Tyler is standing in the hall when I get back to the house. His arms are folded across his chest, his jaw clenched, eyes fierce. He looks as though he’s about to step foot into a boxing ring, ready to knock some brain damage into his opponent. The problem is that I don’t know who the enemy is.
“What’d she say?” he spits in contempt. As he approaches me, he drops his arms and curls his hands into fists. “What did you say?”
I shake my head as I peer around his tall frame, glancing into the living room. Ella is gone and so are the photo albums. “Where’s your mom?”
“Picking up Chase,” he says quickly, his voice gruff. “Now what the hell happened?”
I take a deep breath, my eyes trained on his hardened features as I try to make sense of everything. I’m scared to death. “Someone saw us last night,” I splutter, and bile rises in my throat once more. “Austin Cameron . . . He told Tiffani.”
Tyler’s eyes widen in shock before faltering back into a cold glare. “Are you kidding me?” he growls. A wave of adrenaline seems to flow down his arms, and he hurls one fist at his other palm, creating a loud slap as his knuckles smack his own skin. “I will floor that motherfu—”
“They don’t know it was me,” I cut in quickly, my voice quiet and raspy as I interlock my fingers over and over again. My eyes fall to the floor as my chest tightens. “She’s devastated, Tyler.”
She’s not just upset; she’s furious. I feel like she might be on to us. She now knows that both Tyler and I lied about where we were last night, and despite my horrendous attempt at trying to explain, she made it clear that she plans to figure out what I’m hiding. In retrospect, I probably could have come up with something better than I did. But I was under pressure, so I rambled that I’d lied because Dad and Ella would only let me leave the house if they knew I was going somewhere safe. Convincing? Not for Tiffani. I don’t think I can possibly face her again.
Silence ensues for a moment. Tyler relaxes his fists as he heaves a sigh. From beneath my eyelashes, I watch as he rubs the back of his neck before running his hand back through his hair. “I’ll fix this,” he says quietly. His words make me look up again, my eyes meeting his. “Look, she’s pissed off. I get it, but I can make it up to her. I’ll tell her I made a mistake, I’ll buy her something nice, and then she’ll forget about it and everything will be fine again. And then we can figure the rest out.”
I stare at him in disbelief. With my lips pressed into a firm line, I grit my teeth and glower at him. “Everything won’t be fine,” I say tersely, spitting out each word. “Nothing is fine, Tyler! This needs to stop.”
“What needs to stop?”
“This.” I throw my hands up in surrender as I motion back and forth between the two of us. I shouldn’t have let any of this get this far in the first place. Now I’m in too deep. Three make-out sessions too deep. “You have a girlfriend, Tyler. I refuse to be a cheater.”
“You won’t be,” he says firmly, but then the corners of his lips curl into a smile, and he takes a few steps toward me and reaches for my elbow. The warmth of his skin creates a wave of goosebumps down my arms as he pulls me toward him, and I glance up to meet his closing eyes as he leans down to lock his lips with mine. Immediately, I yank my arm out of his grasp and spiral away from his body. He stands there, his hands hovering in mid-air as his eyes slowly snap open to glare at me.
But I only blink at him as I try to figure out what is running through his mind right now. He’s quite clearly insane. After a long pause, I finally ask, “Are you serious? Now really isn’t the time. Even if you could completely guarantee that she wouldn’t find out—which she will—I still wouldn’t do this anyway.” I take a step back and wave my hands in front of me, my head shaking, a lump in my throat. “I am not doing this.”
“C’mon.” He has wiped the smile from his lips, but the smugness in his eyes still remains. In disgust, I spin around and march halfway up the staircase before he mumbles, “We can figure this out.”
“How, Tyler?” I demand as I twirl back around, gripping the banister and peering down at him. “We only have two options.”
“Only two?”
“Two,” I confirm. I stare down at his smoldering eyes, and then I picture Tiffani and her smeared mascara and muffled sobs and tear-stained pillows. He couldn’t care less. “You have to break up with her.”
“No,” he objects, with a firm shake of his head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” I ask.
To start with, I think he might ignore my question. He takes a while to think of an answer. “Because it’s more complicated than you think it is, alright? Tiffani’s . . . Look, don’t push it.” He pauses and fixes me with a look that tells me not to challenge him, so despite how frustrated I feel, I just frown and wait for him to speak again. “What’s the other option?”
“We ignore whatever we have between us.” It hurts to say it, but I know it makes sense. If he wants to stay with Tiffani, then we have to act like stepsiblings and nothing more. No discreet flirting, no stolen kisses, no sexual remarks. But if he wants that, then he can’t be with Tiffani. Because doing both is infamously known as cheating.
“So basically,” he starts as he folds his arms across his chest, “I get to be with you if I break up with Tiffani? It’s you or her, right?” The conceited expression is long gone by now. It’s been replaced with an aggravated glower, his eyes narrowed into small slits, his chin tilted up as he studies me. I don’t think it’s me he’s mad at, though. I think he’s angry at the situation. I am too.
“Why are you acting surprised? That ultimatum is pretty obvious,” I remark dryly. “You should have known that it was going to come to this.”
As he clenches his jaw, he throws his head back and runs both hands through his hair. He mutters something under his breath before he turns around and stalks into the kitchen. I stomp my way into my room and slam the door loud enough for him to hear.
It’s only a matter of seconds before I begin doubting everything and torturing myself with questions. The biggest question of them all is this: Why am I even attracted to Tyler in the first place?
I honestly cannot think of an acceptable answer. The whole thing is wrong. I’m attracted to my stepbrother, for starters, and the thought of anyone finding out is too much to bear. We’d be judged and frowned upon, banished from society. But it’s not just the stepbrother complication that’s got me baffled. It’s the fact that he has so many flaws, which I should hate, but I simply can’t bring myself to. At least not now. Why am I so fascinated by a guy who doesn’t seem to care about anything? I should hate him for being such an arrogant, egotistic jerk. But I can no longer despise him, despite how many inappropriate comments he makes, how many joints he smokes and how much alcohol he consumes in the space of an hour, because I’m entirely convinced by now that he’s not simply doing it to look cool or to fit in with the guys he hangs out with. There’s something more to it all, something intriguing about who he really is beneath the tough guy that he’s trying to project. I’m so interested, so infatuated, and I’m falling for him.
I really wish I wasn’t.
Ella and Chase arrive home shortly after. She sticks her head into my room for a moment to check if I’m home yet, telling me that the house is too quiet and that it’s making her uncomfortable. I fake a small laugh before she heads next door to check on her eldest and most notorious son. I don’t remember hearing him disappear into his room, but I know he must have had the same idea as me, because I hear his voice through the walls.
They bicker back and forth for a minute or so before Ella gives up and leaves him alone again. I wonder if it’s a repetitive cycle for her. She tries to get through to him, he yells back at her, she gives up. Over and over and over again. It seems like a part of her daily routine.
She comes back up later to coax me out of my room for dinner. I’m reluctant to go downstairs, but she leaves no room for arguing, so I follow her to the kitchen. Dad and Chase are sat in their usual spots, their eyes following me as I make my way to the table. And Tyler’s there too, of course.
“Hungry?” Dad asks, his tie loosened around his neck as he stretches back in his chair.
“No,” I say as I force myself to maintain eye contact with him. I can feel Tyler’s death stare boring holes into my skin from across the table. “How was the meeting?”
Dad shrugs. “It was alright.”
“Dave,” Ella says as she places a dish of barbecue ribs on the table—at which Tyler gags—before moving over to Dad and placing her hands on his shoulders. “You said it went really well.”
He glances up at her as she soothingly rubs her thumbs over the back of his neck and his lips quirk into a smile as they hold each other’s gaze. He used to smile at my mom that way, back when they were happy together. Those small gestures and exchanges stopped long before the divorce. “Hmm,” he says as his eyes move back over to meet mine. “The meeting went great.”
“Good,” I say.
There’s an abrupt screech as Tyler pushes his chair away from the table and gets to his feet. He shakes his head at the food and scrunches up his face in disdain. “I can’t sit here. I’m heading back upstairs.”
Ella’s smile fades from her face within a nanosecond, her hands resting on Dad’s broad shoulders. “But yours is just comin—”
“I’ve got some stuff to do,” he cuts in as he advances toward the hall without giving me a second glance. “I’ll heat it up later.”
Ella heaves a sigh and moves back over to the cooker to turn down the heat. “Well, that’s two kids down,” she murmurs.
Chase obviously likes the idea of there being fewer people at the table, because he grins and yells, “More ribs for me!”
Dinner ends up feeling pretty weird with just the four of us. Chase and I make small talk while Dad and Ella share more elaborate summaries of their days. When they’re not looking, I offer Chase a rib or two.
And dinner as a whole runs relatively smoothly until the phone rings. We think nothing of it until Dad rushes back into the kitchen. He tosses the wireless phone onto the counter and grabs his keys. “That was Grace,” he explains quickly, his wide eyes on Ella as she warily stands. “Jamie’s fallen on his wrist. She says it could be broken. We better go.”
Ella’s face distorts as she presses a limp hand to her forehead. “Not this all over again!”
“He’ll be fine,” Dad tells her firmly. “Let’s go get him.”
Ella rushes around the kitchen to check that everything is switched off, because she can’t have the house going on fire while she’s gone, and then she pauses at the archway to the hall. She strains her neck around to face me. “Can you and Tyler please stay here and keep an eye on Chase?”
I quickly nod as I stand up. “Go.”
She offers me a thankful smile before fleeing out of the house and into the car with Dad. As the engine fades away into nothing, the only noise I hear is Chase slurping the barbecue sauce off his plate.
I begin gathering all of the dishes into a pile as he finishes eating. “Good ribs, huh?”
“Amazing ribs,” he corrects. He tosses the final bone onto his plate and smiles. “Mmm.”
Rolling my eyes, I reach for his plate and add it to the stack before carefully carrying them over to the dishwasher. I almost throw the bones into the garbage disposal before noticing my mistake and dumping them in the trash instead. “So does Jamie break his wrist often or something?”
“No,” Chase says. He’s suddenly by my side, opening up the dishwasher for me and beginning to place all the used cutlery inside. “Tyler does.”
“Oh man,” I say, and then I smile to myself. “I thought he was tougher than that.”
With Chase’s help, we get the kitchen cleaned up in the space of ten minutes, and then he heads into the living room to watch TV while I ensure the front door is locked. Now that Tyler and I are close to being alone in the house, I decide it’s the perfect time to try to talk to him again. I can’t tell if he’s mad at me or mad at himself, but either way he’s pretty furious, and I prefer to see him in a good mood.
He’s sitting on the edge of his bed when I push open the door to his room. His head is low and his hands are interlocked in front of him, his room silent.
“We’re watching Chase,” I say quietly, to let him know that I’m there. “Jamie’s maybe broken his wrist.”
Immediately his eyes flash up to meet mine, and suddenly he’s getting to his feet. There’s panic on his face. “What happened? Where is he? Who?”
I’m a little taken aback by his outburst, and his questions only confuse me. “What?”
He clears his throat. “I mean, how?”
“I think he fell on it,” I tell him. He looks like he might pass out, so I decide to lighten the mood and say, “I heard you’ve broken yours, tough guy,” as I wiggle my eyebrows at him. But it completely backfires.
His eyes dilate with a mixture of anger and shock at my joke. “Who told you that?”
“Um, Chase.” His sudden outrage surprises me, so I look into his eyes to get a clue to why he’s so mad. I can’t quite figure him out. “What’s wrong?”
He drops his eyes to the floor and back up again. He takes a step toward me. “What else did the kid tell you?”
“Nothing,” I whisper as his eyes pierce mine.
Another step. “Are you sure?”
“Stop freaking out.” He ignores me, not reacting as his fierce eyes scan my body. “I’m sure,” I quickly add.
“You know what? I can’t deal with this,” he snaps. Shaking his head and breaking our eye contact, he turns away from me and heads for his bathroom. “I can’t deal with you and I can’t deal with Tiffani. I can’t deal with your dumb questions and I can’t deal with Tiffani’s whining. I can’t deal with any of it right now.” As though he’s out of breath, he exhales rapidly as he grabs onto the edge of the sink and stares at the faucet.
“You’re getting so worked up,” I say as I approach him from behind, pushing open the door further so I can stand inside the small bathroom with him.
“Watch the door,” he mutters. “The lock is fucked.”
It sounds like he’s on the verge of tearing the sink off the wall, so I gently place a hand on his arm in an effort to calm him down. But he only flinches and steps away from me.
“I need a hit,” he hisses, his eyes flashing to the cabinet above. He flings open the mirrored door and reaches up to the top shelf, his hand grabbing a wad of cash. I notice the collection of prescription pills and tablets in bottles carelessly scattered along the shelves. But that’s not what I care about right now.
Tyler slams the cabinet door shut again and turns around, but I quickly step in front of him and bump into his chest, blocking the door. “Don’t even think about it,” I warn through gritted teeth.
“Eden,” Tyler says, leaning toward me as his wet lips hover by my cheek, his breath cool against my skin. “I. Need. A. Hit. Right. Now.”
I glance down at the cash clutched tightly in his hand as I take a step back. My eyes flash back up to lock with his. “Because coke is totally going to fix everything, right?”
“Eden,” he says again, his voice hoarse. “Move your cute ass out of my way before you really piss me off. I gotta meet Declan.”
“I’m not letting you,” I snap. Now I’m furious. Of course he has to resort to drugs. It’s just so typical and just so pathetic of him. What is he thinking? I don’t want to deal with something, so let’s fix it by ruining my life? Drugs are for stalling.
Tyler slams his palm flat against the wall by my ear. “It’s not fucking up to you!”
But what he doesn’t know is that it is up to me whether he goes or not, because he inadvertently told me how to stop him. So as he presses his lips together and stares at me, I reach over for the edge of the door, fumbling before I finally get hold of it. And before Tyler can even notice what I’m doing, I swing the door closed, spinning around and shoving my weight against it until it stiffly clicks into place.
The fucked-up lock, as Tyler called it, just became my best friend.
