Stepbrother WHOA! (The Stepbrother Romance Series #5) by Claire Adams Page A

coming; they ebbed and flowed—one
moment I was sobbing so hard that I felt as if I might break a rib, and the next
I was gasping for breath, trembling but with no tears rolling down my face. At
one point I got up and turned my stereo on, but I barely made it back to my bed
before it hit me again and I was crying all over again.
    How could my mom possibly love a guy like Bob? I
remembered the awful things I’d said. It wasn’t entirely fair—I knew that. I
probably shouldn’t have said that if I’d been his kid I’d have killed him. I
wondered if I was going to be hearing from the police and started crying
harder. But with everything I had heard Bob say to Jaxon, I couldn’t keep my
mouth shut. I had meant every word of it at the moment. I really believed that
if I had been subjected to years of that bullshit, I would have at the very
least lost my cool and tried to beat the hell out of a guy as miserable as Bob
was.
    I shivered when I thought of the fact that my mom
was married to him. What in the world could she have possibly seen in him? I
pictured Bob laying into Mom the way he had done with Jaxon, and even with me,
and the thought of it turned my stomach. He was a bully, an asshole, pure and
simple. I thought of how happy Mom had been with him; but how could she even
remotely ignore the fact that he was obviously on a power trip? How could she
have let him light into me the way he had? I remembered how humiliated she had
looked when I fought back. I remembered the way she’d looked when Bob had made
a scene at the lodge months earlier, the way she had looked when he wouldn’t
get off the subject of Jaxon and me.
    I kept crying until I was too exhausted to cry
anymore and then just laid in bed, listening to my music. Cold numbness crept
through my veins and all I wanted to do was sleep, but I was too worked up
still to manage it. I wanted to be alone and I wanted to be able to stop
thinking about what an enormous clusterfuck the whole
situation was. I realized that it was entirely possible that Bob was vindictive
enough to cut Jaxon off, and to make Mom cut me off. It wouldn’t be impossible
to keep going to classes and finish our degrees—especially Jaxon, who was an
upperclassman. But it would make things harder.
    I started imagining the worst possible scenarios:
Jaxon and me on the street, both of us struggling to make ends meet with the
kinds of jobs that college kids were able to get, losing the chance to compete
because working and studying full time made it impossible to practice. We’d be
able to get through it but I couldn’t help but think that Jaxon would hate me
for it in spite of the fact that he really would be better off without Bob. I
could have held back. I could have just told him he was miserable and spiteful.
Or I could have left when Jaxon had. Instead I had let myself get consumed with
anger and rage and gave Bob everything he had ever dealt to either Jaxon or me
and then some. I had been so happy to see the pure shock on his face that
someone was actually standing up to him. I had enjoyed thinking that maybe, for
one second, he might feel the same pain that Jaxon had felt every time he
humiliated him.
    I realized as one album on my playlist transitioned
to another that I had been crying in my bed for the better part of an hour. I
shook my head at myself. All my muscles felt stiff, and I wanted a long, hot
shower, a snack, and to just curl up in bed and forget that the second part of
the day had happened at all. If I could just remember all of the good stuff and
nothing else—nothing from the point where Jaxon and I had been making out by
the stands—I could possibly be happy. I rubbed at my face; the salt from my
tears made my cheeks feel itchy and stiff, and I hated the fact that I’d been
crying so much. I was not a crying girl. I was an ass-kicking girl. I was the
girl who showed up at the frat party and drank everyone under the table, the
one who got sick air and sometimes landed