A**hole Stepbrother Read online

  A**hole Stepbrother

  A Forbidden Stepbrother Romance

  Nicky Harmony

  Published by

  A Paradise for your Mind.

  © Copyright 2018 by Fable Charm - All rights reserved.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  A**hole Stepbrother

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Preview of Let’s Do This

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  A**hole Stepbrother

  Introduction

  Tilly comes home one night and gets told that her entire life is about to change. Her mom gives her a new uniform for a fancy private school and tells her that she’ll be coming home to someplace new, when she starts on Monday.

  Tilly tried to get her head around everything, but when the impossibly hot guy she sits next to in science decides to knock into her, so that she spills juice all down her new blouse, she realizes that even if she tries, she’ll never fit in.

  When Tilly’s mother gets married, her stepbrother decides to pull a prank to end all pranks, but he doesn’t know that Tilly is still in the woods where he had just sent hundreds of fireworks on their path of destruction. The night ends in painful screams, but will he be able to make up for what he has done and will Tilly ever get over the scars that the night has left on her?

  Prologue

  Tilly: I’ve always been pretty happy with my lot in life. I mean, I know I’m not the most popular girl in school, but I’ve got friends, a crush, and I’m doing pretty well with my grades too. Life has always been pretty average, until my mom decided to move across town, so that she could marry her boyfriend, that is.

  Suddenly I find myself being sent to private school where everybody, including my hot, new stepbrother, seems to hate me. I know that I don’t belong there, but when my stepbrother decides to pour juice down my top, I realize that I’m better off just getting out of there.

  Things finally start to settle down, though, and even school starts to get better, but I should have known that things wouldn’t keep going like that. I should have realized that life never offers you smooth sailing for long, and when my idiot stepbrother decides to prank the wedding, he changes my life forever.

  I wake up and I know nothing will ever be the same again. I try to wrap my head around it, but I can’t. I realize that the only person I have who is willing to help is my stepbrother, and that brings up a whole bunch of uncomfortable questions and feelings that I don’t want to pay attention to.

  James: When my father said that he had a surprise, I’d thought he meant that he’d bought a new summer home or that he would be traveling away. I never thought in a million years that he’d meant he’d be bringing in a woman and her daughter.

  When I’d seen the new girl walk into my class, I’d thought she was hot, but she didn’t belong and everybody could sense it, as though they could smell her poor history stinking up the place. I knew from that moment that my liking couldn’t be known. I knew that I had to treat her just like everybody else was, and that was why I knocked her drink down her top. I had to keep up with everybody else.

  I guess that set us up for a bad relationship, but I’d never expected in a million years that I’d be living with her. I like a nice and easy life, which was anything but what I’d be living now that she was just a few doors down from me. I tried to make it up to her, but she wasn’t having any of it. She gave me some big speech about judging people before I got to know them, but she pretty much did the same thing to me.

  I can’t deny it, though; she looked hot when she was telling me off. Her breathing got all fast and her boobs bounced as she spoke. I mean I’d been listening to her too, of course, but those boobs—wow.

  None of that matters, though. What I did at the wedding was unforgivable and any chance I might have had at redeeming myself had gone up in smoke. I’d known at the time that something didn’t feel right, but I hadn’t listened to my gut. When it all went down, I thought it had played through without anything bad happening, but her screams filling the night had proven me wrong.

  I’d messed it up. I’d messed everything up, but if I came clean, I might find my entire life burning around me.

  Chapter 1

  Tilly

  My last school was made out of breeze blocks. They hadn’t even bothered to plaster over them on the inside; they’d just painted over the bare bricks with this bright yellow paint that seemed impossibly dull considering its relation to the sun. I think it was more the school in general, though. You could feel this sort of grayness wrapping itself around you when you walked up the front stairs, and you couldn’t escape it until you’d showered off the greasy smell that clung to you from the diner.

  It was my school, though, and even though I couldn’t explain the reasons why, I loved it. I had friends there who I’d grown up with. I had a place among the extensive cliques, and although it wasn’t at the top of the social food chain, I was happy with it. I was getting pretty good grades, too. I’d been bumped up into all of the advanced classes, and if things had continued that way, I’d have probably graduated top in my class.

  Things didn’t continue going that wa,y though. In fact, everything changed, so quickly and in such a short amount of time that it took me a while before I could see straight again. It all started when I turned seventeen and my mom told me that we were moving across the state. I’d grown up in a small town about fifty miles away from New York City. It was at the perfect distance to enjoy shopping trips on weekends, but to also have a quiet street.

  It wasn’t as though my mom broke the news to me gently either, or like she’d given me enough time to come to terms with it or even say goodbye to my friends. I’d walked into the lounge that Friday and she’d hung up this school uniform that looked like something off of a television show. The skirt was pleated with a tame, dark green tartan pattern printed on it. The blouse was fitted and matched up with a tie, which matched the skirt in both color and design.

  “What do you think?” my mom asked me with excited eyes.

  “I think you’re a bit old to be dressing up like some private school attendee.”

  My mom laughed. “It’s not for me,” she said as she shook her head and her blond curls bounced energetically along with her.

  “Well, I’m not wearing it,” I said as I tried to work out why on earth my mom would have bought me a school uniform. It wasn’t even as though Halloween was close.

  “Oh, but you are,” she said excitedly. “I’ve been keeping a little secret from you, sweetie, but I think it’s about time that I told you the truth.”

  Just the introductio
n she had used was making my stomach start to turn anxiously. I could see excitement burning in her eyes and my gut was telling me that I was on the pinnacle of change, although even my gut couldn’t have known just how much was about to change.

  “I’m getting married,” my mom said in her childish, high-pitched tone that went right through me like nails to a chalkboard. My mom looked at me with narrowed eyes, as she waited for some kind of reaction from me. “Anyway,” she said when she didn’t get one, “I met him a few months ago, and I think you’re going to love him. He knows all about you and he’s happy for you to move with me to his place. He’s even got you a place at the school that his son goes to and you start on Monday,” she finished with a grin.

  “What do you mean, I start on Monday?” I asked her as I tried to wrap my head around everything that she had just said to me.

  “We move on Monday, so I thought I’d drop you off at school and then you could swing by the new house when you finish.” My mom smiled at me, as though there was nothing that I could ask her that she wasn’t prepared for.

  “Did you not think that this is something you should have told me about sooner?” I asked her, and I could feel my eyes glaring at her, but I didn’t even try to stop them. “I mean, you’re uprooting my entire life just because you want to marry some guy that your daughter hasn’t even met? You tell me two days before the move, so I don’t even have enough time to tell my friends. What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked her, and then I stood up and walked out without giving her a chance to answer.

  I could hear a long sigh leave her as I walked out of the room, and then her footsteps quickly following mine. I picked up my pace and started to take the stairs two by two. I got to my room before she’d even finished the stairs, and I closed the door and locked it before I walked over and pulled out my headphones.

  I turned my CD player up full and let the soothing voice of Tyrone Wells fill my head. I could sense my mom knocking on my door. It was almost as though I could feel the steady disturbance to the particles in the air, but I ignored it, until eventually it stopped and I knew that I was alone. I turned my music down, so that my thoughts could enter back into my head safely, and then I did the only thing I could do: I cried.

  I cried for the life I was losing. I cried for the friends that I would surely drift away from. I cried for the life that I’d had planned in front of me but would now never happen. I’d miss my first kiss with my first crush, Toby from science class, and my prom night where I’d wow everyone with my amazing transformation from ugly duckling to beauty queen. It was all gone now, but it hadn’t been replaced. All I had in my future was an inky blackness that was shrouded in mystery.

  I couldn’t believe that my mom was acting as though it was no big deal. I couldn’t believe that she thought uprooting me during my senior year was a smart thing to do, but what could I say? She was a stubborn woman and I could tell that her mind was made up.

  I thought back to the school uniform that had been hanging in the living room. It looked uncomfortable. It looked like the kind of thing that you wore for a bad teen movie. I didn’t want to wear it. I didn’t want to have to go to a school that demanded a student had to wear a uniform. I’d never worn a uniform and it hadn’t affected my education even a little bit.

  I sighed as I realized that all of my disapproval was pointless. I had two days before I would be forced to move and an entire lifetime to pack up into boxes. I pulled my cell phone out from my jeans pocket and turned on the screen, then I opened a group text and started to type out the bad news, so that my friends could have a chance to drop around and say goodbye before I set off.

  A dull feeling fell over me as I realized that I would never go back to my high school again. I couldn’t believe that in the space of an hour, everything that had felt so secure had been ripped from underneath my feet. I closed my eyes and turned my music back up. My thoughts were not being kind and I couldn’t see any point in thinking about things that couldn’t be changed.

  *******

  Chapter 2

  James

  I really hated the smell of the science labs. They had this weird smell that’s kind of like burning damp, and I was sure that it was coating itself on my lungs. I hated the wooden stools and the way that you had to wear goggles, too. It was like they didn’t even care about the fact that my hair had taken me over an hour to do before I came to school today—or any day, for that fact. I mean, I didn’t mean to sound shallow or anything, but when the only thing that made you stand out was your hair, you made sure that it got noticed. You know what I mean?

  Apparently, my discomfort didn’t matter, though, because I was sitting in one of the dank science classrooms waiting for the teacher to arrive. That was another pet peeve of mine. I mean, my father paid a lot of money for me to go to this school and the teachers were nearly always late. My father expected me to go to Harvard or Princeton, but that was going to be impossible if I never actually got an education out of this place.

  The door opened and I looked over to see the teacher finally walking in. He was a middle-aged man with a slight stomach overhang that seemed happy to rest on his belt. He walked in almost unbearably slowly and then cleared his throat, as though I had all the time in the world and this lab wasn’t slowly killing me with damp.

  “We’ve got a new student today,” the teacher said finally, as though after all of this waiting that’s what I wanted to hear.

  I let my eyes glance back to the doorway, where there was in fact a new girl standing. I examined her with my eyes, which were hungry to lap up what they were seeing. She was hot—not in the way that most of the girls at this school were, though. Most of the girls here were “model” hot. They all had perfect hair and perfect make up, sitting on top of perfectly tanned legs. This new girl was like girl-next-door hot. She was pretty, but you could tell it was all natural. I was pretty sure even her hair color was natural. It was the most fierce red I had ever seen, but I could tell from her light skin and blue eyes that it wasn’t dyed.

  The teacher had been speaking all the way through my examination of her, but I hadn’t heard a word. If I was going to waste my time, then I might as well have been doing it over something worthwhile. I brought my attention back to myself as she started to walk into the room, and I shifted a little in my seat to make room for the sudden growth in my pants.

  “Jesus,” I said under my breath as I rubbed against my pants. A sharp chill of pleasure ran up my spine and, for the briefest of moments, I thought about excusing myself and going to the bathroom to pull one off.

  “You okay?” a soft voice asked me, as the stool next to mine scraped against the floor.

  I took my eyes away from the now throbbing hardness that my pants were barely hiding and looked up at the girl who’d been the initial reason for my discomfort. “I’m fine.” I glared at her as she sat down next to me and started to pull out a bunch of dollar-store notebooks.

  I could feel the eyes of everyone around us as they all peered curiously at the new girl. I could feel the energy coming from them all, as they all decided without vocally discussing it that she didn’t belong in our school. She might have had the uniform and she might have had the fees, but it was clear from the rough way that she spoke and her dollar stationary that she wasn’t from our world.

  By the end of the class, I was wondering what people were saying about me. I knew that her sitting next to me might have sparked some rumors, but I was relieved when I walked into the dinner hall to discover that my seating arrangement had gone by without really being noticed.

  I joined the que for some lunch. After I got my food, I noticed her sitting alone when I’d turned to find a place to eat. She didn’t seem bothered that she was sitting alone. She seemed totally sucked into her book, her untouched lunch being evidence that I was right. I squinted as I tried to see what it was she was reading, but then my best friend, Sam, bounced into my vision and refused to share my attention.

  “I h
eard you sat next to the new girl in first period?” Sam asked as he looked over at her and then back to me.

  “Sure.”

  “The kittykats at the back are wondering whether you’ve gone soft because of it,” Sam said with an evil glint in his eye.

  “Are they really?” I asked dryly as I looked over the table he was talking about. Katherine, Katy and Kacey had known each other since kindergarten and were under the impression that they were somehow school royalty. It didn’t matter, of course, that the entire school bowed to whatever they said. They were looking over at me through their false lashes and hair extensions. “What is it that they want me to do?”

  “They want you to show the new girl that she isn’t welcome here,” Sam said, and he grinned at me.

  I rolled at my eyes at his happy little dog face. I liked Sam, but not because he was a nice person. I liked him because he was good for a laugh and because, although he was a douche to most people, he’d always been pretty loyal to me. “Don’t you think that’s a bit harsh?”

  “I think the kittykats won’t rest if you don’t do what they say,” Sam said with a shrug that was crammed with implications.

  I nodded and sighed as I passed over my lunch tray to Sam and told him to go and sit down. The new girl had just picked up her bottle of juice and I knew what needed to be done. I walked over quickly and as soon as she was within reach, I knocked into her, so her red fruit juice poured down her white blouse, covering both her and her book.

  She stood up quickly and stared at me right in the eye. I could feel myself fighting the urge to step back, as I tried to work out whether she was going to cry or whether she was going to punch me. The red on her blouse kept attracting my attention, though, and the juice had turned her blouse partially see-through. I could tell from the way that her boobs were bouncing that she was upset, but she didn’t cry or punch me. She just walked passed me, leaving her lunch on the table.