Stepbrother At Last Read online

  She stepped forward and said, “I don’t remember much about my time here in the ICU, but I know that if it hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t be here right now. The care I received here inspired me to enter the medical field myself, and I am currently a nursing student at the university, doing my clinicals at Greenwood.” This got scattered applause too. “I don’t know how to express my gratitude, but I hope the staff here knows how much I feel. I also want to thank Nicholas Cochran for his gift of the new ICU. I know that many more people will be helped here because of it. Thank you.”

  The crowd kind of went nuts with clapping and I heard a long wolf-whistle too. Julia was all smiles, probably relieved that the speeches were over. The administrator handed me the giant scissors. Julia and I both held them, each of us taking one handle, and slowly pinched the red ribbon between the blades. Flashbulbs went off all around us. Finally the ribbon was cut all the way through, and I turned to Julia and kissed her cheek to the sound of applause as more cameras flashed. She didn’t object, but smiled at me. Her eyes sparkled in their green depths, and I wished we were alone. But we would be soon enough.

  There was the usual confusion and hubbub of a bunch of people suddenly talking and moving around at once. Most of them seemed to be heading for the exits, and I thought it would be a good time for Julia and me to go, too. Just then, I got a text from my new assistant, Mark. “The letter got here,” it read. “Should I open it?”

  My stomach dropped. I had told him to get in touch with me the instant the letter from the university arrived. “Open it,” I texted back.

  At this point Julia noticed my texting, and said, “What’s up?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “Hang on.”

  She frowned a bit and turned away to talk to another well-wisher, this time the wife of a former mayor of Greenwood.

  It took forever for the answering text to come in, but when it did, it read, “It’s a GO.”

  I couldn’t help it, I said, “Awesome!” Heads turned, including Julia’s.

  “What’s awesome?” she said with a smile.

  “It’s a brand new project for me. Whew! I can’t wait to get going!”

  She stiffened. “Oh really?” she said, and her eyes were suddenly blazing with anger. “I knew it. I knew that you wouldn’t stay. Sooner or later you would turn your back and walk away again.” That’s exactly what she did then, turned and walked through the doorway where we had just cut the ribbon.

  I chased after her. “Wait! Julia, let me explain!”

  She was walking fast through a hallway, the skirt of her dress a red silk flag behind her, but now she turned and faced me in the empty hall. “There is no explanation for this. You did it before, you’re doing it again. At least now I can stand on my own two feet, at least now I don’t have to start my whole life over from scratch.”

  I was stunned. All this fury because she thought I was leaving town? “This is what I’ve been—”

  “Look. Nick. I’m done. I did this thing for the hospital like you wanted, I even started to let you…. But I’m done. You’re not getting the chance to do this to me again. Do me a favor.” She took a deep breath. “Do not ever try to see me again. Don’t call, don’t email…of course what am I worried about? It’s not like you did any of those things the last time you bailed on me. But understand this: I don’t ever. Ever. Want to lay eyes on you again.”

  I grabbed her arm before she could turn away. “Julia stop! You have no idea what this is. You don’t even know why I left!”

  “What difference does it make? What I knew was that when I got out of the ICU, you were gone.”

  “It matters! My god, Julia, you have no idea what I went through.”

  “What YOU went though? Oh, right. I was in a coma, had spinal injuries and everything else. I ended up in a wheelchair for two years—you came out with not a scratch on you, but you are the one who suffered?”

  “See? I knew you blamed me! When they said you wouldn’t remember anything, I felt such guilt. You had all these problems; I had none. I was driving. I was sure you would hate me for ruining your life. It was wrong to run away, I know that now, but at the time…. I almost drove off a bridge, I was such a mess.”

  She grabbed my arms then, and looked at me intently, but then let go of me.

  “Julia, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t bear it, after seeing you in all that pain, to know you would wake up and hate me. I was going to come back about a month later, but that’s when Dad told me you didn’t want him or Lucy to tell me anything about you. You cut off all contact. So I knew you didn’t want to see me. Of course you thought the accident was all my fault.”

  “The hell I did! I never blamed you for the accident! What we were doing was dangerous as hell and it was my fault as much as yours!”

  For a minute I just stared at her, thinking about what she’d said. “Wait,” I said. “You remember the accident?”

  ~ <> ~

  Did you ever ask someone to marry you? It’s like you’ve just jumped off a cliff, not knowing whether you’ll land in deep, welcoming water, or a field of boulders. My heart was going like mad. Julia is a kind person, and she didn’t make me wait.

  She pulled my hand up until I stood and then threw her arms around me. I could feel her jumping up and down a little bit. “Yes, yes, yes!” she said. She was laughing, I was laughing. I touched that delicious little mole beside her mouth, and then I kissed her. We were both gasping with joyful laughter, so it wasn’t a long kiss, but what it lacked in length it made up for in sweetness.

  “Nick, I have always wished…. I mean I always hoped that somehow, someday, we’d be together, but I never thought it would come true!”

  “Me too! I thought I was just the big brother who drove you crazy.”

  “Ugh,” she said. “Don’t say that brother stuff. And yes, you did drive me crazy. Still do.” She pulled my head down to hers, and this time our kiss left nothing to be desired.

  “Let’s go home, Jule. I want to get the conversation with Dad and Lucy over with, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I don’t want to keep my mom in the dark about this. And now she’ll have a wedding to plan!”

  A wedding! This was all happening so suddenly that I felt disoriented for a minute as Julia and I ran to the car. But then I looked over at her on the front seat, and she gave me the most beautiful smile, and I knew that wherever that girl was, that was where I wanted to be. We were young to get married, it was true, but Julia was my home and that was all there was to it.

  We’d been driving for about five minutes when Julia unbuckled her seatbelt so she could slide over next to me on the front seat of the ancient sedan I had then.

  “Julia, that’s dangerous. You should put your seatbelt back on.”

  “Oh, it’ll be okay. I can’t do this from way over there.” She put her arm around me and started to kiss my neck. It made it hard to want her to go back to the passenger side. She had one hand in my hair and one on my chest. I had put a loose shirt on over my bathing trunks, and now she unbuttoned the shirt and slipped her hand inside, onto my chest. It made me wonder about something.

  “Hey Jule. This is maybe none of my business, but have you…. Have you ever had a serious boyfriend before?”

  “No, not really.” She kissed my ear. “I kind of had a crush on this totally hot, unattainable guy. No other guy could come close.”

  I laughed. She really knew how to make me feel good. I don’t know why I had to know this, but I did. I said, “So, you’ve never been with anyone else?”

  “Well, I dated of course. I mean I tried to stop thinking about you all the time, but— Wait. Are you asking me if I’ve had sex?”

  “Uh, yeah, is that too personal?”

  She laughed. “You do remember asking me to marry you, right? I’ll tell you anything. No, I have not had sex. I managed to graduate from high school still a virgin. Probably the only one.”

  “No way are you the only one. And Jule?
I’m glad. I’m glad you didn’t find someone.”

  “What about you?”

  I was afraid she would ask that. “Uh, I have. I haven’t been really serious about anyone, but in college…. It’s like everybody hooks up. It’s expected.”

  “That’s cool,” she said. “At least one of us will know what to do. I’ve never even…seen one.”

  “We’ll have to do something about that,” I said, and gave her a big fake leer and a wink.

  Julia’s hand, the one on my chest, was moving lower. She kissed my neck again, and her hand reached my still-damp bathing suit. Slowly, her fingers grazed my cock outside the fabric. I felt the blood slam into my cock, making it rise to attention. She increased the pressure of her fingers, and gripped me lightly. “Is this right?” she whispered.

  I could barely breathe. “It’s great, Jule.” I turned a bit to kiss her, trying to keep one eye on the road.

  She gave my cock a squeeze, then let go and turned around on the seat. She arched her back and reach behind herself with both hands to unhook her bikini top.

  “What are you doing?” I said, alarmed, though of course I knew what she was doing. “Anyone driving by will be able to see you.”

  “Eh, this road’s pretty deserted.” With that she removed the swimsuit top and put it on the seat. Her breasts were creamy white, in contrast to the light tan she had. Their shape was perfect, and they moved a bit with the motion of the car.

  “My god, Julia. You’re so beautiful,” I breathed.

  She leaned towards me and caressed her own breasts, lifting them and pushing them together. She brushed her pale pink nipples with her fingers.

  I couldn’t resist. I reached towards her, anticipating the smoothness on my hand.

  Just then, the car started to jolt. I’d let the car drift off the road. Too fast, we were approaching a huge tree. I didn’t even have time to brake or turn the wheel.

  Everything ended in the sound of shattered glass and the scream of twisted metal.

  Julia

  “Yes, I remember the accident!” I shouted in Nick’s face.

  “How much of that day do you remember?”

  “All of it, as far as I know.”

  “But…the doctors said you couldn’t. That after the trauma and being unconscious you wouldn’t.”

  “They were wrong! Doctors don’t know everything, Nick.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because it didn’t matter.”

  “Of COURSE it matters! What could possibly matter more?”

  “What you did matters more. What you didn’t do matters more. I woke up in the ICU, and my fiance had disappeared. I’d loved you for years; I finally found out you loved me too—or you said you did; and right away you abandoned me when I needed you most.”

  “But they said you would forget the whole day! I thought you would wake up and discover that your life was ruined and it was all my fault. Not the fault of the man who loved you, because you would forget all that--your stepbrother’s fault. How could you stand to look at me every day? How could you not hate me?”

  “How could you not have stuck around to find out what I remembered? Would it have cut into your busy life to wait another day or two? I’ll tell you what I think, Nick, I think that’s all bullshit! It’s a justification. You didn’t want a wife who was disabled.”

  “What? No—” he started to say, but I knew he would deny it.

  “I get it, it’s a lot to ask of anyone. But that’s what ‘in sickness and in health’ means. And you couldn’t handle it. Which, fine, you didn’t sign up for that. We were only engaged for what? Twenty minutes?”

  “Julia, that’s not it. That’s not the reason, I swear.”

  “Of course you can’t admit it. But doesn’t the timing seem strange to you, if it wasn’t about me being in a wheelchair? As long as I was disabled, you were nowhere to be found. Now I’m walking again, doing great, and suddenly you swoop back into my life. Doesn’t that seem…suspicious to you?”

  “But when I first came back, I thought you were still in the wheelchair! Don’t you remember that day in the hospital?”

  “Sure. But I don’t believe it. A man with a billion dollars can find out anything he wants to know, including the health status of anyone on the planet. Right?”

  “Maybe he can, but it didn’t occur to me. Wait, I can prove it! Come with me.”

  “What? I will not. I’m going home.”

  “Julia, please. If you ever cared for me. Let me show you this one thing. Please give me this one chance. If it doesn’t convince you, I’ll do whatever you want. If you want me to go away and leave you in peace, I will, even though it might as well kill me.”

  He had tears in his eyes, actual tears. I didn’t want to go with him, but at the same time, I wanted it more than anything. If I could know for sure that he didn’t leave because I was disabled--what mattered more than that? I wanted to keep him from being able to hurt me again, but it was too late for that anyway.

  “Okay, Nick,” I said softly. “Okay. You can show me whatever it is.”

  He picked up my hand and kissed it, then led me to the parking deck. We were soon headed out of town, in the same direction he’d taken before, when he’d shown me the tree we hit in the accident.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Out to the lake.” He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask anything else. I was emotionally wrung out. Uncertainty is hard for me to take, and everything was up in the air during that car ride. I thought I had my future all mapped out without Nick, and now? Did he want to be with me, or was he leaving? It was a beautiful time of day, when afternoon edges into evening, and I tried to just notice the beauty and stop thinking.

  Soon we were at the lake, but Nick turned away from the public beach side, and onto a private drive. It was an old dirt road, and I could see glimpses of the lake through the pines as we bumped along. We turned onto a smooth new gravel driveway, and pulled up beside a big, new, lodge-style log house. We got out, and Nick led me behind the house. The back of it was mostly huge windows, and I could see why: the house looked out over the lake. At this hour its mirror-like surface was pure gold.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “Whose house is this?”

  “I was hoping it would be your wedding present. From me.”

  I could feel my mouth falling open as I looked back at the house. The long lake-facing side of the place had a deep porch extending for its whole length. Wide stairs led up to it at the center, and also, on the end closest to where we’d parked, there was a ramp.

  A handicapped ramp.

  I pounded up the steps and waited for Nick to unlock the door. When he opened it, I noticed how wide it was, and how there was no bump between the porch and the floor inside, just a smooth transition. When you’ve spent time in a wheelchair, you notice these things. We entered into a foyer, but where I expected to see a staircase, there was an ornate set of what could only be elevator doors.

  I looked at Nick, and I know my mouth was hanging open in shock. He shrugged his shoulders.

  To the right of the foyer was a huge room with a stone fireplace and a whole wall of windows. There were polished, exposed beams and beautiful woodwork everywhere, but no furniture. We passed on to the kitchen, another big bright room, and I noticed that on one side, the granite countertops were lower than normal, with no cabinets under them. A person in a wheelchair could easily move close to one of those counters and chop vegetables or stir up cookie dough.

  “Whose house is this?” I asked again.

  “When I had it built, I hoped that someday it would be yours. Ours.”

  “I can’t…. I’m not getting it. Tell me from the beginning.”

  He led the way back out onto the porch, and we sat down on the broad steps. He looked out over the lake for a while before he started talking.

  “When I left you in the ICU, I was a mess. I didn’t sleep, didn’t eat. Then I started taking double
the amount of courses at school. Just threw myself into working. I studied all the time, and spent the rest in the gym. And it was just…nothing. I graduated and got a job delivering pizza while I worked on the fitness app. I thought, if I could just work hard enough, I could forget about you and how everything got snatched away from us.”

  I took his hand. Just to be nice, you know.

  “And then the app was done and it took off like crazy, but I couldn’t really feel it. Everything was empty. Once I’d made all the money, all these women just came out of the woodwork, and I thought, okay now I’ll find someone to help me move on. But they didn’t know me. They didn’t want to know me, as long as I stayed rich. Julia, all I could think about was you.” He looked across the lake, and sighed. A bird was flying across the lake, just a foot above the surface of the water.

  “So I thought of a plan. How I could at least make you think better of me. Show you how much you meant to me. Maybe get to see you once in a while. Because all this time, no matter how crazy this sounds, to me we were still engaged. And even if I didn’t end up getting to marry you, just seeing you a little bit was better than life without you. But still I hoped. I dreamed that someday we would get married and have a family. And so I got the land out here where we had our only day together, and built this house. It was like a good luck charm.”

  “Pretty big for a good luck charm,” I said, but I said it gently.

  “This is what I mean, that I can prove it. That I didn’t care about you being disabled. When I pictured us living here together, having kids, all that stuff—I always pictured you in the wheelchair.”

  We sat without saying anything for a long time, watching the birds wheel above the water in the sunset light. So many things were whirling around in my head. Could I really have been this wrong about him all the time?