Stepbrother Surrender: A Step Romance Novella by Zoe Blair Page B

regretting not giving Brandon much of a chance.  Despite my
not buying what I figured to be an “act,” Brandon had been less invasive when
he’d visited.  He teased some, but it almost seemed friendly and
light-hearted.  I wondered if I had the wrong impression of him.
     
     
               Of
course, I might have acted differently if I’d known I wasn’t going to see him
again for another four years.  We lived in Miami, and Brandon went to college
in Los Angeles. He couldn’t have picked a farther place from us on the
continent, it seemed.  And with the hit dad’s bank account took just to fly
Brandon back out here for one visit, it wasn’t feasible to have Brandon come
back too often.
     
     
               It
would have been one thing if his mom and my dad stayed together.  Of course he
would’ve come home more often, but after that first visit our parents got
divorced and his mom moved back to Tennessee.  This gave Brandon virtually zero
reason to ever return to Miami.
     
     
               I
definitely felt bad for dad, but inside I’d been kind of relieved; my chapter
with Brandon was seemingly over, after all. And I was back to being dad’s only
concern.  Sure, I could’ve been nicer to Brandon while he visited for the last
time, but how was I supposed to know it would be the last?  And besides, it was
a great opportunity to move on from that terrifying chapter in my life.
     
     
               Plus,
I was getting older now and thinking forwards, not back. I was busy with school
and afterschool programs to seal a nice scholarship.  And with the way my body
was developing, boys were making their way onto my agenda too.
     
     
               After
Brandon moved to LA, he would send me short emails around the holidays, but
they read like correspondence from a loose associate, and not a sibling.  All
of that was fine with me because I never planned to respond with anything more
than, “Yeah, you too.”  He just wasn’t family to me, but I guess I never felt
like he was in the first place.  It was just two years were a strange boy and
his mom came to live with us and we didn’t get along at all.
     
     
               I
hadn’t really been paying much attention to Brandon though, but all this time,
my stepbrother was quickly maturing into a real man, and a gorgeous one at
that.
     
     
               In
fact, the one time I’d glanced at his social media profile a few years ago, I
saw a picture of him and caught my gaze lingering on his abs.  It was a photo
from a pool party, and he must have just stepped out because his tight skin
glistened in the sunlight.  He had the kind of stomach you only saw in
magazines, that you convince yourself doesn’t exist in real life.  For that
moment, I wasn’t looking at my stepbrother, I was looking at an incredible sexy
man.
     
     
               I
remember breaking my gaze and thinking to myself how wrong it was to be
attracted to him.  Then I quickly closed out my browser.  Brandon and I weren’t technically related, but it was too close for comfort. 
     
     
               Because
we had been step- siblings living under the same roof for two years,
we’d still seen each other walking around the house in our underwear or getting
in trouble for this and that by our parents like normal brother and sister.  Of
course, Brandon didn’t look like that when I saw him in his underwear. 
He used to be a kind of pudgy football player, the kind who had the weight the
team needed but with no real definition.
     
     
               We
didn’t share that kind of life for more than those two short years, but we had shared it.  Besides, it’s not like I would have even met him if it weren’t
for our parent’s marriage.  And even though it was hell back then, and we had a
very frustrating past, it was still a part of our history together.  Well,
‘frustrating’ is an