My Brother's Best Friend (Crazy in Love Book 1) (20 page)

I’m working on the conclusion of Colin and Reagan in the second book of the Crazy in Love series called
Always my girl.
This book should be released in the next few months.

If you like high school and college romances, here’s a sample of the first book,
Never Get Enough,
in my Enough Series.

Prologue

              It feels like I’ve always loved her. Since the day I met her, I just always knew I would love her forever. I had to watch her grow up and wait until she was ready to love me. She was always mine though. I was always supposed to be the one to hold and comfort her. Something in me wanted to be exactly what she needed me to be when she needed me to be it. She brought out the only good in me, without her I was an uncaring asshole, but if anybody tried to come between us I wanted to destroy them. I will love Carter Sanders forever, and I will never get enough of her.

My brother and I heard the news on the TV the same as everybody else. An entertainment news anchor spoke the words that would change everything. “Riviera Sanders got married today to international businessman, Sloan Cameron in Las Vegas. She reportedly said she will not continue to act except for a few cameo appearances. Her plans are to travel with her new husband and get to know her new stepsons better. Congratulations to the Happy Couple!”

              I was having a hard time letting that whole news announcement sink in. My dad got remarried to a woman I had never met, a beautiful, famous woman who had to be twenty years younger than him. If my mother was still alive this would have crushed her to know he didn’t want to be married to her but a younger more beautiful model would do just fine. My feelings of resentment and hate started in on me. He couldn’t find the time to come watch my brother, Keller, and my football games, but he could find the time to romance and marry this bitch. I hate him. I fucking hate him so much it burns inside me, and I feel like I could explode with the hate just spilling out to everything else.

              Keller is finally able to shake off his shock and he starts in on our new stepmom right away. “What does the bitch mean get to know us better, Brayden? She doesn’t fucking know us at all.” Keller can never see my dad for what he is. For some reason he always blames someone else for my dad’s fuckups.  When my dad left my mom and just explained to us that he didn’t want to be married anymore, Keller just blamed my mom for not being what my dad needed. When my dad didn’t show up for any of our football games, Keller blamed all the demands of the company on why he couldn’t be there. So now Riviera was going to be the scapegoat for the last father fuck up.

              But I knew who was the real problem was. My dad was an egotistical bastard who was more selfish than anybody else I knew. He gave us money and trust funds, but no one was here at the house except our housekeeper, Lana. Lana loved us but had a family of her own. Our basic needs were taken care of by her but not anything else. My dad cared about us so little that he could not even pick up the phone to let us know he was married much less to want us at his wedding. I wanted to say out loud how much of a selfish dick he was but my brother would be hurt by it. I didn’t want to hurt the one person I loved just because my dad was a prick, and Keller couldn’t recognize it. I kept quiet and didn’t say anything.

              Keller looked at me questioningly, “Do you think they are coming here tonight? Cause I don’t want to meet that phony bitch?” He said it but I could see the vulnerability in his eyes. He wanted to see my dad if only for tonight; he wanted to see him. My brother, who is hard as nails with everything else, is so raw when it comes to our Dad.  “Yeah, I think they will come here tonight or tomorrow. She has an image to uphold. Spending time with her new family reinforces that image.” He nodded and seemed content with that opinion.

              I just started thinking it was a shock at first and a dick move on the part of my dad, but how much would our life really change. Just then the alarm for the house dinged which meant dad was showing up sooner than expected. Riviera must be really big on public image. She didn’t even take the honeymoon before coming to meet the stepsons.

              My dad called for us to come down and we started down the stairs. Standing at the doorway was my dad, Riviera, and the most beautiful young girl I had ever seen. She looked around my age, but I had never seen a girl that looked like her. She had high cheekbones with wide and slanted bright blue eyes, and the longest, lightest most beautiful blond hair I had ever seen. She was tiny though, maybe just five feet. She had high perfect breast that looked too big for her less than size zero frame. She looked between the most perfect Barbie doll and angel you’ve ever seen.

              I finally looked at my brother and realized he was as stunned from the girl as I was. My dad cleared his throat to bring us back from the open mouthed staring. “Boys, I just got married. This is your stepmother, Riviera, and your stepsister, Carter. We will be spending dinner together and then in the morning, Riviera and I are going on our honeymoon to Tahiti. Your stepsister is going to live here from now on so we don’t have to visit two houses when we want to see our kids. Besides the fact that we think children growing up in a smaller town is better for them than growing up in the city.” What about a child growing up without their parents because that is what we had been doing for years. Since our mom died of cancer, Keller and I had been raising ourselves but now this perfectly beautiful girl had to do it too. What caring parent gene did these two miss out on?

              We had dinner together, and Carter did not utter a single word. She smiled shyly at me and Keller though. I was already a goner for her, and Keller looked at her with the softest expression I had ever seen on him. She looked and acted like the sweetest thing in the entire world. Her mother said she was 14, but in the same grade as me even though I was 15. My brother was almost a year older and would be 16 soon.

              After dinner my dad showed Carter to her room. It was just beside mine. She entered it and gave me a shy smile as she walked inside. My heart beat hard in my chest and I felt a peace that had never been a part of me just knowing that she was in my house. I wanted to make sure she was always taken care of, and my heart felt heavy as I thought how hard that task could be with parents like ours.

              I ease dropped as my dad was giving her the speech about how he hoped she would be happy here and how he had already called an interior designer to do whatever she wanted to the room. She said thank you and she thought she would be very happy here. He left then probably anxious to start fucking Riviera, who couldn’t even come to help her daughter settle in to her new room in a brand new house.

              I was letting her get her thoughts settled before I went in to actually talk to her without the parents around when Keller wanders into my room. “Man, have you ever seen anything like her. She is the most beautiful, sweetest thing I have ever seen. I wonder how she has survived with a mother that is so cold and self-involved. Do you think Dad will turn to ice when he fucks her tonight?” he finishes this statement with a chuckle.

              “I was just getting ready to go over and see how she is. Her life has just been completely uprooted and I would be fucking mad as shit if I were he. Do you think it would overwhelm her to have us both go over to talk and get to know her?” I asked Keller. “Nah, “he said. “ We’re her family now; even if I know I don’t want to be looked at as a brother to her, we are her family. Just like with you and me, we’re all she’s got now it looks like.” We truck over to her room only to find her sound asleep already. “She must have been exhausted to fall asleep that fast,” I said. Keller didn’t even answer me. He was too busy just staring at her face while she breathed lightly in sleep. Of course, she would be too perfect to even snore. She looked almost like she was glowing with her tan skin and blond hair around her face. I felt my chest hurt again, and I was scared by how deeply I already cared about her. Then I looked over at my brother and if I wasn’t scared of the fact that he had the same look on his face as he watched her sleep I would have been moved by it. Never had he ever looked at a girl like he looked at this one, but I was bothered by this look because we both couldn’t be everything to this girl.  And I knew that we both saw something in her that we wanted for ourselves. For now we would both settle for being her family and meeting her needs, but that peace wouldn’t last for forever. It couldn’t
.
For now, we made sure she was covered with a blanket and comfortable before we left her sound asleep.

Chapter 1

Brayden

              My brother is leaving for college today. I hear Carter crying as she makes him our last breakfast together. Half of her family will be gone today. She doesn’t want to start our senior year without her support system intact. If he didn’t have a full-ride football scholarship to Florida State, then I know Keller would have waited until Carter had graduated before leaving town. He does have a full-ride though, and if he wants to make it to the NFL, he has to start putting in his time now.

              The pull we felt to the beautiful fourteen year old angel has turned into a full-on obsession for both of us. We woke up the morning after she first came, and she was making us a huge breakfast of bacon, egg, pancakes, and French toast. We both came down the stairs and she was singing in the most beautiful voice the song
Thousand Years
. She heard us and stopped but I didn’t want her to. “Good morning,” she said and then explained, “I didn’t know what you both liked for breakfast so I tried to make a good selection for you to choose from. I am just so excited to have people to live with. I lived by myself with just a housekeeper that was older and couldn’t be bothered too much with me in New York. So I am really excited about moving to a smaller town in Virginia and living with my stepbrothers. I had to go to a private all-girls school in New York, but Riviera said I get to go to public school with you two now. So I am just so excited to be here, but I do have to confess that both of you intimidate me being so much taller than me and so good looking.” Carter giggled then and I thought how ironic that the most beautiful creature I had ever seen was intimidated by mine and my brother’s looks.

              With that little speech she became even more perfect to each of us with her innocence and happiness to just be there with us, and I was already addicted to being around her sweetness. We took care of her from that day forward. She explained why she hadn’t talked at all the night before. Her mother attacked her verbally almost every time she opened her mouth so it was easier to just keep quiet when she her mother was around. Before Carter came, we were known as football stars around town who liked to party, and then we also became known for how protective of our beautiful stepsister we were. Guys always gawked and even followed, but everyone knew not to ever touch or mess with her, or he would be pounded into the ground.

              Carter went everywhere with us, and we were known to be a tight family unit even at school. She was really athletic herself and always played sports with us and video games too. But we didn’t take her into the party crowd. Keller and I just started staying home more with her during a lot of parties. She also had inherited a huge clothing company from her dad that she was actively involved in. She was the spokesperson for it, and she modeled bathing suits in the summer magazines. So when she would do a shoot, we would go to parties and I would hook up with girls to get Carter off my mind, but as she got older one of us would normally travel with her on her trips. We just started to not even feel comfortable with her traveling on her own, and she would joke about our overprotectiveness. Secretly, though I think she was happy to know that we cared so much.

              I walked into the kitchen while Keller was still packing the last things he would need for his dorm. “Hey, sweetness, good morning,” I said, “Please stop crying that will just make him feel even worse for leaving you.” She smiled through tears and said, “I know, Bray. You both have been the only security I have ever really known. Keller leaving is just shaking how I feel about my life a little. But I don’t want to make him sad or take away the excitement of his move.” That statement is comical for how ironic it was. My brother was a nervous wreck and jealous as fuck about leaving Carter and having me in the house alone with her. With both of us here we operate more like chaperones together, but with just one of us in the house there is no way that will happen.

              Carter is just even more beautiful than when she arrived four years ago. She has stayed so tiny but her perky tits are at least a C cup on her tiny frame. She has always played volleyball, even before she came to us at the girls’ school she attended in New York. This year though she could lead her team to the state championship as the best setter in the state. Those workouts have made her ass, which was already spectacular, absolutely amazing. She is also on the dance team so she performs at all our football games. She is by far the best dancer so she is always upfront and in the middle. She has been in videos for the local news multiple times at football games just because she looks that good dancing on camera. Her attitude is the kindest and sweetest of anybody at our school, she doesn’t care where the popular table is or who is at it, she sits with the people that need her to talk or take an interest in them.