Dearest Stepbrother: Double Trouble - Ultimate Bundle

by Olivia Hawthorne

  The twins glanced at each other and Alex finally said, “We’re going to take dad out for lunch and a round of golf. We’ll go ahead and tell him during that and then we’ll all take your mom out tonight and let her know.

  “In public? We’re going to drop the bomb with a bunch of strangers sitting around us? She’ll freak out!”

  “That’s kind of the point,” Asher said. “If we’re in the privacy of our home, she’ll fly off the handle. But if we’re in public when we tell her, she’ll have to remain somewhat civil. Judging from her reaction at dinner, we’ll decide whether we’re coming back here to spend the night or whether we’re going to stay in a hotel room until tomorrow morning when we can pick up our stuff and move into our new place.”

  My heart squeezed tight in my chest. Dropping a bomb on mom was bad enough, but doing it out where other people would see her reaction seemed like adding a string of cruelty to the truth. I understood why Asher and Alex wanted it that way, but I couldn’t completely agree that it was a good idea.

  “Tell you what. Talk to your dad about the idea of telling her the truth at dinner. He knows her better than all of us and will be in a better position to say if that’s the best idea or not. I want to make this as easy on her as possible. She’s going to be crushed regardless, so I don’t want to add insult to the injury. You know?”

  The twins nodded their heads and Alex said, “Okay, Kelly. We’ll talk to dad about it.”

  “Thank you.” I spoke the words through a choked sob, a lump of emotion blocking my throat. I hated that the day had finally come where I would have to admit the truth. But I knew that Alex and Asher were right. We needed to move forward with our lives and continuing to cover up the truth of our relationship would only make things more difficult in the long run.

  Nodding his head once, Asher walked across the room and cupped my cheek in his hand, angling my face up to look at him.

  “She’ll be okay, Kelly. Don’t worry. It might be hard at first, but eventually she’ll come around.”

  “I know,” I lied.

  Leaning over, he kissed me softly on the lips and said, “We need to go. Why don’t you spend the day with her and we’ll all meet back here in a few hours.”

  I nodded my head in agreement and watched the twins walk out of the room.

  Swallowing down my fear and apprehension, I took a steadying breath and wondered what the night would bring.

  * * *

  When Asher and Alex returned home, the forlorn expressions of their faces told me everything I needed to know.

  I was relaxing in the kitchen with mom after spending the day getting our hair done, shopping and getting manicures and pedicures.

  The twins walked in with their shoulders bent forward and their dad walking behind him with a grimace on his face that left no question in my head as to what his reaction had been to the news.

  Almost as soon as they entered the kitchen, the twins took a seat and their father sat down at the table next to mom and me.

  “Did you want to tell your mom what you’ve been up to? Or shall I? Either way, I’m not letting you take my wife out into a public place and drop the same load on her that I just had to discover.”

  Every muscle in my body tensed beneath my skin. This was not how we’d planned for this to go down and I was a little frightened of my stepfather’s reaction. Normally he was the levelheaded and unemotional one, and if he was taking it this badly, there was no hope for how my mother would handle the news.

  I glanced at the twins, but the looks in their brilliant green eyes told me that there was no way they could help me with this. Their father knew, and soon enough, my mother would know as well.

  “What is it, Kelly?” My mom glanced between all of us, worry creasing her face. “What’s going on?”

  I took a steadying breath, realizing quickly that there was no way around what I had to say. My hands nervously fiddled with the emerald ring on my finger and my thoughts went to that Easter Sunday when Asher and Alex had asked me to be their wife. I still wasn’t certain how we would pull off our unusual relationship, but I was still one hundred percent invested in making sure that we remained together for the long run.

  Steeling my spine and rounding my shoulders, I sat up straight in my chair and locked my eyes to my mom. There was no way around it. I needed to spit out the truth and get it over with.

  “Mom, I’ve been lying to you about something – something big, in fact.”

  Her eyes widened and she glanced between her husband and me. I could see her begin to nervously fidget in her seat when she asked, “What is it, Kelly? Is something wrong?”

  Shaking my head, I said, “No. Nothing’s wrong, but I haven’t been honest with you and I need to be honest now.”

  She sat there silently, her eyes searching my face for the truth before I had the chance to say it.

  “Mom, I’m engaged.”

  “What?” The word left her mouth louder than I’d expected it to be, but I wasn’t done revealing what I had to say.

  Ignoring the emotion that I could already see building behind her eyes, I breathed out heavily and laid it all out on the table.

  “I love you, mom, and I never wanted to hurt you, but I need to be honest with you now.”

  Another deep breath and I admitted, “I’ve been dating Asher and Alex since high school, and when we move out of the house this weekend, I have every intention to marry them.”

  The End

  DOUBLE TROUBLE: AFTER COLLEGE – BOOK 3

  Chapter One

  My hands were wringing one over the other, in my lap. The sharp edges of the emerald ring that Alex and Asher had given me scraped against my skin, reminding why I was now sitting at my parents’ dining room table waiting for my mother to do anything besides stare at me.

  Her lips were parted slightly and I glanced at her chest to see if I could tell if she was even breathing.

  I’d just dropped the bomb that I was not only dating my twin stepbrothers, but that we were engaged and planning to get married after moving out of our parents’ house in a few days.

  I knew my mother was in a state of shock after hearing the news, but her lack of immediate response scared me. Had I broken her with the news? Had I just shattered every happy and positive belief she had in life by ripping the ground out from beneath her feet?

  “Mom?” I finally asked, my voice as weak as it was when I was a little girl in trouble. “Are you going to say anything?”

  She shook her head slightly, her eyes finally blinking as she processed what I’d just told her. I was afraid of what she would say, my anxiety building steadily as I waited for her to reject our relationship.

  Finally, she squared her shoulders and her expression became serious. Locking her eyes to mine, she asked, “Both of them?”

  Her head turned as she glanced at the twins, her mouth pulling into a thin line when they stared back, an apology written into their eyes.

  What we had wasn’t normal – not by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s what we wanted. We were a threesome who had spent years together exploring and discovering a relationship that wouldn’t be acceptable to most people – but it was everything to us.

  “Both of them,” I calmly answered.

  My mother sighed, shaking her head in disbelief, her hair bouncing over her shoulders as she sat back in her chair and reached out to take her husband’s hand.

  “If it was one, I wouldn’t have such a hard time accepting it. I know you aren’t blood related to the twins and I don’t see a problem with you being with one of them, but both? Nobody will accept that, Kelly, and I think it’s illegal.” Turning to my stepfather, she asked, “Isn’t it?”

  My stepfather opened his mouth, but appeared to bite his tongue to keep from saying something that would hurt everybody in the room. I was silent with shock, unable to believe that my mother was more accepting of the relationship than my stepfather.

  His deep voice echoed through the kit
chen when he finally answered my mom. “It’s illegal if they try to get married the right way.” Locking his angry eyes to mine he asked, “How do you three expect to pull this off? You can’t legally marry two people. There’s a term for that. Have you ever heard of polygamy?”

  I flinched when he said it. One of the biggest questions I’d had in my head ever since Asher and Alex asked me to marry them was: How was it even possible? Legally, I could marry one of them. That’s it. There was no way three people would be able to get married.

  When all of this first started between the twins and me, it was fun…it was easy. Yeah, it was weird that we were stepsiblings having sex, but in the grand scheme of things, there was nothing wrong with what we were doing. But then, over the years, we fell in love and the situation became much more complicated. Having their father vocalize it now only made that fact slap me across the face harder. He’d immediately pointed out the biggest problem with what the twins and I were doing.

  The problem was no longer that we were stepsiblings – it was that there were three of us in the relationship.

  Regardless of the legalities and the way people would view us, I couldn’t stand the thought of letting either one of them go.

  Asher and Alex were my world and there was nothing that anybody could say or do to make me feel any differently.

  “Well, then we won’t get married legally,” I said. “It’s a piece of paper – that’s it. We don’t have to have that in order to be happy together.”

  “Nobody will accept this…” My mother began to argue, but Asher interrupted, his voice calm despite the growing tension in the room.

  “It doesn’t matter if people accept it or not. We love each other and we’re happy in the relationship that we have. The only person Kelly cares about accepting this is the two of you – her parents – the only other people in this world that she loves enough to value their opinion.”

  My mother flinched, Asher’s words sinking into her thoughts with enough strength to jolt her system. She closed her eyes for a moment, opening them again so that I could see the tears that were threatening to slide down her cheeks.

  Shrugging her shoulders, she locked those waterlogged eyes to me and said, “I’m not going to tell you to break up. I can’t. Not if you three honestly believe you love each other. I’m not the type of mother who would choose for my child to be unhappy just because people won’t accept the lifestyle they’ve chosen for themselves. You’re not harming yourselves or anyone else. Who am I to judge whether what you have decided to do is best for your life?”

  She glanced at the twins and her husband before looking back at me. “It’s your life, Kelly. You are an adult now, a college graduate and a beautiful and intelligent woman. You’ve done great things and showed me that you can take care of yourself. If you want to love two men at the same time – and they want to love you back – who am I to judge that?”

  Tears fell down my cheeks just as fast as they ran down hers. I couldn’t stand having the table between us, so I stood up from my chair and rounded the corner to pull her up and hug her. Both of us shook from sobbing, but they were tears of understanding and tears of happiness.

  I knew my mom wasn’t fully comfortable with my relationship with the twins, but she wasn’t rejecting me for it either. I couldn’t have asked for a better response.

  When I let my mother go, I looked at my stepdad, hoping to find acceptance behind his eyes. But when I locked my eyes to his all I found was anger. His expression sent shivers down my spine.

  Holding me at arm’s length, my mother looked up at me and smiled.

  “Could you do me a favor, Kelly?”

  I nodded my head before even knowing what she was going to ask. “What?”

  She chuckled. “Could the three of you not kiss and stuff in front of me for a while. I need to get used to this and that will take some time.”

  A smile broke out over my lips and I laughed. “Uh, yeah mom. No problem. We promise not to make out in front of you…” I laughed again. “…Even when you are used to it eventually. That’s just gross.”

  Chapter Two

  “It’s moving day!”

  I threw open Asher’s door and laughed to find him hugging his pillow to his chest, his sleeping body still wrapped up in his blanket.

  Running across the room, I rubbed my hands together excitedly. Not only were we finally moving out of our parents’ house, I got the honor of torturing Asher until he was awake. The day was turning out to be awesome.

  I climbed up on his bed and jumped up and down on the mattress, laughing when he opened his eyes wide at first, only to narrow them in anger.

  “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” I yelled as I kept jumping. “It’s moving day!”

  “Damn it, Kelly! Stop!” He grumbled as he covered his face with his pillow. “Give me another five minutes,” a muffled voice said.

  Acting like I was on a trampoline, I started bouncing around the mattress, too excited to calm down and let the guy sleep even a minute longer. Finally, falling down to my knees, I crawled over him with my legs straddling his abdomen. I pulled the lobe of his ear between my lips and sucked softly, knowing full well what kissing this area of his body did to him.

  “Kelly…” He warned on a growl. “Dammit woman, that’s not fair.”

  I licked the rim of his ear and whispered, “Come on, baby. Don’t you want to get all moved in so we can celebrate later.”

  Puckering my lips, I pushed the pillow farther aside and kissed lightly down the line of his jaw. His skin was scruffy with stubble, but I liked the rough feel of it across my lips. Asher was beautiful on his own, but when he didn’t shave for a few days, the light dusting of dark hair on his face gave him a rough and rugged quality that turned me on at the sight of him.

  It wasn’t difficult to push the pillow aside and when I got close to Asher’s mouth, he turned his head and reached up to shove me onto my back, the entire time keeping his soft lips locked to mine. His large body covered me and his leg came up between mine to push them apart.

  I gasped from the sudden movement and the weight of his body on mine. Pulling away from the kiss, he looked down at me with green eyes sparkling with mischievous thoughts.

  “Well, if you put it like that…you’re damn right I’m ready to get up and move.”

  Laughter bubbled from my lungs, my body shuddering when his knee rubbed up between my legs, applying pressure to the most sensitive parts. “Oh God, I wish we just have some fun right now. I need you so badly…”

  He chuckled and placed a light kiss on my lips. “You just had me a few days ago.”

  Reaching up, I cupped his face with my hands. “That is definitely far too long to go without being with you again.”

  I pulled his face down and his mouth pressed against mine with the same intense and passionate need that I was feeling inside me. We’d finally done it. We’d come clean to our parents, we’d graduated college, the twins had found jobs and we were moving in together as a threesome.

  Life, at that moment, was absolutely perfect.

  Until my mom walked in.

  “Oh my! I’m sorry…”

  I turned to see her facing the opposite wall, her hand up over her eyes despite the fact that she wasn’t looking directly at us.

  “I didn’t mean to walk in without knocking. I’m so sorry.”

  Jumping up and away from Asher, I sat on the edge of the bed and said, “Mom, it’s okay. We were just…” I stopped myself and took a breath. “What’s up, Mom? Did you need something?”

  She breathed out heavily and said, “I love you kids, but if this is what life is going to be like for you, I’m glad you’re moving somewhere where you’ll have some privacy.”

  Asher chuckled behind me and I tried to keep from laughing. My mom’s level of discomfort was somewhat amusing.

  “I just came up here to see how many boxes you want me to pick up from the moving company. We’re going to go pick up the truck.”

/>   I looked around Asher’s room like it could tell me just how many boxes we would need. We weren’t taking our bedroom furniture with us and most of our stuff was in the storage unit. The only things we’d be taking from our parents’ house were clothes and odd and ends.

  “I don’t know? Five for each room?” I guessed.

  My mom nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll be back soon.”

  With that, she ran from the room like it was on fire and I finally burst out laughing. Asher pulled me down to lie next to him and laughed with me. When we finally gained control of ourselves, he said, “Well, that was embarrassing.”

  I patted him on the stomach and said, “Yeah, it’s probably best we control ourselves until we’re completely moved out of the house. I don’t think mom can handle much more.”

  Placing his hand over mine, he kissed me on the forehead before saying, “Sounds like a plan.”

  Chapter Three

  “Why do I always get the heaviest side of the furniture, Asher? Seriously, asshole, you keep setting me up!”

  Alex screamed at his twin as the two carried in the large sectional sofa that they’d argued about just as angrily when we bought it for the apartment. I couldn’t deny that the couch was a beast, but it was a beautiful beast that I had to have. The cream colored cushions were piled up on one wall of the apartment and I tried to direct the twins as they brought it in.

  Grunting from the weight of the furniture he was carrying, Asher answered, “Whatever, Alex. Stop being a little bitch. The couch weighs the same on both sides.”

  “Well, then you’re not carrying it right because I swear I’m holding up the entire thing!”

  Shaking my head, I stood inside the living room watching the twins argue as they attempted to figure out how to fit the couch through the door. You would think by the veins popping out of their necks and the sweat dripping down their skin that they’d been moving heavy furniture all day. But, no.