Beautiful Bastard (A Step Brother Romance) by Gabriel Love

Author:Gabriel Love [Love, Gabriel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-12-23T16:00:00+00:00

Jess woke to Theo stoking the fire. She sat up and yawned, stretching her arms over her head.

“Good morning,” Theo said without looking her direction. “Power’s still out.”

“This happens,” she assured him. Every year she dealt with outages when the snows hit. Lines would come down, someone would wrap around a pole, or some other god-awful issue would take down the whole grid. It would just take time for them to fix it.

A glance outside proved the snow was still falling like crazy.

“Jess.”

Jess looked over at Jake who stood in the doorway, watching her and Theo. She got to her feet and made her way to his side. “Can we talk?” he asked her, his voice low.

She glanced over her shoulder at Theo who wasn’t looking their direction.

“Alone?” Jake added, taking her hand. His fingers laced with hers and she relented.

“Sure,” she said. She allowed him to lead her to their bedroom and they sat perched on the end of the bed while she waited for what would happen next.

“I’m sorry,” Jake said. “I should never have come over here drunk. I screwed up, can you forgive me?”

“You know how important this is to me,” she whispered, feeling her throat close around tears and agony.

His arms came around her and he held her gently while stroking her hair. “I know,” he said into her hair, his words quiet.

But Jess wondered if he really knew it at all or if he was just saying what he had to to get her to forgive him and take him back. Her mother had been a drunk. Jake had promised her he’d quit drinking.

And Theo’s words kept echoing in her thoughts. You’re the backup plan. “Where were you?” she asked suddenly. Pulling away from his grasp, she looked up at him and saw the shock in his eyes.

“I, uh, when? I was here last night.” He scrambled for an answer and she felt her heart sink to her toes.

“Before last night, where were you?” she asked more clearly.

And she could see it in his eyes that he was lying before he ever opened his mouth to talk. “I was at mom’s.”

Jess leaned over to grab her phone off her bedside table and glanced at Jake. “I’ll call her then, and thank her for letting you stay.”

Panic. That’s what she saw in his eyes. Pure, undiluted panic. She’d never questioned him like this before, but now, knowing what Theo had said, she had managed to back him into a corner. And now he had enough rope to hang himself with.

It was fascinating, really, that she’d not seen this sooner. Everything he’d been doing, all the actions followed by apologies and making up, all of it was to beat her down. To manipulate her. To make her into a girl who didn’t ask questions, who just found herself thankful he was back. Like she had the last two times.

Angry, she stood up and left the room before he could protest. In the living room, Theo met her.

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