Page 17 of The Stepbrother 2: Noah

Noah had reached out but ignored him. What had happened between us needed to stay in the past. I did apologize for walking off that day.

Everything that day was just so weird and surreal, and it ended up becoming one of the worst days of my life. That was the day I got the call that my godfather, Lil Compton—Percy Simmons—had been murdered. Openly bisexual, he was known for running through men and women, but nobody knew he had one partner for years. Eddie Fletcher, his bodyguard of twenty years. I guess Eddie had enough of him and snapped when God daddy decided to propose to one of the women he was seeing. Murder-suicide. I was left to deal with God daddy’s estate since he left me everything.

It was a lot at first. His old flings came out of the woodwork with babies, claiming they were his, and random relatives showed up with their hands out—it was a mess. I was only twenty and completely unequipped to handle any of it, but I did. It matured me.

“Hey, are you okay, baby?” Devon squeezed my hand, pulling me out of my thoughts.

I forced a smile to reassure him. “I’m good,” I replied, though the truth was I wasn’t ready to be back home. It had been easier, less stressful, to stay away. But my momma would kill me if I missed her fourth or fifth “fiftieth” birthday party.

“Are we telling your parents we’re engaged?” He asked.

Two years ago, I’d run into Devon in Atlanta. He was in his second year of law school, and I was lonely. He was familiar. We became friends, then one day we started dating. Long, sweaty nights turned into a relationship. I hadn’t thought Devon and I would be compatible, but he kept me grounded. I wanted babies and a marriage young, and he was good for both.

My eyes fell to the ring on my finger. “I’ll kind of have to, with this on my hand,” I said, glancing at the 4-carat princess-cut diamond. Devon had bought it for me with his new lawyer bonus. It was gaudy, not something I would’ve picked, but I appreciated that he wanted me to have something nice.

Devon’s smile showed his excitement for our future. “I think your father likes me, so I can see us hanging out and doing stuff together. Maybe I could even become his lawyer.”

“Yeah, he does,” I lied.

Daddy did not like him. He thought Devon was pretentious, and my momma thought he was boring—the type you accidentally cheated on, she’d said.

“We should go in,” I hurried to change the subject and got out of the car, leaving him to follow.

The front door was open as always. As I walked into my childhood home, memories flooded back, stirring up my nerves. Here, I’d always been the little sister, begging for an ounce of attention. Back in Atlanta, I ran a successful record label andreal estate venture. I wanted to go back so badly. The house looked different now too—more sterile, with white furniture and expensive art. Momma said she hired a decorator to make the space feel more “mature.” If by “mature” she meant like a hospital, then sure, it was mature. Devon came in and grabbed my hand, maybe for support.

I held my breath when Maine walked out of the kitchen, dressed in a pretty yellow sundress, with her four-year-old son DJ on her hip. I loved my nephew to bits, he was the cutest little, light-brown, chubby-cheeked boy with hazel eyes. My parents used to bring him along when they visited, and I’d spoil him rotten, hoping to piss his momma off. Maine had gotten pregnant during her graduation celebration and didn’t know who his father was. I remember Noah telling her to slow down on the parties and drinking, but she hadn’t. Pregnancy had done her some good. she looked thicker, healthier now.

“Hey, Creed. Mom and Troy said they’d be back in a couple of hours,” she managed dryly.

“Nice seeing you again,” Devon offered with forced cheer, trying to play peacekeeper.

I wanted to roll my eyes so badly but didn’t. “Hey, okay,” I said back, just as dry. She called herself mad at me for not forgiving her when she wanted me to. What she didn’t understand was that she really hurt me. I expected her to have my back no matter what. Then when I left she started talking shit about me amongst the family and throwing shade on social media.

I put my purse on the sofa table, then took DJ from and sat on the couch with him in my lap, dismissing both Maine and Devon without saying it.

"I’ll take these upstairs,” Devon said, planting a quick kiss on the back of my head. He grabbed our bags and headed up the stairs, while Maine disappeared back in the direction of the kitchen. DJ, meanwhile, was babbling a mile a minute in my lap, waving his little hands around as he told me about his favorite superheroes.

One minute, I was laughing with DJ. The next, someone was shaking me awake. Disoriented, I blinked my eyes open to find myself staring into a pair of familiar blue eyes. Noah. I awkwardly jumped up, coming to my feet.

Noah looked good. He had aged but was still handsome. I looked around for DJ, and Noah answered my unasked question. “I put him in his bed for a nap. You were sleeping pretty hard,” he said before he reached out and pulled me into a hug.

“Welcome back, Creed.” The way butterflies fluttered in my stomach was ridiculous. He smelled so good. I had to pull back. I didn’t like feeling anything for him.

He stayed close. He was smiling at me too hard, and that made me think of Ashley. They’d been officially together for nearly four and a half years. He hadn’t really waited at all to jump into a relationship. It had thrown me for a loop when I heard, because before I’d left, I’d been lying in his bed with him pressuring me to talk about where we were going. I was not bitter though—not much.

“How have you been, Creed?”

“Why are you smiling so hard, Noah?” The more I looked at him, the less genuine it seemed, and just like that, his smile dropped.

Before he could answer, Ashley seemed to materialize out of nowhere. She attached herself to Noah.

“How are you, Creed?”

I pulled my eyes away from Noah to answer her. She had aged. She looked older than both of us. Petty, but that made the situation better.

“I’m fine. Thank you for asking, Ashley. How are you?”

She answered, and then nobody said anything for a cool thirty seconds. Feeling awkward, I excused myself to go find Devon to escape the situation. I couldn’t find him in any of the rooms upstairs, so I took the back stairs to the kitchen. The house was empty—until I passed the pantry and realized it wasn’t. I paused just outside the door, hearing voices. I could hear Maine and Devon talking, no, arguing. Something was wrong. Why in the hell were they in the pantry?

---