Luke, though, I was far too upset with.
I don’t know why. I mean, it’s not like we were in a relationship or anything. Hell, we’d only known each other for a day, basically. For all intents and purposes, we had literally just met.
But who was he to act like the concerned brother-to-be one minute… okay, for eight long months, apparently… and suddenly disappear as though he didn’t even know me. Okay, technically he really didn’t know me, but why spend all that time at the hospital if he was just going to run off the minute I woke up? It just made no sense.
Back at home, I tried to enjoy the fresh air. I spent time by the pool, even though it was still a little early to be swimming. Technically it was probably warm enough. We lived in California, after all. It was in the seventies and eighties every day. But it never felt right swimming before May. So I’d just lie around by the pool and try to keep my mind off the nagging frustration of thinking about Luke and his motivations.
For the first couple of weeks, I almost expected that he’d at least come by to visit, but by the time May rolled around, I realized it wasn’t going to happen. Screw him, I thought. Why was I so worried about him, anyway? This was the guy who’d called me a stuck-up bitch the minute he met me.
Since I’d missed my chance to go to Berkeley for the year, I decided to enroll in some art classes at the local community college. My physical therapist had suggested I take some classes of some sort just to keep my brain sharp for when I started Berkeley in the fall, and art was the only thing I was interested enough in to actually bother leaving the house.
My first class was on a Thursday. I showed up early, and the classroom was empty. I might have thought I was in the wrong place if not for the endless array of paints and brushes and canvases spread around the room.
“Hey, is this the oil painting classroom?”
I turned to see a guy about my age strolling in with a backpack. I glanced around the room at all the supplies and shrugged.
“My guess would be yes,” I said.
“Oh, right,” he said, finally noticing the supplies. “Are you here for the class?”
“Yes,” I said, extending my hand. “I’m Katherine.”
“Matt,” he replied, shaking my hand. “I can’t believe we’re the only ones here.”
“Well, we are more than half an hour early,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think there’d be so few people here,” he said. “I’m always early to everything, and there’s always at least a few people who show up when I do. But lucky me, I get some time alone with a pretty girl.”
His mouth quirked into a kind of lopsided grin, and he slouched into a chair at the front of the room, hanging his backpack over the back. He was kind of cute, actually. Sandy hair that flopped over one eye, and dark eyes. Not bad.
I sat beside him and asked, “So, is this your first art class?”
“No. I’m in the professional program in graphics design at Berkeley. One of my professors suggested I take some art classes,” he said.
“No way! I’m starting Berkeley in the fall!”
“What’s your major?” he asked.
“I haven’t decided. I just know UC Berkeley feels right for me. I’ve wanted to go there since… well, forever.”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t pick a concentration until my second year,” he said. “You’ll figure it out.”
I heard voices behind us, and some other people started slowly filtering into the room, choosing seats. A moment later, a good-looking man who appeared to be in his forties made his way to the front of the room.
“Looks like a lot of you are already here,” he said. “I’m Mr. Simms, and this is Introduction to Oil Painting.” He wrote his name and the name of the class on the dry erase board on the wall. “We’ll give it a few more minutes to make sure everyone is here before we begin.”
The class was a lot of fun, and I discovered I’m actually not too bad of an artist for a beginner. Mr. Simms said I showed a lot of promise, and I actually started to think maybe I’d have to major in art.
Matt tagged along with me as we left the classroom, and the two of us were walking down the hall laughing together over some of the silly paintings other students created when I heard a voice that made my heart stop.
“What the fuck?”
I turned to see Luke standing behind me, his hand gripping the strap of his backpack so tightly his knuckles blanched white.
“Luke?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”
“Taking fucking classes, what the fuck does it look like?” he asked. “What are you doing here? And who the fuck is this?”
“Um, Katherine? I’m going to go now. Nice meeting you,” said Matt, attempting to slide by us.
Luke grabbed Matt’s shirt and slammed him against the wall, growling, “Not until we straighten this out.”
“Luke! What the hell? I literally just met this guy an hour ago,” I told him. “Let him go!”
Luke stared at him for a moment, and Matt’s face had turned a ghostly shade of pale grey. Luke released him, and he stumbled away, glancing over his shoulder at Luke as though he were certifiably insane. And I have to admit that I was starting to think the same thing.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “You’re supposed to be resting at home and getting ready for Berkeley this fall. What are you doing hanging out with guys?”
“Hanging out with guys? Are you serious? I’m taking a couple of art classes at the suggestion of my physical therapist. Matt is a student in the class. And wait, how exactly is any of this even any of your business?”
“You’re about to be my stepsister,” he said. “I have to look out for you.”
“Oh, please,” I groaned. “Don’t do me any favors. I woke up after eight months in a coma to find out you’d been there nearly every day, and then suddenly you’re just gone. Gone! You haven’t even stopped by to see me once! And you expect me to believe you feel some brotherly duty to me? Bullshit.”
He opened his mouth as though he were about to say something else, and then he just snapped it shut. He turned and walked away, shaking his head and muttering something.
What the hell?
If I had known he would be taking classes at the same place, I’d have found another school. I had begun to wish I never met him, and soon I’d have to live with him. All I could do was hope he’d go off and get his own place before that happened.
Chapter Twelve
Luke
What was I thinking… freaking out over seeing Katherine with that guy? I mean, I’m not her boyfriend or anything. She made it clear that she had no respect for me or the fact that I spent eight months by her side, so what did I care who she hung out with?
But the sad fact was, I did care. I cared a lot. Seeing her laughing with that punk had made a knot form in the pit of my stomach, and it had made my heart race like a herd of galloping wildebeest.
A voice inside my head told me I should just tell her how I feel, but my sensible side told that voice to shut up and mind its own business. I mean, how exactly did I expect her to react to hearing that her stepbrother-to-be had the hots for her? She’d probably slap me and call me a sicko, which was exactly how I felt.
What kind of sick freak develops a borderline obsession with his stepsister, anyway? Okay, so our parents weren’t married, yet. And we were both over eighteen. Technically, we weren’t even remotely related. But we would be. Sort of.
God, if my father found out I was lusting after her, he’d want to kick my ass. And I’d probably let him. Hell, I’d kick my own ass if I could. Maybe it would make me get over her.
Eight months.
I’d spent eight months after the car crash sitting by her bedside and praying for her to wake up. She thought I didn’t know her, but she was wrong. I’d spent eight months listening to her mother talk about her. Eight months seeing every single family photo her mother could dig up. I knew her better than she knew herself.
I
knew that she fell and scraped her knee when she was five and had cried in seventh grade because the dress her mother bought her for the school dance didn’t hide the scar.
I knew that she had an obsession with horses for years, and that her father had promised to buy her a horse of her own when she graduated high school, but he died before he could do it.
I knew that she liked whipped cream on her hot chocolate instead of marshmallows because she thought the texture of marshmallows when they melted was too much like snot.
Her favorite color was purple. Her biggest fear was drowning. Her favorite animal besides horses was the panda. She hated raisins. She was allergic to sesame seeds. She wore braces for several years.
Her mother had gone on and on about her, even bringing in old home movies to watch, hoping they might encourage her to wake up from her coma, or at least bring her some comfort while she was still in it.
I knew the girl more intimately than I knew any other human being on earth, but she hardly knew me at all.
God, I felt pathetic. I was completely head-over-heels in love with a girl who felt as though we had just met. From her perspective, we had.
Not to mention, she and I hadn’t exactly gotten along. Then again, a lot of that was my fault. I had called her a stuck-up bitch when we first met. I’d hurt her over the dress her father had bought her, though in fairness I’d had no way to know that. I’d stopped visiting her after I overheard what she said in the hospital. Then I attacked some random guy because I got overwhelmed with jealousy. Maybe she had every right to hate me.
I decided, for the sake of the family, that I should at least try to make amends. I headed to the little gift shop across the street from campus to browse around. Maybe some little token would help make up for the way I behaved and at least get us one some kind of civil speaking terms.
I knew my dad and Lucy were planning to get married very soon, and the last thing I wanted was a bunch of awkward bullshit at the wedding and reception. Besides, as far as I knew, Katherine and her mother would be moving in with us after the wedding, and if we weren’t getting along, it would be all kind of awkward.
I must have spent two hours scouring that place for the right gift. For a tiny store, it sure held a lot of possibilities. Flowers, balloons, cards, t-shirts… pretty much all the standard fare as far as gifts. But I wanted something that show I’d put some thought into it rather than just picking up something random.
I was just about to give up when I noticed an employee stuffing some items into a box.
“Hey! Wait!” I shouted, rushing toward the poor girl, who looked startled. “What’s that?”
“Um… just some merchandise we haven’t been able to sell, so we’re shipping it off to Amazon to try to unload it,” she answered.
“I want that thing in your hand,” I told her.
She looked down and held up the large stuffed animal.
“This? It’s damaged,” she said. She showed me an area where the ear had nearly detached from the head. “See?”
“I’ll take it,” I told her.
“Um… okay,” she shrugged. “I’ll give you a discount since it’s damaged.”
I paid for the animal and took it home. I had a little work to do.
Chapter Thirteen
Katherine
I was absolutely furious with Luke. Who did he think he was trying to run my life after abandoning me? Some sense of family.
I headed straight home, determined to enjoy my evening. I picked up a five-buck pizza from Little Caesar’s on the way home and went straight to my bedroom. I changed into a tank top and shorts, turned on Netflix, grabbed a Coca-Cola from the fridge, and crawled into bed to drown my frustrations in good old-fashioned junk food.
I had finally found a good movie and was just about to take a bite of pizza when my door opened. I sat there with my mouth gaping and the pizza hovering an inch in front of my mouth as my mother barged in with Luke following her.
“You have a visitor, Kitty Kat,” Mom said. “Be nice.”
I threw my slice of pizza back into the box and said, “What do you want?”
“I’ll leave you two,” Mom said, leaving the room and closing the door.
“I just wanted to apologize for the way I acted at school,” Luke said. “And for not coming to visit all this time.”
“Oh. Okay, you’ve apologized, and I accept. See you around.”
“And I brought you this,” he said, extending a gift bag toward me.
I reluctantly took the bag and peeked inside. I pulled out a huge stuffed panda bear with giant eyes. It was absolutely adorable.
“I love pandas!” I said. “Thank you.”
“Sorry about the ear,” he said.
I glanced at the ear, and it looked like it had been sewn on by a first-grader… who had never sewn anything before… and was blind.
“So… what’s the story with this? Because there’s got to be one. There’s just got to be.”
“There is,” he admitted. “I got him at that gift shop across the street from campus. They were sending him off to sell him on Amazon, and I felt sorry for him. I just couldn’t let them pack him up to sell off as clearance garbage. Especially not knowing how much you love pandas.”
“How did you know I love pandas?”
He pulled the chair from in front of my desk over and straddled it backward, resting his arms on the chair’s back.
“I know a lot about you,” he said. “You love purple. You’re mildly obsessed with pandas. You’ve always wanted a horse.” I noticed him glance at my legs, and he said, “And that scar on your knee from when you fell when you were five has actually mostly disappeared, I see.”
I felt my cheeks warm, and I grabbed a pillow and threw it over my lap. After all these years, I was still sensitive about that scar.
“Okay, this is creepy. Are you some kind of stalker or something?”
He laughed and said, “Maybe. But your mother loves to talk about you, and I had eight months to listen.”
“Oh. I guess that explains it.”
“You know, you think I don’t know you, but I do,” he said. “I’ve known you for about a year now, actually. I probably know more about you than you know about you.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I would,” he said confidently.
“What’s your point?” I asked, growing frustrated.
“Hell, I don’t know,” he said, pushing off the chair and returning it to its place in front of my desk. “I just came by to apologize and tell you that you’re wrong. I do know you. The problem is, you don’t know me.”
“I don’t think that’s much of a problem at all,” I told him. “I think we’re both better off not knowing each other.”
“Oh, really?” he asked.
“Really!” I shot back.
“Fine!”
I watched him storm out of the room and slam the door behind him, and for a moment I was overcome with contrition. He’d come to apologize, and I hadn’t been very nice to him. But what good would it do for the two of us to get to know one another? We were about to be stepsiblings. We’d pass each other in the hallway on the way to our school or work, maybe see each other and dinner and holidays, and that would be it. There couldn’t be anything else.
I could just see the look on my mother’s face if I told her I had a crush on my stepbrother.
“Katherine, think of the family’s reputation!” she would gasp, fanning herself as though she might faint. “We’re royalty, for goodness sake!”
Yeah, I could see it now.
My door opened again, and Mom was standing there with her hand on her hips looking frustrated.
“What did you say to him?” she asked accusingly.
“Nothing,” I told her. “I just told him I didn’t think we should waste time getting to know each other. I mean, it’s not like we’ll be spending a lot of time together.”
“Kat, he’s going to be your stepbrother. You
should at least try to be nice to him.”
“I have, Mom. I just don’t get along with him. I can’t help that,” I told her.
“Fair enough, but that doesn’t mean you have to treat him in a way that would send him storming out of the house as though you’d spit in his face.”
“He was that upset?” I asked her.
“He barely said goodbye. He looked like a wounded puppy.”
Damn.
Crash: A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance Page 6