It should probably weird me out that I fucked him, since our parents are married, but it just doesn’t. The whole stepbrother thing isn’t really a thing to me. We didn’t grow up together. Hell, we barely even know each other. Beyond knowing that his dad puts too much pressure on him, and he’s pursuing a business degree, I have no idea what he does for fun. Or what he does in general.
Yet, I can’t deny that there’s a pull to him. Even when he was being a dick there was a magnetism about him that made me oh-so-aware of him whenever he was near me.
It’s the same for all of them.
The difference is, I don’t have to hide it with the others.
Not at home at least.
At the Kensington McMansion though… I definitely have to hide it. And considering today is Thanksgiving, and Chase and my mom decided to go all out and host the Becketts and St. Vincents—as well as two other families I’ve never met before—it is not a day to be thinking about all of my extracurriculars.
“Did you see Joan’s nose job? Dr. Botch Job calling,” Susie, one of the girls from one of the other families here, bitches to Jessica, the daughter of another. I can’t even remember their last names.
“Oh, God, it was awful, but not as bad as Tiffany’s boob job. She’s lopsided, poor girl. That’ll teach her to take the cheap route. I told her to go to Dr. Pearson. He never does a bad job,” Jessica retorts, and it takes everything in me not to roll my eyes.
Somehow I got shoved in this room with my mom, these two vapid bitches, and their moms; who are currently gossiping on the sofa opposite.
Beam me up, Scotty. I amsodone here.
The puppies came with us at least, and Shadow is lying beside me on the couch, keeping the gremlin-like women away from me.
If I’d have known the guys were going to just abandon me when we got here, I’d have refused to come at all. My only small mercy to this point is that my mom hasn’t dropped news of her pregnancy yet, so everyone isn’t cooing about the baby.
Just thinking about it makes me lose my appetite.
I can’t lie and say that I don’t have a lot to be thankful for this year. Hell, in the last three months my life has changed entirely. If you'd have told me at the start of summer that I’d be sitting here like this right now, I’d have laughed until I cried.
But there are still things in my past that haunt me, especially this time of year.
I already know Christmas is going to be dire. Usually, I hide away, and mom’s always been too strung out, too drunk, or too focused on a man to really care what I did.
Christmas was Iris’s favorite.
It wasourfavorite.
And now it’s nothing but a reminder of the worst day of my life.
But I have a whole month to dread that and the rest of this day to get through first.
“—Briar?” I look up and realize my mom was talking to me and I hadn’t heard a damn thing.
“Sorry, what?” I say, smiling apologetically.
She quirks a brow at me, but smiles anyway, though I can see the frustration in her eyes at me not being the darling little daughter like the other two. “I was just asking if you’re looking forward to the Christmas break, sweetheart. Chase and I are going away with everyone to a ski lodge in the mountains, but I know the boys wanted to stay behind. I figured you’d be doing something with your friends.”
She has got to be kidding me right?
Small mercies, I don’t have to see her on Christmas Day.
“I haven’t really thought about it,” I tell her. “But yes, I’ll probably make plans with my friends.”
She doesn’t have to know that I have all of about three friends, one of which is Emerson, who dropped off the face of the earth when I started at Saints U.
“That’s lovely.” Her saccharine smile makes my stomach twist and I’m thankful when the five of them start talking among themselves again about people from the club, and what happened at the latest charity gala.
God, I can’t imagine that being my entire life.
I will never, ever, be the gala wife.