Wrong: A Stepbrother Romance

His firm grip held my cheek. “Good. But I’m not going to stop fighting for you till you want for nothing in this world, and it’s going to plague me every day of my life, so tell me. Tell me what I can do. I’ll find Owen. I’ll make him stand in front of your mother and say everything. I’ll do it.”

“Please don’t,” I whispered. “I don’t want him anywhere near my family.” Liam clenched his teeth but when he nodded in respect of my wishes, I exhaled. “There’s nothing you can do,” I lied, shaking my head. “I’ll handle it myself,” I murmured.

“That’s bullshit,” he snarled. “That’s a fucking cop-out because you don’t want to address this. What are you going to do to handle it? What?”

Something. That part wasn’t a lie.

When we got back to the apartment, Liam went straight for the shower. I knew he was angry. I knew he didn’t believe me. “I’ll handle it myself” sounded like another vague promise so we could just sweep the dirt under the rug and move on. But for once, it wasn’t.

I didn’t want to invite Owen back into my life. I knew that for sure. But if I had to, I’d retrieve the letters he wrote me. The pages he’d ripped out of his diary, detailing the first day he ever saw me, and every lewd, disgusting urge he felt. I had no idea why he thought I’d want it then. Technically, I still didn’t want it now. But if I didn’t want to lose Liam, I needed to do something new. If insanity was doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results, then I was certifiably that because I’d spent ten years hoping that being nice and ladylike for my mother would win back her love. But it hadn’t and it wouldn’t, so clearly, it was time to fight fire with fire. I needed something to confront my mother with, and that something was Owen’s shameful letters. But even before I could do that, I had another obstacle to overcome. I had to simply get my hands on the letters.

With Liam’s shower still running, I went to my room and charged my phone, kneeling on the ground and feeling appropriately low as I sent a text message to Ethan.

We need to talk. Can I come by the apartment tomorrow?

Chapter Twenty-Four

I sat with the meter running in the cab for ten minutes, typing and deleting my text to Aria, over and over and over.

I’m at my old apartment. I had to see Ethan. Will you come spot me?

I trailed my thumb across the screen. Chewing my bottom lip, I deleted the text for the last time and tossed my phone into my bag. I wanted Aria with me, but I knew what she would say. After an immediate “on my way,” she’d also tell me to reschedule the meeting in public and wait for her, which would obviously be ideal. But what I needed from Ethan was inside my old apartment, and my plan had been to keep my need for those letters a secret, so he wouldn’t know to use them against me. I hoped to talk long enough that perhaps he’d excuse himself to use the bathroom. Maybe even take a call or get a drink from the fridge. Whatever gave me enough time to go into the bedroom, open the drawer of my old nightstand and empty the contents into my bag. It was nerve-wracking, but there was no other way to what I needed. So I just had to do it.

“Sorry about that. Thanks,” I said to the cabbie before finally climbing out of the car. Once I did, I stood frozen on the sidewalk for a couple seconds. I hadn’t been anywhere near the Upper East Side since breaking up with Ethan and moving out of his apartment. It was too risky. His family owned four luxury rentals between Seventy-First and Eighty-Sixth Street, and half their units were occupied by friends of Ethan. And since every one of those friends made his business theirs, they’d been trying constantly to get us back together since hearing we were “taking a break,” according to Ethan. In the first few weeks, I responded to their pleading Facebook messages and emails, but after their words started getting aggressive, I stopped.

And, of course, I started sleeping with Liam, which meant just about no brain space for anything else in the world.

“Miss Blakely! Long time no see,” exclaimed Franco, the doorman. “How was your vacation?”

I cocked my head for a second then smiled. “Oh. It was great, Franco. I needed it. Thank you for asking,” I replied. There was no sense in confusing him. Clearly, a vacation had been Ethan’s go-to excuse for anyone who saw me leaving the building with suitcases. I should’ve known. Anytime something happened without being done on Ethan’s terms, in his eyes, it never happened at all.

“Sasha. Hey.”

I’d barely knocked before Ethan opened the door of my old apartment wearing a blue T-shirt and sweats, looking as if he’d just gotten out of bed. I blinked, surprised, since he rarely let anyone see him unshaven with his hair less than perfect. Of course, the one person who

ever got to see that side was myself. A part of me was glad that I wasn’t about to get the showy version of him with his signature brand fakeness and bravado, but another part of me wished he wouldn’t still treat me so familiarly, like I was still his fiancée.

“Hi.” The greeting I finally returned was stiff. “Can I come in?”

“Sasha, come on. Obviously.”

“Thank you,” I muttered, trying not to look outwardly panicked by the fact that I was stepping into what felt like a time capsule of the loneliest years of my life. It still smelled like the ground coffee beans I’d poured in little pots and put in every room, because the scent reminded me of Aria’s house. Next to the coat rack, there was still those bags full of clothes Ethan refused to return, because he didn’t see what was wrong with replacing my wardrobe without asking. In the living room, the leather sectional was still there, the left side still sagging from where I slept every night, waiting ages for Ethan to come home.

But my stomach went cold when I saw the one new addition – a dog crate in the corner, right outside the door of our bedroom. There was a pink leash inside along with a chewed toy. I turned to Ethan with wide eyes.

“You didn’t.”

He was in the kitchen now, preparing two lattes with the two thousand dollar espresso machine his parents bought for my twenty-third birthday. I shook my head as he broke into a smile, pouring a measured teaspoon of brown sugar into my drink.

“I did, baby.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

He didn’t retort as I’d imagined he would. Instead, Ethan pressed his mouth into a line as he brought the lattes over, nodding for me to take a seat on the couch. Breathing steady, I reminded myself of why I had come here. It wasn’t to curse Ethan out or remind him that he’d treated me like shit. I was trying to get into my old bedroom, preferably without him following me, and I was trying to grab the letters from Owen. For the sake of my plan, it was probably best to keep things at least civil. So I joined him on the couch.

“I can’t believe you adopted her.”

“Daisy. That was what you called her.”