Rock Hard: A Stepbrother Romance (Extreme Sports Alphas) (2 page)

“Wait up!” I yelled, but he didn’t seem to hear me.

I had always been a good hiker but I wasn’t nearly in the kind of shape Reid was. His whole body seemed like it was built to move through the outdoors, almost like he never got tired. His callused hands were strong, much stronger than I realized, and could grip pretty much anything.

That was probably why he was the best climber in our region.

“Hold on!” I called again, and this time he heard me. He looked back over his shoulder, water dripping from his hair and into his eyes.

“Lost a step, sis?” he asked.

“No. Your legs are just longer than mine. And stop calling me that.”

He shrugged. “We’re almost there.”

We had left the path a mile ago, and I knew that if I lost him I would be completely screwed. I had a good sense of direction and could probably find my way back to town eventually, but I had no clue how long that would take.

We started walking again, and this time he stayed at my pace. We didn’t talk, and my heart flittered nervously. I had no clue where he was taking me or why. I was leaving the next day for school, and he had shown up at my bedroom door earlier that morning asking if I wanted to see something. Curious, I said yes.

I had stopped caring about the rain fifteen minutes ago. My parka was soaked through down to my underwear, and my hiking boots felt like I was treading water. The mud sucked at the soles of my feet but I kept moving, making sure I didn’t fall behind.

Ahead, there was a small clearing.

“Almost there,” he said softly.

“What are you showing me?”

“You’ll see.”

That was all he kept saying. I’ll see. He could be pretty mysterious when he wanted to be.

We crossed the clearing and stepped through some thick bushes. Once through, he stopped.

“There,” he said, pointing.

Up ahead, there was an old abandoned van like the kind hippies drove around in the ’60s. I laughed.

“You brought me here just to show me some junk?”

He shook his head. “Not junk. Come on.”

I followed as he walked down toward the car. I had a strange feeling about what was happening, but I didn’t say anything. The van itself wasn’t in terrible shape, all things considered. The green paint job made it blend into the forest, and it wasn’t too rusted. The tires were completely flat and I thought I saw plants growing up through the undercarriage, but the windows weren’t broken and the handles were all intact.

He grabbed the back door and pulled it open. It slid without any sounds.

“Are you sure this is okay?” I asked.

He grinned at me. “Look.”

Inside, there was a small, thin mattress covered in blankets and maybe twenty or thirty candles. Along the back side was a short bookcase filled with books and magazines.

I laughed. “What is it?”

“This is my special place. My hideout from the world, I guess.” He climbed in and I followed him. It was surprisingly spacious, though I was acutely aware of how close he was to me and how heavily I was breathing. Apparently, I was in worse shape than I had realized.

“Took me a while to build it. Had to caulk a few leaks.”

“It’s amazing, Reid.”

He moved closer to me. “I’m glad you like it.”

I snapped back to the present when he put the windshield wipers on. I hadn’t even noticed that the rain started up again. I watched the wipers flash back and forth across the glass, glad of the distraction.

I wasn’t ready to relive that entire memory. Especially not with him right next to me, barely inches away.

“How’s your mom doing?” I asked.

“She’s good. Looking forward to seeing you.”

“Yeah? Her hair getting longer?”

He laughed. “Yeah, actually. She stopped wearing those awful wigs.”

I smiled. Cora was absolutely stunning in a classical kind of way. Even at her sickest, she still managed to look completely perfect. When the chemo made her hair fall out, she had gotten a huge assortment of wigs, and she loved to send me pictures of her trying them on.

“They weren’t awful. She pulled them off.”

He grunted but didn’t respond.

Things were a little strained between us, and for good reason. I guessed the novelty of seeing me for the first time in a year was wearing off. I wouldn’t have been surprised if his mind was in the same place mine was.

We moved through a light and came into the heart of town. It wasn’t much of a city center, at least not like the towns out on the east coast, but it was home. Everything looked the same, more or less, and although that may have been depressing to some people, to me it felt right.

I wanted Ridgewood to be timeless. I knew it wasn’t, that there were problems boiling under its pristine veneer, but I still felt good every time I came back.

Reid suddenly slowed down and pulled over into the minimart’s parking lot.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

“Gotta do something real fast. You wait here.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Craving a Slim Jim?”

“I don’t think they even make those anymore,” he said, laughing.

“This is Ridgewood. This is the place time forgot.”

He nodded, smiling. “That’s the truth.” The car stopped in a spot and he put it in park. “Be back in a second.”

Before I could say anything, he jumped out and ran into the store. I watched him through the front windows, but he quickly disappeared behind a display. For a second, I wanted to follow him in, but I didn’t feel like getting soaked. I was finally beginning to dry off after all.

A few minutes later, he came back out of the store and climbed into the car. He put it in reverse, pulled out of the spot, and then headed back into traffic.

“Changed your mind?” I asked him.

“What?”

“You didn’t get anything.”

He looked at me for a second and then nodded. “Oh, yeah. They didn’t have it after all.”

I gave him a weird look but decided not to press. Reid could be mysterious when he wanted to be, after all.

I had learned not to bother trying to puzzle him out. If he wanted to open up, he would.

We moved back through town in a strained silence. I hated it, hated that he wasn’t teasing me mercilessly for being a science geek or something equally stupid and immature. Anything would have been better than the silence.

“What’s your plan for the summer?” he asked finally, breaking the silence.

“Not sure. Thought I’d look a few people up.”

“Like who?”

“Lindsey, for starters.”

He snorted. “She’s the waitress at the Blue, right?”

Blue was the Blue Light Diner. Most people just called it “Blue” for short.

“Last I heard, yeah.”

“I forgot you two were close.”

“Why, what’s that mean?”

“Nothing. She’s just different than she was in high school, that’s all.”

“Different how?”

He shrugged again. “People change. You sure did.”

“Oh good, this again.”

He laughed. “Don’t get all angry, college girl. Or should I say science geek? Since you’re not in college anymore.”

“If I’m a geek, you’re a meathead.”

“That’s not a bad tradeoff. I’ll take it.”

“What about you? Got any competitions coming up?”

He had a far-off look on his face for a second and then nodded. “Yeah. Got some stuff lined up.”

“How’s it going?”

“Good. Been training hard.”

My eyes roamed down his body. I had to admit, he was looking even more muscular and fit than usual, which was saying something. He glanced at me and smirked.

“Quit staring, Becca.”

I blushed and looked out the window. “I wasn’t staring.”

“You were practically eye-fucking me.”

“I was not. Don’t be a perv.”

“It’s fine, sis. I get it. Hard to control yourself around me.”

I sighed and shook my head. Maybe the silence really was better.

Soon we turned off the road and headed up a thin dirt path, hardly enough room for two cars to squeeze by each other. Each wind and curve and bend was utterly familiar to me since I had gone up and down them hundreds of times. Up ahead, a wood and glass building materialized into view, smoke rising lazily up through its chimney.

“Got the fire on for us,” Reid commented.

I smiled big. I was coming home.

I
hated being the new kid in town. Even years later, I still felt like I wasn’t exactly a local. Sure, I knew the woods around Ridgewood better than anyone, and I was the golden boy of climbing, but if you weren’t born in the town then you were always a bit of an outsider.

She never made me feel that way. Rebecca was a lifer, as I liked to call them, and when I first moved to Ridgewood as a kid she was nice to me. It was hard at first trying to get into the swing of small-town living, and kids weren’t exactly welcoming.

But Rebecca was different. She probably didn’t even remember, because we weren’t exactly friends back then, but she was nice to me anyway. Any sign of kindness was important in those first months, and she was one of the few kids that actually smiled and said hello to me.

Life got better though. I hit my growth spurt, got into climbing, and made some friends. For a long time, I felt lost, like there was nothing in the world for me. People were outgoing and happy and seemed to actually enjoy life, but it wasn’t like that with me. Sometimes it was a struggle getting out of bed.

That changed when I started rock climbing. It was small stuff at first, just little faces and some indoor walls. But it exploded from there.

I could still remember the day everything changed. I was fifteen and out climbing with a friend, some guy I could barely even remember anymore. But we climbed together up the cliff face, and he was teaching me how to properly use the ropes and pulleys when I leaned back and looked out across the landscape.

We were barely above the trees, but I could see all the way to the horizon. Everything was spread out in front of me, and I couldn’t hear what my friend was saying anymore. There was only me and the sun and the sky and the wind moving through my hair. I was free and it felt right.

Everything clicked together that day. I understood what everyone else was doing. The world just made sense when I was climbing.

And quickly that extended to hiking through the thick woods surrounding Ridgewood. I loved being out alone in the deep forest between our town and Canada with nobody else for miles. I could walk all day long out there doing nothing but climbing trees and identifying plants.

High school was fine after that. I guess girls liked me, because I never had trouble finding a new girlfriend. They probably liked the rock climbing or some shit like that, thought I was rugged. But I was never interested in fame. All I wanted was to climb and to climb fast.

Throughout all that, Becca was always around. I kept seeing her in the halls and in class, and I always wondered what she was like. Even though I was getting popular, I still felt intimidated around her. Everyone knew she was the smartest person in school, hands down, and although most people just thought she was some dorky loser girl, I saw a lot more in her.

I noticed the way she twirled her hair when she was nervous. I noticed how she chewed on the ends of her glasses when she was concentrating. She liked orange juice in the morning, and sometimes brought a little plastic bottle of it to school.

But I was intimidated by her in some weird way. I was no genius, but there she was, intelligent and serious and sexy as fuck. I had plenty of other girls to keep me busy, but Becca was always floating on the edge of my awareness, flickering in and out of my sight.

My career took off when I was seventeen. I won a local competition and realized that I could be pretty good if I wanted to be. I trained almost every day, climbing as often as I could, and something just shifted in me. Suddenly, the local competitions were too easy, so I started entering the regionals. I broke a few records, won a bunch of money, and my star took off.

That’s the funny thing about small towns, though. No matter how famous you get, you’re still only small-town famous. And all it takes is one thing to shift, one thing to change everything.

For me, it was two things.

The first thing was Becca. I never saw her coming, not really. Even though I had a thing for her, some little crush, I never understood what it was or what it meant until it was too late. Two days after the night I finally figured it out, our parents announced that they had eloped over the weekend.

Rebecca Foster, the girl from that night, that one sweaty night, was my fucking stepsister.

It was like a crime. The second I had something, it was snatched away, just like that.

The second thing that changed my life was my mom’s cancer. That was worse than wanting to fuck my stepsister. Becca went to college and was gone for most of it, so she didn’t see the struggle we went through. She didn’t see how her dad looked at me when I started bringing home money to help with the medical bills. She didn’t see what I put myself through to get that money, the shit I waded into and got stuck down deep in.

She didn’t see my mom hanging on to life by a thread. She didn’t see my mom eventually beat it, and come through the other side stronger.