Dirty Stepbrother - A Firefighter Romance (The Maxwell Family)

by Alycia Taylor

  At the very end there was the pulling challenge, which had each contestant pull a truck with just their body weight and strength. Once again, I was sure that Tyler had done magnificently, but I couldn’t be completely sure until the winner was announced.

  When the competition was over, the judges deliberated for a little while until finally, they came out with a first, second and third place.

  Of course, they waited to reveal first place until last and as they carefully laid out the winners of the first two places, I held my breath, both hoping to hear Tyler’s name among the winners, but slightly more hopeful that he didn’t get called until the very end.

  After a long lead-in, in order to add to the already mounting anticipation that had taken over the area, the announcer made it official. Tyler won and I could barely contain my excitement. I jumped up and down and screamed at the top of my lungs as he moved up to receive his prize.

  Yet, I noticed with a sense of happiness that it wasn’t exactly the prize that Tyler had his eye on now; it was me.

  Tyler flashed me a wink and I felt my heart flutter while I watched him strut up to be front and center.

  The whole crowd was going wild, but I knew that he was looking at me and for the first time in a really long time, I was happy for someone that was actually close to me, besides just a friend. I don’t think that I had ever been prouder of anyone.

  In a way, with all of the help that I had tried to provide and the amount of emotion that I held for him, whether I wanted to or not at this point, I was also proud of myself. I felt as though I had done something significant in order for the win to have been attributed to Tyler.

  However, after everything that had gone on during this summer, I didn’t feel bad or think that I didn’t deserve this. I had worked hard and so had Tyler. For once in a very long time, I felt as though I deserved every bit of the sensation that I had coursing through my body.

  When everything had calmed down and I was able to meet up with him, I was still ecstatic. I felt as though my whole life had a meaning and a purpose that I had never quite been able to contemplate before. It was fantastic and I was ready to take every inch of that pride for myself.

  I had the distinct feeling that it wasn’t just me and it wasn’t just him and I anymore; we had achieved something together and that meant a lot to me.

  So, as soon as I saw him in the crowd, I was overwhelmed with emotion and excitement. I was happy to see that Tyler also moved with a sense of excitement as I grew closer to him.

  When we were within arm’s length of one another, we embraced and, without even thinking, as I was completely overwhelmed by the passion and excitement running through my body from the adrenaline of the win, I leaned up and pressed my mouth against Tyler’s zealously and comfortably.

  For the moment, we were the only two people that mattered in the world. There might be a whole crowd surrounding us, but all we saw and all we felt was one another.

  The now familiar taste of him was inviting and alluring. Forgetting the world that surrounded us, he grasped onto me and pulled me closer to him.

  The moment, for the short period of time that it lasted, was incredibly powerful. I had never felt such an amazing experience coming unto me before, especially in public. All I really wanted to do was tear his clothes off and make love to him right then and there.

  However, the moment of such wild, careless desire was short-lived, when I heard my father’s voice booming out to me, loudly and completely shocked.

  “Ashley! What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, just before I felt his hand grasp my arm and yank me backwards.

  Tyler instinctively moved toward the man who was pulling me backward, but stopped short when he saw that it was my father. “What are you doing here?” He sounded stunned.

  “I came to watch you compete,” my father answered heatedly. “But I certainly saw more than I bargained for…”

  I looked at my father, who glared between the two of us with a red face, full of fury. I knew that the only reason he wasn’t completely going off on us was simply because he was too shocked to rationalize his words.

  Just like us, he couldn’t seem to understand the full extent of what was going on. The world now seemed to be spinning on around us, while we were completely oblivious to it, but for a different reason.

  I felt sick to my stomach.

  “Come on, Ashley, we are going home,” my father said sternly.

  I glanced at him and thought of saying something to the contrary, but figured this wouldn’t be the time. I just nodded and left with him, without saying a word.

  Chapter Forty

  Tyler

  “Fuck!” I muttered to myself as I made my way back to where the winners were supposed to meet up for a group photo.

  I knew that I was distracted and that had made the whole competition a shit-ton harder for me, but I had been just as happy.

  I enjoyed the idea of having someone to cheer for me, but now, her father had gone and fucked everything up.

  I sighed, trying to let some of the aggravated tension I had built up in me go, before I just shook my head and looked down at the ground. I couldn’t believe my rotten luck. I was just starting to figure things out.

  I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that we would never get caught, but I figured it wouldn’t be at a time like that.

  Since when does he give a fuck about my life? I thought with seething anger as I kicked a rock through the crowd and then ran the other way so the person that it hit wouldn’t figure out it was me.

  I wasn’t afraid of them, though. I just didn’t want a confrontation, because I felt like I would end up doing something that I regretted and that was the last thing I needed. So, I just shook my head again and grumbled as I made my way into the middle of the losers who thought they were hot shit, just because they made it to a place that was deemed the ‘winners’ circle.

  I had come in first and in my mind, that was the only place that really mattered. Second and beyond were all beat by someone, usually me and that’s all there was to it. I had always maintained the mentality that if I wasn’t first, I was last, because no one but myself usually gave a shit anyway; so I might as well try to be hard on myself. Normally, it would make me feel all tingly and cocky, being surrounded by losers, taking the gold; after all, I had worked pretty damn hard. But this didn’t make me feel anything except disappointment right now. I didn’t have any will to even take the trophy, because I didn’t feel like I had won anything.

  Even though I had done what I came to do, I had unexpectedly lost something far more valuable to me and that was surprisingly bothersome.

  The look in Ashley’s eyes when she walked away with her father was haunting.

  To me, it meant that the fun we had was likely over, which sucked because on top of the fact that our relationship had always made me work for something, I felt that it was also making me a better person.

  I had no interest in straying from Ashley. We were having fun together and for once, I was beginning to feel a connection to another person, instead of the selfish, conceited air that I had become accustomed to.

  Now, it was all fucking over.

  After we took the pictures, which were probably going to be in the paper the next day, or something for the town, I took my prize and left.

  Instead of going back to the beach house right away though, I went down by the ocean and began to run. I figured it might be good to give everyone some space, including myself.

  So I forced myself to focus on everything about my stride, the feel of the air entering and exiting my lungs and the soreness of my muscles, which were really feeling the pressure after having completed the competition, instead of worrying about what was going on back at the house.

  I tried not to think about the fact that the longer I stayed away, the longer I was allowing my mother and her father to grill Ashley about our relationship and she probably wasn’t going to appreciate that. But at the moment, I felt that I wa
s too angry to be helpful. I wasn’t going to want to explain myself like some fucking child.

  I was going to want to barge in that house and demand that I was allowed to do whatever the hell I wanted, with whoever the hell I wanted.

  They didn’t give a shit about us all summer. All they did was fuck one another, but they were going to get pissed off at us for doing the same thing? What? Because we’re step-siblings. Go blow it out your ass. We’re not related and chances are, they won’t even last when the novelty of being a married couple wears off.

  It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen it before. Actually, I had seen it twice before. My mother thought that marrying a man and then taking him for all he was worth made her honest, but that only compounded her sins.

  At least there’s no ulterior fucking motive for us being together, I thought, not allowing myself to slow down, for I knew if I gave into the temptation I would not be able to stop myself. Surely, I would just barge in there and give her father and my mother a piece of my mind that they would probably choke on.

  That wouldn’t end well and even though I wanted to do it really fucking bad, something told me that I would regret it. So I continued to make my way down the beach, focusing, almost a little bit too much on the hot sand being kicked up by my feet and the feel of my shallow breathing trying to keep pace with the rest of my body.

  For once, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do and I didn’t want to act on my instinct so, I just kept running.

  When I finally did stop, the fight hadn’t been completely lost from me, but I wasn’t blindingly angry and I had managed to stop seeing the situation as so unbelievably dire. I knew that I needed to get my head on straight if I was going to walk in there, but I also was going to lay down and take their shit.

  So, once I had come to this conclusion, I breathed a long sigh of relief before I huffed loudly as my body caught up with everything I had demanded from it that day.

  I knew how I was going to handle this situation; the only thing that I needed to do now was find my way back to the house.

  I walked back up the dunes and gauged what street I was on. I thought things looked familiar and I was right. I certainly wasn’t that far from the house, so I decided to walk the rest of the way.

  By the time I began my ascent up the driveway, past the car that I had first seen Ashley come out of and the family car that we had driven up in, I had made the decision that no matter what happened when I walked through that door, I didn’t want to make anything more difficult for Ashley.

  If need be, I would leave and never return, if that would make everything all right. After all, my mother wouldn’t give a shit and it would save Ashley from hating me when my mother eventually tired of her father.

  As I thought of this, I stopped to reconsider the idea before I shrugged and thought that maybe I should leave and never come back now.

  However, then I thought of Ashley and knew that I had to at least announce that I was leaving, if it came to that, but there was also something else. There was a large part of me that didn’t want to leave and I realized then that I hoped it didn’t come to that.

  Perhaps something could be worked out, I considered with the first stretch of positivity that I had ever since Ashley’s father showed up at the competition. I can’t believe I actually want something to work out.

  It was beginning to get dark now and I figured I had better get to it and get this shit over with. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take all that long.

  With all of this in mind, I jogged the rest of the way up the driveway and actually, honestly and truly hoped for the best.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Ashley

  Awful would have been a gross understatement to describe every long, daunting, terrible second of the ride back to the beach house.

  Via car, the ride from where the competition was held back to the house was usually extremely short, but at the present time, I thought it would have been easier, quicker and far more preferred to get back home and spare the thick, awkward silence that surrounded us.

  I sighed, trying to figure out what I should say to my father to get him to stop looking over at me with such a sense of disappointment. I knew that he wasn’t happy, but the silence and sizzling sense of nothingness that surrounded us was wholly unbearable.

  At first, I went to speak to him, but the intensity of his eyes as they glowered at me from the driver’s side of the car made me rethink the idea. I didn’t want to upset him even more than I already had.

  So the silence bellowed and the ride continued to be everlasting.

  I looked out the window and tried to focus on something other than the situation I was currently in.

  We passed plenty of different places throughout the entirety of what seemed to be the never-ending trip that I knew well, but that didn’t matter to me at the moment. All I cared about was trying my best to have something to think about and therefore, I felt as though I was seeing the entirety of the world anew. I noticed details of the familiar island that I had never realized were there.

  I thought about everything I saw and tried to experience everything that was passing by my slow-moving window as though I was seeing it for the first time. It worked, sort of. I definitely saw plenty of new details, but none of them were able to distract me from the forbearing silence that bore down upon the vehicle.

  Part of me still wanted to try to talk to my father, but each time I went to speak, his cold, angry eyes dissuaded me.

  I didn’t want to fight. I knew that wouldn’t do us any good, but by the look on his face, it seemed that anything I said or did would cause an eruption of pent-up emotion that would lead to a meltdown of nuclear proportions.

  Therefore, I continued to conclude that my silence was probably best.

  Eventually we made it to the driveway. After my father pulled in and stopped the car, he turned off the engine and air, which automatically made the heat burst through the crevices, making the small space even more uncomfortable.

  I drew in a deep breath, even though it made me feel sick to do so, just so the hotness of the car would not suffocate me.

  My father didn’t get out of the car right away, though, so I figured that I shouldn’t try to get out of the car either.

  I wasn’t sure how I could escape the car without incurring more wrath, so I just stayed there patiently as my blood began to boil and my breath began to pant.

  By the time my father made any kind of move, I was fighting back panting, sweating profusely and feeling as though I was going to be dangerously sick.

  “Ashley,” he said, in a voice that made me wish he sounded angry, “why would you do this to me?”

  “Dad I…”

  “Don’t…” he whispered, shaking his head and sighing angrily. “Please don’t lie to me.”

  “I wasn’t going to lie!” I exclaimed, narrowing my eyes at him and trying my best to remain as calm as possible. I huffed a long sigh before I crossed my arms and sat back against the cushion of the seat. I ground my teeth and rolled my eyes at the absurdity of what was going on. If he wasn’t even going to hear me out, then I really had nothing to say to him.

  “What were you going to say then? You were going to tell me the truth? You were going to admit to my face that you did this to get back at me, that you wanted nothing more than to see my marriage fall apart, while you just sit back and watch what you think is a house of cards crumble? I know you two think that all Theresa and I do is have sex, but we actually have a very loving relationship and this little attempt at sabotaging that relationship just isn’t going to work.”

  “You always think everything is all about you!” I screamed, finally having enough of all his crap. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was that had made me snap; there was sure a whole host of different things that I could have picked up on, but I decided to lead with the big picture. When I did, I felt the wave of fury strike me down suddenly and with a great deal of strain. I felt my eyes bulge out of my head as my forehead gr
ew red and began to ache with pain and aggravation. I could tell that my blood was boiling and all I wanted to do was scream.

  The heat of the car certainly wasn’t helping matters, but by that time, I wasn’t thinking about that at all. All I was concerned with was making him see my side of the story.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded. His face was red for a while now, but I didn’t even care that he was angry with me. I was far too irate with him to worry about what he was going to say or do.

  “Of course! You conveniently have no idea,” I shot back. “When Mom died, it was all about you and how depressed you were and now it’s all about you and how I could possibly do this to you, instead of once thinking about my feelings.” I was screaming now. “I’m your daughter! I lost my mother and all you could do was sit around and feel sorry for yourself, feel guilty for what happened because you know as well as I do that if she hadn’t gotten sick, you would have left her!”

  “Why would you say that? I loved your mother…” He yelled back, but with far less conviction than he had previously.

  “Yes, well I still love her and you know damn well that you were cheating on her. She knew it and I knew it. That was what Mom had to hide from me and why she had to keep her illness from us, because she didn’t want you to stay out of guilt!” Once I started, everything began to tumble out. “I needed you and all you wanted to do was go crawl in a hole and die for four years, not because you were grieving, but because you were guilty. You couldn’t believe that you would do this to a woman who cared about you, faults and all, literally until her dying breath.”

  “Did your mother tell you that?” he demanded.

  “No! She didn’t say anything,” I answered, growing even angrier by the second, “probably because she knew that I would be stuck with you when she died and she didn’t want me to hate you.”

  “Do you hate me? Is that why you did it?”