Stepbrother JEEZ! (The Stepbrother Romance Series - Book #4) (5 page)

“We just have to let it pass,” I said finally. “If
we just…if we give each other some space, and time, it’ll go away.” It felt
like a lie; but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I couldn’t deal with
having Jaxon as both a brother and a boyfriend—it would just be too much.
Too weird.
Jaxon looked like he was about to continue
arguing; I steeled myself, knowing that it would be hard. That I might have to
tell him over and over again and he still might not get it. But the next moment
he sighed and groaned, cradling his head in his hands and looking down at the
floor for what seemed like five minutes.

“If that’s the way you need it to be—if you think it
will work—let’s do it.” He looked up at me, closing his eyes a moment and then
opening them again. “You’re right. We can’t do it both ways. At least… at least
this way we can still be around each other and our parents won’t flip out.” I
laughed.

“Yeah, that’s a silver lining at least.” I fidgeted,
picking at something on my shirt sleeve. I hated how I felt, even if I couldn’t
really define it. Part of me wanted—so much—to go along with Jaxon’s idea. But
it was too easy to see how it would play out.
More and more
ugliness, more and more stress.
It was just better to do it this way.
“It’ll be okay,” I said, forcing myself to smile. “You’ll find some sorority
hottie
and be like ‘Mia who?’ in like, a couple of weeks.”

Jaxon rolled his eyes.
“Yeah,
sure.
I’m all about dating sorority
hotties
.”
He snorted. “I don’t like it—I’m not going to lie. But I know we can’t keep
doing this. If this is the answer, that’s what we have to do.” I nodded slowly.
I didn’t like it any more than he did—but it was one way, maybe the only way,
out of the situation we were in. “Go on downstairs before they come up to find
out if we’re trashing the room fighting.”

I rolled my eyes.
“Game like the
one that was just on?
I’m sure they’re all way too busy trashing the
teams and not worrying about us. But yeah…I’ll see you around, I guess.”

Jaxon shrugged. “I’ll be around. You know.
Can’t be a hermit or whatever.”

“I’ll be around, too.” I wanted to leave but I
couldn’t quite make myself do it for a long moment. I decided the only thing to
do was to force myself to turn around and just walk out of the room. It felt
like someone was hammering nails into my feet, but I turned to the door and I
put one foot in front of the
other,
and in a few
seconds, I was out of the room and on my way down the stairs.

Chapter
Six

When I went back into the living room, I expected it
to be awkward; but I made myself just walk in as if nothing had happened, and
asked no one in particular, “What’d I miss?” and everything
was—shockingly—completely normal. One of the guys was ragging another about his
team, the TV was showing the highlights from a wrestling competition earlier in
the day, and someone put another beer in my hands. After the conversation with
Jaxon, I needed it.

I kept waiting for the awkward moment to happen—for
Jaxon to come down from upstairs and everyone to go quiet again, and the whole
situation to unravel. But by the time Jaxon did finally make an appearance—just
for a second, to ask what was on while he made his way to the kitchen for a
beer—I’d relaxed enough that it didn’t even phase me. I was just happy to be
with my friends, happy to have the conversation behind me, happy not to be
thinking about the whole stupid mess for a few minutes out of the day.

Jaxon disappeared just as quickly as he showed up,
and I had to wonder why he was making such a big deal about giving me space.
We’d managed to be in a room—in his bedroom, no less—alone together, without
tearing each other’s clothes off, and in spite of the fact that we both knew we
were into each other, we’d come to the conclusion to just be brother and
sister. We’d done really well; why was Jaxon hiding?

I could still feel the low, thrumming hum of arousal
that had started the moment Jaxon had closed the door behind us in his bedroom.
I almost wished—though I knew it was a stupid thought—that I was attracted to
any of the guys in the frat other than Jaxon. They were all good looking
enough, and another time I might have suggested to one of them that we screw
around and then forget about it. But I couldn’t even think about having sex
with anyone, much less one of Jaxon’s frat brothers, without feeling sick to my
stomach. I would have to just deal with the fact that I was going to be single
for a while. It wasn’t the first time, and I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be the
last time in my life that I had to deal with it.

I managed to have a good time in spite of worrying
about Jaxon in the back of my mind. It was easier with him up in his room;
everyone relaxed, and no one asked me any questions. By the time Jeremy walked
me back to the dorms at the end of the night, I felt like it
would
be easy—or at least easier—to go back to my normal routine of hanging around,
shooting the shit, talking
to the guys. They knew something was up, but
maybe they’d just assume that Jaxon and I had figured our shit out, and that
things were just a matter of waiting out the awkwardness between us. I hoped
that’s what they thought, anyway.

***

By the next day I felt a little bit better; it was
good to have some kind of solution, even if it wasn’t exactly the best.
Even if it hurt.
It was the only way, I told myself again
and again. Jaxon and I definitely couldn’t keep living the way we had
been—either avoiding each other or screwing each other’s brains out. I told
myself that it would get easier. It would be less awkward. I would eventually
stop thinking about Jaxon’s body pressed
against mine, his
lips, his tongue, and his hands wandering over me
.

At first, it seemed hopeless; every time I saw Jaxon
passing through campus, or caught a glance of him in the frat house, I felt a
shiver go through me. I tried to play it off as best as I could, and none of
the guys in the frat asked any questions. They honestly didn’t want to know, I
think. Jaxon and I didn’t say anything about what we were to each other—on
either count—and it was better for us that way. Even if we’d decided to act as
brother and sister, there would be just way too many questions.

The first time Jaxon and I actually hung out in the
same group, it went from being awkward and weird to being a lot of fun within about
fifteen minutes.
Good,
I thought.
The worst part of it is over.
Over the
course of a few days, things started to feel almost normal; Jaxon walked me to
class sometimes, but not always. He and I could be in the same room without
either trying to flirt or feeling miserable. He tutored me again, but never
alone in his room—even as back-to-normal as things had gotten, we both knew,
though we didn’t talk about it, that it would be tempting fate. Instead, he and
I sat in the frat kitchen or in my common room and he taught me the material
that my professor, a very nice but difficult to understand Pakistani woman,
just couldn’t seem to help me make sense of.

At first, I kept waiting for things to get weird
again. I thought to myself over and over again that in spite of the fact that
Jaxon and I had agreed to just be brother and sister, to just be friends,
something would happen. One of us would lose all self-control and then we’d be
right where we’d been during the holiday—groping each other and screwing around
in private, presenting a totally different face in public. But somehow we both
managed to hold it together.

About a week after Jaxon and I came to the
conclusion about how we were going to handle the situation, Mom called me. “Hey
Mia baby,” she said when I picked up. “How are classes going?” I was expecting
her to be suspicious—I expected her to want to talk about Jaxon, about what
she’d seen, and the fight. Instead she just asked about snowboarding, about my
grades, all the normal nothings that she’d always asked me about in her phone
calls.

The next time she called, she did finally bring up
the issue of what had happened during the holiday. I had been waiting for
it—even if I didn’t want to bring it up myself, I knew one of us had to say
something about it. “I wanted to apologize,” Mom said, after a long chat about
what was going on in each of our lives. “I shouldn’t have sprung a new family
on you like that as a total surprise.” I told her it was okay.

“I mean,” I said, “you’re a grown woman, you can marry
whoever you want. It’s not like you need my permission.”

“I know that, sweetie. But I should have told you
before.” I told her that it was all in the past and she was relieved. “I
honestly… it’s a small world, isn’t it? I never even really thought about the
possibility that Bob’s son would be someone you know.”

I laughed. “It could have been more awkward, but
only a little. Imagine if he’d been someone I totally hated.” Mom laughed.

“Well then there’d have been a lot of fighting but
maybe it wouldn’t have been…” she stopped short and laughed again.
“
It’s been weird between Bob and me, but we’ve actually got
a better relationship now than we ever had before because of it.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” I told her, lying through
my teeth. Ever since the fight between Jaxon and his dad, I didn’t fully like
or trust Bob; his chatty ways, the way he’d thrown Jaxon under the bus, all of
it made me think he was shifty and maybe not good enough for my mom. But I had
to wonder how much of that was because I wanted them to break up—so that Jaxon
and I could be together again, without having to worry about being technical
brother and sister. “So is he just showering you in jewelry?”

Mom laughed again, more easily this time. “I can
tell you one thing: Christmas is going to be a blow-out this year.” She started
going on and on about Bob and how much they loved each other and I felt like I
had to listen; I was relieved that she was talking to me like a normal person
again, not trying to avoid things, not acting weirded out by what I’d done.
Even though things were going well with Jaxon—we had managed to get to a point
where just regular
hanging out was comfortable—I didn’t tell
her anything about him, or even mention
his name. And Mom seemed just as
glad not to bring him up. I wasn’t sure if it was because she wanted to just
forget that it had happened completely or because she still felt a little bad
about what we’d heard about him from Bob.
Or anything else.
But neither of us talked about him, and I was actually a little glad to avoid
the topic.

Things were a little strained during winter break;
Jaxon and I mostly just stayed out of each other’s way, and I made excuses to
mom to stay away from the house and Bob. Christmas was nerve-wracking. Mom’s
prediction of it being a blow-out was definitely true—but every minute we were
hanging out, drinking eggnog and coffee with brandy, unwrapping presents, I
kept waiting for Bob to blow up. He managed not to—but I could feel him and Mom
watching us the whole time.

I still felt weird. As practices with the
snowboarding team started to ramp up to several times a week during the break,
I got to see Jaxon just as much as I always had, and it was impossible not to
notice that he was hot, that he was getting better and better at hitting his
aerials clean, or landing his flips, or any of the little things he was
tightening up for the first competition of the season. But I told myself that
it would go away eventually. It had to.

Chapter
Seven

Just before winter break, the snowboarding team went
to our first competition. I was so excited that it was actually really easy to
completely forget my issues with Jaxon; I’d competed before, but there was just
something about it being my first competition on this particular team that made
it all the more thrilling. When I’d competed in the past it had been in
individual events—I’d been on my own. Of course, for the competitions we were
going to, we’d all be up on our own, but it was so much more fun to have people
on the bus on the way to the games, and to know that I’d have people to talk to
who weren’t competition.

We’d discussed strategy as a team in one of the last
meetings before we headed out; one of the coaches had talked to each of us
individually and had addressed us all as a group. “Stick with tricks that you
know you can pull off,” he’d said. “There’s no reason to get injured this early
in the season. If you’re squirrely on the landing for something, don’t try it.
I know you’re going to be tempted—but if you break an ankle or a wrist or an
arm or a leg, you’ll be out for the rest of the season and you won’t even have
won this comp.” I could see the wisdom in that; but glancing at Jaxon I could
tell that he wasn’t going to take the advice seriously. I knew him well enough
to know that Jaxon would go all out. And I knew that I would too.

We got to the mountain where the competition was
being held and climbed out of the bus and I was so full of adrenaline that I
wanted to jump up and down, run, and scream. Jaxon was playing it cooler; but
looking at him, I could tell that he was just as excited. We were all hopped up
on coffee, full of donuts from the bus ride. Someone on the team had made
breakfast burritos for us to eat later in the morning, and there would be
chili, soup, and other hot things to eat for lunch, provided by the
competition’s sponsors. It wasn’t a big meet, but it was all part of the bigger
series—if we scored solid here, we’d have a good chance of one of us making it
to bigger competitions at the end of the season.