Stepbrother Bestie (A Stepbrother Romance Novel) Page 19

  Plus, in addition to adding a few more notches to my bedpost, I was also interested in what kind of attention I could gain for my typical beach body. Therefore, I knew that I had to keep up with my exercises, just in case.

  Since I hadn’t been to the beach since I was very young, I was extremely curious at exactly what this area had to offer a man with such a handsome, cocky and assured sense of self-worth.

  My body easily glided through the first fifty, but then I began to feel the prickle of discomfort as my muscles strained to accommodate the motions, while keeping in the even stride. My music wasn’t much help to keep a pace though, because it was far too slow. If I kept any kind of rhythm from what was blaring into my ears, I would never make it to my goal of one hundred pushups in one sitting.

  As I continued, I began to feel my back heat up with the force of the exercise. I moved up and down, up and down, faster, stronger and more efficiently. The stronger I was physically, the better I could make myself in every aspect of my life. I lived for fitness. I needed to feel powerful and I did.

  There were very few situations where I felt out of control. I knew how to manipulate people, almost at an expert level. It was a gift, and my physical stature, my strength, only made that gift more prominent.

  I smiled as I reminded myself that there were only twenty more to go. By now, I could feel every inch of my body beginning to burn with the power that came from growing stronger. My breath was still just as even as my stride, which was a big deal to me. I needed to ensure that whatever situation I got myself into, I never showed it that I was fearful.

  I had spent too many years being fearful. I had made one promise to myself: that I would never feel that way again. Sure, I was in every situation for my own personal gain, but I liked it that way. I was the only one who could let myself down, and I always found a way to have the power so that didn’t happen. I was confident in myself and intrigued by everything that surrounded me.

  I was used to getting what I wanted. For years, I had perfected the art of getting exactly what I was after, no matter what the cost. I learned at a young age that the only person who was going to get me what I wanted was myself, which spurred my attitude and foul mouth. This trait, which I kept so dear to my heart, in the effort of survival, tended to get me into a lot of trouble. However, I was always able to hold my own.

  Yet, part of that assurance was the knowledge that there was always the risk of it all catching up to me. I knew that, I understood that, and that was a good reason to just keep moving forward, being the best that I could be, and realizing that I was the creator of my own destiny.

  However, the only thing that I knew I needed to find, rather quickly, was a place to work out that would bring the heat like my gym back home. As encouraging as the pushups were, it wasn’t nearly the extent that I needed to keep up with my training.

  Once I found a gym and perhaps a couple of strongest man competitions to boost my ego, I would be all set. I snickered as I reached the last stretch of my pushups, feeling the singing in my lungs and throughout my body. I didn’t really need a stroke to my ego. It was big and prideful enough, but there was no harm in making me feel better about myself.

  After all, this was a chance to conquer new ground. Back at home, I had already won all of the competitions multiple times and therefore, it was beginning to get a little boring. In fact, in recent years, I had even noticed a decrease in attendance and effort, for it was obvious who was going to take home the championship.

  But all I ever cared about was giving myself a challenge, since I made sure that I was better than my competition before the day to prove it even arrived. So when others didn’t try to beat me, I almost felt like a failure, and that was unacceptable. I needed a challenge to beat, for I was really only competing with myself anyway.

  Therefore, I had known for a long time that I needed a fresh competition, to breathe new life into my advancements. I figured with this area, and all of its allure to natural beauty and the need to achieve perfection, there had to be some kind of competition around here.

  After all, this was a beach town, so while I didn’t bother to look up the extent to which the area had any competitions, I also didn’t anticipate any problems.

  Once I reached one hundred, without having even broken a sweat, I pulled myself up easily and thought about running downstairs. After all, I needed to find something or someone to occupy my time with.

  I was never in one place too long and I got bored quite easily; therefore, I was always looking for things and people with which to occupy my mind.

  However, before I had a chance to turn around and head out of the room, I saw a car pull into the driveway of the beach house. I was certainly intrigued. I didn’t know who that car belonged to, but there was something about the way the car looked that told me there was a hot female inside of it.

  What the fuck is this? I stopped to stare out the window with intrigue, careful not to be observed if she was looking up at the house. She sat there for a long time.

  I was fascinated by the stranger and I wondered why she had decided not to get out of the car. Did she have the wrong address? I wondered, even though I didn’t really care, beyond my own self-interests.

  There was minimal movement within the car, but every once and a while, I would get a glimpse of a carefully crafted waistline or a flash of hair, which kept me interested to find out why this woman was here.

  Finally, my persistence and aversion to losing interest paid off as I watched a beautiful blond woman emerge from the driver’s side of the car.

  I was right about her slender form and her luscious hair. However, her hair and her slim physique wasn’t the part of her that caught my attention. She was wearing cutoff shorts, which showcased her long, athletic legs, and a tank-top that helped pronounce her large, inviting breasts as she stood up straight and turned around to open the back car door. That revealed a perfectly firm, taut buttocks that caused my lips to slip into an appreciative smile.

  It took quite a lot for me to feel that a woman, or anyone, was on the same level of physical attraction as myself, especially since I worked so hard to ensure I maintained my own standards. But I had to admit that this woman was pretty close.

  “Damn…the wonders that I could show you…” I said to myself as I admired her from the window. With any luck, she is here to stay.

  I had the thought that perhaps she was a neighbor or something, but I couldn’t help but notice that even from the distance, she looked vaguely familiar. However, I wasn’t here to see if I knew her before this. My only goal at the moment was to make a good impression in order to satisfy the needs that were awakening inside me.

  In order not to waste any time, I turned and began my descent downstairs, hoping that I would be able to catch her sooner rather than later, and start laying on the charm right away.

  However, as I made it down the creaking old stairs, I noticed that the woman was already making her way into the beach house….My beach house? I thought, trying to figure out what exactly was going on.

  When the girl walked in the door, I spied my mother, finally detached from my stepfather for the moment. I moved over to stand by her. After all, a man standing by a woman, especially his mother, was supposed to be a sign that he was a good guy. I didn’t know about all of that, considering what I’d been told by people, women especially, who weren’t worthy of being or staying in contact with me, but it never hurt to give off that impression.

  Quickly, my mother was joined by my stepfather.

  That didn’t take long, I thought, but tried my best not to roll my eyes.

  “Hi, Dad!” the woman said as she saw my stepfather.

  Dad? I thought, looking at the girl, who now looked even more familiar than she did when she first made her way out of the car.

  My stepfather moved toward her quickly and gave her a hug. “Hello, Ashley! How was the ride up here?”

  Ashley? I thought, frantically trying to run back into my memory
bank to figure out exactly what was going on. A haze of different proportioned women flashed to the front of my brain. Ashley is such a common name…So many whores… I thought, but when I came to the mental image of a woman dressed in one of the ugliest bridesmaid dresses I had ever seen, thanks to my mother, with her hair pulled back easily in an updo, I knew exactly where I remembered her from.

  Wearing clothing that did not make her look like a Christmas tree had helped hide her appearance, since I was not aware there was such a glorious body underneath my mother’s horrible taste.

  Part of me thought then and was even more convinced now, that she had done that on purpose. That way, none of the bridesmaids, nor the maid of honor, would have even had a chance at looking better than her in her decadent wedding dress. However, the thought that it was an insurance policy was pushed aside in my mind, because of my mother’s naturally gaudy taste and insufficiency to think that far ahead about anything. But now, looking at Ashley, I might not have given my mother the credit she deserved.

  I looked over and glanced up and down quickly, testing my theory and thought, well, if it was my wedding and I had that body, against that bridesmaid, I would sabotage her looks; without question. Then, I sneered as I narrowed my eyes at my mother, feeling a sense of seething aggravation run through my veins before I shrugged and thought, you keep on insisting I am so much like my father. I tried my very best not to laugh, before I turned my attention back toward the scene unfolding in front of me.

  When they broke apart, Ashley shrugged. “It was fine. How are you?”

  “Good…Good…” My stepfather answered casually.

  I could tell there was a significant amount of strain between the two of them. I knew there was something that I didn’t understand and perhaps, it was something that I would never know, but as my stepfather eliminated any doubt about who this woman was, I found that I wasn’t as deterred as perhaps I should have been. Instead, as we shook hands and I smiled in a charming fashion, feeling like I had just won the lottery and telling her that I remembered her well, I had a sense that instead of being a challenge, this beautiful new notch in my bedpost was going to be extremely easy prey.

  Chapter 3

  Ashley

  Tyler’s smile was sickening, just like the first time I saw it when we were introduced at the wedding.

  Just as I remembered, he was nice to look at. But the way he stared at me, with his eyes piercing into me and his teeth stretching out around the corners of his smile, as though he had too many, he resembled a shark more than a man.

  I was very turned off by his slick, slippery demeanor. Even though his body looked healthy and he was the epitome of what most would consider handsome, with a sharp chin and a bronze complexion, I was immediately turned off.

  As I shook his hand, which was a strange thing to do, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the way he was glaring at me. His hand lingered, grasping mine possessively, almost as though he felt that I was only there for his own enjoyment.

  However, I thought that I shouldn’t be too harsh on him, even though I was rarely wrong about my judge of character. I was just having such a hard time keeping it all together. I quickly noted that no matter what he did or how he acted, just his presence annoyed me and, therefore, I couldn’t completely trust myself.

  You felt the same way at the wedding, though…I thought, before I quickly reminded myself that was a very emotional day as well. Much like being in this house, I hadn’t wanted my father to get married. He had only met the woman a few months before, and it never sat right with me that the first time she even bothered to meet me, was when she was already a part of the family, whether I liked it or not.

  There was something suspicious about the pair of them, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

  “I’m looking forward to the chance to get to know you,” I heard Tyler’s voice say, in a manner that was smooth as glass and likely loaded with crap.

  However, I didn’t want to come across as rude. Once I realized what he said, over the sound of my own thoughts, I smiled at him and answered, “Yes, thank you…” in the most gracious, interested voice that I could muster. But hearing it ring aloud in my ears, I knew that there was not as much smoothness behind the crap that I was peddling.

  I didn’t care to get to know either of them. I was uninterested in having any kind of civilized relationship with the people who, in my opinion, had stolen my father away from me during his time of weakness. But I reminded myself that I was doing this for my father and so, I kept in time with my charade, no matter how awful it came across.

  When Tyler finally let my hand go, his mother picked up my attention right behind him. “Hi, Ashley…”

  I turned towards the woman who was much younger than my father, but actually saw genuine kindness in her eyes, or at least that was how I perceived it. My stepmother’s expression was not the same as that of her son’s. She seemed to realize, to some degree, the level of my discomfort that not even my father was picking up on. The woman pressed her hand against my arm and moved closer to me, as though asking if it would be alright if she hugged me.

  I made the motion to hug her back, just to ensure the room did not grow to be any more awkward, and she seemed thankful.

  When we broke away, I caught a glimpse of my dad smiling, as though he was proud of what was going on. I wondered if he was ignoring the obvious strain, or if he was just oblivious to it, like he seemed to be oblivious to most things since he had met Theresa.

  I wondered how long he was going to keep up this sense of careful ignorance. After all, I didn’t want to be responsible for creating a problem; but being back in this house, in such a drastically different situation, after all of this time, no matter how I tried to convince myself that I needed to remain under control for my father, I wasn’t sure if I could keep my opinions to myself for an entire summer.

  While my father was welcoming and glad I was there, and his new wife was kind, but cautious around me, there was still something that didn’t quite sit right about them and their relationship. There were a lot of things that didn’t make sense to me, and more was wrong than right with my opinion of my stepbrother, but even my dad’s relationship was a little strange. I couldn’t quite figure it out, what I didn’t trust, but I figured throughout the entirety of the summer, there was sure to be some dirty laundry aired. Maybe through that, I would be able to pick out what was going on.

  For the moment, though, I decided the greatest threat to myself personally, was my own mind and my stepbrother. Although he was just as attractive as I remembered from our brief exchange at the wedding, I quickly became partial to the impression that Tyler likely spent more time prepping himself in the morning than I did. And that is not the kind of man that I am interested in…

  I didn’t even try to expand upon the thought that regardless of how I felt about him, we were family now. But despite trying to shut my brain off before it could actually make that connection, I had a solid thought about it anyway, which caused a shudder to run down my spine.

  Ewww! I thought, keeping in mind that even if I hadn’t pictured the two of us getting together, even in the loosest terms, I would still have thought the idea of them being part of the family creepy.

  There was just something about the whole dynamic between everyone that now resided in the household that just wasn’t right, and I had no idea what to do to make it any better.

  I was simply lost, for words as well as for a sense of understanding, that all I could possibly do was just sit there and stare, while my mind reeled in an effort to gain some answers.

  It took a moment for me to even realize that I had plastered a smile on my face and had resorted to making more noises than I had actual words. Thankfully, no one was really talking to me, but rather about me.

  My new stepmother continued to usher in one compliment after another, trying her best to make me feel overly-welcome into the family that my father had formed with both his new wife and, for all I k
new, freeloading stepson, while I was away, living the dream of a life I actually wanted at school.

  Eventually though, the introductions ran out of words to be uttered and I felt my father tug at my arm.

  “I’ll help you with your bags, sweetie,” he said carefully, as though he wasn’t quite sure how to speak to me anymore.

  That wasn’t much of a surprise. My father hadn’t really known how to speak to me since my mother died. Perhaps I reminded him of her in a way that was too painful to bear and so, it inherently made him feel guilty. Or maybe I was a constant, undying thought of his old life that he would rather forget, and he feared every time he opened his mouth, he might actually let the truth slip. Or there was a possibility that he genuinely never knew what to say to me, since outwardly, he was the one who had taken my mother’s death so hard.

  I knew for a fact that he was guilty about that. While I had never moved on inside my own head, and learned how to adapt in my life so I could keep some semblance of what life was like before I lost my mother, my father just stagnated.

  Until he met his new wife, he hadn’t done much except grieve after my mom passed away. Then, when he finally mustered up the courage to put his foot in the kiddy pool of dating, he married the first person he thought would have him.

  If that didn’t scream guilt, I wasn’t sure what did.

  Still, being my father, I loved him and therefore I was able to put his obvious misgivings aside to actually want to work with him.

  That was why I was here, secretly being humiliated and counting the moments until the summer was over, so I could return to a reality I preferred far more than the reality my father existed in.

  I followed him up the stairs as neither one of us spoke a word. He seemed nervous and jittery though, like he was trying to get up the nerve to say something to me. Even though I wasn’t a big fan of my father, I still managed to learn his ticks and his attitude.