Redeemed Complete: A Military Stepbrother Romance (16 page)

Maggie just smiled at me. “Sounds like you enjoyed yourself, you shameless hussy!”

I let out the biggest sigh of my entire life. “Oh, I’m so glad you said that. I was so worried that you’d hate me. I was so worried that we’d never talk again.”

Maggie laughed. “You think you can get rid of me that quickly, huh? It’s not like you did anything illegal. You’re not blood related. And frankly, these days, anyone who can find a little bit of love should go for it. People are way too wrapped up in social conventions to really enjoy themselves. Took me a long time to realize that, but I was much happier once I did.”

“That’s…good advice.”

“One of the many things I’m full of, love, is good advice. Anything else happen?” Maggie had the gossiping look on her face, she clearly wanted sexy details.

“Maggie! Ew! I’m not gonna tell you that!” By now I was crimson as hell and I knew it. I couldn’t hide a thing on my face. I hoped she couldn’t read me too well.

“Shameless!” was all Maggie could say in between fits of laughter. I couldn’t keep it all together, and I joined her, and we laughed it out, our hands clutching each others.

A minute later while Maggie and I wiped our eyes as we came down, she managed to get some actual words out. “Good for you, Laurel, I’m happy things are working out for you.”

“Ye-yeah, we’re still trying to make sense of it all, but so far…it’s…good, I guess? I’m just confused, really.”

“Don’t move things too quickly, now. You went through something traumatic last night, don’t just jump into the arms of the first guy you see afterward.” Maggie’s eyes gleamed as she licked her lips. “Even if he does look like Harrison…”

“Ugh, you’re the worst. Why did I even tell you?!”

“Because you needed to, Laurel. That’s just how we are. Sometimes there’s distance between us, but one way or the other it always comes back to this.”

I felt the tears coming back again, but this time in a good way. “Y-Yeah. You’re right.” I exhaled sharply. “I’m so sorry I’ve been distant these last few months, Maggie, especially with you going through all this stuff at home.”

Maggie batted away my apology with a quick swing of her hand. “Don’t worry about it, honey. We’ve both been going through a lot, and strains happen once we stop seeing each other every day in school. I totally get it.” She grinned. “Just don’t make a habit of it.”

“Never again.”

“Likewise.” We both looked around like we’d just remembered there were other people in the house. “We should probably get back to the other room. The poppers are probably done baking.”

“Yeah.” We both stood up from the table. “Don’t, uh, don’t tell anyone about all this, yeah?”

Maggie looked wounded. “Of course not, honey! I wouldn’t dream of it. All of this is between us, no question about that.”

“Good. Thanks, I really needed to tell you about it.”

“I can tell. Imagine going through something so painful last night…only to have it end up like this!”
 

We shared a laugh, but I couldn’t help but wonder if things were all that rosy. I mean, yeah, Harrison and I had done some stuff, and that part was…really pretty great, couldn’t lie about it, but…what would come next?

That was the only thing on my mind.

What would become of us?

Was it a one time thing?

Maggie finished getting the jalapeño poppers out of the oven and was arranging them on a plate.

“Let’s go back to the party before they send a search party.”

“Come to think of it, why haven’t they sent a search party?”

Tray of steaming poppers and more drinks in hand, we went back to the other room.

Chapter 11 - The Decision

I drove home from Maggie’s baby shower as light snow started to come down again. We’d definitely keep a white Christmas going at this rate. It wasn’t too tough to drive through - light enough that the flakes dissolved on the windshield passing through a little of the heat I had going full blast inside the cabin.

I didn’t have a car in the city, so when I got down here I took full advantage, and that included using all the features like…heat.

I thought about the party I had just left. Maggie looked so happy, so ready for what was coming. I envied her support system she had, even with her husband so far away. She was such a strong person, that even without them, I knew she would be fine no matter what happened. Maggie had always been the stronger of the two of us, Able to take on whatever came with gusto and aplomb.

Me, on the other hand, I was a little more prone to freaking out about things. I was usually able to get it together in time, but that didn’t stop me from worrying about things.

I knew the trip back from Maggie’s place by heart, I’d driven it so many times. I remember doing it by bike a bunch of times, and even once I walked home after my car broke down and no one was home come pick me up.

It was good that I didn’t have to navigate, because my head was totally elsewhere. Of course, that elsewhere had a name, and it was Harrison.

Ugh.

It was so weird to have shifted my perception of him so much in such a short amount of time. 24 hours ago things were all normal and nothing was out of place - Harrison and I stayed out of each other’s way. It was easy when he was deployed, off fighting somewhere, or on base on the other side of the country.

No chance of running into each other then. Just the way we liked it.

Except…not anymore. Now he was close by, and now he was rescuing me from too-aggressive guys in bar parking lots.

That part, of course, I was grateful for.

Harrison, though, was different now. His time overseas had definitely affected him, and I didn’t know how to deal with this new version of him.

He wasn’t the reckless and destructive boy he’d been, setting figurative fires wherever he went. Visions of the late nights my father and his mother stayed up waiting for him to come home, wondering if they’d get a call from the police before he opened the door and went right up to bed.

And that didn’t even count the times Harrison chose me as the subject of his cruel attention. Sometimes it was bad jokes, sometimes it was public humiliation.

With the old Harrison, I never knew. I just tried to stay out of his way, keep my head down, and make it through till he graduated and moved away.

The last two years of high school, after he was off in the army, were so much nicer. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder at home or at school; I was free to enjoy myself without sleeping with one eye open.

I’d gotten used to it.

But, coming back to Summitville, I’d planned on turning on wary mode again, just in case I couldn’t avoid Harrison and he tried something.

I never would have expected what actually happened. This new Harrison was so different and so…much better than I could have ever expected.
 

I just hoped it would last.

How could it?

Argh, I could feel something inside me holding me back. Something preventing me from just letting go and enjoying the new found experience of…well, of Harrison.

What was it?

I mean, I was certainly attracted to him. It was impossible for any straight woman not to be. With a body like that? Rawr. When he looked at me with those dark eyes of his I found it difficult to draw breath into my lungs.

I’d get in better cardiovascular shape just by standing next to him. But as I was learning, the new Harrison and the new Laurel (hey, that’s me!) couldn’t just stand next to each other without sparks flying.

So what was it standing in our way?

Was it that we were brother and sister?

I grimaced, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. I couldn’t start that again. STEP-brother and STEP-sister. None of this would work if I couldn’t square that away in my head.

We weren’t related. Not by blood.

Yeah, it was a little weird, but it wasn’t illegal. And it wasn’t birth-defect gross.

Children, though.

I didn’t want to start thinking down this road, but as I drove home I couldn’t help it. I’d just come from a baby shower and my best friend was gonna give birth any day now.
 

And my evil stepbrother had suddenly become the sexiest and most alluring man I’d ever met.
 

How did this happen to me?!

I was getting so far ahead of myself I couldn’t even turn back and still see reality. Harrison and I had just fooled around a little bit last night and already I was fantasizing about having his babies?

Well, yeah, I kinda was.
 

The old Harrison would have made a terrible father. Just the thought of it, made me scoff out loud to the empty car. If anyone else had been in there with me they’d have agreed, I just knew it.

Come to think of it, I was frankly shocked Harrison didn’t already have a kid or two, given just how frequently he got around back then.

If I hadn’t gone to school with all the girls Harrison slept with, and so would have noticed any pregnancy-related absences or other tell tale signs, I’d have no trouble believing there were a few Harrison Jr’s starting preschool this year.

Waves of imaginary jealousy rolled over me, and I gritted my teeth at the mere thought of some other girl having Harrison’s baby. I was shocked at how possessive I become, in such a short amount of time.

I made a right turn onto School Street, and soon I was passing by our high school. It was a Saturday afternoon, so not much was going on, especially with the weather. As I drove past the dark buildings, I remembered all the hours I have spent inside them. High school felt like such a long time ago, even though it was more recent than I’d like to admit.

What struck me most, in that moment, was how important I and everyone around me had thought of our time in high school while it was going on. These petty things that occupied our days were automatically for most dramatic and exciting and earth shattering things in our universes. But even now, just a little bit removed, I could look back at them and laugh at how little I knew.

I could laugh at how little those things would actually matter.

Maybe that is how every phase of our lives work. In the moment, whatever were doing is the toughest and most dramatic and exciting thing ever. But even just a few months or a couple years of hindsight, some distance between you and those events, shows them in an entirely new light.

Maybe.

I turned off School Street, almost home. As soon as the school was out of you, my thoughts returned to Harrison. A few myself flushing, the memory, all too recent, of what we had done last night. The way Harrison touched me in the moonlight, the way he’d felt pushing into me in my room, made me shiver even more than 12 hours later.

How did he have such an effect on me?

I meant, besides that sexy body of his. That I could daydream about for many many hours without stopping, or maybe even pausing. Those tattoos, perfectly choreographed to dance across those bulging muscles, in the barely lit moonlight, made my mouth water. I had never seen a man’s body quite like that, and after seeing it, I didn’t need to see any others.

Harrison was the perfect physical embodiment of a man. When I closed my eyes and fantasized about an unknown man seducing me, from now on he would look like Harrison.

I shook away the cobwebs as I drove, cobwebs made of lusty thoughts. Now was not the time to be caught up in the out of control clutches of my raging hormones.

Now was the time for sensible deliberation, and careful decision-making. Screw that, I just wanted him to fuck me again.

All over. And not stop.

Ever.

But Harrison and I also had to figure something out - we needed to decide where this was going, if anywhere. I was definitely not the type of girl to have a fling of any kind, but I found my thoughts so overwhelmed with Harrison that process when it came to, I would probably say yes.

And from all that I’d seen over the years, Harrison wasn’t exactly given the long-term attachments. Of course, given what he said last night, maybe he’d turned over a new leaf.

All I think I knew, as I pulled up beside our parents house, and turned off the car, was that I wanted to spend more time with Harrison for the first time in my life.

I wanted to see what we could be together.

And more than anything, that scared me.

Chapter 12 - The Afternoon

When I got home, the house looked empty. I went inside, and turned up the heat first thing, rubbing my hands together and trying to avoid touching all the cold surfaces until the heaters kicked in.

No one was home but me. I couldn’t remember freedom like this.

I went to the kitchen first, and busied myself making some tea. Anything to warm myself. While I was waiting for the key to steep, I looked around the kitchen, and noticed the hastily scrawled note on the table.

Stepping closer, I picked it up, and read: “Laurel and Harrison! Decided to go on a last minute evening trip. Back tomorrow night. Please don’t burn down the house. Joking. Sort of. Mom and dad”

Real subtle joke there. I just thought a joke about setting things on fire was too soon, but I guess right now our parents knew Harrison better than I did.

I guess it was just Harrison and me for a little more than 24 hours. What could we get up to?

I couldn’t really figure that out by myself now could I. Where the hell was Harrison anyway?

I drank my tea, and ate an oatmeal cookie, finally warming up. Whoever invented winters had a really sick sense of humor. It was weird having the house all to myself. I don’t think that had happened since high school. I wasn’t used to having silence all around, rather than the random sounds of three other people living there.

My old self could get used to this. But I had grown more social than the last year, and had gotten used to having people around me.

It was about 4:30 PM, and I had no plans for the rest of the day. Maggie was really the only friend that I kept in touch with from high school, and I had seen a lot of her since I’d gotten back. I was pretty sure she was busy with family stuff tonight anyway.