PIERCED - A Stepbrother Romance (7 page)

My steak sizzles on the grill as I pour beer over it. The late afternoon sun burns down, heating the cement floor of my rooftop deck, but I don’t mind. A second steak sizzles and browns. I’m not sure why I threw another one on. It’s not like Lauryn’s going to come busting through my door at any moment, making herself at home, and asking what’s for dinner.

Wishful thinking.

My left hand slides into my pocket, my fingertips grazing the warm glass of my phone.

Fuck it. I’m calling her.

Against all odds, she answers.

“Yes?” Her voice is rushed and breathy; as if my call interrupted some very important business she was conducting.

“Hello to you too.”

She groans into the phone. “Sorry. Hello.”

“That’s more like it.” I turn the steaks, listening to her breathe and silently appreciating the fact that she’s on the other line. Something about that feels comforting, like that warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you think about a fond memory. Most people get it when they think of home, but Lauryn was the only thing that ever felt like home to me.

“Can I help you?” If she’s trying to sound polite it’s not working.

“Look, I’m sorry about earlier.” I can be the bigger person, especially if it means it’ll keep her from walking out of my life again.

She’s quiet, which, knowing Lauryn, could be either really good or really bad.

“Come over for dinner.” I’m not asking. “I’ve got two steaks on the grill. How do you want yours?”

“Sut…”

“You can’t stay mad at me forever.” I put the phone up to the grill and bring it back to my ear. “Hear that sizzle? That’s a New York strip with your name on it, personally grilled to perfection by yours truly.”

“I appreciate that, but I’m sort of in the middle of something right now.”

“A girl’s got to eat. You’re going to eat right?” I toss a few pieces of garlic bread onto the top rack of the grill and stir some marinated zucchini in a grill basket. “Lauryn, I can see your place from here. You’re a five-minute walk away. Get over here and have dinner with me. I’m your brother. We’re family.”

I say the last part with a smile in my voice. I want her to remember that things don’t always have to be so serious. We can get back to that fun place again. I’ve loved her all my life, but if friendship is all she can offer me, I’ll take it.

“Sut, please. I told you I’m busy tonight.”

“With what?”

“I’m checking into something.” She has a distant inflection in her voice, the one that women get when their minds are saturated with worrisome thoughts.

Fucking James.

“Want help?” I offer.

“I’ll let you know.” She ends the call as I curse that fucking rodent.

I met James my freshman year of college, and he made it quite clear from the beginning was that his life goal was to be filthy rich. I’d never seen such determination in another man’s eyes before. He’s spend chem lectures scoping out the girls and Googling them until he narrowed down which ones came from money, and then he’d turn his charm on and work his magic.

He failed out of the program within a year, and though we kept in touch for a while, I started distancing myself from him. I watched from a far as he dated rich girl after rich girl, each relationship ending catastrophically when they realized James’ wasn’t the nice guy he pretended to be.

And now he’s fucking with Lauryn. My Lauryn. Lauryn who’s the sole heir to her mother’s multi-million dollar fortune. Sweet Lauryn with her movie star good looks and naïve heart and loyal demeanor.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, sending a shock straight to my heart. I’m like a teenage girl, praying my crush is calling me. I slip my phone out with baited breath, only it’s my mother.

“Hey, Mom.” I plate the food and carry it back inside, the chilled air wrapping me up like a frozen blanket.

“I think your father’s cheating on me.” My mom’s voice is a hushed, rushed whisper laced with teary undercurrents. She’s insisted on calling DeVonn my father since they got married, never mind the fact that I was already an adult by then. And true, DeVonn had hand in raising me. He was the only father figure I’d ever known really, but it was always in a harmless, he’s-my-best-friend’s-dad kind of way.

Until the affair.

“You think so?” I play the part of the sympathetic friend because I know my mother has long since run out of those. Choosing DeVonn over her best friend, Diane, alienated her from the rest of her social circle and earned her the reputation of certified home-wrecker.

“I don’t think he’s been faithful to me since day one,” she slurs. She’s been drinking. Her imbibed state coupled with the fact that she generally lives in a constant state of delusion makes her forget reality sometimes.

“You were the original other woman, Mom.” I say it as gently as I can, as if she could break and shatter at any moment. “Did you think he’d change?”

“I’m leaving him,” she says. “I think.”

“Good,” I say, though more for selfish reasons than anything else. I don’t want to be Lauryn’s stepbrother. I never wanted to be in the first place.

“I mean, I guess we can go to counseling. Maybe we can save this marriage.” She’s talking in circles, and there’s a clink in the background that could only be the slamming of an empty bourbon tumbler against her kitchen table.

“DeVonn’s not the monogamous type, Mom.” I sit down with my plate of food, alone, at the head of a long dining table. The spot next to me is where Lauryn should be sitting. “It’s probably time to move on.”

“God, I love your father so much.” Her voice cracks, and I cringe with the mention of the word father once again. It’s as if she thinks if she says it enough, it’ll come true. I want to remind her he’s not my father, and he ceased to be my father figure the day I found him fucking her on the pool table. “I never thought it’d come to this, you know? He said he loved me more than Diane.”

She says her name as if Diane was the other woman, and I begin to wonder exactly how long the affair had been going on before I caught them.

“Is he back with Diane?”

“Oh, God, no. He wouldn’t go back to that dried up old hag,” she slurs her words again, drawing out the word like
haaaaaaaaag
. “I think he’s fucking his personal trainer. Some Columbian bitch with tits up to her eyeballs and butt implants.”

I try not to laugh. I shouldn’t laugh. My mother is hurting, and I love my mother. She’s not perfect but no one is.

“I need to come out to Miami sometime,” she says. She’s been saying that for years, but it never happens. She can never peel herself away from DeVonn for longer than a few hours, and now it’s all starting to make sense. She can’t be away from him because she’s never trusted him.

“Yes, Mom. You should come out.”

“Ugh, it’s so humid there,” she whines, as if that’s the only reason leaving California has never appealed to her.

“You get used to it.”

“I’ll check my schedule and let you know.” I know what it means. I won’t be holding my breath.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Mom.” I slice into a piece of steak, and my mind wanders to Lauryn. “Don’t settle, okay? You deserve someone who will love you no matter how hard it might be.”

“You’re a good man, Sutton,” she says. “I raised you right.”

If we want to get technical, she didn’t raise me at all. My nanny, Lupita, raised me until I was fourteen, and then I was practically turned loose like a wild animal. No curfew. No monitoring. No expectations. It was Lauryn who made me want to be a better person. Perfect Lauryn with her perfect grades and perfect smile and perfect personality. I did it all for Lauryn.

It was always for Lauryn.

My palms sweat as I pull up Gmail and type in James’ email address. I try his first password, the one he uses for work, and he fails. I try a second password, and a third and a fourth. I try the name of his childhood dog, our anniversary, his name spelled backwards. Nothing.

And then his security question pops up.

“What is your mother’s maiden name?”

Too easy.

I type in “Robbins” and the page turns white. It’s loading, and my heart is thumping like a herd of wild horses against a desert prairie. The page appears with a multitude of green, blue, red and yellow. There are at least a hundred and fifty emails sitting in his inbox.

I scroll down. Most of them are junk. I see a “reset your password” email from a dating website which serves as a quick punch to the gut, but I’m already so numb I hardly feel it.

A group of emails from someone named “Colette” appears halfway down the page. The most recent email is from yesterday. The icon next to her name shows a conversation going back to hundreds of exchanges.

I pull in a deep breath and expand the emails.

Hey, babe!

I put the utilities in my name like you said. Can’t wait to move into our new place! My dad was more than happy to help with the down payment. Hope you get things worked out with your apartment back in New York. Sucks about the sub-lease clause. I have you covered, and I know you’ll pay me back. You’re good for it!

Since you worked so hard all week, I have a special surprise planned for this weekend. Come home hungry, Friday night, and I mean it in more ways than one…

xoxo,

Colette

I want to throw up, but there’s nothing in my stomach, so I retch. The room spins. I can’t catch my breath. I know I shouldn’t keep reading but I have to. It’s a train wreck, and I can’t look away.

My eyes dart to a message dated from the weekend James surprised me.

Going to miss you this weekend, baby. I hate that you have to go back and work in New York this weekend. I thought transferring to Miami meant I’d get to have you all to myself all the time. Can’t wait until I do! Soon.

xoxo,

Colette

A metallic taste fills my mouth, as if I’m sucking on pennies. I fight back against the urge to retch once more, realizing that my eyes are dry. I’m not crying. My face is hot, probably cherry red. If this is what real anger feels like, I haven’t been this angry since everything went down with my parents and Sut’s mom.

I slam my laptop screen and shove it across my bed as if it’s dirty, as if the laptop itself has betrayed me. My heart is racing but not as fast as my mind. I want to know more. I yank the computer back into my lap and pull up a search engine.

I Google this girl who’s last name is DuBois according to her email. A hundred thousand hits come up, and a picture of her pops up on the right hand side of the results page. She has her own damn Wikipedia page.

Who is this broad?

I click on the picture of a smiling girl with jet-black hair and deep brown eyes just like mine. Her smile is wide and white, like mine, and her makeup is tasteful and pretty. James certainly has a type: dark and exotic. She’s the daughter of Texas oil magnate Pierre DuBois and Puerto Rican beauty queen Eva Mercado.

Colette DuBois is stunning – genetic lottery stunning.

And richer than God.

At least her parents are. The web page says her dad is worth 3.6 billion. I scroll down, reading her bio and her family history. She has three sisters: Celeste, Cecelia, and Camille. She’s trained in dressage and devotes most of her free time to her charity efforts, rescuing wild horses. She currently resides in Miami, where she co-owns a popular nightclub and a clothing boutique with her sisters.

What the hell is someone like that doing with someone like James? What does she see in him? Probably the same things I see. He is nice. Safe. Benign. Charming. Sweet.

I slam the laptop screen down harder than before. I’m seeing red. I’m seeing black. My thoughts are jumbled, not making any sense. Before I realize what I’ve just done, I’m standing in front of Sut’s door. I don’t remember putting my shoes on. I don’t remember grabbing my purse or locking my door. I don’t remember the walk over.

But now I’m here.

At Sut’s.

Pounding on his metal door until my fist turns numb.

He answers it in blue scrubs, and I remember he works Saturday nights. His eyes light up as he drinks me in, and then he sees my face. His brows scrunch, and he pulls his door wide. “Hey, Laur. Come in.”

“Guess what?” I say, spitting my words at him as if he’s the intended target.

“I know,” he says. His face is sullen.

He knows?!

“Yeah, it means we can be together again.” His lips pull into a smart-ass grin, as if he thinks this situation is funny.

“You’re disgusting.” My arms fly across my chest, interlocking tightly. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me?!”

Sut’s head cocks to the side, and he scratches just above his perfectly arched eyebrow. It’s dark and not too hairy like most guys. Perfectly manly without looking manicured. I hate that I’m concentrating on how good his brows look right now, but that’s what I do. I focus on irrelevant things when the real stuff is too difficult to deal with.

“I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.” He steps toward me, placing his hands on the sides of my crossed arms. He smells like a fresh shower and laundered scrubs. “Our parents are divorcing.”

“James is cheating on me.”

James cheating on me trumps our parents divorcing. I could give two shits about what my jackass father is doing. He’s a moron. He never should’ve left my mother, and he doesn’t deserve my sympathy. He doesn’t deserve for me to give a flying fuck about what’s going on in his life.

“Oh. Shit.” Sut exhales, but judging by the vague look on his face he’s not surprised. “Let me make you a drink before I go to work.”

I throw myself across his leather sofa, as if I’m suddenly comfortable and ready to make myself at home. Really, I just don’t care. I don’t care that I look like shit. I don’t care that I swore I’d never be friends with Sutton again. I don’t care about a damn thing.

I’m temporarily anesthetized by the tremendous amount of betrayal circulating my body. It hurts so much that it doesn’t hurt, if that makes sense.

My hand glides along the soft, buttery leather but my palm senses nothing. Sut’s fixing a drink for me in the kitchen, some clamoring and the sound of his ‘fridge opening and shutting sounds far away. Tinny almost. I’m out of my body and nothing feels real.

“Here we are.” He sits a martini glass filled with some light pink drink in front of me. “Vodka cranberry.”

I reach for it as if I’m dying of thirst, and I swallow it all in four generous gulps. I don’t taste it though, and judging by how smoothly it went down, it was definitely expensive stuff. For a second, I ask myself why he’d have martini glasses sitting around. He’s a beer kind of guy. Did they belong to an old girlfriend?

And does it even matter?!

I shake my head, my body feeling warm from the liquor coursing my veins. I welcome it like a warm blanket of superficial, momentary comfort.

“How long?” he asks, his face winced.

“I don’t know,” I mutter. “Judging by his emails, I’d say a good couple months.” I lift my empty glass. “Got anymore of this?”

He fixes me another drink, and I sit in silence, mourning the loss of my future. Just a few days ago it was all mapped out. I thought my heart was safe with James. I thought everything would fall into place. I thought he was my happily ever after.

“I’d ask what you’re thinking right now, but I don’t think I want to know.” Sut rests my fresh drink on a coaster, and I realize my face is so pinched it’s beginning to hurt. “Look like you’re about two seconds from needing something to punch.”

I lunge for my drink, bringing it to my lips before saying, “I’m done. I’m done with men.”

“Ah, now, Lauryn.” Sut chuckles. “Not all guys are pieces of shit who can’t keep their dicks in their pants.”

“I’ve yet to be proven wrong about a single one of them,” she insists.

“But there’s where you’re wrong.” He lowers himself back to the sofa, sitting next to me. Our hips are touching. He turns to me, his eyes focusing on my pained face, watching me intently. “I’ve never cheated on anyone. Ever. I never will.”

I fly into a standing position, rolling my eyes. “God, Sut, you can’t stop with the sales pitch for five minutes, can you?”

Now I look stupid for standing up. I’m not trying to leave yet. I don’t want to go back to my place, and I’m not quite ready to leave Sut’s.

“I’m not trying to sell myself. I’m stating a fact.” He stands, slipping his hand across my arm and turning me to face him. “Besides. I don’t need to sell myself to you Lauryn. You already care about me. I know that for a fact.”

My brows furrow, and I toss him a sarcastic, “Oh, really?”

“You used to love me, Lauryn. You loved me so much, that you pushed me away. And you continue to push me away because you still love me.”

He’s right. Even in my half-buzzed state, I know he’s right. I say nothing, choosing to neither confirm nor deny his allegations.

“James was an opportunist.” Sut’s mouth hardens into a straight line. “He knows you have a trust fund, right?”

I nod. “More or less.”

The day I met James at a national conference for pharmaceutical reps, he approached me asking if anyone had ever told me I looked like Diane Hudson.

“She’s my mother,” I told him, watching his eyes light up the way everyone’s always did when they found out I was the daughter of a famous movie star.

I should’ve known.

“Look. I met James in med school. The only reason that ass hat ever wanted to be a doctor was so he could make money, drive a flashy car, and convince the rest of the world that his dick isn’t three inches too small.”

He earns a snicker from me and a half smile.

“He failed out of med school and then proceeded to date every girl on campus with a seven figure trust fund. Let me guess, his mistress? She has money?”

I bite my lip and stare at the ground, offering a reluctant nod that seals the fact that Sutton is spot on about James.

“Fucking dick.” Sut says as he checks his timepiece. He steps away from me, and I immediately miss the coziness of his body heat. “Laur, I’m late for work.”

We walk to the door together, and my eyes fall to his ass. The scrubs hug his muscles, and for whatever reason I’m fixated on the way they shift when he walks. A man that attractive making a living as a doctor is a killer combination. I’m dying to know why he’s still single and how some cunning temptress with beauty queen good looks hasn’t swept him off his feet yet.

“You like being a doctor don’t you? Delivering babies?” I ask as we head to his hall. He’s locking his door and he stops, turning to me and smiling.

“I love it.” His phone rings, and his smile fades just as quickly as it had appeared. “Dr. Pierce…”

I give him a wave, not getting the chance to tell him I’ll see him Monday or to thank him for the drinks.

And then I realize for the last two minutes I haven’t had a single thought about James. Sutton made it all go away, if only temporarily.