Chapter Eight
Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, I immediately think when I hear Dex’s voice over the music in the other room. Wild pulls his mouth off mine reluctantly but remains planted very much in my personal space before he turns his gaze toward the source of the voice.
He blinks his eyes a few times. “Wait, am I awake, or did I pass out? Because I swear this is a scene from Pornhub.”
I resist the urge to laugh because I’m not sure how this conversation is going to go. “Dex…” I start before letting out a breath. “Ummm… well, Wild and I…”
“We’re together,” Wild interjects forcefully. “So if you could kindly tell your guy to lose his hard-on for her, that’d be great.”
His mouth drops open before he nods in what seems like approval. “Man, I love when hot people are together,” he says before taking a hit of his vape and blowing it off to the side. “But didn’t you guys grow up together? I thought you met when you were barely out of diapers.”
“Sort of.” I wince.
“And I’ve been in love with her ever since,” Wild adds.
“Oh my God, this is spicy. I love this for you guys. So you’ve been hiding this all along?” he asks, and I already know I’m going to be grilled for every detail the next time Dex and I are alone.
I nod. “It’s hard to explain when you’re just getting to know someone.
Like ‘yes, I actually have an on-and-off boyfriend who’s also my ex-stepbrother, but unlike the movie Clueless, we’ve been in each other's lives forever and were basically raised as biological siblings.’ It’s just easier to keep it to myself,” I ramble, instantly regretting going that far into detail.
“When the fuck were we ever off?” Wild snaps, and I feel the tension radiating off him before I even meet his gaze.
“You barely talked to me this year, for one.”
“I don’t give a fuck. We’ve never been off. Don’t say that shit again. I’ve always been yours and vice versa,” he grits out at me.
I hadn’t meant it like that, and while his growly tone always turns me on, he’s choosing the wrong time to pick a fight with me over this. “Then why did you take that bitchy Little Mermaid out on a date?” I snap.
“Oooh,” Dex chimes in.
Wild’s face falls, and he shakes his head, ignoring Dex’s light instigation. “I don’t want to get into this now.”
Thaaaat’s what I thought.
“I only meant that we’ve been hiding this for… a really long time,” I say before turning back to Dex. “I love him. I’ve loved him my whole life. I never really explained how my dad died and everything that transpired after, but… it’s all tied up in that.”
Dex nods. “Well, I’m not going to tell your business. And I mean… you’re not siblings, and if your dad died when you were a kid, that means he’s no longer your stepbrother, right? Did his mom adopt you?”
“No,” I state, thankful I’m able to give that answer.
“Well, who cares. It’s only weird if you guys make it weird, skulking around in corners like you’re ashamed of it,” he says, waving his hand to indicate that's what he thinks we’ve been doing.
“We only recently decided to go public with this and…”
“Wait, am I the first to know?” he asks as if he’s excited to be in on something no one else knows.
“I guess? His mom obviously knows that something’s been going on for years, but I guess technically, you are the first, yes. She made it perfectly clear when we were younger that what we were doing was wrong, so I guess that’s the reason behind our… hesitation to take this public.”
Memories of lectures that left me feeling like I was doing something wrong or that I was sick because of how I felt come flooding back, and an uneasy feeling forms in the pit of my stomach. And because Wild is so in tune with my emotions, he notices instantly.
“Dex, can we meet you back at the table?” he asks just as my gaze drops to the floor.
I vaguely hear his reply, but it doesn’t register as I’m thinking about a particularly ugly argument that ended with Sara telling me my father wouldn’t approve of this and, worse, that he’d be disappointed.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Wild’s hands are back on my face, and while they do provide comfort, I back out of his grasp.
I wrap my arms around myself to try to stop the chill shooting through my bones. “This isn’t the place for this conversation.”
“Then we’ll leave.”
“No. I want to stay. But are we crazy for this? I just had a vision of your mom freaking out on us like she did all those years ago.”
“Saint, we are not teenagers anymore. We are very grown adults,” he says, and I can see the concern etched all over his face like he thinks I’m running from the situation.
“Don’t you remember the things she said? Those things haven’t changed just because we’re older. She said we’re siblings and this is wrong.”
“Yes, I remember that, and if she doesn’t respect our relationship, then we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. But I do think a lot of my mother’s frustrations and anger came out of us being teenagers and her trying to raise us both.”
“Okay, and what about your job?”
“Baby, the world is absolutely going to have their opinions about us being together. I can handle it. As long as I have you, I can handle it.” His voice is low, but the sincerity in his tone is so evident. “Do I have you?”
I nod. “Of course, you do. You’ve always had me,” I whisper.
He gives me a grin that makes me feel like everything is going to be alright, and nothing could ever go wrong so long as we have each other.
“Let’s just try to have fun tonight, yeah?
” He tucks some hair behind my ear and tilts my chin up slowly to meet his gaze.
“I’ve waited so long to tell the world that you’re mine.
Nothing is going to stop me now. Do you understand?
” He slides his hands around me to rest on my behind.
I nod, feeling his possessive words thundering between my legs. “Yes.” He squeezes my butt in response before pressing a light kiss on my lips. We pull away, and I instantly sense movement in my periphery, and when I turn, I see the redhead from earlier.
My God, give it a rest, girl. He is not interested.
“You know… I recognized you, but I could not place you for the life of me,” Quinn says as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Until I remembered something… an article from one of your interviews.” She looks at Wild briefly before looking down at her phone and tapping her nail against the screen.
“My stepfather, Desmond, is what led me into this line of work. He was an architect, and he died when I was five in the most horrific of ways. Murdered in cold blood during a robbery in front of his daughter and me, my stepsister, Halle…” she reads from her phone, then looks up at us with an expression of pure judgment.
“You go on about this beloved stepsister that you consider more like an actual sister since your mother raised you both.” She blinks at me.
“I assume you’re the Halle in question?”
“I don’t think I have to answer to you,” I respond instantly because fuck her and this pathetic act of jealousy.
“No, but Sebastian has to answer to a board of investors who may not want to continue doing business with a man who sounds like he’s in somewhat of an incestuous relationship.”
“Quinn, this is not your business. This has nothing to do with you.” He takes a step toward her and somewhat in front of me. “And I am only going to tell you once to kindly stay out of my business.”
“This is absolutely going to blow up in your face,” she says, pointing at us both.
“No one is going to think this is okay.” She scrunches her nose.
“Whether it’s illegal isn’t the question.
It’s immoral, and people will be uncomfortable with it.
” She snorts. “I’d hate to be on the PR team in charge of your firm when you go to them with this.
” She raises an eyebrow before turning and walking away.
I realize my hands have been balled into fists this whole time until Wild has them in his hands, kissing both gently to try to loosen them. “What a bitch. You actually took her on a date?”
“It wasn’t a date, it was…”
“A date. Don’t bullshit me, Sebastian. You kissed her, and now, because she’s jealous, she’s about to be our intro into the world? What the fuck?”
“I’ll handle it. I’ll talk to my team when I get back to Seattle.
She’s not going to say anything,” he says.
While I believe he will handle it and that she won’t say anything out of fear of pissing him off, it wasn’t the point.
People’s opinions were going to be loud and judgmental and seep into my soul the same way Sara’s had all those years ago.
“This is starting already. All I can hear is Sara’s voice telling us that what we’re doing is wrong.”
Halle: 16 years old
Sebastian: 17 years old
“Absolutely not. No. Not happening,” Sara says as she slams a cabinet closed in the kitchen.
I cross my arms over my chest, trying my best not to explode all over my stepmom, but she was being unreasonable, and I was so tired of this same old conversation.
“Sara. I am trying to be responsible. We both are.”
“Responsible?” she says as she slams a tomato against the cutting board and begins chopping aggressively for the vodka sauce she’s preparing for dinner. “Good one.”
“I want to go on birth control,” I repeat.
“Because you and Sebastian are having sex.”
I swallow before letting out a deep breath. “Yes.” Wild probably won’t be happy when he finds out I approached Sara about this alone when we agreed to talk to her together, but I thought it would be easier to talk to her woman-to-woman without him present.
“The answer is no, Halle.”
“Do you want us to get pregnant?”
“No, I want you to stop doing what you’re doing. Letting you go on birth control seems like I’m condoning this behavior, and I don’t. It’s wrong.”
“Sara, I love him, and he loves me. You know how we feel about each other. You can see it when you look at us, and that’s what scares you about all of this.” A tear falls down my face, and I wipe it away. “It’s real.”
“It’s not real, and it’s not acceptable! No one will be okay with this. I am not okay with this!”
How can she tell me it’s not real? She doesn’t know what I feel, what Wild feels.
God, I can’t stand her sometimes. It’s times like this I wish I didn’t have two dead parents.
I wish I had someone whose DNA I shared and who could try to understand me because they brought me into this world and loved me unconditionally, even if they didn’t agree with my choices.
“It’s not illegal. We aren’t related. He’s at most my stepbrother, but if we want to get technical, step anything is defined by marriage, and you aren’t married to my father anymore in the literal sense.
The step part of our relationship died with my dad. ”
I notice her flinch at my words, and I realize I probably could have phrased that differently and more sensitively. I open my mouth to clarify in a less harsh way when she speaks. “That’s not how it works.”
“You’re my guardian, yes, but that doesn’t make me your actual daughter.”
Her lips form a straight line as she nods. “I’ve been raising you as my own for almost eleven years… since you were five years old. You are my daughter, Halle. And I don’t want you having sex.”
“You don’t want me having sex with Sebastian,” I clarify.
“We’d be having this conversation if it were anyone. I think you’re too young. But yes, the boy in question being Sebastian does make this situation even more complicated.”
“If you think you can stop us from being together, you can’t.
” I swallow. I hadn’t meant to come off as rude or disrespectful, but ever since Sara found out about Wild and me discovering our feelings for each other, we haven’t been getting along well.
I hated that she thought she had the power to tell me who I could love.
She closes her eyes slowly and lets out a deep breath before setting down the knife on the cutting board. “Halle! The answer is no. And if you don’t want to be grounded for the next week, I suggest you go to your room.”