Page 61 of Jealous Stepbrother
I can’t let her slip through my fingers again. I need to stop playing fucking defense, stop waiting for someone to corner us, and start laying the future out in stark, beautiful, inescapableterms.
My name, my protection, my bed—forever.
The thought makes my chest ache in a way I’m not ready to look at too closely because I know she’ll resist. To her it’s been a matter of weeks. She doesn’t know I’ve planned this for four years. That?—
A knock breaks into my head. It’s not tentative or measured.
Dad.
I glance at the clock. I reluctantly carried Scarlett back to her own bed just before dawn, then fucked her one last time in her childhood bed because why the fuck not?
Then I returned and crashed.
It’s past nine now but the house is quiet, which means the girlsare still asleep.
“Asher.” His voice is flat when I open the door but his sharp eyes are anything but when he looks meup and down,then glances past me to the rumpled bed. “Come with me. Let’s take a drive.”
I arch a brow. As far as I’m concerned we said everything that needed saying yesterday. “Why?”
“Hardware store run. The gardener says a few of the poolhouse window hinges are shot.”
“You’ve got multiple staff for that,” I reply dryly.
His mouth twitches, not quite a smile. “You’re here, aren’t you? Humor your old man.”
Every instinct says no, but some part of me—maybe the part that remembers being close to him before Annette and Scarlett—forces a shrug. “Fine. But if this ends with me hauling fertilizer, I’m sending you the dry-cleaning bill.”
He chuckles low, and for a while, we almost feel like we used to—spur-of-the-moment road trips with the windows down, the sea air whipping through, old memories surfacing without the sting they used to carry.
“See you downstairs in five?”
I nod. I could take a quick shower but I decide not to. I’m not ready to watch Scarlettoff ofmeyet and fuck it if my dad smells her on me.
Dragging on a clean pair of dark jeans and a T-shirt, I finger-comb my hair and step out. Glance down the hall. The need to see her burns like the sweetest addiction through my veins, but I suck it up and head downstairs.
She’ll be up when I get back. And if she’s up for it, I’ll take her for a drive. Somewhere private. There are several quiet roads in Montauk.
Maybe my sexy sister will let me spread her over the hood of my Aston Martin, get her engine good and purring.
I hide my pleased smirk as I slide into Dad’s car.
And for the journey, I indulge his reminiscing about when I was a teenager, how I’d practically lived in the garage tuning cars. I remind him how he bribed me with a case of beer the summer I rebuilt the old Porsche with him.
For a moment, it feels almost…normal.
But normal has an expiration date.
Two hours later, we pull back into the driveway, bags of useless odds and ends rattling in the trunk. And the second I step inside, the silence feels wrong.
It takes me a moment to register what’s missing.
Annette’s car isn’t in the garage.
Belly hollowing, I rush up the stairs, not even sure why I’m fucking panicking.
Her room is empty but there are signs of makeup and getting-ready girl shit, and her perfume lingering in theair.
I stalk back down as I activate the Find My Phone I placed on hers on her first day as my intern.
