THROTTLE: (A Stepbrother Romance) (2 page)

4

Jared
sat propped up by pillows on the bed in Seth’s spare room.
 
His best friend had insisted he stay there
while he was on parole, and although being in the same town as Emma was going
to make things more difficult, he’d needed a place so he could get back on his
feet.

He
flicked through the music on his phone, unable to decide on a track that
wouldn’t be too sad or too upbeat.
 
He
didn’t want to wallow in lyrics of love or loss or listen to something with no
soul.
 
Tossing his phone aside, he put
his hands behind his head and breathed out a long sigh.

 
Jared had labored over the note he’d left on
Emma’s door, rewriting it over and over to make the words convey the message he
wanted to get across.
 
He’d met his
parole officer a few days before and would be bound to the restrictive routine
for ages.
 
The humiliation of having to
check in with someone had solidified his resolve.
 
He didn’t want to drag Emma into the
sordidness of it all.
 
She’d already gone
through too much during the trial.
 
It
was why he’d never let her visit him, afraid for her to see him like a caged
animal, surrounded by so much filth.
 
He
didn’t want to drag her down with him.

He
rolled onto his side, pulling the comforter over his shoulder.
 
There was a loud crack of thunder and a few
seconds later a flash of lightning.
 
As
the rain began to patter against the window, he heard the front door open and
the sound of voices. He wondered if maybe it was Seth’s girlfriend coming over
to stay.
 

After
a couple of minutes there was a tap on the bedroom door.
 

“Come
in,” he called out, and Seth opened the door as Jared maneuvered himself to sit
up.
 
“What is it?”

“The
postman came late tonight,” Seth said, throwing a white envelope onto his lap.

“Postman?”
Jared looked down at the handwriting and realized who had been at the
door.
 
“Emma,” he said, with so much
longing in his voice he was embarrassed.

“Yes,
Emma.
 
She came over here in the rain to
drop that off.
 
She looked like shit
too.
 
I don’t know what you’re playing at,
bro, but Emma’s a good girl.
 
She waited
for you all this time.”

Jared
shook his head, not wanting to hear it again.
 
Seth just didn’t understand and wouldn’t understand.
 
He hadn’t been through the horror of that
night.
 
He hadn’t seen the girl he loved
drugged and abused by…

He
had to stop, not wanting to pollute his mind with those thoughts again.
 

“You
know I’m doing this for her good, don’t you?”
 

“She
didn’t look that appreciative just now.
 
Read the letter, Jared.
 
I hope
you’ll come to your senses.”
 
Seth left
the room, pulling the door shut behind him.
 

Jared
flicked on the bedside light and held the envelope, looking down at his name
printed in Emma’s lovely handwriting.
 
Even if you didn’t know her you’d be able to see what a sweet, happy
person she was from the round neatness of her writing.
 

He
tore it open as carefully as he could, knowing he’d tie this letter up with the
pile of her others that rested at the bottom of his closet.
 

The
note inside was so short he read it in a few seconds.
 

Jared,

I love you.
 
I love you so much that I won’t let you do
this. You don’t get to sacrifice yourself for me again.
 
If you don’t come to me, I’ll wait for you
until you do. There will be no one else.
 
I’ve waited eight years. Don’t make me wait any longer.

Emma

It
was the first time she’d signed off a letter without a kiss. That told Jared
something about how she was feeling.
 
He
put the letter down and rested his head in his hands, feeling utterly confused
about what to do next.
 
Emma had given
him an unexpected ultimatum, taking charge of what she wanted in a way that she
hadn’t before.
 
The fifteen-year-old girl
he’d left behind had grown into a strong woman who knew her own mind and wasn’t
afraid to express herself. It reassured him to know that she wasn’t broken by
what happened.
 
Somehow, through it all,
they’d held themselves together.
 
Or
maybe, through their letters, they’d held onto each other.
 

Jared
got up and crossed the room, opening the closet door and squatting so he could
store away her letter safely.
 
All her
words were precious to him, from the sweetest to the most confrontational. He
had hardly any possessions, but Emma’s letters were his most treasured.

The
rain was still hammering on his window, and he thought about Emma going back to
her home in the dark, alone.
 
Imagining
the dangers she might be facing was too much for him to bear. He grabbed the
jeans he’d discarded earlier from the chair and pulled them on, found a fresh
t-shirt from a dresser drawer, and drew on his coat.
 

Seth
had a big umbrella by the door that would shelter him from the worst of the
rain.
 
Jared was going back to Emma’s to
make sure she was okay and to try and talk her out of her idea that they should
be together. If a letter wasn’t going to work, maybe seeing her in person would
do it.

5

Emma
was undressing for bed when she heard a soft tap at the door.
 
She pulled on her yoga pants and headed down
the creaking wooden stairs, pausing to look through the spy-hole.
 

It
was Jared.

Her
heart did an almighty flip in her chest as though it was magnetized to him or
something.

When
she pulled the door open he stayed motionless, taking her in, his chest rising
and falling quickly as though he’d been running.
 
Emma stepped to the side and motioned for him
to come in and he did, just enough to allow her to close the door behind
him.
 
Her eyes ran over him slowly,
taking him in from head to toe.

The
last remnants of his adolescence were gone, replaced by the lithe-bodied
strength of a grown man. Prison had changed him.
 
Gone was the soft expression he used to have
just for her, the hint of innocence that’s there before a person has seen
terrible things or experienced great hurts.
 
If he'd been capable of killing at the age of eighteen, it sent a
strange thrill straight through her to think of what he was capable of now.

"You
came," she said, taking a deep breath and turning away from him to glance
out the bay window. It overlooked the end of their street, where the road gave
way to gravel and dirt under the last of the city lights.

Nothing
but shadowed darkness and memories lay beyond.

When
she found the strength to look back again, Jared’s eyes seemed shadowed and
dark, and it was as though they’d returned to the unfamiliarity that had
crackled between then in the first few weeks after they’d met.
 
His skin smelled of rain, the forest, and his
own scent that hit her with such power that she felt woozy.
 
Emma had missed his smell so much.
 
It was one of the hardest things about being
apart, that she didn’t get to be near him and breathe him in.

She
wanted to reach out to touch him, fingers shaking at her sides with the desire
to strip away his clothes and his reserve one layer at a time. It was the
closest they'd come to one another in so long. Her eyes scanned him for
response and intention, still unsure what was going on in his mind.

He
reached up to cup the side of her face.
 
It was a brief touch, his fingertips barely grazing over her skin, but
when she reached for him too Jared took a step back.

She
wanted to kiss him so desperately. Wanted to throw her arms around his neck and
taste his rain-touched lips, but couldn't bring herself to act when he seemed
so remote.
The clock ticked, the only
sound in the otherwise silent house.

“We
can’t do this,” he said gruffly, as though he was talking around a lump in his throat.
 
“You need to listen to what I said in that
note.
 
You
gotta
forget about me, Emma.
 
Leave me be.
 
It’s best for both of us.”

“Is
that what you really think?” Emma said, taking a step back until she was leaning
against the wall.
 

“I
wouldn’t have written it if it wasn’t.”

“I
can’t do it, Jared,” she said, using all her internal resolve not to cry.
 
“I love you.
 
I want you.
 
There’s no good
reason for us to be apart anymore.”

“There
are plenty,” he said, finally looking her in the eye.
 
What she saw in his gaze was agonizing.
 
Hurt. Fear.
 
And determination that was so fierce she knew she wasn’t going to win
the battle that night.

“You
might be okay with giving up on us, but I’m not,” she said, quietly but
firmly.
 
“If you’re not ready now, that’s
fine. But I’ll be waiting for you when you are, and nothing you can say will
change my mind.”

Jared
rubbed his hand over his closely cropped hair in frustration, then took a deep
breath and reached out for the door.
 
“It
was nice seeing you, Emma.”
 
He paused
and looked back at her over his shoulder.
 
“You look real good.
 
Take care of
yourself, now.”

Emma
watched him leave until he was out of sight, greedy for every look at him she
could get, and then closed her door on the cold, wet night.

6

Before
he’d been convicted of voluntary manslaughter, Jared had been training to
become a mechanic.
 
The man who’d taken
him under his wing all those years ago was Nolan, and it was to Nolan’s Auto’s
that Jared was returning now that he was a free man.

Having
a job was a condition of his parole, but working was something damn important
to him.
 
A man wasn’t anything without employment,
and he wanted to be able to repay Seth for his kindness.

Jared
was flat on his back, tinkering with the underside of a car that should have
been scrapped a long time ago when he heard the soft tap of high heels against
the concrete.
 
He rolled himself out from
under the vehicle, coming face to face with a pair of slender legs in pretty
black shoes.
 
As his gaze roamed higher
he realized he’d been gawping at Emma’s legs like a man that hadn’t seen a
woman in years.
 
Well, he could be
forgiven for it.
 
It had been a long time
since he’d seen anything as good as she looked at that moment.

“What
are you doing here, Emma?” he said, sitting up and getting to his feet, brushing
the dust off his pants.
 
He kept getting
surprised at how little she was against his now burly frame.
 
When they’d been teenagers, and he’d been
scrawnier, their difference in size hadn’t seemed so apparent.

“I
brought you lunch,” she said, handing him a brown paper bag.

He
took it from her, frowning. What kind of game was she playing now?
 
He’d told her that there couldn’t be anything
between them, and here she was the next day, feeding him with—he looked in the
bag—an amazing-looking meatball sandwich and homemade iced tea.

“Thanks,”
he said, embarrassed when his stomach growled loudly at the delicious smell.

“I’ll
see you around,” Emma said casually, as though they didn’t have any kind of
complicated history or emotion between them, then turned to walk out of the
garage, swaying her hips just slightly as she went.
 

Jared
watched her walk away for a few seconds then looked at the ground.
 
God, she looked good in her work clothes,
slick and professional.
 
The fifteen-year-old
girl she'd been was a figment of the past, a fleeting image in the back of his
mind. Now she was a young woman, shapely and more desirable to him than ever
before. She’d got him thinking dangerous thoughts, and he couldn’t allow
himself to be tempted.
 
He knew what he
was doing was the best thing for her, and he just had to keep focused on that.

And
now he had a sandwich to take his mind off his issues.
 
Except the sandwich tasted so amazing and it
was homemade too.
 
He hadn’t had homemade
cooking since his arrest. The last thing Emma’s mum had cooked him was pot
roast, and there were times when he was shoveling in the disgusting slop in the
prison canteen when the thought of that meal could have bought tears to his
eyes.

He
took another bite of the meatball sandwich and shook his head.
 
Emma was using dirty tactics by targeting his
stomach.
 
As tasty and thoughtful as it
was, it didn’t change the fact that his hands were stained forever by his
crime.
 
As justified as he was, those
hands that had brought about death had no place on a sweet girl like Emma.
 
That didn’t stop him devouring everything in
the paper bag.