Stepbrother WHOA! (The Stepbrother Romance Series #5) (6 page)

I managed to force down the food I’d ordered, eating
in stony silence while Bob kept talking about the situation. With any luck, I
thought, he’d get loud enough that someone would complain about him, and then
we’d be kicked out—or at least he would. I thought it would be so much easier
to eat my damn dinner if Bob was sent to the car. I was dreading the fact that
I was going to have to ride with them back to campus; if Bob wasn’t going to
shut up about the situation in the middle of a crowded restaurant, I couldn’t
imagine what he would be like in a car alone. I looked at my mom; how could she
stand to be around him? I wondered if Bob was any different with her. For the
first time, I wanted her to divorce him not because it would make it easier to
be with Jaxon but because it anyone would could be such a monumental asshole to
someone he barely knew—and even more of one to his own flesh and blood—could
obviously never be good enough for Mom. No matter how much she liked him and
his stupid mansion and the heaps of money he spent on her, the guy was a
complete and total asshole.

I felt myself getting angrier and angrier as it
became clear to me that Bob was almost enjoying his tirade—that he was like any
bully. He was treating our silence like a victory, his voice getting louder. I
remembered all the terrible things he’d said to Jaxon and the way Jaxon had
told me that every time his father lit into him he felt like he was still the
stupid, angry, reckless teenager. Jaxon didn’t deserve to have a dad that
treated him like shit. Even if I didn’t know what motivation Bob might have
had—and I’m sure that Jaxon was not easy to deal with—I couldn’t think of
anything at all that could possibly justify the kind of shit that Bob was
slinging, the way he lit into even me. I finished my entrée and set down my napkin.
All at once I had made up my mind.

I know the signs when I start getting too angry.
Everything around me starts getting too clear, too vivid. It’s rare that I
really get good and mad at someone—for the most part I feel like people just
aren’t worth the energy. But listening to Bob go on and on about what an
irresponsible waste Jaxon was, and seeing him pin me down and dare me with his
stupid half-drunk eyes to say anything else while he was slinging mud at me
too, I got to where I just couldn’t stand another minute of it. I drank down
the last of my soda and set my glass down. I stood up in one quick movement,
looking down at Bob. Mom was staring at me in shock, but I couldn’t have
stopped myself even if I had wanted to.

“You know what?” I said, keeping my voice as much
under control as humanly possible. “You’re an asshole, and I’ve had just about
enough of listening to you talk, Bob.” I looked at my mom; she was staring in
shock still, her face bright red, and I knew that she was just as humiliated by
the thought of me taking a stand as she ever could have been at Bob making a
scene. “I’m going to tell you something, Bob: Jaxon and
me
have absolutely nothing to do with you and Mom. We started seeing each other a
long time before you guys got married, and we’re seeing each other because
we’re in love with each other, simple as that.”

“Young lady, I am not finished talking to you,” Bob
started to say. I held up a hand.

“Yes, Bob, you
are
finished talking to me, because apparently all you have to talk about is how
screwed up I am, and what a fuck up Jaxon is, and frankly it was a hell of a
lot more interesting the last time you launched this tirade months ago. You
don’t have any new material so you might as well shut the hell up and listen.”
Bob sputtered, setting down his silverware. I saw the angry look in his eyes,
and part of me felt a flicker of fear—where did Bob draw the line? Jaxon had
never mentioned his father getting physical with him but it wasn’t hard to
imagine Bob losing his shit completely and going off that way. But I was tired,
I was angry, and I’d had enough of tiptoeing around what I wanted because our
parents were disturbed by what was going in between Jaxon and me.

“Jaxon and I are grown-ass adults, and if we want to
see each other, we absolutely will, and there is nothing that either of you can
do about it. Kick us out if you want to; I don’t think either Jaxon or I give a
single fuck about it.” I took a deep breath. My hands were shaking, but I
didn’t want to show a single sign of how emotional I was about the whole thing.
“By the way—if you really have such a problem with us seeing each other, it
might have been a decent idea to make sure we knew the two of you were
seriously dating when it happened, instead of presenting us to each other as
step-brother and step-sister long after we’d already met and hooked up. What
kind of adult pulls that shit? You guys were dating what—a couple of months
when you got married? Are you kidding me that it never occurred to either of
you that with kids going to the same college, they might have already met?” Mom
put her silverware down and looked at her plate, biting her bottom lip and
looking thoroughly humiliated; but the thing that was strongest in my mind was
getting back at Bob for everything he’d said to both Jaxon and me.

“I’d also like to point out that really, from what
I’ve seen, you’re a miserable damned father. Jaxon would honestly be better off
poor and on the streets than living with a guy who thinks it’s so much fun to
tear him down constantly. I can’t even imagine how much he hates you—I’m ready
to hate you and I’ve only known you a couple of months!” I took a deep, shaking
breath. “If I were in his position I’d be in jail for killing your ass by now,
and I don’t know why he isn’t.” Bob’s eyes widened as he stared up at me. I
shook my head.

“Look, you asshole. All you do is make your son
miserable and humiliate him in public and around people who care about him.
From what I can see, even with all the shit he was involved in as a teenager,
Jaxon is at least a million times better as a person than you could ever hope
to be. As far as I’m concerned, if you and Mom got divorced tomorrow she would
have wasted far too much time with you because you’re a miserable fucking human
being who deserves to die alone. How about instead of insulting and humiliating
people you’re supposed to love and care about, you grow a damned heart or maybe
even a soul and actually—oh, I don’t know—give a damn about them?” I took a
deep breath and exhaled. Abruptly I had nothing more to say at all; every last
bit of my pent-up rage towards Bob was spent.

I realized that everything around me had gone
completely and totally silent. Where only the people at the tables nearby had
been able to hear Bob’s remarks about how terrible Jaxon and I both were, how
disgusting it was for us to date, it seemed as though everything in the
restaurant had come to a screeching halt sometime during my tirade. I felt the
blood flood into my face. I glanced at my mom; she was still staring down at
her plate, but the look on her face was a mixture of hurt and humiliation,
rather than just embarrassment. Bob was still staring up at me in shock, his
eyes wide, and his mouth slightly open.

I felt exhausted and completely humiliated. I
couldn’t stay in the restaurant for a single moment longer. I took a deep
breath and swallowed against the tightness I felt in my throat. It seemed like
every last person in the restaurant was staring at me; there was no way I could
sit down and have dessert, or pretend like nothing had happened. There was also
no way that I was going to give Bob even a momentary opening to react to what I
had just said—I could only imagine what he would be like if I showed even the
slightest sign of backing down. I picked up my purse and looked at Mom again.
“I’ll call you later, Mom. Have a safe trip home.”

I walked to the door, and as I opened it to go out,
the restaurant seemed to come to life behind me; everyone was suddenly keenly
interested in pretending like nothing had happened at all. I shook my head as I
walked out of the door.
Fuck,
I
thought, stepping into the cold with the realization that Bob and Mom had been
my ride.
How the hell am I going to get
back to campus?

Luckily for me, some of the people who had been
competing that day were still on the mountain, not quite ready to end their
partying and celebration. I called one of the boarders who’d given me her phone
number and begged for a ride, telling her only that I’d gotten separated from
my team, that I’d had a situation with my parents that had gone nuclear, and I
needed a ride back to the town the college was in. I remembered that it would
be on her way. “Yeah sure, get to the lodge and I’ll give you a ride.”

I had just enough time for a beer to try and calm my
frazzled nerves before she and her friends set off to get back to where they
were going to school, a few miles north of the campus I lived on. I didn’t tell
them anything at all about the situation with Mom and Bob, but kept talking
about the tournaments to come and how exciting the day had been. They asked me
questions about Jaxon—they hadn’t missed the fact that Jaxon and I were
obviously an item—and I kept my perkiest, happiest act in place, telling them
about how we’d ended up on the team together, how he was helping me to get
better as a snowboarder.

I was exhausted—I would have been tired down to my
bones even if Mom and Bob hadn’t shown up, even if there hadn’t been a disaster
of a dinner to come after the long day of competition. I tossed my new friend
some cash for gas as a thank-you for giving me a ride, and bought her a coffee
when we took a pit stop. The only thing I wanted in the world was to get to my
dorm and to take a long shower and curl up in my bed. I kept thinking of all
the ways that I probably made the whole situation worse.

But in the back of my mind I couldn’t help feeling
like there was nothing more I could have done. I couldn’t have just sat there
and let Bob bad-mouth both Jaxon and me. I couldn’t just take it. After
everything that Bob had said about Jaxon, someone had to stand up for him. I
felt my anger building up inside of me again at the fact that this was the man
my mom was married to. How long would it be before he started bad-mouthing her,
too? He was an asshole of the highest caliber and if I could somehow manage to
never have to be in the same room as him ever again in my life, it would be far
too soon.

Chapter
Nine

By the time I managed to get across campus, and make
it upstairs to my room, I was completely fried. I had told myself over and over
again that I was going to take a long, hot shower when I got in, but I didn’t
even have the energy for that. I could still hear Bob’s angry words in my mind
as I walked through the door and veered left on shaky legs to my bedroom. I had
no idea where Jaxon was, or even if he had made it back to campus yet. I had no
idea what Bob and Mom were doing. I was exhausted down to my very bones; my
brain was reeling with everything that had happened.

I climbed numbly into my bed as soon as my bedroom
door was shut behind me. I curled up to the wall and buried my face in my
pillow and started to shake all over. I was so overwhelmed by everything that
had happened that in a matter of minutes I was crying, sobbing harder than I
had even when I’d broken bones. I realized that I had cried more in the past
year than I had for most of my life and that only made me cry harder. I thought
about the terrible things Bob said to Jaxon, the way he seemed to take so much
pleasure in making his son feel worthless and useless, and the sobs kept
coming.

I had gone from the highest high in my entire
life—making first place on a competitive field of boarders, all of my practice
paying off, getting the chance to win my victory right next to a guy I was in
love with without worrying for even a moment that someone would tell us we were
revolting—to my lowest low. When Jaxon had stormed off away from his father I
should have just followed him and gone away, I shouldn’t have even tried to
talk to Mom and Bob at all. I should have just left things the way they were.

My tears kept coming; they ebbed and flowed—one
moment I was sobbing so hard that I felt as if I might break a rib, and the next
I was gasping for breath, trembling but with no tears rolling down my face. At
one point I got up and turned my stereo on, but I barely made it back to my bed
before it hit me again and I was crying all over again.

How could my mom possibly love a guy like Bob? I
remembered the awful things I’d said. It wasn’t entirely fair—I knew that. I
probably shouldn’t have said that if I’d been his kid I’d have killed him. I
wondered if I was going to be hearing from the police and started crying
harder. But with everything I had heard Bob say to Jaxon, I couldn’t keep my
mouth shut. I had meant every word of it at the moment. I really believed that
if I had been subjected to years of that bullshit, I would have at the very
least lost my cool and tried to beat the hell out of a guy as miserable as Bob
was.

I shivered when I thought of the fact that my mom
was married to him. What in the world could she have possibly seen in him? I
pictured Bob laying into Mom the way he had done with Jaxon, and even with me,
and the thought of it turned my stomach. He was a bully, an asshole, pure and
simple. I thought of how happy Mom had been with him; but how could she even
remotely ignore the fact that he was obviously on a power trip? How could she
have let him light into me the way he had? I remembered how humiliated she had
looked when I fought back. I remembered the way she’d looked when Bob had made
a scene at the lodge months earlier, the way she had looked when he wouldn’t
get off the subject of Jaxon and me.