Mask - A Stepbrother Romance

by Daire, Caitlin

  He nodded again. “We already have the fences and gates with their security cameras, and the alarm system in the house—plus the added benefit of being quite far out, so people wouldn’t usually just try to wander onto the estate. But who knows? Perhaps some drunk woman was in the area for some reason, and she somehow managed to get in. Not sure why, as nothing has been taken, but I can’t think of any other reason why you might’ve seen someone.”

  “Oh. I didn’t even consider the possibility of an intruder. I just assumed…”

  ‘That this place is safe?” he said. “I would’ve thought so too, considering how bloody much I pay for the security measures, but just to be sure, I’ll call up my security company and have them check the feed from the cameras near the front gate. If they saw anyone unusual come onto the estate during the last few weeks, then they really should’ve told me, but I’ll call them anyway and make sure, just so we all have some peace of mind.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, darling,” Mom said, squeezing his arm. “I’m sure Rayna was just having a nightmare, though.”

  Speaking of nightmares…with the way Jace was staring at me now, and the way my body was wantonly responding to that, it looked like I was going to be trapped in one for quite some time. All I wanted to do was touch him, but as long as our parents were together, nothing like that could happen, so I was trapped in this sexual limbo where I couldn’t even think of another guy.

  I pictured myself leaping across the table and onto Jace’s lap, where he could kiss me, strip me, and bounce me up and down on his hard cock, and as the images flashed in my mind, I sighed quietly to myself. It was an extremely vivid fantasy…but it was one which could only exist in my head from now on.

  Dammit…

  Chapter 10

  Rayna

  “Rayna, have you seen my hairpin? The one with the turquoise stones set on it.”

  I turned to my Mom with a smile, holding up her hairpin. “Don’t worry, Mom, I’ve got your ‘something blue’.”

  Her face sagged with relief, and she took the pin from me and gave it to the hairdresser, who’d just arrived at the manor. The wedding day had finally arrived, and we were getting ready in a large guest bedroom on the second floor.

  The ceremony was being held here on the manor estate, and the subsequent reception was to be held at a ritzy hotel in downtown London. Even though it was Gerald’s fourth wedding—or was it his fifth? I couldn’t remember—he’d still gone all out and made sure my Mom had her dream day, which was really sweet of him. A lot of money had been spent, a lot of people had been invited, and it was going to be featured in the wedding section of the country’s biggest paper.

  Two hours later, we headed out into the extensive gardens, where two hundred guests were gathered. They were sitting in French-style white chairs on either side of a cream runner carpet that had been set up on the perfectly manicured lawn, and beautiful pink floral arrangements adorned each row. For a place like England, which probably often had grey skies this time of year, it was actually a beautiful day for a wedding—not a cloud in the sky, and the horizon had never seemed brighter.

  Too bad I couldn’t say the same for my mood.

  I knew I should be happy for my Mom and Gerald on their special day, and I was, but still, knowing that Jace would officially be my stepbrother soon had made a dark cloud descend on my mood, and I couldn’t shake it, no matter how hard I tried.

  A string quartet began to play a classical song, and everyone stood and turned to watch as I headed up the carpet, smiling and holding my little bouquet of pink peonies. I was Mom’s only bridesmaid, and Jace was Gerald’s only groomsman, so when I arrived at the wreathed arch at the end of the runner, he was standing directly opposite me, staring at me. I looked back at him, and he gave me a half-smile; a smile which made me die a little on the inside. He was so close, only a few feet away, and those eyes of his…the way he looked at me…

  Determined, I looked away. I would not like him like that anymore.

  What the hell was wrong with me, anyway? How was I not over our two failed hookups after this long? Not only that, I was being incredibly selfish. This was my Mom’s day, and I was making it all about me and Jace. With that guilty thought, I turned and watched my mother walk down the aisle. Her face was radiant, and I really was happy to see her like this; glowing with joy and anticipation. I hadn’t been sure about Gerald at first, seeing as he’d just been some internet stranger when I’d first heard of him, but the two of them seemed very happy together, and by now I was sure they’d be happy for a long time. While Gerald could be gruff sometimes and had been through previous relationships like a box of tissues during flu season, he seemed to have his heart in the right place when it came to Mom.

  When Mom finally reached the altar, the priest smiled and looked at us. “Friends, family…welcome. Today we are gathered here to celebrate the wonderful union of…”

  He started the whole spiel, and in what felt like just a few seconds, it was done, and my Mom was kissing her brand new husband. I finally dared another glance at Jace, and I saw that the half-smile was gone from his face now. His expression was stony, and I wondered what he was thinking. Was he angry at his father for putting him through yet another wedding ceremony? Or was he thinking about me and wishing we hadn’t just become legally bound as siblings?

  Either way, it didn’t matter. Our parents were officially married now, so whatever Jace and I had shared during those brief encounters of ours…it was really over.

  Over for good.

  ***

  Most of the people at the reception were posh, uptight people from the upper class world that Gerald inhabited, and I’d made polite yet awkward conversation with a few of them for as long as I could handle it. After a while, I needed a break from it all, so when the food had been served and the liquor was flowing, I sat at a table in one corner, sipping champagne and sneakily reading snippets of the book I’d hidden in my bag.

  It was the book Jace had lent me weeks ago—World’s Over. I’d only just had the chance to start reading it, seeing as I’d been so busy with everything else lately, and so far, I loved it. There was a central mystery along with action, romance and other thrilling moments, and I could see why it was one of Jace’s favorites. Reading it made me feel strangely close to him, even though we hadn’t talked in weeks, and funnily enough, it was actually the book that made us finally speak to each other after all this time.

  As I sat there reading, I suddenly had the distinct feeling that I was being watched, and I looked up to see Jace standing in front of me, looking handsome as heck in his tux.

  “Enjoying the book?” he asked.

  My cheeks flushed, partly from seeing him, and partly from being caught out hiding in the corner. “Yeah. It’s great.”

  “Reading at a wedding reception, though…being a bit antisocial, huh?”

  “Uh, yeah. Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. This party is stiffer than a teenage boy upon seeing his first pair of tits.”

  “Should you really be talking about teenage boy’s erections at our parent’s wedding?” I asked, arching a brow.

  He grinned. “Oh, shut up.”

  I smiled back at him. Despite all the weeks of silence, we’d somehow fallen right back into regular conversation with very little awkwardness.

  “So what part are you up to?” he asked, gesturing towards the book.

  “The NASA scientists have just figured out where the supposed extraterrestrial signal was coming from, and I think Billy-Joe is about to kiss Lola.”

  Jace laughed. “You reckon?”

  “Yeah. They end up together, right?”

  “You’ll see,” he said softly.

  We looked at each other, charged tension thick in the air between us. We’d only been talking about the characters in the book, but for some reason it felt like we were both referring to us.

  “Do you want another champagne?” Jace asked, changing the subject.
>
  “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

  I watched him get up and approach a waiter, and he made polite conversation with him and then headed back over to me a moment later with two full champagne flutes.

  “Here.” He handed one to me, and I gratefully accepted it.

  “Thanks. Hey, do you mind if I ask you something?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Well…this is gonna be an awkward question…” I said, my voice trailing off uncertainly.

  “I think we already passed the point of awkward when we first hooked up and only realized we were going to be siblings after the fact,” he said with a grin. “Doesn’t get more awkward than that.”

  “True. Okay, well, I saw you talking to that waiter just now.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I just noticed that you’re much politer to the wait staff than some of the supposed ‘elite class’ here, who were meant to be raised with all these good manners and so on. That’s who you are—a naturally nice guy. Most of the time, anyway. So why do you feel the need to hide that from certain people?”

  He stared at me, his expression impassive. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…you just seem to have so many sides. My friend Liana told me that you’re meant to be this douchebag party animal sex addict—”

  He cut me off with a snort of laughter. “Sex addict, huh?”

  “Yes. You probably are a sex addict, but you’re not a douchebag. At least not all of the time. When you think no one’s watching, you’re actually pretty cool and nice. So why hide that?”

  He sighed. ”You really wanna know? Might be a long story.”

  “Of course.”

  He shrugged and gestured around us at the rich reception guests, clinking their glasses together as they swanned around in their elegant designer gowns and suits. “See all these people?” he said. “As stiff and annoying as I might find them, I grew up around this posh crap, so I know how to act around them and fit in. I know how to play the role of the polite trust fund kid, basically. But with some of my friends…well, it’s hard to explain.”

  “I’ll try to understand.”

  “Okay. This will probably sound really whiny, like I’m complaining about all the good fortune I’ve had, but that’s not how I mean it. But anyway, you know how wealthy my Dad is. He’s an asshole most of the time—don’t give me that look, you barely know him. Just wait, you’ll see. Anyway, as I was saying, he can be a prick, but he’s still taken care of me and my mother, financially speaking. I’ve never had to worry about money.”

  I nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “I went to a good school; one of the best in the country. But just because a school is good doesn’t mean all the students are good people.”

  “Yeah, I get that. Some of the biggest assholes I knew back in the States went to the best schools.”

  “Exactly. Anyway, I sort of had two main groups of friends back in school. The first group had guys like Tom, who I think you met at the masquerade party—he’s the guy whose house it was at. Nice guy, doesn’t get into trouble. Easy to fit in with as long as you aren’t a serial killer. So yeah, first group was a bunch of guys like him.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The second group was more like the ‘cool’ kids. Like some teenagers do, they wanted to grow up too fast, and after a while, I started ditching the first group more often to hang out with the second. I wanted to seem cool; wanted to fit in. So I changed.”

  “You changed?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I started drinking and partying on weekends with them, and by the time we started uni, I was in pretty deep, and a lot of us were starting on more serious shit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Pills. Weed. Coke. That kinda shit. And I paid for most of it. A lot of the supposed cool kids came from families who either cut them off financially once their parents figured out what they were doing, or they just didn’t have that much. But my Dad never gave a shit what I did. So yeah, I footed the bill a lot, and bought a metric fuck-ton of drugs over the last two years. I guess you could say we all got a bit addicted.”

  My eyes widened. “Oh.”

  I’d known Jace had a wild past, but I had no idea he’d been that wild. I’d known a few people who’d smoked pot back in high school, and even a guy who’d been hooked on his brother’s ADHD meds for a semester during my first year at college, but I’d never known anyone who was addicted to party drugs. As a result, I wasn’t quite sure what the right thing to say was, but I was glad he was telling me about it. It meant he trusted me with his problems, and the thought made my heart flutter.

  “I dropped out of uni in Manchester because I wanted to get away from it all. Went to live in my Mom’s city up in Scotland for a fresh start, but I fell right back into all that kinda shit with another crowd of people. It was even worse. I really fucked things up.”

  Something told me I shouldn’t press him for details on what exactly he’d done to fuck things up. If he wanted to tell me, he’d go ahead and do it, and I wouldn’t gain his trust by being invasive and nosy.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. So that’s why you came back to London?” I said instead.

  “Yeah. Trying to stay out of trouble. Don’t get me wrong, at the time I was more than willing to go along for the ride,” he said. There was no self-pity in his voice at all, just acceptance about what he’d done. “But I lost myself along the way. I guess I started to be a different person to fit into the lifestyle and all, and pretty soon I was like that most of the time. It’s weird; sometimes I think I’m still the normal guy I used to be, but most of the time I think I’ve really become the asshole I started pretending to be when I was eighteen. Like I pretended so much that it became real. Like the mask I put on became my real face.”

  I nodded slowly, and Jace arched an eyebrow. “So does that long, boring sob story answer your question?”

  “Yes. The douchebag party animal thing is like a mask you originally put on to fit in, and it sort of became part of who you are.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, you don’t have to act like that around me,” I said. “I kinda like the original Jace. The nice one.”

  “Thanks. And what about you…how are you gonna act around me from now on?”

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve been avoiding me for the last few weeks. But you really don’t need to. I get it; I get why you think we shouldn’t talk. But we can be friends, Rayna. I’m not gonna try and seduce you over the breakfast table every morning,” he said. “Believe it or not, I kinda like the real Rayna too, from what I’ve seen so far, even if we can’t touch each other. So what d’ya say…friends?”

  I gave him a tentative half-smile. “You really think we can just be friends, without any of the….you know…the hooking up stuff?”

  “Sure. Friends without benefits,” he said with a teasing smile. “If you even want to be friends with me, that is.”

  “Yeah, I do. I’m sorry I haven’t been talking to you. But on the other hand….well, I hate to sound like a broken record, but a guy I know once told me that it takes two to tango.”

  He grinned at that. “Yeah, I know, I haven’t been talking to you either. Honestly, I just figured you needed some space.”

  “Well, not anymore. You’re right, we can just be friends,” I said. “After all, we have to live together for god knows how long, so we may as well get along. Just don’t call me ‘sis’.”

  Jace chuckled. “All right, I’ll call you ‘bro’ instead.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  He grinned, then held up his champagne. “Well, Rayna,” he said. “To friendship without benefits.”

  “Friendship without benefits,” I echoed with a smile, holding up my glass to toast his.

  Jace was right. If we liked hanging out together and generally got along well, then there was no reason we couldn’t just try to be buddies, like normal stepsiblings usually managed to do. We’d be able to keep things platonic and keep
our hands off each other—I could totally manage that, and things would be fine. It couldn’t be that hard, could it?

  Yeah, I was totally lying to myself…

  Chapter 11

  Jace

  I lay in my bed later that night, wondering why it had been so damn easy to open up to Rayna. I never discussed my past, not with anyone, yet with her it had been so simple. I’d basically poured my heart out to her at the reception—not the worst parts, but the general story of what had happened to me in the last two years—and let her know exactly who I was and why I’d become this way. It was the truth, and I’d finally admitted it; admitted that I’d become a huge douchebag in the last couple of years. But that didn’t mean I had to like who I’d become.

  With Rayna around, I was beginning to think there was another way through life.

  If she could like me and accept me for who I really was deep down, then surely others could too. I usually found it difficult, if not impossible, to talk about my feelings and experiences with my friends, and I couldn’t even discuss it with my family. To be honest, that was the reason things had gone so sour with my Mom recently. When I dropped out of uni and moved in with her to try starting afresh a year ago, she couldn’t understand how much I’d changed; how I’d gone from a normal kid to the trashy idiot I’d become. I didn’t understand it either, and I didn’t know how to stop. I fell in with all the wrong people again, and before I knew it, I’d fucked things up irrevocably.

  But that was a story for another day.

  Anyway, Mom just didn’t know how to cope with all of that, and I didn’t know how to explain my reasons for acting the way I was to her—I couldn’t even explain it to myself until now—so although she never expressly told me to leave, I knew it was for the best. Sometimes things just didn’t need to be vocalized for them to be completely obvious. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her any longer, so I’d left at the first chance I’d gotten and wound up back in London….right here with Rayna.

  So the move really had been for the best. With someone as cool and understanding as Rayna to talk to and share my concerns with, I could seriously start to move on and get a real fresh start to my life.