Shackled: A Stepbrother Romance Novel (11 page)

There was a bit of an edge to his voice and I raised a brow at the unsolicited advice. If I understood him correctly, he had just given me his blessing to go after Fiona without outright saying it. It was nice to think that at least one of our parents didn’t have a problem with us being together, even though I honestly couldn’t have cared less about their approval.

Fiona and I were going to be together whether they liked it or not.

As soon as I figure out a way to win her over
, I thought as I glanced down at the key in my hand.

“
I
still can’t believe
she kicked you out,” Brenda said with an incredulous scoff as she pulled the car onto the freeway. “And was that
Jonathan
I saw standing on your doorstep? What the hell was he doing there?”

“He lives there,” I dryly informed her. “Mom is engaged to his dad.”

Her eyes went wide and she turned away from the road to give me a look, scaring the shit out of me for more reasons than one as she screeched, “Get the fuck out!”

I let out a nervous laugh as she turned back to the road and jokingly said, “Can I wait until we’re not going sixty miles per hour?”

Brenda laughed. “Sorry, girl. You know what I meant, though. When the hell did that happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t know. She just sprang this on me when I got home,” I admitted, turning in my seat to face her better. “Do you want to know what the real kicker is? She practically forced me to go out to the cabin with Jonathan so we could
bond
since we’re going to be
family.
That’s what started this whole mess.”

“Technically speaking, you not telling your mom about dropping out was what started this.”

“Well, she didn’t tell me about Gerald!”

“Calm down, girl! I’m on your side here, I was just saying. Anyway, Mom says you’re cool to stay with us,” she said, scrunching up her nose at the end. “But it looks like Grandma might be moving in with us full-time soon, so I don’t know how long that offer is good for.”

I sighed, mentally going through the list of other friends from school that I knew were still in town who might let me crash on their couch for a few nights.

It’s cool. I’ll figure it out. Everything’s going to be
fine
.

But as Brenda began to fill me in on some of the stuff I missed since I’d been gone, I wondered how long I could keep lying to myself.

“
S
o
. Tell me.”

I eyed Brenda warily as she plopped down beside me on the bed, fresh out of the shower. She was giving me an expectant look, one that made me nervous as I asked, “Tell you what?”

“About Jonathan and the cabin. I
know
you, Fiona—this mood isn’t just coming from your mom and college. What happened out there?”

Out of all the friends I had in high school, Brenda was the only one who ever picked up on my hidden feelings for Jonathan. Or at least she was the only one who had the nerve to confront me about it.

But because of how much I vented to her about Jonathan during our senior year of high school, I knew that she wouldn’t judge me for anything I had done with him. So I told her everything—from the moment I got home to the conversation on the porch—and by the time I was done, I was nearly hoarse from talking so much. She offered me her drink and I took a sip, waiting for whatever her reaction was going to be.

“So how was the dick?”

My eyes widened with disbelief. “After everything I just told you, you’re choosing
that
to focus on?”

Brenda shrugged. “So my priorities are a little fucked up, I can admit that. Now tell me.”

I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t stop myself from letting out a small sigh. “It—He—It was incredible.
Everything
was incredible. Satisfied?”

“Meh, it’ll be enough for now. So if it was so
incredible
, why aren’t you and Johnny-boy off somewhere in a cheap motel room fucking like animals right now?”

“You know what he did on prom,” I pointed out with a frown. “I just… I don’t know if I can move past it.”

“Oh, puh-lease! You
just
told me that you were all on board the forgiveness train at the cabin. You’re just freaking out now because of all this bullshit with your mom. Which
will
blow over, by the way. Just give her a little time.”

What Brenda was saying rang true, and in reality, I knew my mom would eventually get over it. In a way, I really couldn’t blame her for her reaction, however overblown it might have been. We had discussed me going to college for months and not once had I even hinted at the fact that I didn’t want to go. So this must have been a total shock to her.

Add to that the shock of me being with Jonathan and well… yeah. I supposed this could have gone even worse than it did.

“All right, fine. I’ll cut my mom some slack.”

“And will you also be cutting poor Jonathan some slack? It is Christmas after all.”

“No,” I said dryly.

While a part of me was considering it, I really needed to focus on my living situation first. It was a far more pressing issue than my relationship status.

“Oh, come on! Where’s your holiday spirit?”

“I must have left it at college.”

Brenda cackled and I chuckled along with her, grateful when she took the hint and turned on the television, leaving me to stare mindlessly at the screen while I got lost in thought.

G
oing
on a job hunt two days before Christmas wasn’t the brightest idea I’d ever had. Many of the small stores I intended to apply at had already closed up for the holiday, more interested in letting the employees spend some time with their families than cashing in on the last minute shoppers. Exactly the kind of place I would have liked to work.

I made a list on my phone of the stores that I needed to revisit next week and grabbed applications from the ones that were open. Brenda followed me around without protest, content to sip her latte while she watched me aimlessly move from store to store.

“So I take it from your random selection of stores that you aren’t looking for anything specific,” she commented after I came out of a hardware store, victoriously clutching a blank application.

“Anything that will take me. I just need some income coming in while I figure out what I really want to do.”

She cocked her head to the side, squinting at me warily as she asked, “So you really have no plan? No idea of what you want to do?”

“Do
you?
”

Brenda shrugged, her eyes moving away from me as she covered her reaction with a sip of her latte. I folded my arms over my chest and waited. If I had to answer all these questions, I felt that it was only fair that she did the same.

After all, Brenda had deferred for a year to
‘figure it all out.’
I was curious to hear what she had learned—if anything—in the past few months.

“I guess I don’t,” she finally admitted with a sigh. “I thought having space from school and drama and all the high school bullshit would give me some time to breathe and figure everything out, but honestly, it’s just made me lazy as hell. Sometimes I stay in bed all day just watching Netflix.”

“How’s your mom feel about that?”

She shrugged and continued walking, leading me back to the car as she considered my question. “I’m not sure, honestly. I can tell she’s a little… I don’t know, irritated? But she hasn’t said anything.”

“Yet.”

“Yet,” she agreed with a tip of the drink in my direction. “But it’ll work out. Maybe I’ll take a page out of your playbook and start looking for something part-time.”

I clutched the applications to my chest and shot her a dirty look. “Just don’t apply anywhere we stopped today.”

“Ugh, don’t worry. I have no interest in working at…” she trailed off as she grabbed the stack out of my hands, her eyes flicking rapidly over the store names. “Okay, wow. Did you seriously grab an application to a farm equipment store? Where the hell did you even get this?”

“Apparently the guy who owns the hardware store owns the farm one as well. I told the manager that I wasn’t picky and he gave me both.”

“Desperation doesn’t suit you,” she said as she shoved the stack back at me. “I know college wasn’t
‘your thing’
or whatever, but maybe you should think about taking a night class. They have employment programs at the community college that only last for a few weeks.”

That was an idea I hadn’t even considered. I opened the pad on my phone and made a note to check out what kind of classes they had available later, even though the thought of paying for it out of pocket made my nose scrunch up.

I really wouldn’t be able to afford it until I had a job first, so maybe I’d hold off on even looking. Even though I was beginning to feel a little more secure about my plans since I was actually
doing
something, there was a nagging feeling in my stomach telling me that something was off.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what it was.

And it wasn’t the fact that this was going to be the first Christmas I spent without my mom.

“
F
iona
! Your phone is ringing!”

I had just gotten out of the shower when I heard Brenda’s voice shouting through the door. I wrapped a towel around myself as I yelled back, “Is it my mom?”

“Nope!”

“Just let it go to voicemail!”

“I’m going to answer it!”

Even without seeing her face, I could sense that something was amiss. I stepped closer to the door just in time to hear her voice as she sweetly said, “Hi, Jonathan. She’s just getting out of the shower—I’m going to slide you under the door. Hold up.”

The phone came sliding beneath the door, slapping into my foot as I stared down at it. The phone was clearly on and seeing Jonathan’s photo staring up at me was enough to make me panic.

“You better pick that up!” Brenda ordered before I heard her footsteps striding away from the bathroom door.

How believable would it be to ‘accidentally’ hit the end call button with my foot?

“Fiona? You there?”

If it hadn’t have been otherwise silent in the bathroom, I probably wouldn’t have even been able to hear the soft sound of his voice. I bent down to grab the phone with a resigned sigh, putting it my ear.

“Hey.”

There was a brief pause before his voice hit my ears again, thick with relief.

“Hey. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” I said, leaning back against the bathroom counter and toeing at the corner of the soft memory-foam rug under my feet. “How are you?”

He chuckled incredulously. “Do you really have to ask? I’m fucking terrible.”

Guilt began to swirl around in my stomach, making me feeling nauseous. At the time, I could see in his eyes that our argument on the porch hurt him, but I honestly hadn’t even considered how he’d feel after I left. I thought he’d just shrug it off like he did everything else and move on.

“I’m sorry,” I offered, unsure of what else I could really say.

“Are you? Then come over. I’m staying at my Dad’s place.”

I never thought to ask what happened to their house after they moved in with my mom, but I guess they hadn’t sold it yet. Part of me was curious to ask whether Gerald had gone with Jonathan, but I didn’t want to give him any kind of impression that I planned to go over there.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why the hell not? It’s just me here—we can talk or not talk or whatever you want. I just want to see you.”

“Nothing’s changed since we last spoke, Jonathan. I meant everything I said on the porch.”

To my surprise, he didn’t scoff or make any sort of protest. I seemed to be a little better at lying over the phone than I was in person. Either that or he just didn’t want to argue with me.

“You said you don’t know what you want from me, but we can figure it out together. You said it yourself—this whole fucking problem was caused by keeping secrets and not talking to each other. So come over and we can talk.”

“We’re talking now,” I weakly protested, the high-pitched tone of my voice making me wince.

“I need to see you, angel. I need you to look me in the eye and say you don’t want me.”

Like I could ever do that. Which was all the more reason for me to
not
go over there.

“Look, I’m tired. I’m just going to—”

“I’ll go over there.”

“Don’t! Some of Brenda’s family is staying over for the holiday. I’m being enough of a burden on them as it is without adding this drama.”

“Come here. You’d never be a burden to me.”

Jonathan was persistent, I had to give him points for that. If only I actually
wanted
the attention. Which I really,
really
didn’t.

I turned around and glanced up to the mirror, noting how red my face had gone.

I’m even bad at lying to myself.

“Fiona?”

“I’m still here,” I breathed out, covering my eyes with my free hand and trying to think of a way out of this. “I can’t tonight. I-I don’t
want
to. Okay? I need to figure out everything else before I even
begin
to think about what I want from you. Can you accept that?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No.”

There was a long pause, followed by a heavy sigh. “Then I guess I’ll have to deal with it.”

I felt a brief flare of surprise that he was so calmly accepting this, immediately followed by suspicion. I narrowed my eyes at my own reflection as I asked, “You aren’t going to come over here in the middle of the night, are you?”

“No, Fiona. I’m not a fucking creeper. If you want me to wait until you patch things up with your mom, then I’ll wait.”

“Mom is the least of my worries right now.”

“What else do you need to figure out, Fiona?” he asked, his tone irritatingly calm. Almost as if he were indulging a child.

“How about the fact that I have no job and nowhere to live?” I seethed and shook my head to myself. It was incredible just how easily he could rile me up, even without being in my presence. “Look, I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk. Okay?” Jonathan grunted, but made no further comment. I gave him a few seconds before I said, “I’m going to bed now.”

“Sweet dreams, angel.”

“Good night, Jonathan.”