Shackled: A Stepbrother Romance Novel (4 page)

“
D
o
you have to antagonize the poor girl?” Dad asked after the slam of her door echoed through the cabin.

Have to? Probably not. Want to? Well…

I shrugged and turned around under the pretense of checking the refrigerator for food, pointedly ignoring the look of disappointment Leslie was giving me.

“Why wouldn’t I? She just took off after graduation and refused to speak to me again. It’s pretty damn obvious she’s not interested in being friends anymore.”

I wasn’t going to take
all
the blame here. Sure, I behaved like an asshole. No, I hadn’t done the right thing and the fault there was entirely mine.

But she never even gave me a
chance
to explain. It was like the moment her feelings got hurt, the entire twelve years of our friendship suddenly meant nothing to her.

“We may not know what happened between you two, but don’t you
dare
try to imply that it was all on Fiona,” Leslie chided. “It takes two to tango.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at her words, even though the truth of what had really gone down between us gave me a sinking feeling that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. I just couldn’t bring myself to admit to either of them that the fight itself was entirely my fault.

So I did the only thing that made sense to me. I lied.

“Yeah, well… I suppose we both screwed up.”

I had a nagging feeling that if I didn’t put things into play soon, Fiona was going to be gone before I even had a chance to get a word out. Knowing her, she was probably on the phone right now with Brenda, begging to be rescued from her big, bad, ex-best friend.

For someone who was supposed to be a mature college student, sometimes she acted as if she had never left middle school. Fiona was the type who had a hard time letting go of habits once they formed, many of which were learned from the few female friends she had over the years.

I could just picture it now—her lying back on the bed and staring up at the ceiling while she whined on the phone about spending time with me to whomever would listen.

But then again, I supposed that was one of the things that I absolutely loved about her. Fiona was nothing if not predictable.

Whenever she was lying, she would bite her lip and avoid eye contact. When she got even the slightest bit embarrassed or flustered, her cheeks would burn red. If anything sexual was said around her, she would fidget. If she disagreed with someone but didn’t want to say anything, I could tell by the way she pursed her lips together. It was subtle—but it was there. It seemed that no matter how old she got, she still couldn’t figure out how to control her reactions.

Which, in my opinion, was a good thing.

Sure, spontaneity was great sometimes, but there were arguments to be made about people who were easy to read. Especially when it came to women. They were hard enough to figure out already without any additional mystery.

I could provide all the spontaneity we ever needed. I had done so during our entire friendship and it always worked out well.

Except that one time.

My jaw clenched at the reminder. I needed our parents to leave pretty much immediately
.
I had a lot to do and a very limited amount of time to do it in. The sooner I got started, the better.

“I’m going to do everything I can to fix things between us,” I promised when I realized Leslie and my dad were still staring at me warily, hoping my confident tone would ease their concerns.

“Good. Now give me a hug,” Leslie ordered, opening up her arms. I gave in to her request, but refused to let the moment get too emotional. Too
motherly
.

Because I was quite sure Leslie would gut me where I stood if she knew what I was
really
planning to do with her daughter this weekend.

“See you Monday, son.”

After a brief pat on the back, our parents w walked out of the cabin and headed back to the car. I subtly watched from the front window, forcing a smile and waving as they backed out of the driveway.

When I lost sight of the car, I turned back to the luggage and grinned.

If she really was sleeping, then this was going to be easy.

If not, then it was going to be ridiculously difficult.

Either way, I was going to do it.

No time like the present,
I thought as I dug between my carefully arranged clothes and pulled out the pile of chains.

I
had
no idea how long I was out for, but it was an unfamiliar noise that pulled me out of my nap. It was almost like a snap or a click, and for a brief moment, my half-asleep mind panicked at the thought that I might have actually broken the door when I slammed it.

When I moved to sit up, I was abruptly jerked back by something on my arm.

“What the—”

“Morning, sunshine!” Jonathan chimed from beside me, startling me to the point that a shrill scream slipped past my lips. He winced and raised a hand to cover one ear. “
Jesus
. Please don’t do that again. I’m rather fond of my ability to hear, thanks.”

“What are you doing in—”

My question cut short when I tried to stand up, only to feel that same pressure on my wrist again. When I looked down, there was a thick metal band snapped around my wrist and a chain attached to it.

My eyes widened with horror as I followed the chain, quickly realizing that it was attached to another cuff on Jonathan’s own wrist. The silence was thick as I dragged my eyes up to his, my mind not working fast enough to come up with a response.

Jonathan did, though. He smiled brightly and shook his hand, the long, thick chain that tethered us together jingling from the movement.

“I think this is a great way to kick off our bonding session, don’t you?”

Every frazzled emotion that I felt melted away all at once—too weak to compete with the sheer amount of
rage
I felt boiling my blood. I watched his smile fade as I snarled and lunged towards him, knocking us both off the bed with the sudden force.

I was sure that he was trying to calm me down, but I couldn’t even register the words. I raised my fists and beat them as hard as I could on his chest, feeling hot tears of frustration pooling in the corners of my eyes when he just laughed at my attempts to hurt him.

“Let me out of this thing
right now
or I swear I’ll—”

“You’ll
what?
” he mocked, roughly gripping my wrists and flipping us over until he had me pinned to the ground. I squirmed in his grasp as I felt the tears overflow, turning my head to the side so he couldn’t see them. “Tell me what you’ll do, Fiona.”

“I’ll call Mom,” I whispered pitifully.

“Oh, will you? I mean, sure, I’ll probably get into some deep shit, but you won’t be immune to it when I tell her that you weren’t even going to
attempt
to make up with me. You were going to call Brenda and run off, weren’t you?”

“I was not!” I argued, defiantly turning my head to meet his gaze.

But I knew this was a battle I couldn’t win. I wound up biting my lip and looking up to the ceiling, knowing that he would instantly recognize the tell. I was a terrible liar and he fucking
knew
it. He knew exactly what to look for to call my bluff. That just made me even angrier.

“Oh no? So all those sexy outfits you packed are for me?” he asked, smirking triumphantly as I renewed my efforts to squirm out of his grasp. It was no use, though; he was far stronger than I was. “Sweetheart, I appreciate it and all, but you don’t have to go through so much trouble to impress me.”

“They aren’t for
you
,” I hissed. “Fine! I was going to call Brenda. Excuse me for not wanting to spend my winter break being forced to bond with you. I don’t want to do
anything
with you!”

I spat the words out with disgust, hoping they would hurt him. Make him feel anywhere near what I had when he blew me off right after I told him I loved him. He knew me far too well not to realize how hard it had been for me to say those words to him.

Yet, he still broke my heart without a second thought.

Asshole.

“You wound me. But don’t act like I’m particularly happy about this shit either.”

Despite the fact that every damn logical part of my brain screamed at me not to rise to the bait, I couldn’t convince my body to stop itself. I shifted my hips, let my legs fall open, and pressed up. I smirked when I felt the very obvious bulge in his jeans directly against my core.

I couldn’t help but to smirk as I said, “I don’t know. You seem pretty happy to me.”

Just like my brain had tried to warn me, it quickly became obvious that it had been the wrong thing to do. Jonathan’s eyes narrowed even as his pupils blew out, zeroing in on my face. I swallowed hard, hoping he wouldn’t see the movement, but he did. One corner of his mouth turned upwards and he leaned just barely forward, bringing our lips only inches away from one another.

My breathing hitched and my neck craned to lift my head to his, but as my eyes began to drift closed, my mind replayed the sight of catching Jonathan screwing that girl as if it had just happened.

“Get off of me,” I whispered harshly, jerking back as I recalled the look on his face when he realized I had walked in on them. He didn’t even pull out of the girl. He just blankly stared at me until I couldn’t see him through the blur of my tears as I turned around and ran.

Good times
, I thought bitterly.

“Get off of me!” I shouted, my momentary lapse in sanity disappearing beneath the weight those memories still held.

Jonathan seemed able to sense where my mind had gone and he rolled off, sitting beside me and propping himself up against the bed. The chain between us was fairly long, giving him plenty of room to cross his arms over his chest while he shot me an emotionless glare.

“We really need to talk, Fiona.”

“No, we
really
don’t,” I disagreed with a harsh shake of my head. “What I
need
is for you to take this damn shackle off so I can get the hell out of this cabin.”

Much to my irritation, he blatantly ignored me. “Look, what happened on prom night was—”

“I don’t care, Jonathan,” I said miserably, raising my hands in mock surrender. “I just don’t. There’s nothing to fucking say about it because I. Don’t.
Care.
”

His eye twitched once before he clenched his jaw, obviously fighting back whatever it was he wanted to say. Or shout. Either one wouldn’t have surprised me. Jonathan was nothing if not passionate.

“
Liar
,” he muttered, just loud enough for me to hear it. I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off with a wave of his hand. “Tell yourself whatever the hell you want, but no matter what you say, you’re stuck with me for the next three days. Literally.”

As charming as his smile was, all I wanted to do in that moment was slap it right off his face.

Without even considering my actions, I did exactly that.

A
sharp blow
across my cheek was pretty much the
last
thing I expected from Fiona. I raised a hand to my face in disbelief, scoffing at how absurd the notion was even though it had literally just happened.

She seriously fucking slapped me.

I tried to save face by pretending that it didn’t bother me, but it did. This was going to be a hell of a lot harder than I’d thought. Sure, I’d never expected her to just lie back and accept an apology, but I definitely hadn’t expected her to
hit
me.

The semester she’d spent at college had changed her a little more than I realized. The Fiona I knew was stubborn as fuck, but incredibly mild-mannered. In the past, she would have just pulled a face at me and sulked. Angry outbursts were never her style.

She must really hate me now. Or at least she thinks she does.

“So help me—Jonathan, let me go right the fuck now. We have
nothing
to talk about,” she practically
growled
out, her anger making her tremble.

She didn’t even realize that she was turning me on.
Fuck
, she looked feisty as hell as she harshly pulled on the shackle in a vain attempt to get it off her wrist.

But what did she really expect me to do? Just give in to her demands because she slapped me? Unlock the chain and let her flee from the cabin and my presence and ignore all the very real issues that we needed to talk about? She knew me better than that, or at least I thought she did.

“I beg to differ, sweetheart,” I argued with a chuckle, rubbing the stinging skin of my face while I shook my head. “If we didn’t have anything to talk about, you wouldn’t be so fucking hostile.”

Fiona raised her hand to slap me again. Once bitten, twice shy. I caught her wrist and pushed her down, pinning her against the floor while she glared at me. The new position didn’t save me from the verbal half of her assault.

“I wouldn’t be hostile if you weren’t such an
asshole
.”

She squirmed beneath me and I cursed our arrangement, my erection once again brushing against parts of her that I had no business being near. At least not yet. I gritted my teeth together and pushed myself up, trying to get away from her hips as she used them to try to buck me off.

“Listen to me for one fucking second,” I ground out, letting out a sigh of relief when she stopped moving. “I owe you an explanation.”

Some of the anger melted out of her gaze and while that should have made me happy, the look that replaced it felt more like a punch to the gut than a victory. She sadly shook her head and I silently cursed at myself when I saw her eyes beginning to tear up again.

“Maybe you do, but I don’t want to hear it. You’ve done enough,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion.

Then the walls went back up and the hope of trying to fix things between us started to slip away. Because looking at her closed off expression now, I realized that I hurt her far worse than I originally thought.

She hadn’t been lying when she told me she loved me. And I broke that.

I
had
done enough. More than enough, actually.

I pushed myself up and crawled as far away from her as the chain between us would allow, running a hand over my face as I contemplated this turn of events. My mouth opened and closed numerous time as I tried to think of something funny or smart to say. Something to make her feel better.
Anything
to break this terrible silence.

But that look on her face...

Part of me wanted to let her go, let her move on even if it meant I’d spend the rest of my life regretting it. But the larger part—the selfish part—still needed to try.

At the very least, I owed her an apology. Whether she wanted it or not.

I glanced back and saw that she hadn’t moved from where I left her lying on the floor, just staring blankly up at the ceiling. I swallowed the lump forming in my throat and closed my eyes, trying to will away my doubts and figure out my next move.