I headed downstairs and outside, and she approached me with a wide smile. “Surprise, honey!”
“Surprise? What’s going on?”
She gestured towards the car. “I’ve been doing some thinking for the last few days, and I realized how inconsiderate I’ve been in making you move here with me on such short notice. You had to leave everything and everyone you knew behind, and I know how hard it’s been for you to make friends in the past. So I’m sorry, Charlotte. I thought I’d try and make things up to you a bit by getting you a brand new car to get yourself around in, seeing as there’s not really much in the way of public transport out here. So this Volvo is all yours!”
“But Mom, that must’ve cost a fortune,” I replied, trying to remember how much the average brand new car cost these days.
“Well, Keith helped a bit,” she said. “Do you like it?”
Her forehead was creased with anxiety, and I broke into a grin. “I love it. Thanks, Mom.”
I threw my arms around her, and she squeezed me tight. “I know it’s just a car, but I am thinking about you as well as myself, sweetie. I think moving here was the right choice.”
I pulled back and smiled. “Yeah, it was. It was sudden, but I’ll make new friends, and RMU is a really good school. And this house is amazing.”
“It is, isn’t it?” she replied. “By the way, Cade is pretty good with cars. I actually had him come with us to Denver yesterday and help pick it out, and he made sure we got a pretty good deal. Apparently his football coach’s brother owns the car dealership we went to.”
“Oh.”
“So maybe say thank you to him as well,” she said, giving me a tight smile. She must’ve noticed some of the tension between us at the lunch the other day, and now she was trying to make us bond and get along.
I gritted my teeth. “Sure, I’ll talk to him later. Can I take the car for a quick spin first, though?”
“Of course! Have fun,” she said, handing me the keys. “Oh, and by the way, Cade left the car manual and all that jazz in the glove compartment for you.”
“All right. Thanks.”
“Well, you have fun. I’m going to keep unpacking things.”
She headed back towards Keith’s SUV to grab more boxes, and I got into the Volvo and sat down, smiling as I inhaled the fresh ‘new car’ smell. I hadn’t expected a gift like this at all, and I felt guilty for being so snippy with Mom over this whole move. It definitely made sense for us to be here, rather than Keith moving his family back to Philly, because he was on the State Senate here, so he couldn’t exactly just pack up and leave all that easily, whereas Mom’s job as a pharmaceutical rep allowed for more flexibility.
Before starting the car up, I reached into the glove compartment to check out the manual, and I shrieked as my hand touched something furry. Yanking it back, I peered at it, only to realize that it was a toy mouse.
Of course.
Cade was obviously still mentally eight years old and still leaving things around to scare me. Well, I wasn’t going to take it; even something as petty as this. I grabbed the mouse and strode inside, then headed upstairs and down the hallway to find his room. There were only two doors down this end of the hall, and one had a rocket on it, so I made an educated guess that that room was Evan’s, and then pounded on the other one.
There was no answer, but Evan poked his head around his door a second later. “Charlotte? Are you looking for Cade?”
I turned to him and smiled. “Yep. Have you seen him?”
“I think he went down to the gym on the first floor. He has a game coming up soon, so he has to work out.”
“Oh.”
“Is that a mouse you’re holding?”
I gave him a sheepish smile and held up the toy. “Toy mouse, yes. Cade left it in my new car.”
Evan rolled his eyes. “That’s totally something he’d do. He’s only teasing, though.”
“Some might call it that,” I mumbled.
“No, seriously. Cade and I tease each other all the time about silly stuff, but he’s not a bad brother. Maybe he’s just trying to help you settle in by bringing you into all the silly pranks we play on each other.”
My face must’ve given something away, or else Evan was even more perceptive than I thought, because he stepped out of his room, a concerned expression on his face. “What’s wrong? Do you have a mouse phobia or something?”
“No. It’s just…well, I don’t know if you know this, but Cade and I actually knew each other when we were kids.”
A look of comprehension dawned on his face. “Oh! I forgot you and your Mom were from Philadelphia as well. I had no idea you and my brother already knew each other.”
“Yeah, well, we went to school together, and he used to play all these pranks on me back then,” I said, holding up the mouse again. “I guess nothing’s changed.”
He gave me a rueful smile. “He’s good when he needs to be. I used to get really badly bullied in school when I was younger. Then he came and found the guys who used to beat me up after school one day. He laid them all out and then told them if they ever touched me again, he’d be back.”
“Really? I’m so sorry you were bullied. I had no idea.”
He nodded. “They left me alone after that, because of Cade. He’s a really good guy when he wants to be,” he said. A look of comprehension suddenly dawned on him. “Hey, I just remembered something. Did you always wear pigtails to school when you were a kid?”
“Yes.”
“You must be the girl in his old school books, then!”
“Huh?”
Evan crept across the hall and opened Cade’s bedroom door. “Guard the door,” he said. “If you hear him coming back, distract him. He’ll probably be embarrassed if he knows I showed you this.”
“Erm…okay,” I said.
I heard him rummaging around Cade’s bedroom for a minute or two, and then he let out a triumphant, “Aha!”
He came out and held up a book. “He used to let me read his old school books to help me out with school when I was little, and this is one of them. I found this while I was reading through it one day.”
He skipped to the midway point and then pointed to a scribbled drawing on the left-hand page. It was a childish heart with an arrow through it, and the word ‘Charlot’. Evan looked at me with glee.
“See? He totally had a crush on a girl named Charlotte. Obviously couldn’t spell it, but whatever…I think this book was from when he was only eight or nine.”
I shook my head. “There must’ve been some other Charlotte he knew.”
“I don’t know. When I first saw this and teased him about it, he said it was a girl he used to like, who had green eyes and dark hair she always wore in pigtails. Oh, and there’s also this.”
He skipped forward another few pages to show me another doodle of a heart with the letters CB +CR inside it.
“That’s his initials and yours,” Evan said. “It was totally you!”
I shook my head again, slower this time. “That doesn’t make any sense. Cade didn’t like me.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, for one, he called me Charlotte the Harlot every time he saw me for the whole of the fourth grade, not to mention all the other teasing and pranks over the years.”
Evan arched an eyebrow. “I hate to sound like a cliché, but boys sometimes tease girls because they like them. I used to do it too, with this girl I liked when I was younger. Her name was Lisa, and I used to call her Lisa Pizza. It was stupid, but I was nine, and I just wanted her attention.”
I chewed my lip as I thought about it. I’d always thought the old cliché of boys teasing and bullying girls because they ‘liked’ them was a load of bullshit which taught girls to take shit from boys, and taught boys that it was okay to be abusive. I said as much to Evan, and he nodded.
“Well, I agree with that, but Cade never did anything abusive….did he?” he said.
I sighed. “Um…sort of.�
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“Really?”
I nodded. “Yeah. See, it was all pretty harmless, funny stuff for the first few years—from about second grade onwards—but he did something in the seventh grade which made it all way worse. It probably sounds like something really petty, but it’s the kind of thing that really affects a girl when she’s at that age.”
“Oh?”
I filled him in on the whole ‘Period Girl’ incident, and on how that had really been the catalyst for me becoming a permanent social outcast. Evan’s face darkened as I outlined it all for him, right up until the point of high school and how awfully I’d been treated as a result of the ‘loser’ reputation that Cade had created for me.
“That’s horrible. I’m sorry. And you’re sure it was him who played that corn syrup prank on you?”
“Yeah. The girl who sat next to me told me it was him who put the stuff on my chair and bragged about how bad it would look with my white pants. And he’d played tons of other so-called pranks on me before that, although none that were anywhere near that mean.”
“Crap. I had no idea….that’s really weird, though. I can imagine him playing stupid pranks and teasing you—honestly, he does it to everyone—but I can’t imagine him doing something that horrible to a girl. I think you should talk to him about it.”
“I don’t know. It’s all in the past. Maybe I should just get over it,” I muttered, already feeling a bit sick at the memory. Just thinking about it made me feel like I’d swallowed a lead balloon.
“We all have to live together, so you may as well hash it all out and get to the bottom of it. I really think there’s more to it, because like I said, I really can’t see him doing something like that, even when he was way younger. He’s always talked a tough game, but he’s a softie at heart. So yeah, at least talk to him.”
I smiled. “Fine. You’re right. Has anyone ever told you that you’re really mature, Evan?”
“Every day,” he said. “Naw, just kidding.”
“Well, you are.”
“Thanks. Promise me you’ll talk to Cade at some point!”
I nodded. “I promise.”
“Cool. Anyway, do you need help unpacking or bringing anything in?”
I smiled. “Thanks, but I’ve got it covered. Most of our stuff is still in storage at the moment, so it’s just a few bags and suitcases.”
“All right.”
I headed back down to my room at the opposite end of the hallway, contemplating Evan’s earlier words about Cade. Was there really a chance that I’d been so wrong about him for all these years? If he hadn’t played that horrible ‘period’ prank on me, then that meant that he wasn’t responsible for my social demise after all. Sure, he’d played other pranks on me and teased me for years before that syrup prank, but that was all just harmless silly stuff. The period prank was the prank that cemented my status as a total joke and made me lose all my friends, which in turn made me get treated awfully later on in high school.
All this time, I’d assumed it was him simply because I’d been told it was him by another person….but what if it hadn’t been him? I was still quite convinced that it was him, but if it wasn’t, then I owed him a serious apology for how rude I’d been to him in my hotel room the other morning, and on other occasions since then.
The whole thing also made me question my deep hatred of him over the years, and the way I’d clung to it so intensely. He’d been a scapegoat for everything; blamed for all my misery, but what if I’d just used him as a target for all my hatred because I’d needed someone else to blame other than myself? Before I’d finally stood up for myself in my junior year of high school, I’d acted like a victim for a long time, and to tell the truth, I’d hated myself for letting myself get treated so awfully. I knew it wasn’t my fault that the other kids did it in the first place—that was on them for being asshole bullies—but the way I chose to view myself and react to the situation was on me. It was only when I stood up for myself and stopped allowing them to treat me like that when I’d gained a real sense of respect for myself again.
Evan was right—I needed to talk it out with Cade and learn to let go of the past. Even if it turned out that he was responsible for the period prank and all the other things that had eventually led to the other kids treating me as an outcast, then it was time I stopped holding a grudge. Maybe I’d never be friends with him, but I could at least stop lingering on the past and holding onto all my anger.
Seeing as he was apparently working out in the home gym now, I figured I’d unpack my stuff first and talk to him later, because I didn’t want to disturb him. On top of that, I didn’t quite know how to bring it all up just yet; it would be awkward as hell.
As I padded back into my new bedroom, I headed over to the bed and sat down before glancing around at everything again with a smile. This was my house now, and with any luck—and providing how well my chat with Cade went—it’d soon feel like my home.
Chapter Six
Cade
Groaning under the heavy weights attached to each end of the bar I’d just picked up, I lifted it over my head, held it for ten seconds and then lowered it back down to the rack. Wiping sweat from my brow, I sat up on the bench, knowing I’d finally done enough bench press reps.
I’d done forty-five minutes of weight training now, and it was time for some HIIT—high intensity interval training. It involved doing multiple intervals of short, ultra-intense exercises, and it helped build and maintain cardiovascular fitness as well as burning off extra energy. It was important for me to utilize different workout methods to keep my body in tip-top shape, because football players didn’t only need size and strength. We also needed speed, agility, and endurance, and doing a variety of workouts helped build all those things up. It also kept it from being boring; there was nothing worse than doing the exact same routine every single time.
As I did some explosive squat jumps, I thought about my earlier encounter with Charlotte in the hall. I’d been asked to show her where her new room was, and I’d tried to be nice to her, but as usual, she’d been so hostile that I couldn’t help but bite back at her with a hostile comment of my own. Honestly, I had no idea what her problem with me was.
Sure, I’d teased her in elementary school, and maybe that made me a dick, but I’d been a fucking kid with a crush, that was all. I’d never done anything serious. I remembered chasing her around the playground a bit, and I also remembered doing dumb crap like leaving toy spiders on her desk or on her chair. Just stuff to get her attention. I’d also made up a rhyming nickname—Charlotte the Harlot. Yeah, that was an asshole move, but I’d been nine, and I hadn’t even understood what the word ‘harlot’ really meant, and when I’d found out, I’d stopped calling her that.
I knew teasing a girl was a shitty way of letting her know I liked her, but fuck, I’d literally been a child. I didn’t know jack-shit about getting girls to like me back then, and I’d honestly thought that if I got her attention by playing stupid tricks on her, she’d suddenly return my feelings.
But Charlotte acted like I’d done something far worse. I had no idea what I’d allegedly done aside from the silly harmless kiddy pranks; in fact, I distinctly remembered sticking up for her a lot whenever other kids tried to do anything. One time this bitch who was jealous of Charlotte’s good grades played a really mean fucking prank on her. She left some sort of red sauce or syrup on her chair, and then one of my friends screamed out something about Charlotte getting her period when she sat in it. I wasn’t proud of this next part, because violence wasn’t exactly the best response, but I beat up that particular friend of mine during lunch that day for saying that shit, and whenever anyone else tried to mock Charlotte over it, I told them to get fucked as well.
It hadn’t worked very well, despite my popularity and influence. Kids could be cruel, especially the young girls who acted like period stuff was shameful—as if it wasn’t going to happen to them one day—and Charlotte pretty much became a loner after that
. Her friends seemed to have abandoned her, and I didn’t see her around much for the rest of the semester. I’d gone to the library to try and find her a few times, to see if she wanted to talk or hang out, but I’d never been able to find her.
A few months after that, Mom left, and Dad moved us all the way to Colorado, where he’d grown up. I had no idea what Charlotte’s life had been like after that, but considering the way she’d yelled at me the other week in the hotel room, I guess it wasn’t exactly great. That was shitty, and I felt bad for her.
But to actually blame me for all of it? That was bullshit.
She’d literally told me that I ‘made her life hell’, but was leaving the occasional prank mouse on her desk in the fourth grade really the equivalent of ruining her life? Hell, like I said earlier, I’d even tried to stand up for her multiple times. It wasn’t my fault that other girl played that nasty prank on her in the seventh grade and spread ostracizing rumors, and I’d even done my part in trying to stop those bullshit rumors from going any further. So for her to act like I’d wrecked her whole life and treat me like shit was a bit of a slap in the face, and to tell the truth, I was surprised to see her act like that.
She’d always been a sweet girl back in school, which was one of the many reasons I’d had such a crush on her, but the way she treated me now was the opposite of sweet. I’d tried to be nice, I’d tried to lighten things up and break the ice by telling stupid, sleazy jokes—just like the silly, sleazy jokes she’d seemed to like so much on the night we’d hooked up—and I’d even helped her Mom pick out a new car for her. But she was having none of it. She’d become a total ice queen around me, and now I figured the only way to deal with it was to totally ignore her. Clearly, she didn’t want anything to do with me, and our house was big. I could avoid her most of the time.
What really sucked was how little I actually wanted to avoid her. As much as her resentment and hostility bothered me, it was impossible to ignore the fact that she was the hottest damn girl I’d ever seen, and whenever I closed my eyes, I thought of her—those curves, those lips, that ass. Most of all, the way she’d felt in my arms that night.
Tease - A Stepbrother Sports Romance Page 5