about what to do. It was Isabella who’d initiated it, Isabella who’d taken Philip’s larger than avera
ge, already swollen cock out of his pants, sucked him until he nearly came and guided him inside her. That first time was magical, but it hurt like hell. Sex since then had only got better and better, until her illness came rudely along to ruin it. Now, lately, from the day she stopped her medication, the sex had been better than all other times put together.

  “Lick me”, Isabella demanded. “Fuck, I’m so horny.”

  Philip didn’t need to be told. He liked nothing more than running his tongue along Isabella’s slit, between her fat pussy lips, around the inner labia that hung a little lower than the outer, around her clitoris in circular motions that made her knees jerk involuntarily, and finally into her pussy hole. They’d experimented a lot since that first time, and Philip knew exactly what he needed to do to get her off. After he’d teased the opening to her pussy with his tongue, pushing it inside her just far enough to make her beg for more, he pulled it out completely, replacing the fat muscle with the tip of his finger and running the rough underside across her swollen clit while he began to finger her gently.

  A month ago she would have complained about the pain. A month ago she would never have been as wet as she was now. Philip was astounded by the change, and he put it down to the new, protein rich diet, the long walks she was taking in the park, the sea air, the upbeat attitude.

  Isabella moaned. She could feel things exploding inside her she didn’t know the origin of, nerve endings sending triggers of pleasure rapidly to her brain and pulses of pins and needles spreading out across her skin like wild fire. If this was what love physically felt like, she never wanted it to stop. Isabella pushed her pussy hard into Philip’s face and demanded he tongue her more fiercely, finger her more deeply.

  She’d go back when the baby was born, that was the agreement. Only when the baby was born. After that everything would be fine.

  Philip could see Isabella’s body tensing and relaxing as though she was having involuntary contractions. Every so often she would moan deeply and her pussy would clench tightly against his fingers while she grabbed for a fistful of sheets, only for the sensation to pass again just as quickly. He was pushing her close to the edge and they both knew it.