Stepbrother HOT! (The Stepbrother Romance Series - Book #3) (5 page)

“Jaxon,” he
said,
his voice
a little thick from all the wine. “Stop being such a dumbass. This is your
past—these are the decisions you made. None of
it’s
ever going to stick to you legally—you were a kid. But if you can’t even admit
to your own past in your own family, how are you ever going to move on?” I
cringed. That was the last thing Jaxon needed, I knew. I felt my heart beating
faster as the silence dragged out among all four of us. I knew it was going to be
bad.

Chapter
Six

As Mom and Bob started getting cozy again, talking
to each other about stupid kids and what a pain they were to deal with, Jaxon
was still getting madder and madder. I glanced at him as quickly, as briefly as
I could and I could see it—but Bob was apparently, like usual, oblivious to the
fact. I could see Jaxon was winding himself up. “You know,” Bob was saying, and
I heard my heart pounding in my chest. “I’m glad I found a new wife—and I have
a new step-daughter. Maybe you’ll both help Jaxon stay on the straight and
narrow. God knows I haven’t been able to do it.” Jaxon stood up.

“Hey, Dad,” Jaxon said, his lips pulled back in a
snarl. “Don’t you ever get tired of that same old song and dance about what a
screw up I was as a teenager? I mean, hell, everyone else already thinks
it’s
old news. You trot out that sad sack bullshit about me
landing in
Juvy
to every woman you date.” Bob sat up,
pushing my mom away.

“You need to watch your tone, Jaxon.” Jaxon laughed.

“I’m watching it,” he said. “I’m watching you, too.
Telling people how impossible I was. What a fuck up. Hell, you already married
this one—you don’t have to impress her anymore. Why not learn some new material
for your stupid pretend standup routine? I’ve got the perfect bit for you.”

“Jaxon…” His cheeks were red, his eyes were hard,
he
didn’t even hear me. Mom was trying to calm everything
down, but Jaxon wasn’t listening to her either. He just plowed right ahead.

“How about this, Dad: Your son is dating your new
step-daughter. Mia and I have had sex. You can go around telling everyone who
will listen to you what a freakish family life you have—apparently the apple
doesn’t fall far from the tree, you banged a woman and your son banged her
daughter and surprise! We’re all family.” Jaxon laughed again; it was almost a
shout. “You want to know the funniest part about it? It was all under your
nose. Everyone else has known about it for a day or more and you had no clue.
Because you never have a clue about anything! How does it feel to be the odd
man out for once?” Jaxon shook his head. “If it’s not about you, you don’t even
care.” Bob’s eyes went wide and he stared at Jaxon for a long moment. I saw him
glance at me, and a look of revulsion came over his face.

“What the hell are you talking about Jaxon?” Bob’s
voice was quiet, but I could hear the tension in it—the anger. I saw his face
go red, and then pale, and then red again. “That is the most disgusting thing
I’ve ever heard of! You’ve had sex with your step-sister? Was it before or after
you found out?” Jaxon laughed again—it was
like
he’d
lost his mind.

“Both. She and I had sex before I even knew you were
dating Mia’s mom, and then we had sex right under your roof the other night.
You had no clue—you were all about showing off for your new wife.” Bob shook
his head, shaking with the force of his anger.

“That is absolutely disgusting. You both should be
ashamed of yourselves. I won’t permit it. You are never, ever to have anything
to do with each other like that again.” Bob slammed back the rest of his glass
of wine, shaking his head at Jaxon. “I can’t believe you.” The words hit me
hard; it was disgusting, we should be ashamed. I felt as if I’d been punched in
the stomach. I’d known it was wrong—at least a little bit. But it wasn’t
like
we were actually related. It wasn’t even as though we’d
been brought up together. Jaxon and I had been strangers to each other until
we’d met at the frat. Just because our parents had met separately and had
gotten married in a matter of months—what the hell did that have to do with us?

But I still felt dirty. I felt filthy from head to
toe, sick to my stomach, appalled at the situation. But Bob wasn’t finished.
Mom tried to break in—she tried to get Bob to calm down. “It’s been a really
long day, and everyone’s exhausted,” she said quietly. “I think we should
discuss this another time, you know, it’s been… it’s been really tense.”

“No.” Bob shook his head at my mom. He softened a
little bit when he looked at her, but the minute he was looking at Jaxon again,
he was hard as a rock. “Jaxon has to take the consequences for his behavior—for
his choices.” Bob looked Jaxon in the eye and for the moment it was
like
Mom and I weren’t there at all. “You’re a fuckup, you
know that? Yeah, I tell everyone—I don’t want anyone to be tricked by the game
you run. You might be doing well in school now, but I remember exactly how you
were when you were younger. You haven’t turned a corner at all—joining that
frat,
partying
it up, I know exactly the kind of
person you are. You’ve always been a disappointment to me, and this just proves
how much of a screw up you’ll always be, no matter how hard I try to make you a
decent human being.” I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t move; I was frozen by
the venom in Bob’s voice.

He had seemed like such a regular guy up until that
night. I glanced at Mom; she was just as shocked as I was. Bob went on,
hammering the point home that Jaxon was the worst person, he was always trying
to game the system, he’d never accomplish anything in his life, and everything
about my situation with Jaxon faded into the background. I had had no idea that
Bob was like this at all; he was drunk, so probably was worse than he would
have been otherwise, but I couldn’t even believe that the mild-mannered guy who
rattled on and on about stupid bullshit at the dining table, trying to get
everyone to get along, was capable of being so cruel to someone he claimed over
and over again to love. It was awful. I wanted to yell at Bob that the only
terrible good-for-nothing person I could see in the entire lodge was
him
. I wanted to scream at my mother that she was a stupid
asshole for marrying someone capable of being that cruel to his own child. I
wanted to punch Bob in the face.

My stomach was turning flip-flops inside of me, and I
watched as the fight escalated between Jaxon and his dad. Jaxon was saying
things—the words leaving his lips fast, both of them somehow managing to keep
from outright shouting, but saying the most incredibly horrible things to each
other. Jaxon told Bob that maybe he wouldn’t have turned out to be such a
disappointment if Bob had ever given a damn about him, Bob told him that he’d
tried but clearly Jaxon was determined to ruin his own life, and he was going
to be damned if he would ever bail him out again. Jaxon told Bob that it was
his fault that Jaxon’s mom had left, that all Bob ever cared about was himself.
I couldn’t believe the things that they were saying to each other. At some
point Bob brought the conversation back around to Jaxon and I having sex and
how could Jaxon be so incredibly inconsiderate, how could Jaxon be such a
freak, such a colossal idiot. Jaxon was getting more and more upset—the
explosion was building up in him again and I was afraid that at any moment
they’d start fighting for real. I saw Jaxon’s fists clench and I knew that he
wanted to punch his dad. I knew that if it kept up for much longer it would
turn into a physical altercation. My heart was beating faster and faster in my
chest, pounding in my ears.

Before anything could happen, before it could come
to blows, Jaxon shook his head. “I don’t have anything more to say to you.” He
turned away from the fire, from his dad, from
me and Mom
and walked out of the lodge, not even bothering to say anything else. He walked
out into the dark, his back tense, and his head forward. I watched him leave,
wondering just how he was even going to get home, whether he was even going to
go home. Everything in the lodge went utterly silent. All I could hear for a
long moment was my heartbeat pounding in my ears, my breaths coming fast and
shallow, and my blood roaring in my veins. No one said anything at all. We all
just let Jaxon walk out.

Chapter
Seven

Bob was the first one to break the silence. “I can’t
believe the nerve of him,” he said, shaking his head. I stared at Bob in shock.
He couldn’t believe Jaxon’s nerve? I couldn’t believe his. Humiliating his son
in front of his new family, calling him a fuckup, saying the awful things he
had said; Jaxon had said terrible things too—but only after his Dad made him
out to be a good-for-nothing criminal, in front of people who as far as Bob had
known, barely knew him.

“How else did you expect him to react?” I asked, the
words leaving my lips before I could even think of whether or not I wanted to
say them.

“Bob, everyone’s a little bit heated right now;
let’s all calm down. I’m sure Jaxon is just going home. Let’s just give him
some space and enjoy the rest of our evening here—and then tomorrow we can
clear everything up.” Mom was putting on her best manners, soothing Bob; I’d
seen her do it a million times before with other guys, and it always worked.
Bob started to calm down. In a matter of moments the two of them were joking
around as if Jaxon had never even been in the room.

I sat there in shock for a long time, just staring
at my mom and my new step-dad. I couldn’t believe that they were able to just
brush off how upset Jaxon had been. I just couldn’t believe it. “I need to go
home,” I said quietly. Mom stopped in the midst of what she was saying and
looked at me, concerned for once in the entire hellish nightmare of a vacation.

“What, sweetie?”

I stood up. “I’m going back to the house.”

Bob shook his head. “You don’t know the way—you
should just wait for us to finish up here, have a good time. Don’t let Jaxon
spoil your night, Mia.” I scowled at him. He was going to totally ignore the
situation, get drunk, and probably go home and spend the rest of the night
screwing my mom without giving a second thought to the fact that he had no idea
where his son was.

“Mia, you’re upset, I understand that—it was a
really difficult moment, but please calm down, have a glass of wine, and we’ll
go home in a little while.” Mom was on edge. She knew she couldn’t pull the
same soothing trick on me that she could on the guys she dated.

“No. I’m going back to the house.” I grabbed my
jacket and stood up. Mom tried to say something; Bob tried to say something
too. But I didn’t even hear them. I threw my jacket on and walked right out of
the lodge. I didn’t even have a clue of how to get back to the house. I didn’t
care.

When I stepped outside the cold hit me like the
first blast of water from the showerhead. I looked around; one of the staff
members of the lodge was walking towards a car in the parking area. “Hey!” I
hurried over to the woman. “Look, I know this is really, really weird, but if I
give you an address can you maybe give me a ride home? My parents are drunk and
I just need to get out of here.” The woman glanced back towards the lodge and I
saw the guilty look on her face. She’d heard the blow-up between Jaxon and Bob.

“Yeah.
Get in.” I found the address Mom had sent me in my phone and gave it to her.
“That’s lucky; it’s actually on my way out.” She smiled at me. “Family shit’s
always dumb. I don’t even know why Thanksgiving even exists—it’s just torture
for everyone.”

“Amen to that.” We didn’t speak again for the
fifteen minute drive to Bob’s house. I wondered—I had no idea—whether Jaxon had
already managed to make it home, whether he was even headed to the house. I
couldn’t ask the woman to wait for me to check—she’d already done me a huge
favor just driving me home.

“If you’re stuck like that again,” the woman said,
giving me a little smile, “The snow patrol can give you a ride too.” I sighed
with relief. Jaxon probably knew that; he’d gone to that mountain a bunch of
times before, Bob had said at one point before the blow-up.

“Thanks for the tip.
And the
ride.”
The woman shrugged and gave me another grin.

“No problem.” I hopped out of her car and she drove
away. I was exhausted from my head to my toes. I walked up the driveway towards
the front of the house; I realized that my board was in the SUV, along with all
of my gear. I hadn’t even thought about it. At least, I thought, it would
probably be relatively safe there. Mom and Bob would just bring it with them
whenever they came back home.

The front door was unlocked, so I let myself in and
trudged through the living room, down the hall, straight to my bedroom. I
locked the door behind me and stripped off all the layers of clothes I was
wearing. I was going to take a bath, and then I was going to go to bed.

As I sat in the water, though, everything started to
hit me all at once. Bob knew about Jaxon and me. Bob was a horrible human
being. Mom was married to him. Everyone knew the situation, there was no
covering it up anymore. I heard Bob’s words in my head again—him saying it was
revolting, disgusting, the worst thing he could think of anyone doing. If it
was so bad, why had it felt good? What the hell was wrong with me?