Her Wicked Stepbrother: A Nolan Bastards Novella Page 8

  A shiver skittered up her spine. “That’s a little dramatic. Did he believe you?”

  “He did.” He regarded her with eyes as cold as a Chicago winter. “One ting I will say about Kyle, he is not stupid.”

  * * *

  With the extra help from Brynn and her stepbrothers, her dad and uncle completed the Mitchell house renovation two days ahead of schedule.

  The day the home went up for sale, they received four offers and, after a short bidding war, they pocketed twice the profit her dad had anticipated gaining in the endeavor.

  She hadn’t seen her dad so happy in… well, ever.

  A week after Christmas, Aiden turned eighteen.

  Brynn remembered Siobhan had once mentioned Aiden’s favorite meal back home had been a traditional Irish stew, so after a chat with her stepmom, Brynn made the trek to the grocery store and filled her shopping cart with all the items she’d need to make the dish. She picked up potatoes, beef, and an assortment of vegetables, along with a box of birthday candles and the ingredients to make him a chocolate cake.

  As she made her way up and down the grocery aisles, she realized she had started to feel a little like herself again. The oppressive weight sitting on her chest these past months had eased, and she’d even started sleeping through the night again. For the first time since the party, she’d started to believe she was going to be okay.

  Largely because of Aiden.

  Mostly because of Aiden.

  Every time she’d tried to turn inward, he’d drawn her out again. With little things, like chocolate and teasing smiles, he’d kept her from completely shutting out the rest of the world.

  At night, when the nightmares visited, memories of his solid warmth or the feel of his arms around her was often the only thing that quieted the chaos inside her. In the moment of her greatest peril, he’d made her feel safe.

  She owed him so much. She wanted to thank him, though she suspected he’d never acknowledge the significance of what he’d done for her. So she’d settle for making him a birthday dinner.

  On the walk home, she paid no mind to the brisk wind that nipped at her cheeks and lifted her face to soak in the bright sunlight.

  But when she arrived home, she stumbled to a stop on the sidewalk. One of the grocery bags slipped through her fingers and dropped hard onto her foot.

  Pain throbbed in her toes, and she fought back tears as she stared at the big white For Sale sign that’d been staked into the ground in their front yard.

  * * *

  Aiden’s birthday dinner went downhill from there.

  While Irish stew may have been his favorite, Cian and Rory loathed the dish and politely refused to touch the stuff. At the same time, her dad and Siobhan chattered nonstop about the two homes they’d viewed earlier in the day and had all but decided to put in an offer on one of them.

  The boys’ lack of enthusiasm for her cooking didn’t carry over to the prospect of moving, despite the fact that it’d be their second move in less than a year. Indeed, they had nothing negative to say about the proposition whatsoever. The traitors.

  But the real blow came when she set Aiden’s birthday cake loaded down with eighteen fiery candles before him.

  Recoiling, he gaped at her as though she’d plopped down a slaughtered kitten. “What’s this?”

  “It’s a birthday cake.”

  “Right. What’s it for?”

  “For your birthday.”

  Shadows flickered across his face as he frowned at the flames. “Ye shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I wanted to.” Her stomach knotted. “I thought you’d like it.”

  “I like it,” Cian jumped in.

  “Aiden Joseph, what’s gotten into you?” Siobhan snapped. “Brynn worked hard to do this for you. Thank yer sister.”

  At the last, Aiden flinched, but his gaze remained locked on Brynn. “Thank you,” he said softly.

  She lifted her shoulders. “It’s nothing. Really.”

  Rory pointed his fork and the flaming cake pan. “Why don’t ye blow out the candles so we can eat it?”

  Aiden appeared slightly ill as he ate a small piece of cake, and the moment the last bite disappeared into his mouth, he fled downstairs.

  When they returned to school after the winter break, a new student had taken Kyle’s seat in fourth period. He had bright red hair and a goofy smile that instantly put Brynn at ease.

  Mr. Strickland introduced him, explaining that he’d relocated to Chicago from Indiana. Brynn experienced a pang of sympathy when she considered how nervous and out of sorts she felt by her family’s upcoming move, and she wasn’t going to have to change schools.

  She offered him a small smile. “Hi, I’m Brynn.”

  “Harry,” he said.

  “How do you like Chicago so far?”

  “It’s cool.” His head bobbed. “It’s a lot different than Indianapolis.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “I miss my friends, but our new house is pretty sweet.”

  At that, some of her own anxiety about moving receded. “What do you think about the school so far?”

  “It’s all right.” His goofy smile made an appearance. “I figure we only have a few more months left before graduation anyway, so how bad can it be?”

  Brynn liked Harry, and by mid-February they’d formed an easy rapport.

  Over the next several weeks, as her childhood home sold and she prepared for the move to a new house, she tried to emulate Harry’s upbeat attitude about his own displacement.

  As moving day neared, she spent fewer hours at her dad’s office after school to return home and work on boxing up her belongings. On this particular day, Siobhan had gone to a doctor’s appointment, and the house was quiet when she let herself in the back door.

  Upstairs, her packing was interrupted by the laundry basket overflowing with dirty clothes in the corner of her bedroom. She crammed as much into the basket as she could lift and hauled the heap to the basement, but as she loaded her garments into the washing machine, a soft sound froze her in her tracks.

  A giggle.

  A girly giggle.

  Against her will, her feet carried her toward the source of the sound. Inch by gut-wrenching inch, she approached the door to Aiden’s bedroom.

  There she stopped. The door slightly ajar, she peered through the crack. His broad back faced her, and she watched undetected.

  Brynn didn’t know the girl whose waist his hands gripped and whose mouth his lips claimed in a soft, lingering kiss.

  With the visceral, gutting pain that slashed through her, she gasped.

  He turned his head and golden brown eyes speared her to the spot. Something dangerous and fiery flashed in his dark irises, but she couldn’t decipher it’s meaning through the shattered lens of her breaking heart.

  Letting go of the girl’s small waist, Aiden strolled toward Brynn.

  His eyes held hers as he eased the door shut.

  Echoes of pain ripping through her, Brynn stumbled away. At the washing machine, she shoved the rest of her clothes into the basin and slammed the lid closed. Unable to see past the tears filling her eyes, she cranked the dial and darted for the stairs. But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t outrun the truth.

  That she loved more than Aiden’s smile.

  Chapter 9

  On a dreary day in March, Brynn loaded the boxes that contained her entire life into the back of a moving van and watched it drive away. From the back seat of her dad’s car, the only home she’d ever known faded from sight.

  She tried to convince herself she didn’t care about the house, and that her anxiety didn’t seem to be growing right along with Siobhan’s swelling belly, but it was no use. With every new change in her life, she only became more lost and alone.

  Their new house was larger than the old one, and as long as Rory and Cian continued to share a bedroom once the baby arrived, it had enough bedrooms for Aiden to move out of the basement.

  U
nfortunately, he moved into the bedroom next to hers. Worse, the two rooms shared a connecting bathroom, and Brynn just knew the first time he brought a girl home she was going to cry. Or vomit.

  Probably both.

  Lost in her brooding thoughts, she was surprised when Harry appeared at her locker. His face flushed as bright red as his ginger hair, and his tongue tripped over the flurry of words that shot from his mouth. Through the sputters and stammers, it took her a moment to realize he was asking her to go with him to the prom.

  Her first instinct was to flatly refuse. She didn’t want to go to any more parties, even a school-sponsored one, but it’d obviously cost him a lot to ask her. In truth, she found his awkwardness endearing.

  So she accepted his invitation.

  She tried to get excited about attending the foremost social event on the school calendar, but she simply couldn’t muster any enthusiasm. Since he’d asked her prom, Harry hadn’t spoken more than three words to her, and she hated how uncomfortable they now acted around each other.

  She also hated shopping. She hated it so much that she waited until the last weekend before the dance to go to mall to buy a dress.

  At breakfast Saturday morning, she caught her dad before he left for work. “Can I borrow your credit card? I have to buy a dress for the prom.”

  Her dad retrieved his wallet from the hip pocket of his work slacks. Sliding the card from its slot, he held it out to her. “Maybe your mother would like to go with you.”

  Brynn and Siobhan blinked at one another.

  “What’s this?” Siobhan asked.

  “The senior prom?” Brynn took the thin plastic card from her dad. “It’s a dance at school. It’s kind of a big deal here.”

  “It sounds lovely.”

  Brynn’s dad refilled his coffee cup. “As I understand it, shopping for the dress is a pretty big deal, too.”

  Siobhan blinked, then understanding struck. “Oh. Sure. Of course.” She pushed to her feet, a difficult feat with her ginormous belly. “That sounds like fun. Let me change my clothes, and I’ll come with you.”

  On occasion, Brynn had overheard the other girls at school talk about shopping with their moms, and she couldn’t stem the fountain of hope that bubbled up at the chance of experiencing what every other teenage girl did—an afternoon of shopping, and bonding, with a mother.

  Maybe not her mother, but still.

  Reality, however, was a little different than Brynn had pictured it in her mind. Probably because Siobhan had three boys and was eight months pregnant, and Brynn had only ever shopped with her dad, a man who considered the task loathsome and, when forced to do it, attempted to complete the job in as short a timeframe as possible, often giving Brynn mere minutes to make her selections before heading to the store’s exit.

  Whatever the reason, both women struggled with the moment.

  Brynn visited three stores before she found a dress she liked well enough to try on, but when she emerged from the dressing room, Siobhan was nowhere in sight. Brynn returned the dress to the rack and continued on to the next store. As she passed by the food court, she spotted Siobhan in line at the pizzeria, and it was right about that time that Brynn realized the mother-daughter thing just wasn’t going to happen for them.

  The night of the dance, Brynn added some curls to her long hair and stepped into the plum cocktail dress she’d picked out while Siobhan ate pizza.

  Minutes before Harry would arrive to pick her up, she headed downstairs.

  But as she descended the bottom stairs, Aiden approached. Passing by on his way to the kitchen, his steps slowed when he spotted her. He stopped before her.

  She eyed him with warily. “You’re not going to… do anything, are you?”

  Sorrow touched his features. “I am not.”

  The leaden pit that formed in her stomach whenever she recalled Kyle or C.J. or what happened at that party made a sudden, sickening appearance. “Is there anything I should know about Harry?”

  “He hasn’t given me any reason to warn you off him.” The gold in his eyes glittered. “Yet.”

  She exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

  Then she took in his blue jeans and T-shirt. “Aren’t you going?”

  “The girl I wanted to take is unavailable.”

  The stab of jealousy barely hurt anymore. Too much scar tissue had built up over the wounds for her to feel the fresh jabs.

  In the living room, Cian, Rory, and her dad watched the baseball game playing on the TV while Siobhan knitted something yellow and fuzzy. Brynn claimed a seat on the sofa to wait for Harry, who was a few minutes late by that point.

  She fussed with her flowy skirt, smoothing the delicate fabric flat to prevent wrinkles, and turned her attention to the game. Carrying a glass of milk, Aiden returned from the kitchen and settled at the opposite end of the sofa.

  After one inning and roughly twenty minutes of waiting, a stomach-turning dread began to crawl up her spine. She slipped her cell phone from the small clutch she’d bought that matched her dress, but she hadn’t missed any calls or texts from Harry. She brushed aside her worry and readjusted her skirts.

  When the next inning ended, Rory climbed to his feet. At the front door, he lifted his jacket off the coat hook.

  Siobhan smoothed a hand over her large belly. “And where do you think you’re going?”

  “To meet up with some friends.”

  As underclassmen, Cian and Rory wouldn’t be able to attend the senior prom unless they went with a senior, but that night, Brynn knew of several parties taking place that her stepbrothers would surely have been invited to.

  “Wait until Brynn’s date gets here,” Siobhan said. “We want to take some pictures with all of you.”

  Brynn wanted to argue as Rory flopped into an armchair, but her throat had tightened, and she didn’t trust she’d be able to speak. She pretended immense interest in the activity taking place on the television.

  Excruciating seconds ticked by until another half an hour had passed. Both Cian and Rory typed away on their phones, likely sending texts to their friends to explain that they were running late, and why.

  Why hadn’t Harry done the same?

  She stared hard at the TV.

  Had something happened to him? Was he sick? Involved in an accident?

  Or was it just her?

  As the minutes continued to slip away, old memories began to rise from the shadows of her mind. She recalled the expressions on the teachers’ faces as they’d huddled together, speaking in hushed voices while Brynn had waited for her mom to pick her up at the school. All the other kids had gone home and only Brynn remained. When darkness began to fall, she remembered how their looks had changed from annoyance to concern, then to pity.

  With a mental shake, she shook off the past. The past had nothing to do with today.

  Except for the waiting.

  And the wondering if something awful had happened.

  And the wishing someone would tell her what the heck was going on.

  And the worrying that the truth would hurt more than the waiting and not knowing ever could.

  Across from her, her dad’s knee bounced like the shaft of a jackhammer.

  If Harry had been delayed, why hadn’t he called? She sent him a text asking where he was, and then another less than five minutes later to inquire if he’d changed his mind about going to the dance. Five minutes after that, she even told him it was fine if he had changed his mind, but to please let her know so she wouldn’t worry.

  But it wasn’t fine, and she’d begun to suspect that, for the rest of her life, she’d wonder and worry if it was her. If she simply wasn’t enough.

  No response from Harry came to her phone.

  Nearly two hours after the time he told her he’d pick her up, she stopped obsessively checking her phone. She stopped fussing with her skirts, knowing it no longer mattered if they became wrinkled.

  Her dad, who’d been pacing back and
forth in front of the window, ceased.

  Discreetly, Siobhan signaled the boys that they could leave and Rory and Cian slipped silently from the room. But Aiden hesitated.

  She hated him all the more for it.

  With an odd sort of detachment, she considered that the threat of tears didn’t loom over her. Maybe she was numb. Maybe she no longer experienced shock at what all seemed so predictable. Inevitable.

  Even so, she didn’t trust herself to speak. Silently, she stood and forced herself to walk, not run, to the stairs. She kept her spine straight and her shoulders squared when she slunk from the room.

  In her bedroom, she locked the door behind her.

  Almost immediately, a knock sounded.

  She ignored it and sank down on the edge of her bed. It was probably her dad, but there was nothing he could say that’d make the situation suck any less. Why pretend there was?

  After a prolonged wait, footsteps retreated down the hall.

  Leaning forward, she propped her elbows on her knees and rubbed the ache between her eyebrows. The tears did come then.

  The bathroom door swung open. Her head came up to find Aiden standing in her bedroom.

  She glared, determined not to let him see her tears. “Go away.”

  Of course, it was too late to hide the wet streaks on her face, so she lifted her chin, determined instead not to let him know it bothered her that he’d already seen her tears.

  His expression gave little away. “I’m starting to think you were right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “There’s no such thing as The One.” His mask of indifference suffered a crack. “At least, not for me.”

  Her soft chuckle held no humor. “I guess you’ll have to stay single forever, then. Not to worry. I suspect any woman who agreed to marry you would also have murdered you in your sleep.”