I turned my back to him and hugged my sister from behind. She smacked me with the spatula, leaving a blob of pancake mix on my nose. I hopped up on the counter and used my finger to get it off and lick it up.
Levi came up to me, his eyes fucking furious as he opened the cutlery drawer. He gave me a challenging look, making me move my legs, and I quickly checked to find my mother fully engrossed in her newspaper and my sister frowning at the pancakes.
Then, instead of pulling my legs to the side, I spread them as wide open as I possibly could, pulling the drawer open for Levi and giving him an innocent look.
“Fork? Spoon?” I asked him, my fingers touching the cool steel of the cutlery. “What do you need?”
He hissed and grabbed a knife from my fingers. The words he whispered in my ear came so suddenly but felt so damn exciting.
“I should play with you using this as punishment.”
A whispered promise against the shell of my ear, and then he was gone, and my legs snapped back shut.
I got off the counter and Amanda loaded my plate with burnt pancakes.
Well, to be fair only half of them were burnt.
The rest were so raw they were still a bit runny.
We all sat down to breakfast like one big, fucking fake family.
Mom didn’t look up from her paper, and Levi didn’t look up from his phone. Amanda rolled her eyes and got her own out, and I just sat there and miserably sliced my pancakes into tiny pieces. Nobody said a thing, and the room was quiet and boring. My mind kept replaying the events of last night, and I wanted to hate Levi, hate myself for what had happened… but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.
“Well, I’m off,” Mom said with a heavy sigh, barely looking at any of us as she got up and left a kiss on Amanda’s forehead.
It always hurt a little when she acted like that, like Mandy was her only daughter. I never mentioned it though. I wasn’t brave enough.
I watched my sister drown her pancakes in maple syrup while Levi followed Mom outside. I heard them arguing in the hallway, and for the umpteenth time, I wondered how long it would take them to get that damn divorce already. Of course, I already knew the answer. Not for another four months, not if my mom had anything to do with it.
Levi and Mom had signed a prenup before they got married.
We were never poor. Mom had a great job since we were born, and she only spent a few months with us as babies before returning to it. We’d never known our father, and we were both fine with it staying that way. Mom used a sperm donor, because she always said men weren’t worth the trouble of a relationship. I didn’t know what category that put me and Mandy in, but once again, I was too afraid to ask.
Then Levi came along.
And he wasn’t just well-off, he was rich.
The car he drove was flashy, and so were his clothes. Mom told us his watch cost tens of thousands of dollars, which made my mouth drop and made Amanda look at our new stepfather with even more interest. He lavished us with expensive gifts, always. It was only when he and Mom had a terrible fight about us using him that I asked Levi to stop. And while he still bought Mandy designer bags and clothes, he gave me different kinds of presents.
A book he enjoyed.
The NYC shirt.
A Build-A-Bear I was much too old for but still slept with every night.
I thought the gifts were more meaningful than Amanda’s, and I always thought he secretly liked me better. I would never brag about it, though. Just knowing it was enough for me.
But while Levi’s business kept booming, Mom’s slowly felt off a cliff.
I didn’t realize we were having money problems until I heard them fighting, and by then, the whole thing was doomed anyway.
And now, I knew what Mom was trying to do. We all knew.
The prenup stated she wouldn’t get any money off Levi if they got divorced before three years were up… And we all knew Mom was trying to bide her time. She needed that money. We all did.
I wasn’t sure how Levi felt about the whole thing, and I wasn’t about to ask, either.
But when I heard the front door slam, I still got up and walked into the hallway, forgetting about my sister who was texting one of her boyfriends.
Levi was leaning against the hallway wall, and in the cool morning light, his hair looked grayer than ever before.
I kind of liked it.
“Hey,” I said softly.
When his eyes snapped to mine, I tugged at the hem of my shirt self-consciously. So much for being confident.