Crash: A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance (8 page)

Luke

What was I thinking… freaking out over seeing Katherine with that guy? I mean, I’m not her boyfriend or anything. She made it clear that she had no respect for me or the fact that I spent eight months by her side, so what did I care who she hung out with?

But the sad fact was, I did care. I cared a lot. Seeing her laughing with that punk had made a knot form in the pit of my stomach, and it had made my heart race like a herd of galloping wildebeest.

A voice inside my head told me I should just tell her how I feel, but my sensible side told that voice to shut up and mind its own business. I mean, how exactly did I expect her to react to hearing that her stepbrother-to-be had the hots for her? She’d probably slap me and call me a sicko, which was exactly how I felt.

What kind of sick freak develops a borderline obsession with his stepsister, anyway? Okay, so our parents weren’t married, yet. And we were both over eighteen. Technically, we weren’t even remotely related. But we would be. Sort of.

God, if my father found out I was lusting after her, he’d want to kick my ass. And I’d probably let him. Hell, I’d kick my own ass if I could. Maybe it would make me get over her.

Eight months.

I’d spent eight months after the car crash sitting by her bedside and praying for her to wake up. She thought I didn’t know her, but she was wrong. I’d spent eight months listening to her mother talk about her. Eight months seeing every single family photo her mother could dig up. I knew her better than she knew herself.

I knew that she fell and scraped her knee when she was five and had cried in seventh grade because the dress her mother bought her for the school dance didn’t hide the scar.

I knew that she had an obsession with horses for years, and that her father had promised to buy her a horse of her own when she graduated high school, but he died before he could do it.

I knew that she liked whipped cream on her hot chocolate instead of marshmallows because she thought the texture of marshmallows when they melted was too much like snot.

Her favorite color was purple. Her biggest fear was drowning. Her favorite animal besides horses was the panda. She hated raisins. She was allergic to sesame seeds. She wore braces for several years.

Her mother had gone on and on about her, even bringing in old home movies to watch, hoping they might encourage her to wake up from her coma, or at least bring her some comfort while she was still in it.

I knew the girl more intimately than I knew any other human being on earth, but she hardly knew me at all.

God, I felt pathetic. I was completely head-over-heels in love with a girl who felt as though we had just met. From her perspective, we had.

Not to mention, she and I hadn’t exactly gotten along. Then again, a lot of that was my fault. I had called her a stuck-up bitch when we first met. I’d hurt her over the dress her father had bought her, though in fairness I’d had no way to know that. I’d stopped visiting her after I overheard what she said in the hospital. Then I attacked some random guy because I got overwhelmed with jealousy. Maybe she had every right to hate me.

I decided, for the sake of the family, that I should at least try to make amends. I headed to the little gift shop across the street from campus to browse around. Maybe some little token would help make up for the way I behaved and at least get us one some kind of civil speaking terms.

I knew my dad and Lucy were planning to get married very soon, and the last thing I wanted was a bunch of awkward bullshit at the wedding and reception. Besides, as far as I knew, Katherine and her mother would be moving in with us after the wedding, and if we weren’t getting along, it would be all kind of awkward.

I must have spent two hours scouring that place for the right gift. For a tiny store, it sure held a lot of possibilities. Flowers, balloons, cards, t-shirts… pretty much all the standard fare as far as gifts. But I wanted something that show I’d put some thought into it rather than just picking up something random.

I was just about to give up when I noticed an employee stuffing some items into a box.

“Hey! Wait!” I shouted, rushing toward the poor girl, who looked startled. “What’s that?”

“Um… just some merchandise we haven’t been able to sell, so we’re shipping it off to Amazon to try to unload it,” she answered.

“I want that thing in your hand,” I told her.

She looked down and held up the large stuffed animal.

“This? It’s damaged,” she said. She showed me an area where the ear had nearly detached from the head. “See?”

“I’ll take it,” I told her.

“Um… okay,” she shrugged. “I’ll give you a discount since it’s damaged.”

I paid for the animal and took it home. I had a little work to do.

Katherine

I was absolutely furious with Luke. Who did he think he was trying to run my life after abandoning me? Some sense of family.

I headed straight home, determined to enjoy my evening. I picked up a five-buck pizza from Little Caesar’s on the way home and went straight to my bedroom. I changed into a tank top and shorts, turned on Netflix, grabbed a Coca-Cola from the fridge, and crawled into bed to drown my frustrations in good old-fashioned junk food.

I had finally found a good movie and was just about to take a bite of pizza when my door opened. I sat there with my mouth gaping and the pizza hovering an inch in front of my mouth as my mother barged in with Luke following her.

“You have a visitor, Kitty Kat,” Mom said. “Be nice.”

I threw my slice of pizza back into the box and said, “What do you want?”

“I’ll leave you two,” Mom said, leaving the room and closing the door.

“I just wanted to apologize for the way I acted at school,” Luke said. “And for not coming to visit all this time.”

“Oh. Okay, you’ve apologized, and I accept. See you around.”

“And I brought you this,” he said, extending a gift bag toward me.

I reluctantly took the bag and peeked inside. I pulled out a huge stuffed panda bear with giant eyes. It was absolutely adorable.

“I love pandas!” I said. “Thank you.”

“Sorry about the ear,” he said.

I glanced at the ear, and it looked like it had been sewn on by a first-grader… who had never sewn anything before… and was blind.

“So… what’s the story with this? Because there’s got to be one. There’s just got to be.”

“There is,” he admitted. “I got him at that gift shop across the street from campus. They were sending him off to sell him on Amazon, and I felt sorry for him. I just couldn’t let them pack him up to sell off as clearance garbage. Especially not knowing how much you love pandas.”

“How did you know I love pandas?”

He pulled the chair from in front of my desk over and straddled it backward, resting his arms on the chair’s back.

“I know a lot about you,” he said. “You love purple. You’re mildly obsessed with pandas. You’ve always wanted a horse.” I noticed him glance at my legs, and he said, “And that scar on your knee from when you fell when you were five has actually mostly disappeared, I see.”

I felt my cheeks warm, and I grabbed a pillow and threw it over my lap. After all these years, I was still sensitive about that scar.

“Okay, this is creepy. Are you some kind of stalker or something?”

He laughed and said, “Maybe. But your mother loves to talk about you, and I had eight months to listen.”

“Oh. I guess that explains it.”

“You know, you think I don’t know you, but I do,” he said. “I’ve known you for about a year now, actually. I probably know more about you than
you
know about you.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I would,” he said confidently.

“What’s your point?” I asked, growing frustrated.

“Hell, I don’t know,” he said, pushing off the chair and returning it to its place in front of my desk. “I just came by to apologize and tell you that you’re wrong. I do know you. The problem is,
you
don’t know
me
.”

“I don’t think that’s much of a problem at all,” I told him. “I think we’re both better off not knowing each other.”

“Oh, really?” he asked.

“Really!” I shot back.

“Fine!”

I watched him storm out of the room and slam the door behind him, and for a moment I was overcome with contrition. He’d come to apologize, and I hadn’t been very nice to him. But what good would it do for the two of us to get to know one another? We were about to be stepsiblings. We’d pass each other in the hallway on the way to our school or work, maybe see each other and dinner and holidays, and that would be it. There couldn’t be anything else.

I could just see the look on my mother’s face if I told her I had a crush on my stepbrother.

“Katherine, think of the family’s reputation
!” she would gasp, fanning herself as though she might faint.
“We’re royalty, for goodness sake!”

Yeah, I could see it now.

My door opened again, and Mom was standing there with her hand on her hips looking frustrated.

“What did you say to him?” she asked accusingly.

“Nothing,” I told her. “I just told him I didn’t think we should waste time getting to know each other. I mean, it’s not like we’ll be spending a lot of time together.”

“Kat, he’s going to be your stepbrother. You should at least try to be nice to him.”

“I have, Mom. I just don’t get along with him. I can’t help that,” I told her.

“Fair enough, but that doesn’t mean you have to treat him in a way that would send him storming out of the house as though you’d spit in his face.”

“He was that upset?” I asked her.

“He barely said goodbye. He looked like a wounded puppy.”

Damn.

“I’m sorry. I’ll apologize next time I see him,” I promised her.

“Please do. Luke is a very nice boy, and he’s tried very hard to fit in with this family. Never forget that he spent eight months in the hospital with you even though he didn’t have to.”

“I know, Mom.”

“What are you watching?” Mom asked.

“Some sappy love story,” I told her. “But now I think I’d rather watch a slasher flick.”

“Ooh, scoot over!” Mom said. “Is that pizza?”

Leave it to my mother to butt into a pity party she wasn’t invited to. I sighed heavily and scrolled through the horror movies, picking out the goriest one I could find. I needed something to take my mind off Luke.