Stepbrother At Last Read online

  “Actually, I need to get to the library to study. Thanks for asking, though!” Julia said brightly, doing her perky routine that I remember so well. She used to use it on guys she didn’t want to go out with. Now I was one of them.

  “Can I drive you to the library, then?”

  “I thought you said you wanted to walk off all those calories?”

  “Uh. Yeah. But I can go to the gym later, too. I’d really like to talk with you.”

  Lucy chimed in then, god bless her. “Oh come on, Julia. Go for a walk with Nick! He’s your brother and you haven’t seen him for ages!”

  “Yes, that’s true, Mom, I haven’t. Why don’t you ask Nick the reason for that?” Julia said this to her mom, but looked right at me while she did. The bottom dropped out of my stomach. In that moment I almost gave up the whole thing. Why had I come back in town, made all my plans? This was hopeless. She was never going to forgive me—I had no chance at all.

  Then Lucy said, “Julia, may I speak to you in the kitchen, please?” with this absolutely take-no-bullshit tone in her voice. Julia heaved a big sigh and went with her.

  I don’t know what Lucy said to her in there, but Julia came out in a different mood. She walked right up to me and quietly said, “Okay. Let’s go for that walk.”

  I got up and we walked out into the May twilight of my old neighborhood. We walked a couple of blocks in what I thought was companionable silence until she said, “Well?” with an impatient tone in her voice. “Here I am with my ears open. What is it you’re so desperate to say?”

  I had planned this conversation forever, but I couldn’t start. In my plans she was already soft and loving and the words came easily. But now…. What I really wanted to know was how much she remembered of the day of the accident. The doctors told me, while she was still unconscious afterwards, that she might not remember anything about the accident or even that whole day. But how do you say, Hey, do you remember the kiss that changed my life? Hey, you said you loved me, does that ring any bells?

  I didn’t know how to find out what she remembered without hurting her more than I already had. So I chickened out.

  “I just want to say that I’m sorry, Julia.”

  “You said that the other day, and I said there was nothing to apologize for.”

  “I know you said that, but…. Aren’t you mad that you were so injured and I just got cuts and bruises? It’s so unfair. You were disabled and I wasn’t.”

  She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “The whole rest of the world isn’t disabled. Why get mad at you, out of all of them?”

  “Sure, I get that, but you’re acting mad. You don’t want to see me, spend time with me. We used to be pretty close.”

  “I’m not acting mad. I’m busy.”

  “Julia, come on. This is me. It’s not just that you’re busy.”

  “Okay, fine. What do you want? To get together for coffee once a week? Okay, you can have Tuesday morning or Thursday. Seven to eight AM. Which do you want?”

  “I don’t want to be slotted into your schedule! I want us to be close again!” I blurted out

  She was quiet for a long time. I stole a glance at her, and she had her lips tucked into her mouth, that little mole pulled tight.

  “It’s been a long time since we were close,” she finally said. “I just can’t…. How long are you even going to be in town?”

  “Always. I’m not going back.”

  “Seriously? You’re staying in Greenwood when you could be in California? That’s where your business is. You can’t just move here.”

  “I am the business. I can move wherever I want.”

  “Oh yeah, the billionaire thing. I forgot. You make the rules.” She moved her mouth into a twisted smile.

  “Not all of them, apparently. You won’t do what I want.” I tried to turn that into a joke, but she didn’t smile.

  “I don’t work for you. Even if I did agree to go along with your publicity for the hospital.” She was quiet again, then said, “So, why did you decide to do that, give all that money to Greenwood Hospital? I’m sure there are plenty of people and places that need money more, though of course the hospital here is always over budget.”

  “For you.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “They saved your life, Julia. I’d cover the place in gold and diamonds if I could.” She looked at me for a few seconds. I would have given the same amount I gave to the hospital to have known what she was thinking.

  “They saved my life almost three years ago. Why now? Didn’t you come back because I can walk again now?”

  “I didn’t know you could. When I got in touch with the hospital, I thought you were in a wheelchair.” She whipped her head around and looked at me with her mouth open. I went on, “In fact, nobody told me about…your condition…the entire time. I didn’t bring it up, and I guess they assumed I knew. I had no idea until you walked into that conference room the day before yesterday.” She still didn’t say anything, just kept looking into my face like she was trying to figure something out. I waited a minute for her to start talking, and when she didn’t, I said, “So, how did it happen that you can walk now? Were the doctors just wrong, or what?”

  “No, they weren’t wrong,” she said quietly. “As far as they knew, the damage to my spine and pelvis was too extensive to ever allow me to walk. But then this doctor I’d never heard of, Dr. Cortner, got in touch with my doctor and said she was developing a new surgical technique and thought I’d be a good candidate for it. Long story short, it worked.”

  “You weren’t scared?”

  “Not really. What did I have to lose? If it didn’t work, I’d just be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, and that’s what I already had.” She was quiet a minute. Somewhere lilacs were blooming, and their scent came to us on a light breeze. “Mom was scared,” Julia said. “She was afraid I’d get my hopes up and then be disappointed.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s really amazing. They did the surgery at Greenwood Hospital?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe I should have donated a new surgical unit instead.”

  “You still didn’t answer my question about that. Why give to the hospital at all?”

  “I wanted to give you something. I know, I couldn’t make up for what happened, but it just killed me that I was okay and you were…damaged.” She made a disgusted noise, but I plowed on. “When you’re rich, you can give people stuff. I gave my dad enough to quit his job and be comfortable forever, but he’ll never quit teaching. But for you, I knew money wouldn’t do it. You’re not the kind of person who really cares about money.”

  I looked over at her, and she was chewing on the middle of her upper lip. I went on, “I kept wondering what I could do for you that would really mean something to you. I remembered you giving all your babysitting money to a bunch of different charities, and I thought, maybe if I gave to the hospital, some place that was important to you….”

  “What? If you gave to the hospital, then I’d be your…friend again? Is that it?” She had a bitter edge to her voice that was not the Julia I remembered.

  “Maybe! I didn’t think of it exactly like that, but I thought if I did something good in your name that maybe it would blot out what I did to you! That maybe we could find some way to, I don’t know, go forward. Together.”

  She sighed. “Okay, Nick. Coffee once a week. That’s what I’ve got to give right now. Take it or leave it.”

  Of course I took it.

  ~ <> ~

  The whole time I was taking that walk with Julia after dinner, I kept flashing back to another walk we had taken together, that day of the accident so long ago.

  Once I pulled her out of the water and knew she was going to be okay, it was like I couldn’t think any more. I felt this huge wave of relief, and all the feelings I had for Julia that I had been pushing down for so long burst out. I couldn’t hide them any more, couldn’t joke and tease my way out of them. I didn�
��t think, I just grabbed her and smashed our lips together. I wasn’t looking even one second into the future, so I didn’t stop to wonder if she’d push me away. What she did was kiss me back. All those stupid cliches about time stopping, the earth standing still, rocking your world, all that bullshit? All one hundred per cent true. With the right person, at the right moment, one kiss can change your life.

  When our lips finally parted, I helped Julia stand up. We looked at each other, and this time, I kissed her on purpose. I took my time, first just brushing her lips with mine, then gradually opening, tasting, claiming her mouth for my own. And the miracle was, she was into it!

  We broke the kiss, and she looked up at me with this smile on her face that was like the gates of heaven opening up.

  “Julia, I—”

  “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry!”

  “I wasn’t going to.” I grinned right back at her. “I’ve never been less sorry about anything in my life. I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

  “Oh god! Me too! Why didn’t you?”

  “A million reasons. I thought you’d be grossed out, for one thing. Some people would say we’re brother and sister.”

  “Step, though. Not blood relations. I looked it up.”

  “You looked it up?” I laughed. This made me so happy. “I can’t believe it. What did you find?”

  “Well, the law says we can…. I mean, we’re not doing anything illegal, that’s all that matters, right?”

  “To me, it wouldn’t matter if it was illegal. I’d go to jail for this.” And then I kissed her again. We started to walk along the edge of the lake, where the water met the sand. I know, big cliche, right? Go try it with the love of your life and you’ll see why it’s in practically every movie ever made. The sun was behind us. I put my arm around Julia’s shoulder. I could touch a lot of her skin, and it was still cool on top from being in the water so long, but warm underneath. I squeezed her for a second—having that thought about her being in the water reminded me of almost losing her.

  “So…” she said. “How long have you…felt this way?”

  “Forever. The whole time. Ever since Dad and Lucy took us out to dinner to tell us about the wedding.”

  “No way! It’s the same night for me too.”

  “I even remember what you had. You ordered the escargot because you didn’t know what it was and thought it sounded fancy. I thought you’d chicken out when you found out it was snails, but you ended up sucking all the garlic butter out of the shells. I can still picture you doing it.”

  “Oh great, what a romantic, ladylike image!” We were laughing. That walk was all laughing and kissing.

  “What about you, what do you remember about me that night?”

  “I remember you were really nice to my mom. I thought you had a good relationship with your dad. You just seemed good on the inside. You were wearing a chocolate brown sweater that was the exact same color as your eyes.” She turned to me then and put her hands on my face. There were little gold glints in her green eyes. I put my arms around her and she did the same. I could feel so much of her skin pressed up against me, from my thighs all the way up to my chest. She pushed herself against me, and of course I got wood.

  I tried to back away a little, hoping she couldn’t tell. She was only eighteen, and I didn’t know if she’d ever had a serious boyfriend. I’d been away at college most of the time. But she didn’t want me to pull away. She grabbed me harder and started to grind into me a little. I gotta say, I was surprised, but I got over it pretty quick. Holding that hot girl in my arms, the girl who had starred in my dreams for years, feeling her rub herself against me that way—it was pretty great.

  But we had to stop. I mean, there we were at a state park. I couldn’t just take her behind a tree and jump her bones, even though that was a tempting thought. When I got with her, I wanted to take my time, do it right. Not to mention, what were we going to do about the whole brother-sister thing?

  “Hey Julia. If we don’t stop now, I’m not going to be able to stop”

  “Okay.” She was panting a little, her eyes sparkling. “Let’s keep walking. If we stand still, I’ll molest you.” She winked.

  “What are we going to do about Dad and Lucy? Should we tell them?”

  “I never thought about this part. I don’t know. I don’t want to keep it a secret.”

  “Yeah, me neither. It makes it seem wrong, kind of,” I said.

  “So…do we just…start acting like boyfriend and girlfriend and see what they say? Or do we sit them down and tell them? Ha, I know, we’ll take them back to that restaurant where I had the escargot!”

  “Jule.” I stopped laughing and pulled her close again. “This is more than boyfriend-girlfriend stuff for me. I love you.”

  She leaned her forehead against my chest then, and I couldn’t see her face. Had I scared her? It felt like forever before she looked up into my eyes. “I love you too. I always have.”

  Julia

  When I got home from the hospital after clinicals there was no one there. Mom must have gone out. In the mirror beside the front door, I could see big black tracks of mascara running down my face. It had been my hardest day yet as a student nurse.

  I really wanted to talk to my mom. She’d left me a note in the kitchen—it was one of her volunteer days and she’d be back late.

  This was one of the things that I had to fix in my life: not enough friends. I used to have lots of friends, before the accident. But once I was out of the hospital and was facing life in a wheelchair, most of them just drifted away. It was partly my fault, but also part of it was that a lot of them had gone to colleges far away and just didn’t keep in touch. It would have been nice to be able to pick up the phone and talk to a friend about what had happened.

  Of course the first person I wanted to talk to was Nick. I’d thought of him while I was still at the hospital, even. But I didn’t want to get all dependent on him. He was a freaking billionaire now. He could have any girl he wanted, not to mention go anywhere, do anything he wanted. No matter what he said, he’d be gone from Greenwood soon. He didn’t need to know how often I woke, tangled in the sheets, damp from dreams of him, of his hands and mouth on me—everywhere.

  Still. He had ears, he could listen. We’d had coffee a couple of times and it wasn’t horrible. It was awkward, yeah, but once we’d been talking a few minutes, the awkwardness went away, and it was kind of like it was before the accident. And he kept asking for more—dinner, movie, fly to New York and see a play. I always said no—I knew that I didn’t want to start trusting him and get my heart broken. Again. But just this once wouldn’t hurt, right?

  So I called him.

  He answered right away, and it was the strangest thing, just the warm sound of his voice saying, “Hi Julia” got me all choked up again.

  “Nick, I need you,” I said. I didn’t mean to say it that way—it just came out.

  “What’s wrong?” Instantly his voice was serious, take-charge. “Are you okay?”

  “I had…. I had a really bad day at the hospital.”

  “Oh. Where are you?”

  “I’m at home.”

  “Okay, sit tight, Jule. I’ll be right there.”

  I washed my face and changed clothes. Less than ten minutes later, his car pulled up out front.

  When I opened the door, the first thing he did was to fold me up in a big warm hug. I wasn’t expecting it, but I didn’t freeze up like the last time he’d hugged me here. It wasn’t a sexy hug, or anything like that. Just a long, comforting one. I didn’t know how to feel about it. I didn’t want to let him get too close. His scent, some clean-smelling cologne and that sunshine smell, was almost intoxicating, though. Just friends, I reminded myself.

  I led him to the kitchen, which was where everybody sat to talk in this house.

  He said, “Can I make you some tea? Do you still drink that woo-woo herbal stuff you used to like?” He rummaged in a cabinet for a second. “Y
ep, here it is.” He started to heat water and got two cups out.

  “You still remember where everything is?” I said.

  “Yeah. Your mom’s still as organized as ever.”

  When we were seated at the table with the fragrant mugs in front of us, he said, “So what happened today?”

  “I was working surgical,” I said, and I felt my voice tightening up. “They brought a girl in through the ER who’d been in a car accident. Just a 13-year-old girl, Nick. Her injuries weren’t exactly like mine, but pretty close, with a crushed pelvis and broken legs.”

  Nick pressed his lips together before saying, “Were you in the OR where they were working on her?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They operated for four hours. I was there the whole time. She’s in critical condition now, in the ICU. Just like I was. I was a basket case today. Once she was in recovery, I went to the ladies’ room and just cried and cried. Thank god my shift was over, because all I wanted was to come home.”

  “So, you cried after?”

  I nodded.

  “But how about during? While she was on the table? How did you feel then?”

  I took a sip of tea. “I don’t know. I just was focused on working. I was upset. But I still just did my job.”

  He smiled, kind of a sad smile, but still a smile. “That’s great though, Jule. Nobody would blame you for falling apart in a situation like that. But you didn’t. You did the job.” He stroked my fingers with his thumb. I looked down. Somehow, he’d taken my hand while I was talking and I hadn’t registered the fact.

  I left my hand in his, because, I told myself, it would be rude to pull it back right then.

  Nick said, “Are you proud of yourself? Cause I’m really proud of you.”

  “Well, yeah! Yeah, I kind of am.”

  He looked at the time on his phone, and I said, “Oh, sorry. Do you have to be somewhere?”

  “No, not at all. I was just thinking, it’s really early for dinner, but I bet you didn’t have lunch, did you?”