Protector

by Candy Quinn

  Suddenly, I realized that I wasn’t looking at the woman who was going to be just part of some step-family. My perplexed eyes softened. I was looking at Chelsea all over again, a delicate, sweet girl with all the hope in the world of this being the wonderful life it was meant to be. This gorgeous young woman didn’t deserve what she and her mother were walking into. She didn’t deserve to be terrorized by my dad like I was. I was too young to realize what was going on back when our own family was falling apart, but Mackenzie, I realized, could be different. I could keep her from having to experience all the pain my dad put us through. I could be an older brother to her. I could protect her.

  “Guess so,” I gave a crooked smile back and laughed, rubbing the back of my neck and taking a step into the room. “Hope you like this place, they really didn’t spare any expenses building it. Provides just about anything you could want.”

  “Oh, definitely!” she giggled, “So do you still live here, or—oh, no, I asked you that already.” She blushed a light shade of pink, playing with her hair nervously.

  “It’s fine.” I laughed it aside, trailing off.

  Glancing back out the door, I made sure nobody was eavesdropping before pushing the door almost closed behind me.

  “Uhm,” she started, looking puzzled.

  “Hey, listen,” I cut her off gently, “Mackenzie, I don’t know how much you’ve heard from my—our—dad, but whatever kind of impression you’re getting from this new marriage…”

  I stopped myself. She looked like she wanted to interject something, some gushing about how wonderful this all must seem to her, what a bright new life this was going to look like in comparison to the fading career her mother promised to pass on to her. I wanted to keep going, to warn her off all the bright distractions my dad must have dangled in front of Julie, but I couldn’t bring myself to dash her that harshly. I had to be more careful about this. I had to give her the kind of life I wanted to give Chelsea.

  “Just be careful around here, alright?” I settled, “Life can be really tough for the families of high-profile people like my dad and your mom. The media is going to be all over this wedding, you know? And this kind of life, well, all the fame can really go to some people’s heads. It changes people.”

  I watched Mackenzie bite her lip, uncertain where I was going with this, but her eyes offered me her rapt attention. I gave her the most reassuring smile I could, stepping forward and putting a hand on her arm and stroking it with my thumb. I didn’t realize just how much taller I was until then, and my hand seemed so huge on her slender arm.

  “You just seem like a really sweet girl, Mackenzie, and I don’t want anything around here to spoil that for you. Someone like you deserves a break, I can tell. I dunno how this wedding is going to work out, but I’m going to do everything I can to be there for you through it all. Alright? I’ll look out for you.”

  Her eyes looked up at me uncertainly, but I could feel her heart race from the pulse under my hand. She nodded in understanding after a moment, and a sweet smile even crept onto her features. “Thanks, Cole,” she said, sounding secure with my standing there over her. I beamed back. It felt good, feeling like the protector I was supposed to be.

  “I’ll see you around,” I told her as I turned away, giving her a reaffirming nod before pushing the door open and heading the rest of the way down the hallway. Some of the staff gave me puzzled or accusatory looks as I strode through the house, but the looks I shot back kept them from saying anything. They weren’t going to screw this up for me, they most definitely weren’t going to let my dad have his way with this family, and above all, nobody in this house was going to stop me from protecting Mackenzie.

  But as I hopped down the short stairway outside and headed towards my bike, a pang of fear hit me in the back of my mind. How far will my dad go to sink his claws into this family, though? I can’t be around all the time. I can’t listen in to everything they say, everything they do. What if my dad gets to Mackenzie? What if he turns her against me? Makes her think I’m just some bum trying to take their money?

  I knew I couldn’t let that happen, I realized, my heart sinking at my narrowing prospects. There was just no way to keep her safe as long as she was hanging around, starry-eyed in the presence of this influential actor. And he was good at acting; that much was undeniable. As long as she was under his roof, Mackenzie would be vulnerable to his abuse. Vulnerable to his manipulation. To everything that Chelsea and our mom and I had to put up with.

  Those drop-dead gorgeous eyes kept peering back up at me in my mind, so trusting and innocent. She’d get caught up in my dad’s web in no time. What if something happened to her? What if Julie walked out on them like my mom walked out on me when she caught Dad cheating, leaving Mackenzie alone with him? What if something happened to Mackenzie?

  No, I told myself as I cranked the engine on my motorcycle and peeled out of the driveway and down the road, speeding back to my place, the girl back at her apartment waiting for me long forgotten. I couldn’t let Mackenzie go through all that. I had to get her out of that house. I had to get her to leave. There was no way she’d just walk out of the lap of luxury just like that, though. I was going to make her leave. My heart sank as I realized exactly what I needed to do.

  I had to make her so miserable in that house that she’d realize she couldn’t stay there anymore. I had to force her out.

  MacKenzie

  I stared at my bedroom doorway, dumbstruck. Even though the boy had been gone for hours, there was a weird kind of buzzing feeling left in the air. My entire day had been spent in near-silence, poring over old books and journals I’d kept in middle school. Around two, my mom had returned from shopping and dropped by to offer me a sandwich and a bottle of water. The half-eaten food still sat on its plate on the dresser now. At seven, she reappeared to inform me that she and Todd were heading out to dinner on the Boulevard and would be out for a few hours.

  Sensing that I was in an odd mood, she cocked her head to the side and asked gently, “You okay, Sunshine?”

  I managed a smile and a nod for her sake. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just a little overwhelmed with unpacking and stuff, you know.”

  She sat down on the edge of my bed and absentmindedly twirled a lock of her hair, looking for all the world like a porcelain doll. After years of obsessively watching makeup teams transform her face in a mirror, Julie Mason had perfected the art of the pink pout and smoky eye. But today there was a little smudge of eyeliner on her cheekbone. I wondered if she had been crying.

  “How ‘bout you, Mom? Everything okay?” I asked, my heart pounding in my chest. Immediately I recalled countless occurrences in which she had come into my room this way, trying to dab her tears away with her sleeve. Out of habit, I prepared myself for the letdown, for her to tell me that Todd was a mistake. I braced myself for the re-packing of our stuff, the sleeping on someone’s sofa until we “picked ourselves back up,” as my mom always said.

  But she merely turned to me and flashed an award-winning grin, then flung her arms around me. “Oh Kenzie, I’m just so happy.” She pulled back and cupped my face in her flawlessly-manicured hand. “This is a new start for us. I want you to be happy.”

  Suddenly Cole’s face flashed into my mind: eyes the color of wet moss, lips parted ever so slightly, his shoulders broad under a close-fitting shirt. I mentally shook myself to forbid the image. Taking Mom’s hand in mine, I squeezed it and assured her, “I am happy, Mom, really. I’m just a little tired, I think.”

  After a moment of scrutinizing my face, her eyes softened and she said, “Okay. Well, don’t feel like you have to unpack all this stuff tonight. If you’re worn out, take a break. There’s no rush, honey. We’re here to stay.”

  I shrugged in agreement and she flounced out of the room, promising to bring me leftovers and dessert from the restaurant. A few minutes later, I heard the pair of them clacking down the marble hallway toward the front door, laughing and murmuring to each other like they’d al
ready had a drink or two. For a moment, I worried that they shouldn’t be driving, before I remembered that Todd had a chauffeur.

  I was living in a mansion with a super-wealthy movie star who had a full-time driver and wait staff employed in his house. This was my home. Slowly, I slid down off the side of my bed. In a daze, I crossed the room and shut the door. Then I curled back up on my bed and closed my eyes. For a few minutes I forced my mind to focus on how I would decorate this new bedroom, but before long Cole had wandered back into the forefront of my thoughts. He had swept into my world like a gust of wind, leaving me momentarily breathless and a little disheveled. I rubbed my eyes and reminded myself that he was going to be my stepbrother.

  It was strange; I’d never had a sibling. For all my life, it was only my mom and me, plus the various guys who stayed awhile and either played Daddy or didn’t, but the idea of a brother was a totally foreign concept. Certainly, I had pondered it before, how different my life might be if only I had someone a little older than me, someone stronger and more experienced in life to keep an eye on me. When I was little, I felt lucky to have a mom who was silly and playful, who let me wander and be independent. All my elementary school friends complained of their bedtimes and strict chore schedules. For a long time, I reveled in my own relative autonomy. My mom didn’t have a lot of rules beyond “say please” and “don’t talk to strangers.” She was always willing to play with me and make believe whatever I wanted, with an astounding level of conviction. After all, she was a very good actress.

  But in later years, I began to realize the downsides of having that kind of parent. I discovered that the reason she gave me so few responsibilities was because she didn’t have a particularly firm grasp on her own obligations. In high school, I remember lamenting to Jessica that sometimes I felt like I was the parent and she was the child. Julie Mason was always game for a good time, but she wasn’t always around to clean up afterward. I learned to take care of myself, to stay within the lines. If Mom wasn’t going to do it, I had to do it myself. In some ways, I was grateful. My mother’s faults had developed me into a self-sustaining individual. But sometimes, I felt a little lonely, staying in night after night to take care of business at home. Jess told me over and over again, “You never get to just be a kid, Kenzie.” I knew she was right, but what could I do?

  But now that I was going to have a stepbrother, maybe things would change. Maybe I would at least have someone to share the burden with. I imagined Cole’s lips moving to form the words replaying in my memory: “I’ll look out for you.” There had been so much heat, so much insistence in his voice, those green eyes blazing. My own eyes squeezed tightly shut, I licked my lips and recreated his entire image in my brain: tall, so tall he almost had to duck under the doorframe—surely he towered at least a foot above than me; muscles hard and sharp under those half-rolled sleeves. I kept returning to his lips, rounded and full on the bottom, shaped into a Cupid’s bow on the top. They looked so soft.

  A tiny, dark, shameful part of me wondered what they tasted like.

  My phone split the silence with a loud, high-pitched ring, and I nearly fell off the bed in surprise. Sitting up and pressing my hand to my chest as though to slow my heart rate, I fumbled to pull my phone out from under the comforter. It was Jessica. Still trying to restore my breathing to normal, I accepted the call.

  “Hey gorgeous!” she exclaimed, and instantly I could tell that she’d already started drinking for the night. “What the fuck are you up to tonight?”

  “Nothing, at the moment,” I admitted, preparing for her inevitable disbelief.

  Jessica heaved a long, drawn-out sigh into the phone and I held it away from my ear for a moment until she was finished. Then she said, “You’ve been busy all week, Kenz. Are you breaking up with me?”

  I laughed and got up to pace around the room. It was a weird habit I’d developed, probably an anxious tic of some kind. “Jess, you know our love is real,” I told her emphatically. “But what are you doing tonight?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual. I’m downtown in that park, that one with all the roses? I’m waiting for the guys to come meet me but they’re super late, of course. We’re going to some pub they played at last weekend. Vince is, like, pissed as hell that they haven’t paid up yet.” She paused for a moment, presumably to take a sip of something, and then added, “Wanna come with? I promise we’ll leave if the scene gets weird or anything.”

  For a few seconds I considered the invitation, but my sensibility wouldn’t allow me to accept. “Mmm, not tonight, Jess. Maybe next time.”

  She groaned overdramatically. “One of these days, I am seriously gonna go to your house and kidnap you. Just so you can experience the outside world for once.”

  Desperate to change the subject, I jumped in with the first new topic which came to mind: “Oh, you’ll never guess who I met for the first time today.”

  “Mr. Van der Hausen? I thought you met him like a week ago.”

  “No,” I said, peering at myself in the mirror on my dresser. “Mr. Van der Hausen, Junior, his son.”

  “Really?” she gasped, clearly warming to the subject. “Oh my god! I forgot he has a son! Holy shit. I can’t believe I forgot, dude, he’s so fucking hot.”

  I was silent for a moment, trying to decide whether it was okay for me to agree with her or not. Luckily, Jessica picked right back up with, “How did it go? What happened? Tell me everything.”

  “He just kind of showed up here, at Todd’s house. I was in my room and he just appeared in the doorway. I didn’t even know he was in the house until he was suddenly there talking to me,” I explained lightly, hoping she wouldn’t ask for the gritty details of our conversation.

  “Shit. I would have literally died of shock immediately.”

  “Yeah, he scared the hell out of me at first.”

  “So?” she pressed eagerly. “What did he say? What was he wearing?”

  I rolled my eyes and glanced at the clock on my bedside table. It was now 9:56. I set the phone on speaker and laid it gently on my dresser. “Um, he didn’t say a whole lot. Just welcomed me to the family, you know, that kind of thing,” I lied. I kicked my knee-high socks into a little pile of dirty clothes forming in the corner and began to peel off my striped shirt.

  “Okay, boring. But what about my second question?”

  “Why do you wanna know what he was wearing so badly? What could that possibly do for you, Jessica?” I asked, laughing. I shimmied out of my denim shorts and folded them neatly on the dresser. I squinted at my full-length reflection, surveying my rounded hips and smooth, white thighs. In this light, my pale pink undies were almost sheer, but I looked away.

  “I’m just curious, is all.”

  I leaned over my dresser to say, “He was dressed like a dude. I don’t know.”

  “You are completely useless to me, Mackenzie Mason. Useless.”

  “Thank you, thank you,” I replied. “I try.”

  “Okay but really, though. At least tell me if he’s as hot in person as he is in pictures. Give me something,” she pleaded. I reached back to unclasp my bra and let it fall to the floor. I sighed contentedly, picked up my phone, and got back into bed.

  “I mean, he’s gonna be my stepbrother, Jess. I don’t think it’s right for me to talk about how hot he is,” I claimed.

  She snorted. “Ha! So you definitely do think he’s hot, then.”

  “I didn’t say that. Besides, I can have an objective opinion, right?” I asked, only half-joking. I snuggled down under the comforter and stretched.

  “Sure, whatever. We both know you already have a crush on your brother.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “Stepbrother, Jess!” I choked out, then quickly added, “And no, I do not!”

  “You dirty little bird,” she laughed. Before I could protest, I heard a series of muffled male voices in the background, and then Jessica said, “Oh hey, the guys are here. Finally! I gotta go, babe. I’ll text you later. Try not
to fantasize about your new bro too much, ‘kay?”

  “Ugh. Bye, Jess. Be careful,” I mumbled.

  “Love ya!” she quipped, and ended the call.

  I dropped the phone on the pillow next to me and flicked my lamp light off. I stared up at the ceiling as my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. A yawn rattled through my body and I realized just how sleepy I actually was. Thinking about everything that had happened over the past week was a little too much to handle, and before long I dropped off to sleep…

  There was music pumping, shaking me to my core. A deep bass rumbled across the floor and electrified my veins. I couldn’t make out the words, and I wasn’t sure where I was, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter very much. My vision was foggy and my limbs moved without much guidance from my brain, as I danced under dim, flickering lights.

  Suddenly, there was a hand on my waist, long fingers pressing into my hip, moving down to grab my ass. Another thick arm snaked around to graze my throat, one pointer finger coming up to circle my mouth. To my dull surprise, I opened my lips and drew the finger into my mouth, rolling my tongue back and forth along its underside. There was heat behind me, and I could feel a strong, muscular body pressed up against my back. The stranger bent down a little to breathe raggedly into my ear, sending a shiver down my spine. His hand gripped my ass hard for a moment, then roved across my hip to my inner thigh. I leaned back into him and felt his long, hard cock hot against my side. He groaned and held me closer still, whispering words I couldn’t understand into the ticklish warmth of my neck. His hand slipped up underneath the hem of my skirt and stroked lightly at the slit between my legs. I inhaled sharply and turned my head to face him. His lips mashed into mine wantonly, greedily, and I melted into his embrace. As he worked his fingers into the slick folds of my pussy, I moaned against his mouth. Suddenly needing to see his face, I pulled back and gasped to see vivid green eyes gazing back at me. He parted his lips to form my name…