Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 104501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 523(@200wpm)___ 418(@250wpm)___ 348(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 523(@200wpm)___ 418(@250wpm)___ 348(@300wpm)
“Um…”
I rolled my eyes. “For the record, I don’t want it to be me.”
“You don’t?” He looked pained, the lines around his mouth growing tight. “Well, it’s not you.”
“It’s not?”
“No.” He still looked pained.
“So who is it?”
He lifted a shoulder. “No one.”
“No one?” I motioned to my mouth. “This, right here. You don’t see it, but it’s on the floor.”
“Come on.” He glanced to the ceiling for a brief second. “I’m not that bad.”
“You are that bad. You’re the six-monther, remember? #Sixmonthguy.”
“Don’t start doing hashtags.”
“#Sorry.”
He let out a breath, sliding his hands in his back pockets. “Look. Truce, okay? There really is no girl. Ever since you said something about my pattern, it’s been bugging me. It’s not healthy, you know? To always have a girl with me? So I figure I should try to do something about it.”
“Like what?”
“Like—” He motioned between the two of us. “—what we’re doing here. We’re just talking. Nothing else. No flirting. No sexual innuendos, no signals being sent about hooking up later.”
“You do that sort of stuff?”
“Don’t you?”
I couldn’t even figure out my signals to myself. “No. You do all that in a regular conversation?”
“More or less.”
I had things to learn. “Wow.” So much to learn.
He grinned, seeming to relax. “It feels good. Refreshing.”
“What is?”
“A conversation that’s just about what we’re talking about.”
I felt a headache starting. “Okay. I can’t wrap my head around the kind of conversations you usually have, so let’s let it go.”
“Okay. Good.” His grin went up a notch, and his hands came to rest on my shoulders. He squeezed. “This is what being normal is like. Huh.”
I tensed and looked at his hands. “Not in the slightest.”
“What?”
I bounced my shoulders up. “Those.”
“My hands?” He let go and backed away, his palms spread out toward me. “That wasn’t a normal thing to do, was it?”
“Nope. That’s totally normal to do,” I paused. “If I were your girlfriend.”
“Right.” He backed away another step and slid his hands back into his pockets. “I might have some things to learn.”
“Don’t think about sex when you’re talking to a girl.”
“Well, don’t get ahead of yourself.” He grinned ruefully at me. “No guy can do that.”
“Then I’ve got nothing for you.”
“That’s okay. I’ll figure it out.”
And now cue the uncomfortable silence. Everything in me wanted to go see Caden. Marcus was there, talking to him. He could be saying things about me, about how I was leading him on, how I was hanging out with Kevin. I couldn’t defend myself. But instead of bursting in and protecting my relationship with Caden, I was stuck trying to teach my stepbrother how to be a normal, nice guy.
This conversation blew.
“Am I bothering you?”
“What?”
Kevin motioned to my face. “You did like eight eye-rolls in a row there. Is it Caden?”
My eyebrows shot right up. “Caden?”
“You do like him, don’t you?”
I couldn’t even think about lying because I already felt the heat inching up my neck, and my cheeks warmed. I looked down at the ground.
“It’s okay, you know.”
It wasn’t. He could say something. He could turn Caden against me, or worse, tell him what I was convinced Marcus was already saying. He could tell Caden I was obsessed with him. Or how delusional I could be.
Oh, God. Kevin knew my crazy better than anyone. I was already in the pre-stalker phase. I was beginning to recognize my phases.
Step one: realize you’re in love.
Step two: deny you’re in love.
Step three: start staking out his hangouts.
Step four: obsess every minute about him.
Step five: I gulped. I didn’t want to name it because I was pretty sure I was there. I didn’t want to know how far away I was from sneaking into Caden’s bed wearing lingerie. A restraining order came after that.
“Hey.” Kevin put his hands on my shoulders again.
I tensed.
He shook his head. “I know. I know, but I’m not being flirty here. I’m being a friend, or trying to be. It’s okay if you have feelings for Caden. I know a lot of girls do. Half the girls I’ve hooked up with were just using me to get to him.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
I nudged his hands off my shoulders.
He backed away, his hands in the air. “Listen, I’m glad you’re here. I was coming to find you.”
“I knew it!”
He lowered his hands to his side. “Not for that.” He sounded hurt.
I shrugged. He’d get over it.
“I was thinking we could start fresh, try to be the way my mom wanted us to be in the first place.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We should be more like family, you know? So I was thinking you could help me learn how to be a nice guy, and in the process, we could maybe become actual stepsiblings. What do you say?”
My eyebrows locked forward. “What’s the catch?” There always seemed to be one with him.