1. Chloe #2
I assumed it was from his assistant—some efficient woman who handles his calendar and remembers family birthdays so he doesn't have to. The bag has been sitting in its dust cover on my closet shelf, too expensive and too perfect for me to actually use. I wanted to preserve it. Keep it pristine.
"I thought you liked the color red."
The words hit me like cold water. He knew I liked red. How did he know I liked red? I've never told him my favorite color—I've never told him anything, because he's never asked, never seemed interested in answers that required more than one syllable.
The handbag flashes through my memory in perfect detail. Deep red leather, clean lines, subtle gold hardware. Beautiful and understated and exactly the kind of thing I would choose for myself if I had that kind of money.
I'd stared at it for ten minutes when it arrived, wondering how his assistant had managed to pick something so perfectly suited to my taste.
Except it wasn't his assistant.
"You can't be telling me you went to a store and picked it out personally. For me."
The words come out defensive, covering the shock that's currently rewriting assumptions. Adam walking into a store and choosing a gift because he thought I liked red.
He stands. Six feet five inches of controlled movement, and suddenly the space between us shrinks to nothing.
He walks to the bar and stops directly across from me, forearms on the polished surface, close enough that I can see the details of the tattoo that disappears under his rolled cuff.
Some kind of geometric design, all black lines and perfect symmetry.
"What if I did?"
Not a question. A statement delivered in a voice that's lower than it was thirty seconds ago. His gray eyes hold mine, and I'm trapped in the eye contact like it's quicksand.
The train sways underneath us, and I grab the edge of the counter to steady myself.
"Why would you do that? You hate me."
The words fall out before I can stop them. Years of careful politeness, and I just threw my actual feelings on the bar between us like a gauntlet. I want to take it back immediately, but it's too late.
The truth is sitting there in the space between the tequila bottle and his hands, and I refuse to pretend I didn't mean it.
Adam looks genuinely surprised, like I've said something he wasn't expecting.
"I don't hate you."
I laugh. Actually laugh, short and sharp and bitter enough to taste. "Could've fooled me. You all treat me like dirt."
The silence that follows is different from the one when I first walked in. This one has teeth. Adam's expression changes—something shifts in the set of his jaw, the way his brows pull together, like he's seeing me clearly for the first time in three years.
"Explain."
The word is quiet but carries weight, like he actually wants to know instead of just waiting for me to finish talking so he can leave the room.
Fine. He wants explanation, I'll give him explanation.
"You don't talk to me." I lift my hands, gesturing toward the lounge where Chris is still sitting, where Harry is still nursing his bourbon.
"None of you talk to me. Ever. Since your mother's wedding to my father, you've given me grunts and one-word answers, and that's on a good day.
I've tried—every Christmas, every family dinner—and you shut me down like I'm asking for state secrets instead of making small talk. "
The words pour out faster than I intended, swallowed frustration finally finding air. "Harry leaves rooms the second I walk into them. Chris gives me monosyllables when I ask how his work is going. You look at me like I'm something you stepped in."
I gesture toward Harry, who has gone completely still at the far end of the bar, bourbon frozen halfway to his mouth. "I spent last Easter wondering what I'd done wrong, and the Easter before that, and the one before that. Family gatherings where I feel like an intruder in my own family."
This is the first time I've said any of this out loud. I've thought it, analyzed it, wondered if it was my imagination or if they really disliked me as much as it seemed.
But I've never actually voiced it, never put words to the careful way they avoid making eye contact or the speed with which conversations die when I try to join them.
I didn't plan this. I came out here to make a margarita and maybe exchange the usual five minutes of stilted small talk before retreating to my room. Instead I'm spilling hurt feelings all over the bar of a moving train, and I can't seem to stop.
Adam's eyes narrow. Something shifts in his expression—not anger, but something sharper. More focused. Like he's making a decision about something, weighing options I can't see.
The train hums underneath us, filling the silence that stretches between us. Chris hasn't moved from his seat, but I can feel his attention like a physical thing, focused and still. Harry is statue-still at the end of the bar, and for once he's not looking for an escape route.
Adam leans closer, his forearms sliding along the bar surface until there's nothing between us but twelve inches of polished wood and misunderstanding.
"You want to know why we've been trying to ignore you? Because if we don't, we might not be able to control ourselves."
The words don't make sense. They don't connect to anything I know, don't fit with the pattern of cold shoulders and careful distance I've been analyzing like a puzzle I can't solve.
"What do you mean?"
Adam's voice drops lower, intimate in a way that makes my skin feel too tight. "I've wanted to fuck you since I first saw you."
The words steal the air from my lungs and replace it with something hot and electric that spreads through my chest and settles low in my stomach. My grip tightens on the edge of the bar as the meaning sinks in, rewriting every interaction we've ever had.
Heat floods my face, my neck, places I didn't know could blush. The train car feels smaller suddenly, like the walls have moved closer while I wasn't paying attention.
My body is responding in ways I don't want to acknowledge, ways that make me grateful for the counter between us because my knees feel uncertain and my pulse is doing something that has nothing to do with shock and everything to do with want.
"What." The word comes out barely above a whisper.
"You were nineteen. You were my stepsister." Adam's voice is matter-of-fact, like he's explaining a business transaction instead of rewriting three years of my life. "So I kept my hands to myself. That's why the distance. That's why the silence. Not hatred. Control."
The ground shifts under my feet—not the train, but something fundamental about reality. Every grunt, every one-word answer, every time Harry walked out of a room when I entered—all of it reframed in a single sentence.
They weren't avoiding me because they disliked me. They were avoiding me because they wanted me.
The revelation should probably shock me more than it does. Should probably send me running back to my room to lock the door and process the fact that three men I've been attracted to have apparently been attracted to me right back.
Instead, standing here with Adam's gray eyes burning into mine and the taste of truth sharp in the air between us, all I feel is a reckless kind of certainty.
The tequila is still sitting on the counter, unmixed.
There's zero alcohol in my system, nothing to blame for what I'm about to say except years of wondering what it would feel like to stop being careful around them.
To stop pretending their presence doesn't affect me.
To stop swallowing everything I actually want to say.
"What if I don't want you to keep your hands to yourself?"
Adam's mouth curves—not quite a smile, but close enough to make my stomach flip. "Challenge accepted." His voice drops, taking on a teasing edge that I've never heard before. "But tell me, sweet little stepsister—what would your boyfriend think of you flirting with your much older stepbrother?"
I raise an eyebrow, letting a smile play at the corners of my mouth. "I don't have a boyfriend."
The silence stretches for exactly three heartbeats.
"I've never even been kissed."
The confession falls into the space between us like a stone dropped in still water. Total silence except for the rhythm of the train on the tracks and the distant clink of ice in Harry's glass.
The air itself seems to pause, waiting for something I can't name.
Chris stands. Slowly, deliberately, like he's making a decision that can't be unmade.
He crosses the lounge in four measured steps and stops directly in front of me, brown eyes locked on mine with an intensity that makes my breath catch, looking at me like he's seeing something he's been denying himself for longer than he cares to admit.
"Are you a virgin?"
The question is low, controlled, pitched just for me even though we both know Adam and Harry can hear every word. I should blush. Should stammer or look away or deflect with humor the way I usually do when conversations venture into territory I have no experience navigating.
Instead, I hold his gaze and refuse to flinch.
"Yes. Problem?"