Bad Apple_A Stepbrother Romance

by Stephanie Brother

  I knew I was whining, but Rogue never seemed to mind when I did.

  Rogue chuckled and carded his fingers through my hair. “She’s just getting too big for such a cramped space, why shouldn’t she move around a bit? You would be uncomfortable if that were you.”

  “Rogue,” I muttered. “We were all there, and I don’t even remember it. She will forget it as soon as she’s out of me, then she’s gonna start crying because she misses that safe, but cramped space inside me.” I hissed as I sifted my body again. “Fuck, this is too damn uncomfortable.”

  “You should watch it with the cursing from now on, Richard is learning words,” Rogue added. “I’m better than you on that front now.” He grinned.

  “That’s just ‘cause you already taught him the worst word,” I complained.

  “That wasn’t my fault, and it was only the once,” he corrected.

  “Not much difference, Rogue, he still said it,” I teased.

  My face screwed up as I shifted, again and again, letting out a sigh of frustration before moving back because I couldn’t seem to get comfortable today.

  “Do you not need me to rub your back some more?” Rogue asked.

  I shook my head, moving around until I could put my pillow, and my head, on his thigh.

  “I’m fine, just…”

  I didn’t get to finish the sentence, my face screwing up again when I felt something else that was odd and unexpected.

  “Claire?” Rogue said inquisitively. “Just, what?”

  I heard him, but I couldn’t answer him. I squirmed a bit more, and my expression twisted as I looked up at him.

  “Rogue? I think I my water broke.”

  His eyes widened. “What?”

  “I just felt something wet. Rogue…”

  We both came to the same conclusion, but he was the one to say it out loud.

  “The baby’s coming.”

  We both sat there dazed for a moment; then everything moved in a flurry. I let Rogue get up and out of bed to walk around and get everything set up while I hurriedly changed my clothes. I reached for my phone on the nightstand to call Mom who would be taking Richard while we all sat and waited for the contractions to hit.

  Our little girl was ready.

  Why doesn’t it hurt?

  My thoughts were moving slow, and I was stuck on this bit. My water had broken, but I just felt uncomfortable, I didn’t feel any pain. So I wasn’t in labor yet, but the baby should be ready to come out. I wasn’t up for the pain, and while a part of me felt relieved, because I couldn’t handle it yet, another part of me was panicking, wondering if it meant something was wrong with the baby.

  “Rogue!” I shouted, some of that panic seeping into my voice. “Rogue, you need to hurry!”

  “I’m right here,” he said, coming back into the room. “Are you in pain?”

  “Not yet,” I said, frantic. “But we need to get to the hospital quickly. I should have gone into labor already! I’m worried!”

  He picked up the bag we’d packed in preparation for this, then helped me stand up.

  “Do you want me to carry you?” he asked, panicking a bit himself. “We can go faster.”

  “Won’t I be too heavy?”

  “Trust me, I can handle it.”

  I let out a strained chuckle at that. “What about Richard?”

  “He’ll be okay sleeping in the playpen while I get you to the car, it won’t be but a couple minutes, give me a second and I’ll ask Martin to keep an ear out.” With that, Rogue rushed out of the apartment and next door.

  He appeared two minutes later with our neighbor Martin, an elderly man in tow.

  “Gonna have the wee little lass, are you, honey? Well, don’t you worry, I’ll keep my eye on that boy of yours till Rogue here gets back from taking you down to the car.”

  “Thank you, Martin.” I would have to remember to send him something later. Maybe bake him a pie, if I remembered correctly, his wife used to make the best apple pie, before she’d passed away. I’d have to see if I could remember the recipe.

  Rogue carried me over to the elevator, but he set me down as we waited for it, then walked inside. He carried me again when it opened up at the parking level.

  He couldn’t open the car door and hold me in his arms at the same time, so he had to put me down again to get the front passenger door open for me, and he helped me sit down, then put on my seatbelt, making it lose, so I had space to breathe.

  “I’ll be right back with Richard and your bag.” He rushed off back to the apartment.

  I waited patiently, but continued to worry as I still didn’t feel any contractions yet.

  The drive to the hospital was made in a hurry, but I started up my breathing exercises to keep me from panicking too much.

  We arrived at the hospital, and Mom met us at the car. She took Richard while Rogue grabbed my bag and I started walking on my power. But then, halfway to the entrance, I felt it. The first contraction. It was enough to take my breath away, and I stumbled and would have fallen if Rogue hadn’t caught me. I was so surprised by it that, even after it passed, when he carried me inside, I didn’t argue.

  Some nurses separated us momentarily, as I was taken to the exam room. I was barely listening to anything they were telling me because once they started, the contractions kept coming, and I began to panic a little because he wasn’t with me yet. But he did make it a couple of minutes later, with scrubs, a cap, gloves and a mask on.

  “Where’s Mom?” I panted.

  “She’s got Richard in the waiting room, no more worrying. I’m here.” He smiled and squeezed my hand. As he’d promised, he held my hand through it all.

  Some hours later, I was in a private room with Rogue, waiting for our little girl to be brought back to us. The moment the nurse walked in with her, my eyes blurred with tears, and I had to blink them away to see her.

  A girl. Rogue and I had a daughter.

  He sat beside me, sniffling a bit himself as we looked at our perfect little angel.

  Mom came to the room carrying Richard not long after, and we both looked up with smiles on our faces and tears dripping down our cheeks as she walked into the room.

  “Mom,” I said with a light laugh. “Come and say hi to our little Anna.”

  “She’s beautiful,” she said as she walked over to share in our joy.

  I felt like I was finally complete.

  I finally had all my family with me.

  ###The End###

  More Books By Stephanie Brother…

  Forbidden Sext

  About Forbidden Sext…

  Why is my perfect match the only guy I hate on campus?

  When I join the college dating app, I'm expecting to be matched with someone who's my type. Instead, I get the college prankster, Elijah.

  He might be good looking, he might even be chivalrous, but that doesn't mean I'm interested.

  I think it's a mistake, or maybe one of his pranks.

  I keep my distance for a while, but I'm only human.

  Mistake is my middle name, especially when it comes to relationships.

  And I find myself left with two dramas. Elijah is going to be my stepbrother and is now totally forbidden. Oh, and the other thing is I'm carrying his baby.

  This is a standalone novel with a HEA and NO cheating!

  Chapter One

  Elijah

  I left the library the moment I got a text from Logan. Technically, I was supposed to be studying for a test, not to mention all the assignments I still had to do, but I didn’t care. Logan, supposedly, had something important for me. While he wasn’t the most reliable guy out there because he liked to prank me a lot, he was still one of my best friends, and he knew when not to joke with me.

  Because of course, I returned every prank twice as hard. He’d come to learn not to mess with me.

  Fuck, I was invincible when it came to pranking!

  I made my way toward the dorms. Our college was pretty relaxed when
it came to student housing, more than most colleges I’d heard of. At least, that was the consensus, since they allowed coed dorms, and plenty of people took advantage of this fact. My friend Logan was one of them, because he loved bunking with the ladies for a night of fun.

  So it wasn’t a surprise when he’d texted me to come to the dorm house a block away from the one we lived in. Usually, he just told me he’d be busy nights, so I was curious what he’d called me out for.

  Logan hooking me up was one of his worse pranks. He would set me up with the opposite of what I liked in women, and it had led to a few humiliating situations. So much so, that I hated myself for being the center of them all!

  I walked into the dorm and found a few people lounging around the common room on the first floor. Logan was nowhere to be found, and I wasn’t about to start knocking on doors to find him. I took my cell out and made a call.

  “Seriously Logan, where you at? I was studying, you know.”

  He laughed. “Dude, who you trying to kid? Studying. Please. You’re here, aren’t you? That means you’re interested! In fact, you should be thanking me.”

  I rolled my eyes, “Fine, whatever. But I swear if this is you trying to trick me again…”

  Logan laughed again, though there was an edge of nervousness in it. I hadn't forgotten the last prank, and I’d yet to get him back, so he’d been wary of me lately and trying to get back in my good graces. It was part of the reason I even showed up, knowing he could still try something stupid.

  “I’m up in Dana’s dorm, on the third floor.”

  Dana was a girl Logan fooled around with, at least one of the latest. Lately, she was all he’d been talking about, so I didn’t think he was seeing anyone else. For now, but knowing him it wouldn’t take long for him to get bored and start seeing another girl.

  Sometimes, I envied how carefree he could be. When it all backfired on him, though, I was the first person to point a finger and laugh my ass off.

  I headed up the stairs and started the jog up. I got to the room and held my hand up to knock because I didn’t want to walk into anything. When I remembered something that made me pause.

  Shit.

  I called Logan back. When he answered, I spoke before he had the chance to.

  “Is Sophia in there? I almost forgot that they’re roommates.”

  Sophia was studying the same major, and we’d even had a few classes together. There wasn’t anything wrong with Sophia. I could even admit that she was pretty, but we just didn’t get along, which was why I tended to avoid her like the plague.

  “Don’t worry,” he said dismissively.

  “Of course she’s not here. Why on earth would I call you if she was? Would you hurry and get in already? I left the door unlocked.”

  He hung up, and I glared at the cell, before sighing and putting it back in my pocket. I could curse him later for hanging up on me. I reached for the doorknob and opened. The room wasn’t so different from mine, fairly spacious with a couple of desks, dressers, and beds pushed to opposite sides of the room. Logan was on one of the beds, with Dana lying on her back and Logan propping himself up on his elbow above her as they kissed.

  “Dude,” I complained, closing the door behind me. “I didn’t come here to watch you get it on.”

  He gave me the finger, and I had to wait for them to pull out of the kiss. He’d talked to me a second before I walked in on the cell, so I was sure the show was for my benefit. I sighed and looked around the room. I could have gone over there to pull the two of them apart because it was just Logan being Logan and trying to piss me off. I didn’t have anything against Dana.

  Since they were on the other side of the room, I focused on the other. I glanced over at the desk, to the laptop. I frowned at it, then moved closer. I thought, at first, it was off because the screen was black. But then I noticed the words bouncing around, and realized the screen saver was on. Out of curiosity, I swiped my finger over the touchpad, and the screen came on.

  Just how careless was this chick, to leave her things lying around?

  Logan and Dana’s kiss ended with a moan and a smacking sound from behind me, and I turned around with a glare to find my so-called friend grinning up at me.

  “Finally done?” I asked, tone heavy with sarcasm.

  “Sure, sure,” he said, waving lazily at me. “But, I didn’t call you here to be a peeping Tom.”

  I glared. “Is it even peeping, if I’m in the room with the two of you and you invited me? Without locking the door?”

  Logan just chuckled. “Anyway, I called you over here for that.”

  He waved his hand, and I followed the gesture, my eyes returning to the computer behind me. My eyebrows shot up. I turned back to the two on the bed.

  “Isn’t that Sophia’s computer?”

  Dana hummed, shifting, so she was sitting up with her pillows behind her. Logan pouted then moved to sit up himself, raising one of his knees up and leaning back on his arms.

  “It’s hers,” Dana confirmed. “I told her I had someone coming over and she said she’d find somewhere else to be for the time being. She forgot to turn off her laptop.”

  Logan laughed. “She practically ran off when I walked into the room. Dude, you should have seen it, you would have gotten a kick out of it.”

  “Yeah, I doubt that,” I said dryly.

  Sophia, for some reason, hated my guts. She acted like a bitch to me every time our paths crossed. I’d had people openly hate me before, and I didn’t give a fuck about them. But some reason I hated it whenever Sophia cut her eyes at me. I hadn’t even done anything to her, that was the reason it bugged me the most.

  “So,” I said, and sighed. “You called me here…because Sophia left her computer on.” I shrugged. “So what?”

  Logan grinned. “Well, I was calling you here for a dare.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  He nodded solemnly. “I know you haven’t forgotten the last time I pranked you?”

  I scowled. “Of course I haven’t forgotten,” I growled.

  Logan gave me a piece of paper at the end of class, telling me it was the class assignment, and he’d forgotten to hand it in. Being the nice guy I was, I took the paper without even glancing at it. The professor was female, in her thirties, and hot for someone her age. If I went for older women, she would definitely be my type.

  I should have figured it out, but I was distracted at the time. Because it was Logan, and he always had others that did that type of shit for him. Women were always running around him. Never could figure out why? Sure, he was charming, but man did he love to cheat!

  “Do you know how much trouble I got into? The whole assignment was about behavioral research in dating and sexual activity among teens and youths!”

  I narrowed my eyes, “And then to include information about lusting after older figures of authority like, say, teachers and professors. And all the fucking details about seduction and all that bullshit. Can you even call that a fucking assignment?”

  Logan broke out laughing, feeling no shame or guilt. He didn’t understand how humiliating it was at the time. The professor had glanced through the paper, and I thought it was my cue to walk away. Only, she’d stopped me, and I saw her frowning as she read the paper in more detail. When she blushed, I knew that was something wrong.

  She’d proceeded to ask me to follow her to her office, and explained that while it was a good paper, very well researched, a lot of the details were unnecessary. She couldn’t look me in the eye, and I was sure that she’d been keeping her eye on me ever since and avoided me like crazy, because he wrote my name and not his own as being the writer of the paper. He did set me up for the fall, but I still hated him for it. Crap! Who was I kidding, Logan was like the brother I never had, he was crazy and kept me on my toes.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Logan was saying through his chuckles. “You should see her. I swear she has a thing for you, with how much she keeps eyeing you.”

  I
rolled my eyes. “More like she’s worried someone else would read the paper, and she would get into trouble for inappropriate relations with her students that led to a paper like that. It was like fucking porn, only on paper. I didn’t know you were that skilled.”

  He shrugged. “I asked some girl to write it for me. She thought she was writing the summary of a steamy romance novel or something. It was good.”

  I folded my arms across my chest, feeling impatience building up in my chest.

  “What does any of that have with me being here?” I asked.

  “Oh, right! The dare. You’re good with computers, right? So, the dare is you get on there and dig around. Maybe, you can find out the secret about why she’s so stuck up all the time.”

  His expression soured a little, and I remembered I wasn’t the only one Sophia had shown disdain for.

  I frowned, glancing at the computer. A part of me was seriously tempted. This girl had been a thorn in my side for months. She’d humiliated me publically almost every time we were in the vicinity because I didn’t know how to keep my mouth shut and she had some good comebacks. I’d realized early on I probably wouldn’t win a verbal war with her, but I’d tried it plenty of times, anyway.

  Still, I couldn’t just go through her things…

  “Go ahead and do it,” Dana said before I could open my mouth to refuse.

  “It’s probably the only chance you’re ever going to get if you want to get back at her. She’s always on that thing... She was careless today because she was caught off guard. It doesn’t happen often.”

  I’m glad that Dana’s not my roommate. Damn, I thought girls were supposed to be tight. Or maybe Dana’s a lot more into Logan than he realizes and she’d do anything for him.

  “See?” Logan added his own two cents. “This is your chance. How many times has she said something to your face, around a bunch of people, that’s left you a laughing stock, huh? I’ll tell you; it’s way more than me.”

  I pursed my lips, remembering. The last time, we’d been with a bunch of other guys, and I’d been getting shit from them ever since. They weren’t guys I would ignore, and I’d locked myself in my room, or hidden in the library, for the past couple weeks while I waited for the hype to die down.