Burned: A Stepbrother Romance (4 page)

“Uh, no officer. I’m afraid I’m not very familiar with the car.”

The officer stands back inspecting my ride. “She’s a nice one alright. Your boy’s?”

What, a girl like me can’t have a car like this?
I nod. “Yes, sir.”

He leans against the window, lighting up Brock with his torch, one hand on his weapon.
Don’t ask for my license. Don’t ask for my license.

He hoicks something up, spitting next to the tire. “Tell you what. You’re a pretty girl, seem like the sensible type. How about I let you off this one time, but if I see you around here again you’re really going to owe me, got it?”

I nod. “Yes, officer.”

He tips his hat. “Now you two have a good evening.”

He walks away and I absolutely cannot believe my luck. Well, I can. You see, Officer Mendez and I were in the same class at the academy. I don’t think I’ll ever forget him or his, ah, appendage.

Brock looks amazed. “What kind of mystical flying fuckery did you use to pull that off?”

I give a little shrug. “Guess it’s just my killer looks.”

“Like hell.”

“You’re not saying I’m attractive?”

Got ’im.

His eyes drop to my chest, correcting themselves and swiftly moving back up. “I never said that. You’re…”

I cup my ear. “I’m what?”

“Beautiful. Okay, there. You’re god-damned the most beautiful girl I know.”

The warm and fuzzies are getting it on with the pins and needles still squirming away in my belly, my entire body a chemical lollapalooza. I pretend like these words are commonplace, that they’re not lighting up the hot space between my legs. “Thank you. You’re not so bad yourself. Now, I think I’ve had enough driving for one night.”

I let Brock take the wheel and take us home, everything far more precarious than when we left.

My eyes open.

The ceiling of my room looks the same, but different.

I turn sideways, the sheets coiling around my torso and stare at the kitten poster on the wall.
Still so damn cute.

That’s when I notice something pressed against my back.

Wait…

This isn’t my room at all.

As carefully as I can, I turn over, and there he is.

I stop breathing, I remain still and I compel my brain to work as quick as it possibly can to fill in the blanks.

I run through last night. We came home, said goodnight, I locked up, and went to bed.

But you didn’t lock
your
bedroom door, did you? You never do.

That’s right.

You’ve sleepwalked your way right into your stepbrother’s bed.

Yeeeeeep.

What to do. What to do. What to do.

Brock’s lips are just parted, skin bare. His foot is wedged between my legs. I can’t understand how anyone can look so peaceful.

I ease the sheets off myself and roll off the bed, scissoring my legs open and sliding his foot away.

I manage to get one foot onto the carpet and sort of pirouette off, not allowing the mattress to sag.

Finally, I can stand on two feet looking down at Brock… again.

Is it really so impossible to conceive? The two of us together? I’m almost convinced I could go there.

When we were younger, when we were both horny teenagers we’d talk about sex and who we’d get it on with at school. We’d take stupid internet quizzes and stay up late watching horror movies on cable. Our parents never seem concerned that we might try and get together, and neither did we.

He must have thought about it many times, just like me, but we never made a move. We never took that next step.

Sometimes I would lie in bed with my ear cupped to the wall and listen for him, sure I could hear him jerking off. I’d close my eyes and picture him, quietly sliding a hand into my panties and running a finger into my slit. I’d come with my face buried in my pillow and my hand sticky, cheeks hot with the knowledge he was probably doing the same, that all that separated us was this one thin wall.

So I watch him now and it all comes flooding back—the good times. There were
a lot
of good times now I think about it, but then came that night, the following disappearances, the new friends. We spent less and less time together until one day he was just gone, no word, no nothing.

I look around the room once more. It used to be mine. He’s sleeping in the very bed I used to. His room was always bigger, the one I coveted more. He was gone less than a week before I moved in.

I stand at the door and watch him lying there. I watch him and wonder where it all went so wrong.

*

The captain’s nodding. “You’re saying this Hernandez character is the one we should be looking into?”

“Definitely.”

I really can’t stand the captain’s office. The ashtray is always full, the coffee always foul, and the entire place jammed with military memorabilia from his time as an army sniper. He’s particularly proud of this. Give him five seconds and he’ll start hitting you with his infinite war stories.

He leans back and looks over my report. “You filed your recordings with Audio?”

“Headed right there.”

“Keep at it. I want more. I want to know what these guys are having for breakfast, who they’re fucking… everything.”

“Yes, sir.”

*

Tonight I didn’t even have to ask. Brock simply threw me my jacket on the way out.

“Your car’s back,” I note, stepping out into the cold with him.

“Yeah,” he replies, “she’s good to go again.”

“Your car’s a girl?”

“You’d prefer I was riding a guy?”

“Sorry, the Brokeback thing really isn’t my style.”

He winks. “Good to know. Can’t say the idea of two ballsacks rubbing together is of high appeal to me either.”

We get in, the perforated leather of the passenger seat now comfortable and familiar, the smell of the old leather thick.

“You never dropped the soap in prison? Just for curiosity?” I query, trolling again.

“No,” comes the emphatic, monosyllabic reply.

I curl one finger into a circle and work another in and out of it. “You and Hernandez never…?”

Maybe it’s taking it too far, but Brock’s always had a thick skin.

“No, Mads.” He holds up his hand. “Good ol’ Ms Palmer saw to that end of things.”

“Ew.”

“Inside, you take what you can get.” He turns the key, the Chevy rumbling into life with a lopey idle. “You do what you have to. That’s the only way to get by.”

Something about these last words makes me uneasy as we pull out and head off. What did Brock have to do in prison? Kill someone? Smuggle something in? I checked his file. He got done for low-level distribution, six months, but he only spent three inside. There were no reports of any trouble, any incidents. There was a riot just before he left, but the chaos was so widespread nothing concrete was added to the report. I even had the tech guys pull the footage, but it’s just a blur of bodies. I couldn’t even pick him out.

I’m pretty familiar with the bay area, but the club has found a spot overlooking the entire expanse I never even knew existed. The cars are lined up at the water’s edge, the sky a sharp magenta.

I recognize most of the vehicles now, can put them to faces, but I do note Hernandez is notably absent.

I find Birdie hanging her feet over the water stuffing a hotdog into her mouth. So far all I’ve seen these guys eat is fast food with more grease than a Puerto Rican gang bang, but Birdie has somehow retained a perfect figure. I haven’t seen Brock working out once, but he too is looking far too good considering his diet of soda and processed meat.

I sit beside Birdie and take in the water. It’s really peaceful out here. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

I kick out my chin towards the hot dog. “Good?”

“Terrible. Ass on a bun.”

“Sounds… delicious.”

She hands over the half-eaten monstrosity. “Want some?”

“No, thanks. Say, does Brock ever work out?”

Birdie looks confused. “Like, the gym, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Hernandez has a warehouse on the other side of the bay. I think they hang out there a fair bit. There are some weights down the back, a stack of pornos. Nothing that takes my fancy, of course. Pornstars with their big, plastic tits. Not my thing.” She turns her attention to my breasts. “But those? I could work with those. You sure you don’t want to swing a little, check out the other side?”

“I think I’m right.”

She returns to her hotdog. “You don’t know what you’re missing. Then again, if I was a fan of the cock I could see why you’d be interested in Brock.”

I can imagine the audio guy’s face lighting up when he plays this back tomorrow.

“What do you mean?”

Birdie holds the hot dog sideways and adds another couple of inches.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, he’s packing a real deli down there.”

I have to ask. “How do you know?”

“Back in the day your stepbrother was pretty loose. He had
no
problems pulling that thing out.”

“I bet.”

I try to cast my mind back a few years ago. There
were
a lot of girls. They never lasted long, and he never brought them home. Once he got a car, that was it. We barely saw each other. Sometimes I could smell them on him, that flirty vanilla body-spray scent teenage girls seem to love slathering themselves in.

“Shit.” A line of sauce has squirted down Birdie’s top. She stands up and drifts off. I’m about to get up myself when Jay takes her place, seating himself beside me and smiling.

“How’s it going?” he says. “Ready to run Main to Second yet, become one of us?”

“I doubt Champers would even make it from Main to Second let alone in twelve seconds.”

“You should try it in Brock’s car.”

“Is it really that special?”

“Very. He’s done all the work himself, you know. Doesn’t trust anyone with it.”

“What about Hernandez?”

“Not even Hernandez.”

“I thought they were only just fixing it for him the other day.”

Jay shakes his head. “Not that I know about it. Wherever the Camaro is, Brock is. It’s as simple as that.”

I decide to flesh this out a bit more. “Where’s Hernandez tonight?”

Jay throws his hands up. He’s European, his words clipped with an accent I can’t place. He dresses like he’s eighteen, but he looks older. There are lines on his face. “Who knows? Business probably.”

“Business?”

“I’m not really involved, sorry. Got too much on my own plate.”

He pulls out his wallet and opens it to reveal a beaming little girl with pink-studded braces and porcelain hair. “My baby. Love her to bits, you know.”

“She’s beautiful. What’s her name?”

“Amelie.”

I’m not ready for what comes next.

“She’s got the big C, cancer,” Jay continues.

“Shit, I’m sorry. Is she okay?”

Jay just holds wallet open staring at her. She will be, and she’s been better lately thanks to a new treatment. Your brother had a lot to do with it.”

“Brock?”

“Yeah.”

Clearly, Jay doesn’t want to elaborate, and I don’t want to pry, but this is intriguing. It just doesn’t seem like Brock at all. Maybe he
has
changed.

There’s a whistle from behind us, the others signaling they’re leaving.

“What is it?” Brock asks as I open the Camaro door. Even after all this time we can still read each other so well. He knows something’s going on.

Inside, I spill. “Jay told me you’ve been helping with his daughter.”

Brock starts the car and nods. “True.”

“Well…?”

“Well, what?”

“Why?”

Brock turns to me, those eyes growing deeper and deeper every time I see them.
You could lose yourself in them, Maddy. Be careful.

He polishes the gearknob with the palm of his hand. “I’m just helping a friend. Tell me, Officer Collins, is that a crime?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“What you’re doing?”

“Enough,” and with that Brock reverses out, waving to the others as we take the highway.

“We’re not going to cruise with them tonight?”

“Not tonight. Tell me, why are you really here, Maddy? And don’t tell me it’s to spend time with your beloved stepbrother.”

Shit.
“So what if it is?”

“None of this interests you. I know that. You know that, so let’s cut the bullshit.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Nothing more is said, the highway markers whipping by the only sound.

“Are you spying on me, for our folks?”

I laugh. “That’s a good one,”
but far too close to the truth.

“Then what?”

“I like it, okay?”

“Like what?”

“Spending time with you.”

“Why, in god’s name?”

He just won’t let it go, a pit bull with a bone. “You’re,” I search rapidly for the right word, “exciting.”

He turns to me perplexed. “Exciting?”

“Yeah, you’ve always had an edge. You were always cool. I was just the studious good girl. I never had time for fun.”

“And now you do?”

“I guess so.”

He thinks on this, leather jacket shifting against his seat, eyes focused on the road and the Camaro purring. “So, what do
you
like to do for fun?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“I don’t know. I like eating out.”

“Okay, where?”

“Nowhere you’d know.”

“Try me.”

“Well, there’s a new place down past Spinnaker I want to try out, kind of retro. The Glass House, I think it’s called.”

Brock turns to me and I know he has an idea. “Tomorrow then. We go there tomorrow night just you and I.”

“It’s not cheap.”

Brock smiles. “Nor am I.”