Break Me: A Stepbrother Romance (11 page)

I found a stash of money beneath some rags under the sink, but I kept looking. The rich snot had five hundred dollars in his wallet and another two grand beneath a stack of porn mags in his bedside table. He also had a decent-sized baggie of coke in there, but no way was I touching that. I left it alone.

I walked out of there with seven thousand dollars. All that pain and anguish, and Evan Tanner was so rich that he had seven grand lying around his house while Nate had hobbled around on crutches, afraid for his life.

I doubted he’d call the cops on me, considering what was stashed in his own house. But I knew how the world worked. Evan Tanner was the mayor’s son. I’d scared the shit out of him, robbed him, and humiliated him. If he wanted revenge, all he had to do was cook up the flimsiest excuse and call his good buddies, Fat Cop and Thin Cop. It would be my word against his. He could bring me down and keep me down.

That wasn’t going to happen.

I left Evan Tanner unconscious on his swanky living room floor.

S
ummer

I
sat
in the hospital waiting room for two hours while they put my dad back together. I curled up in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs and tucked my sweater over me, staring at the wall and tuning out the sounds of beeping machines and TVs and other people coming in and out of the room, talking and sometimes crying. I stared at the oatmeal-colored plaster wall and thought about Bram.

He’d been gone by the time I got there. The paramedics were already there, shining lights into Dad’s eyes and putting blood pressure cuffs on his arm. But Bram was gone.

Why did I have the crazy feeling he was gone forever?

“Miss Friesen?”

I looked up. The doctor was a black woman of about thirty-five, her hair cut short and a sympathetic look on her face. “You can see him now,” she said.

I uncurled myself from the chair and slid the sweater off. “Is he going to be okay?”

“He doesn’t have the symptoms of a concussion, but his head was hit pretty hard, and he did lose consciousness. We’d like to keep him overnight for observation. Otherwise, he has a broken rib and two broken fingers, but he’ll be fine.”

I felt my stomach turn and tears sting my eyes. I tried to speak, but nothing came for a moment. “I’m sorry,” I said. “He’s just really important to me. He’s all I have.”
Except for Bram. And Bram isn’t here.

“It’s very upsetting when a loved one is a victim of violence,” the doctor said gently. “It’s understandable. I think the police are finishing with him, so why don’t you go in?”

The police? I walked down the winding corridor to Dad’s room, nervous. Dad’s status as an ex-con was always there, looming over us. Were the police going to get involved? Was Dad going to be accused of something?

And if Dad was going to be accused, was Bram?

A uniformed cop came out of the hospital room as I approached and introduced himself. “I’m very sorry this has happened, Miss Friesen,” he said. “Luckily it looks like your father will be okay.”

I nodded, unable to speak.

“I just have a few quick questions before you go in,” the cop said. He wasn’t one of the cops who had taken Bram for questioning—I had seen both of those cops briefly, and they didn’t look like this one.

“I really want to go in and see my dad,” I said.

He nodded. “I get that. Tell me, are you aware of any threats your dad has been receiving recently?”

“No.”

“What about strange people coming in and out of the auto body shop? You notice anything?”

“The body shop has customers coming and going all day,” I said numbly. “There are strange people all the time. And I don’t work there every day.”

He nodded, obviously trying to pacify me. “That’s true, I’m sure. Okay. Your dad didn’t mention anything to you, anything that’s been worrying him?”

“He broke his leg. He’s been in pain and he hasn’t been sleeping. So yeah, that’s been worrying him.”

“Nothing besides that?”

“No.”

The cop looked down at his notepad. “Do you know where I can find Bram Riordan, who’s been living with your father?”

I felt the back of my neck go cold, but I didn’t flinch. “I don’t know where he is.”

The cop looked at me closely. “We’d like to ask him some questions.”

“Right,” I said. “Like I say, I don’t know where he is.”

“Would you say your father had a good relationship with Bram Riordan?”

“The best.” I couldn’t keep the anger from my voice. “My dad trusts Bram with his life.”

He looked at me a moment longer, then finally nodded. “Give us a call if you can remember anything else, Miss Friesen. We’d like to catch whoever did this.”

I didn’t answer—I just brushed past him into my dad’s room. I’d probably screwed everything up, looking angry and guilty, but I was too upset to care. I didn’t want to deal with all of this alone. I wanted Bram here. I wanted to lean on him, to feel his arms around me. I didn’t want to feel lonely and scared anymore.

Dad was awake, lying back on his hospital bed. His tired eyes lit up when he saw me. “My Summer,” he said. “My beautiful girl.”

I leaned over him and kissed his cheek, trying not to hit any of his bruises. He gave me a smile, and I knew they’d given him a painkiller or two. “How do you feel, Dad?”

“Pretty good right now,” he admitted. He grasped my hand as I sat down and lowered his voice. “Where is Bram?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do the police have him?”

I shook my head. “Dad,” I said. “I know this isn’t a good time. But can you please tell me what’s really going on?”

He sighed. His face was bruised, his nose broken, his lip split. But he was still my dad, still Nate Friesen, who had been through fire and had no intention of lying down, no matter what life brought him. “I haven’t been honest with you,” he said. “I’ve been ashamed. But I’ll tell you now. Just listen.”

He told me about Evan Tanner, how he’d claimed to have evidence that Dad was running stolen cars through the body shop. How he’d been squeezing Dad for money. When he got to the part about Tanner pushing my dad down the shop’s back stairs and breaking his leg, I started to cry.

“You told me it was an accident,” I said.

“It was, sort of,” my dad said. “I don’t think Tanner meant for me to go down quite so hard. But I did, and after that he felt like he could squeeze me even harder. Honey, don’t cry.”

I tried to stop so he would keep talking. “I want to hear the rest of it.”

So he told me about how Tanner had taken the money the day Bram had been questioned about it, how Dad had withdrawn the cash from his credit card and walked into the police station with some fake racing slips to pretend he was a gambler instead. How Tanner had come again tonight, demanding the money from the safe, and when Dad had refused, he’d threatened me, beat him up, and taken the money anyway. How Bram had found him and figured out the entire story.

I felt a stab of fear. I didn’t like to think about that creep even knowing who I was, let alone where I lived. “Oh, my God,” I said. “You don’t think he went to Tanner, do you?”

The drugs were kicking in, and Dad stared at the ceiling, his brow furrowed. “He will,” he said. “Tanner threatened you, so he will. What he does when he gets there is up to him. He has to make a choice, Summer. But that’s why I didn’t tell the cops who did this to me.”

Because if Bram had been to Tanner’s house, and the cops found out—Oh, God. It would be over. Bram had already done six years. I didn’t think he’d come out the same man if he went in again.

I was shaking. Tears ran down my face again. I took a deep breath and saw that my dad had turned his head and was watching me, his gaze on my face.

“Oh, Summer,” he said.

“I’m sorry.” I dashed the tears from my cheeks. “I love him, Dad. I really do. I’m—I’m crazy in love with him. I’m so in love with him I can’t even see straight. It happened mostly since he came back, but I think part of me always has been. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you until now.”

I thought he’d be surprised and shocked, even through the drugs, but he just patted my hand. “That’s good, in a way,” he said. “It matches how he feels about you.”

I swallowed.
What?
“What are you talking about?”

He smiled, then winced as his split lip gave him pain. “I’ve been in love more than once in my life, Summer. I know what a lovesick man looks like, and Bram has been the perfect example for weeks now. He broods around my house looking sorrier than that pasty boy from the
Twilight
movies. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know how you felt about
him
. If you didn’t feel the same way, he’d just have to get over it.”

I couldn’t process it. “You—you think he’s in love with me?”

“I know he is. What kind of guy gets out of six years in prison and doesn’t go to a local bar to pick up a woman? I felt the same way about your mother after I got out. I just didn’t get as lucky as Bram, because she didn’t feel the same way.”

“You don’t… disapprove because he’s Brenda’s son? Because he’s an ex-con like you were?”

He was drifting off to sleep now. “Bram loves you,” he said. “He’ll work hard for you, and he’ll take care of you, and he’ll never cheat on you. If you want children, he’ll give them to you. His past doesn’t matter—his future does. That’s what I want for my daughter. That’s what every parent wants.”

After he fell asleep, I wiped my face with hospital Kleenex and walked out to the waiting room again. I pulled out my cell phone and called Bram for the dozenth time. There was no answer.

I didn’t leave a message. Instead, I hung up and texted him.

I love you,
I said.
Come home.

He didn’t answer.

I tried to get myself together. The hospital was keeping Dad overnight; he’d need some supplies from home. Numb with pain and worry, I got in my car and drove to Dad’s house.

The yard was tidy, I noticed as I pulled into the driveway. The grass had been cut, the clippings raked, the weeds pulled from between the stones of the walkway. When I turned the key and went inside, I saw that the house was tidy, with clean dishes stacked on the drying rack in the kitchen and the tea towels hung to dry. I opened the fridge and saw it fully stocked with all of Dad’s favorites—beer, Miracle Whip, spicy sausage from the local butcher, sliced cheese. A leftover pan of baked macaroni and cheese was also in there—evidence of actual cooking, other than spaghetti and meatballs. I’d been to the house numerous times since Bram had been home, but now, when my senses were so heightened by my emotions, I noticed that the house looked nothing like you’d think a place inhabited by two bachelor ex-cons would look. My dad wasn’t a slob, but with his broken leg, things had been slipping. This was all Bram’s doing.

Curious, I walked to the basement door, which had been hanging wrong from its hinges for at least the past year. I grabbed the door and opened it, noticing that it worked fine now. Bram had fixed it. He’d also pulled out the rotten board on the back steps, I saw, and replaced it with a temporary piece of lumber to prevent accidents while he looked for another board the right size.

He’d been doing these little odd things every day, I saw now. Nothing showy, no huge projects that would get him praise. Just the small, everyday things that made the place nicer and made things easier for my dad, the man who had taken him in.

Bram, what did you do? Where are you?

In the living room, my eye caught on something that had been left in the middle of the coffee table. My heart racing, I walked to the table and looked down.

Sitting there was a thick stack of bills, held together by a rubber band. The top bill was a hundred.

Next to the stack of bills was a cell phone. Bram’s cell phone.

I picked it up and tapped the notification icon. Unanswered phone calls—mine—and one new text message.

I love you. Come home.

I’d sent it too late. Bram was already gone.

S
ummer

I
lived
the next four months in a haze. The heat of summer gave way to a beautiful fall, filled with clear blue skies and the changing of the Michigan leaves. The vacationers left their cottages on the lakes and went home. Mornings started getting cooler, and after dark the air was chill. I barely noticed as I got up in the morning, went into the shop, and went home again.

Dad didn’t have a concussion. I brought him home the next day, cranky and complaining, a vial of pain pills in his pocket. He was in a terrible mood for weeks, and I couldn’t much blame him. He was grieving for Bram, helpless in pain, and tearing himself apart with worry. Except for the lack of a broken leg and a few bruises, I felt much the same.

We had three more visits from the police. They were looking for Bram, they said—not to arrest him, but just for some general questioning. They asked us over and over if we’d heard from him, if we knew where he’d gone. They asked my dad if he had any idea where Bram might have gone, or why—as if Dad, as an ex-con, might have some special ex-con psychic power. They asked us over and over if we thought it was odd that Bram had taken off like that, leaving his job and his home behind. Were we sure we hadn’t heard from him? We should think hard. Were we sure?

I read the local Terre Mills newspaper every day for weeks, opening it every morning on the edge of my nerves. I kept expecting the headline I was dreading: MAYOR’S SON ASSAULTED BY LOCAL CON, perhaps, or POLICE DECLARE MANHUNT. There was nothing—but Evan Tanner didn’t come back to Dad’s shop, and Dad didn’t hear from him again. There was no doubt that whatever Bram had done after he left Dad that night—whatever he’d said or done to Evan Tanner—had put a stop to the blackmail.

Dad wouldn’t go to the cops over it. I was mad at him about that at first, but when we argued, both of us at the end of our tethers, and he finally explained, I saw his side of it. “It’s my word against Tanner’s,” Dad said. “There were never any emails, or anything in writing. All Tanner has to say is that he never squeezed money out of me, that he never threatened you. Who is everyone gonna believe? That’s how it works, Summer. That’s what Tanner knew all along.”

He was right. But if Dad couldn’t call the cops on Tanner, it became obvious that Tanner couldn’t—or hadn’t—pressed any charges against Bram. Tanner was likely mixed up in things he didn’t want the cops to know about, so he kept everything quiet.

But I didn’t know any of this—not for sure. And the one person I could ask was gone.

I didn’t blame him. He was lying low, keeping away until everything blew over. I’d rather have Bram far away, and free, than in jail again. At least this way I knew he was safe.

But I longed for him. Not just my heart, but my body, too. By day, I kept everything together, but the nights were the hardest. I lay in bed, curled on to my side, aching for Bram’s body in mine. I longed for his hands, his arms, his amazing mouth. I wanted the quirk of humor in his dark eyes, his fingers pressing me open, the volcanic heat of his cock. I wanted to hear his voice saying dirty things to me as he made my body feel things it had never felt before. I wanted the ripple of his muscles under my palms, the taste of him on my lips. I tried touching myself, thinking of him, but it barely took the edge off. There was no doubt about it—my body was addicted to Bram, and it was craving a fix.

My furniture shop was doing better than ever in the run-up to the holidays, and I was busy enough to keep my hands and my mind occupied during the day. But I wanted more. I signed up for a college course on interior design that was set to start in January and felt nervous flutters in my stomach whenever I thought about it. What the hell made me think I could be an interior designer? I was just a college dropout who had an eye for nice furniture and some refinishing skills. On my low days, I felt so nervous I almost threw up. But on other days, when I looked out the window of my little shop and watched the world passing by, I knew I could do it. I just knew.

It was early December, and I was at my dad’s house, sitting on the sofa with him, watching TV after a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs. Dad was healed from the beating Evan Tanner had given him, which remained an unsolved case according to the cops. He was also finally free of the cast and the crutches, though his leg wasn’t strong yet. He had a series of exercises his physiotherapist had given him, and he tended to do them behind the glass in his office at work, while the guys in the auto body shop hooted and laughed at him.

There was a silly sitcom on, and I was leaning on my dad’s shoulder, both of us boneless on the sofa as he sipped his mug of tea. We’d long ago stopped arguing over silly things, and we were more unbreakable than ever. “What if he never comes back?” I said.

We hadn’t been talking about Bram—we hadn’t been talking at all—but Dad knew who I was talking about. “He’s being cautious,” he said. “He can’t take any chances. I know I wouldn’t, if I were him.”

“But wherever he is, he’s all alone,” I said. “He has no one to help him. What if he’s been in a car accident, or he got pneumonia? What if he’s out of work and has no money, no place to live?”

I felt Dad tense beneath me, but all he said was, “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“I’m not,” I said. “He should be here with us. I think I’m going to find him.”

Dad was quiet for a long minute. “How do you propose to do that?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”

On the TV, the sitcom had ended and the local news came on. The top story of the night was the shocking arrest of Evan Tanner, the son of Terre Mills’s mayor, on charges of theft, possession of stolen goods, and drug possession.

The air emptied out of the room. I straightened and leaned forward on the sofa, the blood draining from my face. The video footage showed Evan Tanner in handcuffs, being put into the back seat of a police car, his hands over his face. The newscaster added that there was, as of yet, no public statement from the mayor.

I looked back at my dad. He was sitting in a state of shock, his mug forgotten in his lap, his skin gray. The man who had tormented him, who had broken his bones and driven Bram from his life, was finally gone.

“It’s over,” I said.

He shook his head numbly. “I don’t…”

“It’s over,” I said again. I jumped up, crazy emotions pulsing through me: fear, nerves, excitement. “Dad, it’s over. Bram can come home.”

He put his mug down on the table with a trembling hand and gripped the arm of the sofa. “Are we sure? Are we sure the coast is clear?”

“How much clearer can it be?” I said. “There’s no way there will be any punishment for Bram now. It’s been four months. Evan Tanner is a criminal now. No one’s going to believe his word anymore. No one can touch Bram.” I rubbed my hands against the thighs of my jeans. “I’m going to find him. I think I might hire a private detective. I’ve got some money saved, and if there’s a way—”

“Hilton Head, South Carolina,” Dad said.

I froze and gaped at him. “What?”

Dad raised his gaze to me. “I got a call three weeks ago from a fishing outfit there. They were staffing up for winter. They said one of their employees gave my name as a reference. The outfit was called Caterman’s. In Hilton Head.”

“And you didn’t say anything?” I said. “You knew where he was, and you didn’t tell me?”

“Bram didn’t want me to,” my dad said. “I didn’t have to talk to him to know that. He didn’t want me to tell you where he was yet.”

I tried to process this. “And now?”

My dad blinked at me. “He didn’t want me to tell you as long as there was a risk. But Tanner’s in jail now. Summer, I think you need to go. He won’t come back unless he knows you want him to.” He gave me the ghost of a smile. “I think the only thing he’s waiting for is you.”