STEPBROTHER Love 1 Read Online Free Page A

old.  If a twenty-year-old truly didn’t want to do something, they didn’t do it.
    Whatever he saw in my expression made his own smugness dim.  He shook his head and then turned his attentions back onto Katie.  He leaned in and whispered something into her ear, and she blushed and giggled.
    I interrupted Paul, taking him by the arm and pulling him toward the kitchen.  Maybe some of mom’s lasagna and strawberry lemonade would wash the sour ashes out of my mouth.
    I hoped.

 
    Chapter 5
     
    Loren Rollins was gushing over how jealous she was that I’d gotten a full scholarship to Chapel Hill.  I couldn’t imagine why.  Her family was rich by any standard, and she was already heading off to Stanford, where she was promised a spot on the basketball team.
    Her mother and father had met while attending Stanford, so Loren was a legacy.  She had even been invited to join her mother’s old sorority. 
    Maybe she just wanted to have earned something.  Maybe that was it.
    So I kept listening and trying not to look uncomfortable about it.
    I saw mom and Paul talking out in the kitchen.  He’d practically eaten his weight in mom’s cooking, complimenting her on every new dish he tried.
    As if he’d never had her cooking.  She’d cooked all the time when they were married.
    A girl I’d only spoken to once while in line for lunch flitted past with a piece of my mom’s strawberries and lime ice box cake, making my mouth water, and my mental calculator—which was now up to forty-seven classmates—wondered how many of my classmates had tagged along with someone I knew, and how many just crashed.
    It was an open invitation, sure.  But I meant an open invitation for my Facebook friends.
    Just then I saw Joshua pulling Katie Boyd by the hand across the room toward the hallway with the master bathroom and mom and mine’s bedrooms.
    Katie looked tipsy, but not as if she wasn’t ready and willing to follow Joshua wherever it was he was taking her.  Her face was flushed, and she had a dopey smile on her face.
    They disappeared into the hallway and I turned and headed for the kitchen.
    Strangely enough, the kitchen was empty.  Not a soul in sight.  Which should have been a good thing, but being alone made me realize that I’d wanted mom and dad to be in there, so I could comfort myself with their presence.
    I mean, they hadn’t been in the same room since they split up, opting to do their divorce via their attorneys.  Paul would call when he’d pick me up, and I’d rush out to the car so he never felt he had to come inside. 
    Then I spotted something strange lying on the tile floor, something silky and daffodil yellow.  I picked it up and was grossed out that they were someone’s panties… even worse, I recognized them from all the laundry I’d done.
    They were mom’s!
    I heard something crash to the floor over behind the pantry door.
    Something told me to run.
    I should have turned around and never looked back.
    But I didn’t.  I walked over to the pantry door like some kind of zombie, taking the doorknob in hand.
    But I stopped.
    I stopped with my hand on the cool brass doorknob, my mouth feeling dry, and my mind jumbled one second, and strangely blank the next.  Like when the cable cut out.
    “So what’s Princess Cali up to?”
    I let go of the doorknob and whirled around.  Joshua stood on the other side of the kitchen, a cruel leer stretching his lips.
    Katie Boyd stood by his side, her lipstick smudged and her hair mussed.
    My mind was going through sensory overload.  I just held mom’s panties in my hand and looked over to the pantry door, my mouth open but nothing coming out.
    Joshua’s eyes danced from the panties in my hand, to the pantry door, to me; his leer turning into a broad, wicked smile.
    Damn, he had pretty teeth...
    He let go of Katie’s hand and walked over to and then past me.  He made a show of cracking his neck, shrugging his shoulders, and then clasping and unclasping his