Author: Estelle Maskame
Category: Romance
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/10329_27
“We’re missing the fireworks,” Eden pathetically mumbles. She can’t look at me. She only stares out of the window, watching the world carry on without us.
“I don’t care about the fireworks,” I snap. How can she even notice those? There are more important things going on right now, like figuring out what exactly she means when she said she found me interesting. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? Interesting?” It’s such a let-down. I was desperate for something more.
“Your walls,” she says, but her voice is shaking. Is she scared of me again? Is it because I’m angry? Or is she scared of herself? “Your walls interest me.”
My heart skips a beat. Oh, shit. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie, but it is nowhere near convincing.
“I didn’t realize it until now,” she continues. She is anxiously chewing at the inside of her mouth as she looks down at the floor. It’s almost like she’s thinking it through in her head, gathering her thoughts. Her eyes flick back up to meet mine. “You’ve got walls up and they interest me.”
Whispers: Interactive StoriesMake your own choices and decide what happens next!
“You know what? I don’t care,” I say defensively. She can’t figure me out. I have gone all these years without anyone breaking me down into pieces and analyzing me, and the thought of Eden noticing the cracks in my life is almost too much to bear. “Think whatever you want about me.”
“Think whatever I want?” she repeats, and her voice goes stronger, like she is shifting back into the Eden I’ve thought was pretty cool over the past few weeks. The Eden who doesn’t back down, the Eden who challenges me, the Eden who isn’t afraid to tell me the truth. “I think that you infuriate me,” she begins, narrowing her eyes. “I think that you are an arrogant jackass who can never simply be nice to someone, because it doesn’t fit in with the act you’re putting on.”
Clearly, I have slipped up on my Tyler Bruce performance one too many times, because she can see straight through it all. She knows it’s all just an act. She knows it isn’t me, but I want her to think that it is. I don’t want her to ever figure out that I’m really just fragile and broken. “You have no idea what you’re saying,” I tell her. She’s wrong.
“Let me finish,” she says, and she inhales a breath of air. “I also think that you’re a jerk. Your ego is too big for your own head and you think that you look cool by being a badass. But really, Tyler? You just look pathetic.”
Stop fucking saying that! I almost scream it at her, but I bite my tongue and fight to keep my anger from exploding. I tell her I’m attracted to her, and she turns around and throws it in my face like this. It hurts. I should have left while I had the chance. “Alright, now I just look like a moron coming up here and telling you that I’m attracted to you,” I say. “You could’ve let me down easier.”
Her lips press together, her eyes twitch as they narrow. “I thought someone as badass as you could handle it.”
She is challenging me again. I shove my hands into my pockets and think about her words for a minute, turning back to the window. The fireworks are still lighting up the sky and I watch them in silence, listening to the popping and the crackling. Maybe there is a very small part of me that likes the idea of Eden figuring me out. It’s a terrifying thought having someone know my darkest secrets, but a tiny fraction of my being is almost begging for it. I try to fight against it, to push people away, but deep within me, all I really want is for someone to finally understand me. Someone who will tell me that everything will be okay one day. Someone who will tell me that I’ll be okay. I glance over my shoulder at Eden. “And I thought you’d figured out that I’m not really a badass,” I whisper. This is me. This is Tyler.
Eden’s eyes are locked on me. There are several feet between us, but she stares across the hallway at me through the silence. The bright, neon colors of the fireworks are still flashing in her eyes. So many different emotions are flickering in her gaze. At first, confusion. Then surprise. And finally, a fear that I recognize all too well. It’s the same fear I felt on Saturday night after I realized that not only did I just kiss my stepsister, but that I also liked her.
“I think,” she whispers, “that I’m attracted to you too.”
What? My heart really does stop this time. I turn away from the windows, angling my body back toward Eden. Surprise fills me, but so does doubt. “You are?” I ask, but my voice doesn’t even sound like mine.
“I am,” she says. She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment and I can see her swallow hard. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing,” I tell her. Why is she saying sorry? This is exactly what I wanted to hear, but she looks absolutely terrified. It’s a heavy realization to swallow, I know, but it’s one I am willing to accept. I hope she is too. Slowly, I near her, only stopping when I am standing a mere inch or two away from her. “Don’t regret anything.”
Her gaze flicks up from the ground to meet mine. I am looking down into her eyes, at all of the colors shining within them, but I only see hazel. I want to kiss her again. I am dying to. I want to feel her lips pressed to mine again. I want to feel her skin against my own. I reach out to touch her elbow, lightly brushing my fingertips all the way down her arm to her wrist. Then, I move my hand to her waist.
“What’s happening?” Eden whispers. She is quivering under my touch. She is tensed up, she isn’t breathing again. She can’t even look at me; she is watching the fireworks. I trace circles on her hip with my thumb and my eyes never leave her face. I can feel our adrenaline radiating between us. She wants this too. I move my mouth to her jaw and brush my lips against her soft, soft skin. She is warm and comforting, and I kiss every inch of her skin from her jaw to her mouth. I hover by the corner of her lips.
The silence feels too fragile to break, but I dare myself to whisper, “Let me kiss you.”
“But you’re my stepbrother.” Her voice is barely audible as she forces the words out through a breath of air, and she is frozen in place, my mouth so, so close to hers.
“Just don’t think about it,” I murmur, and I can’t bear it any longer, so I take her lips in my own.
They are so plump and so perfect, and I kiss her in a way I’ve never kissed anyone else before. I kiss her so softly, so gently, taking in the sensation of her mouth against mine once more, and I don’t think I will ever get enough of it. I tune out everything else around me. I tune out the fireworks. I tune out a distant voice that is calling. I am focusing on only this moment, on my heartbeat rocketing against my chest, on Eden. I pull her closer against me, deepening the kiss, quickening the pace. I want to explore every inch of her and I can’t stop my hands from moving. My fingers are wrapped into her hair, I am touching the small of her back, I am pulling her against me until her body is molded into mine. My pulse is racing with the electricity and my head is spinning. She is giving me full control, working in sync with my movements, and I slow the kiss back down again. Moving my fingertips to her chin, I tilt her head up so that I can kiss her even deeper. And God, it’s amazing.
“Alright, wrap it up,” the distant voice is calling out, tearing through the bubble I’m in and bursting it completely. Even Eden has suddenly gone rigid. “Cut it out already!”
“Dammit,” I mutter as I reluctantly pull away from Eden. The moment is ruined now anyway. I drop my hands from her body and throw them back through my hair as I turn around to face the jackass who has interrupted us. It’s a cop. A Culver City police officer is staring at me, glowering sharply at us, and I fold my arms across my chest as I glare evenly back at him. It’s so instant, so subtle, that I barely even realize I have switched straight back into my Tyler Bruce facade until I hear myself growling, “You got a problem?”
“You are trespassing,” the officer states, his voice firm. He looks me up and down suspiciously, eyeballing the hell out of me, and then Eden.
“Trespassing?” I repeat. Is he kidding me? Is he on a power trip or something? “Don’t you have better things to do? Like sorting out those drunk fights out there on the field?” I nod to the
windows, to the masses outside as the fireworks continue to shower the black sky in an array of colors. It’s July Fourth. I am pretty sure there are more serious matters to be dealing with.
“Enough with the attitude,” the officer barks at me. He places his hands on his hips, resting on his duty belt. “This school is closed apart from the designated hallways. You are trespassing and I am giving you the chance to leave by yourself before I have to make you.”
“Make me?” I almost laugh out loud. Is he threatening to drag me out of here? It’s really not that serious. “Can’t you just give us a second? We’ll get out of here, but you kind of interrupted something.”
“Tyler, just come on,” Eden is mumbling. She is tugging at the hem of my shirt, begging me to drop it and just leave, but Tyler Bruce doesn’t back down. I stand my ground, refusing to let her pull me away.
“Yes, I figured I interrupted something,” the officer replies, his voice dripping with sarcasm, and he fires us both a disgusted glance. Was he watching us the entire time? What a creep. “I’m not asking to reason with you,” he says. “I’m asking you to leave, and I expect you to do it. Don’t try to waste my time, son.”
“It’s a goddamn hallway,” I remind him, throwing up my hands. This is bullshit. I’ll leave, but not until I get to finish what I started with Eden, not until I get to kiss her again without interruptions. “It’s not like we’re sneaking around the White House. Just give us five minutes.”
“Can’t you take no for an answer?” the officer snaps, growing agitated with my defiance. “Didn’t your old man ever teach you how to obey orders?”
And there it goes: my temper. “Are you a fucking asshole or what?” I hiss at him as I step toward him, my fists balled by my sides. If he wasn’t a cop, I would swing at him. Who the hell does he think he is? Orders are the only fucking thing my dad ever gave me.
“Alright, that’s it,” the officer says, and he plucks his pair of cuffs from his belt. “I have asked you to leave but you are refusing orders and your attitude is downright inappropriate, so I am arresting you under Section 602.”
Shit. This can’t be happening. I’m supposed to be laying low, staying off the radar, keeping my name out of their mouths. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Eden’s lips part as her jaw falls open in shock, and at the same time, I hear the officer add, “Both of you.”
37
FIVE YEARS EARLIER
When Hugh drops me off after school on Friday, I walk into the house to find Dad sitting at the kitchen table. Usually, when he takes the afternoons off from the office, he doesn’t actually bring his work home. But today, the kitchen table is covered in binders and sheets of paper, pens and a cup of coffee. Dad is hunched over the table, his tie loose, one hand in his hair, one hand holding up a sheet of paper in front of him that he’s intensely studying.
The house is silent. Jamie and Chase will be upstairs. Ever since Dad moved the PlayStation 2 into their room, they have become hooked on video games.
I pull out a chair and sit down at the table across from Dad. It’s been a week now since he made his promise, and he hasn’t broken it. That’s the only reason I sit down, because I am slowly trying to trust him again, just like I used to before it all went wrong. I rest my cast up on the table and smile at him. “You’re working from home?”
“Not working,” Dad says as he quickly glances up at me without lifting his head. His smile mirrors mine, but I can see that it’s forced. There are stress wrinkles around his forehead. “Figuring stuff out.”
“What do you need to figure out?”
“You wouldn’t understand. At least not yet. You will one day,” he says. Heaving a sigh, he sets down the sheet of paper in his hand and rubs at his temples. “Why does everything have to go wrong at the same time? Why do I have accounts missing the same week that two of my guys quit?” he mumbles, though I think he’s talking to himself. Dad’s company, Grayson’s, used to run smoothly, from what I can tell. Structural engineering or something. Offices all up and down the west coast. Successful. Or at least it used to be. The past few years . . . not so much. The pressure is stressful for him, and I’ve always figured that it’s the stress that has led to his short temper.
“You’ll fix it,” I tell him. It’s what Mom would say if she was here, but she’s not, so I’ll do the reassuring for her. I’m trying to stay on Dad’s good side and I don’t want him to get stressed. I don’t want him to get mad. “That’s why you went to college. To be able to know how to fix things.”
“No,” he says. He lifts his head. “I went to college so that I could provide for you.” He pushes the papers in front of him away and then rests his hands on the table, interlocking them as he edges forward. “Tyler, let me tell you something. When I was a teenager, I was an idiot. I didn’t care. School? Lame. I almost got kept back a grade in high school, not because I wasn’t smart enough, but because I didn’t put in the effort. Oh, your grandma . . . I drove her insane.” He stifles a laugh as he rolls his eyes. “I was sixteen and in love with your mom. I’d steal my dad’s truck and sneak out to see her. We’d drink cheap beer together. And then . . . Well, you know the story of the birds and the bees. We got a little surprise with you.”
“Yuck,” I mutter, wrinkling my nose at him in disgust. I already know Mom and Dad were young when they had me, that they were seventeen and still in school, and I really don’t need to know anything more. It’s gross.
“You won’t be pulling that face when you’re sixteen, let me tell you that,” Dad jokes, but then quickly raises an eyebrow at me and more seriously adds, “Or at least eighteen, please.”
“Dad,” I plead. My cheeks are burning hot.
“Okay, okay!” Dad laughs as he holds up his hands in surrender, then he focuses his soft gaze back on me again. “The point is: We cut the crap. We weren’t going to be the parents that were high school dropouts, living in some cheap house and struggling to get by. We wanted better than that for you. That’s why we stayed in school, graduated, and went to college.” He stops for a moment as his expression becomes solemn again. “Tyler, your mom did seven damn years of college with three kids. Law school. With three kids. Do you understand how hard that was?” I nod. I still remember all of the late nights Mom spent working on assignments. “Well, that’s how much she loved you. And me too. Because now you have everything you need, don’t you?” I nod again, and Dad sighs. He gets to his feet and walks around the table, sitting back down on the chair next to me, his hands intertwining between his knees.
“This is why I push you so hard, Tyler,” he explains, and now I finally understand the point of this story. “Not because I’m being a jackass, but because I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did. I want you to be successful. I want you to focus in school and get into a real good college. One of the best. We’ll even pay those Ivy League tuition fees.”
I furrow my eyebrows at him. “You expect me to get into an Ivy League school?”
“Well, why can’t you?” he asks, and my expression is blank. “Exactly. And then once you get your degree—in engineering, remember—I need you to run this company much better than I currently am. Okay?”
I don’t have the nerve to tell him that maybe I don’t want to get into engineering, maybe I don’t want to run his company. So I just smile and say, “Okay.”
And as his face lights up with pride, Dad pulls me into a hug full of warmth and love.
38
PRESENT DAY
“You couldn’t have just kept your mouth shut?” Eden is whispering into my ear from beside me. She is rubbing her forehead, massaging her temples.
We are currently sitting in a holding cell at the Culver City Police Department. Our parents have been called, and the longer we are waiting for them to turn up, the more visibly anxious Eden is becoming. Clearly, she has never been arrested before. The process is unsettling for her, and if we were alone right now, then maybe I would, like, put my arm around her something. But w
e’re not. We have companions in here, such as the wasted woman in heels who is throwing herself at the floor in protest, wailing and yelling.
“Cop was a prick,” I mutter back to Eden. I hate cops, or at least these ones. I sink back against the wall, watching all of the officers as they mill around the station. Phones are ringing, words are being said. “They all are.” This is a lie. There is one officer who I will make an exception for, and only one, and that is Officer Gonzalez from the Santa Monica department. I like him.
“We wouldn’t even be here if you’d just walked away,” Eden says, heaving a sigh. She’s mad at me again, because the only reason she is even sitting in this cell right now is because of me. I dragged her into it with me, and although I do feel guilty about it, I also know that she has nothing to worry about.
I groan and lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees as I stare at the floor. “My mom will get us out of it,” I tell her, stealing a glance up at her. She is sitting next to me, but there are inches that separate us. We aren’t touching. We can’t. Not when there are people around.
Eden rolls her eyes, but she still doesn’t look at ease. “What? Because she’s an attorney?”
“Because she’s done it before,” I admit, sitting back up. There are always benefits to having a mom who is a lawyer. A civil attorney, sure, but she still knows her way around criminal law too. She hates it when I get myself into trouble like this, so she will always do anything she can to get me off lightly. She has been on a break from work for the past five years while we have dealt with the mess that we found our lives in, but she has never lost her skill. “She always gets me out of it.”
“Before,” Eden repeats. She looks at me, her eyes narrowing with curiosity. “How many times have you been arrested?”
“Once. Twice.” I shrug as my lips curve into a playful smirk. “Maybe a couple more than that.”