Royal Pain: A Step Brother Romance

by A. J. Moran

  “I hope not.” I admitted casually and pushed my hands into my pockets. First step, no more pretending. Second step, treat this like it’s real. Third step, make her fall in love with me.

  “He has it bad Taylor. Just put him out of his misery and tell him you like him too.” Wade grinned over at me with an eyebrow up. Is that what he meant by helping?

  “Wade.” I hissed at him. “Dude.” Not cool.

  Thankfully she ignored him and grabbed a table near the windows. Wade quickly sat across from her taking up the whole bench seat. Leaving me sitting on the same side as her. Rubbing at the back of my neck I cleared my throat. Taylor looked up at me with a smile and I felt slightly lightheaded.

  “Are you going to sit down?” Her voice light and teasing, the grin on her face and the openness on her face almost make me feel like this isn’t all one-sided. Without breaking eye contact I nod and slide into the booth next to her. My leg brushes up against hers and heat rushes through me. My muscles tense up and then seem to release all of the tension. She puts me at ease with just an innocent touch.

  “Thanks.” I lean towards her with a whisper. A slow smile spreading across my face as her lips part slightly on a breath, she must feel it too.

  That isn’t crazy, right? We started all wrong but if we end up right does it matter? We could build something out of this. I think. I hope.

  “I am getting a strawberry shake and onion rings.” She announces without picking up a menu.

  “At least you won’t be kissing me with that breath.” Wade replies, his face buried in the menu. I kick him under the table and he glances sharply at me over the menu. “What?” He cries innocently. I was beginning to think he didn’t know what ‘helping’ meant.

  “Who says I’ll be kissing anyone?” Taylor looks from him to me, an eyebrow cocked in challenge.

  A slight pang echoes through my chest at her look and I can almost feel my heart racing in my chest. I can’t resist turning towards her and running my hand down her arm softly. We could take it slow. So she wants no more kissing. I could let her take the lead. She can tell me when she is ready.

  “You’re right. Let's take it slow.” I agreed.

  “Why are you acting so strange?” She asked, her voice suspicious. She moves against the wall out of my reach and faces me. Her smile faded away, like the autumn light.

  “It’s called falling in love.” Wade answers dryly for me. I was going to kill him. “Please don’t let me ever do that.” He pleads with a look at Taylor.

  “Why are you acting so strange?” She asked, again only directing the question at my brother. “You guys are acting like you’ve lost your minds. You both know I’m in on it all right? No pretending around me.” She glanced between us, a cute little crease between her eyes at the top of her nose, her face serious. Her hands flat on the table top.

  “Just ignore us.” I tell her with a sharp glance at Wade. He better get the meaning of that. Enough ‘helping’ for the day, it felt more like he was trying to sink the whole damn ship.

  “Okay” She draws out the word. Then after a pause she straightens out in her seat before looking over at me. “So, I’ve been thinking—“

  “About?” I try to smile but there is something about the way she says it, that makes me dread whatever she is about to say.

  “I’m ready to end this. So how do you want me to do it?” My heart thundered in my ears and my breathing felt like I couldn’t get enough air. Her words slammed through me. The casual way she said them broke me apart. Not yet my heart screamed silently, I haven’t had enough time to build a new us.

  “End this?” I repeated hoping I heard her wrong. Wade put down his menu and stared at us, like we were a train wreck happening right before his eyes.

  “Yeah. That was the whole point, right? Make me look like a bitch and all that.” Her voice is light and airy, nothing like my heart felt in my chest. It was like lead. Now it was just a dead weight beneath my rib-cage.

  “Of course.” I forced the words out as light and airy as she had.

  “Wait. You guys can’t just go from ‘blissfully happy’ to ‘broken up,’ real relationships don’t happen that way. You’ve got to plan this. Make the break up seem organic and real. Right?” Wade argued.

  What was he doing? I felt like I was overheating and I could feel a bead of sweat make its way down the center of my back. My mind was racing to find a reason behind his words but I couldn’t make sense of them.

  “Uh, yeah. I mean, of course. Gotta make it seem real.” Taylor responded to him with a nod of her head. “So what do you think we should do?”

  “The way I see it is you guys have been dating for a tiny bit, so you need at least a few more weeks of happiness before you just ‘end it’. That way it will seem more real.”

  “A few more weeks?” Taylor repeated an unreadable look on her face.

  “I see what he is saying.” I finally found my voice. Wade was brilliant. It would give me a few more weeks to change her mind. “I think it would make the most impact that way.”

  “The most impact.” She repeats again looking at me. I still can’t read the look on her face. “I mean. Does it really matter? You just want me to look bad.”

  I forgot about that part. It was making me feel like a jerk.

  “Not anymore. We can just end it mutually, you know when the time comes.” I quickly tell her, trying to ease my guilt at the whole horrible plan.

  Chapter 40

  Taylor

  The next week went by in a strange haze. Pretending to be with Marcus in public. No more kisses, but lots of touches. It was starting to grate on my nerves and I was pretty sure I would be breaking first. I couldn’t do this fake stuff. My heart wasn’t going to be able to take it.

  Especially when he would be so nice to me at home, even when no one was around to witness it. Dad and Claire seemed to enjoy the fact that their kids were now ‘getting along’ as they say. It made me want to scream from our balcony at home that it was not real. It was all 100% completely fake.

  It is probably where the thought of skipping class for the first time ever came from. Going into my fourth hour was becoming pure torture. The pretend. The touches. The whispers of breath that made me hold my own waiting for what he would do or say. That isn’t even mentioning the stupid butterflies in my stomach that must be brain dead by now with how much they have battered against my stomach trying to escape.

  “It is SO cute that he calls you his Princess!” Samantha gushed as soon as I set my book down on our Chemistry table. She was sitting sideways on her chair and facing my table.

  “Yeah. It’s- uh- nice.” Keeping up this act was starting to become painful because honestly every time he called me Princess I thought of his words about me being a bitchy kind of princess. Not that his opinion really mattered to me. Not even a tiny bit.

  Nope.

  That’s why it didn’t matter that he said we could just break up mutually. That he didn’t care about making me look bad anymore. It didn’t mean anything. He didn’t actually care about me.

  “Tell me everything.” She instructed. She had given it a couple weeks before that question had surfaced. I had to give her credit.

  “That is not going to happen. You are the gossip queen.” I grinned at her. Not much to tell anyways. It’s fake. All fake. She was going to be so mad when she realized Vee knew everything before she did.

  “Oh come on. Please!” She begged me leaning forward in her chair. “Just tell me a little something. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.” That would be a broken promise. I couldn’t hold in my laugh at her begging.

  “Tell you what?” Marcus’s voice was close behind me and then his hand was on my waist as he leaned over my shoulder to hear what Samantha had to say. He absently pressed a kiss to my temple like the loving boyfriend he was pretending to be.

  “Anything. How did you get together? When did it happen? Why were you hiding it?” She sounded like the reporter she was. It was
so easy for her to drop back into that mode.

  “Oh, that sounds like a story for Taylor to tell you. I don’t kiss and tell.” He winked at her and then leaned back into his chair. I turned towards him and he smiled brightly. “Missed you.”

  “Right.” I rolled my eyes at him. One, it had only been a couple of hours. Two, it’s hard to miss someone if you are faking the whole thing. He only cocked an eyebrow at me and grinned wider.

  “We have to make this look real.” He whispered, his voice quiet for only my ears. “Then we can end it.”

  “Right. Of course.” I replied. “We could do it right now.”

  “Not on your life. It’s not time yet.” He laughed. His hand seemed to be absently trailing down my bare arm with his words. His touch sent tingles down my spine and I moved away slightly. Catching my movement he grinned and I flushed in embarrassment at being caught backing down. It didn’t deter him and he leaned closer. “I love it when you blush. Do you know that?” He whispers into my ear, his breath brushing my skin sending a heat I could feel down to my toes. “I like it even more when it’s because of something I do.”

  “Mr. Frost don’t let me interrupt you but I do have a class to teach if you are finished. Or do I need to explain once again the kind of Chemistry class I actually teach?” Mr. Tanner’s voice broke us apart guiltily. Marcus had drawn me in again. How did he do that?

  “Sorry.” Marcus replied with a grin, he was not sorry.

  “Now that I have everyone’s attention we are going to the lab today-“ As everyone followed him out of the room I reluctantly got up from my seat and followed too. He continued talking as we moved into the lab and I quickly took a lab table near the back of the room. Marcus followed me to the table I picked out and Samantha took the table next to us. I’m sure so she can hear everything we say.

  I wasn’t into class today. I couldn’t focus on my favorite subject when I was feeling so much organic chemistry with my lab partner. Even if it was all for show I still felt it. It was time to play his game. “Bae, can you hand me the 150ml beaker?” I asked Marcus sweetly.

  “Bae?” His eyebrow shot up and hid behind the hair that had fallen onto his forehead. A slight smirk graced his lips and I could tell he was holding back a laugh.

  “Do you prefer pookie?” I asked innocently as I poured the liquid we were using into the first beaker.

  “Pookie?!” He snorted out a choked laugh.

  “Oh not that either? What about honey? Or sweetie? Or baby cakes? Or boo bear?” I paused and grinned at his open mouthed stare. “Oh wait I’ve got it,” I snap my fingers, “Big Boy.” I gave him another smirk and a suggestive wink. Not that I’d know how ‘big’ he was. We hadn't gotten past the kissing part, no matter how much he jumped from girl to girl before this fake relationship.

  His tongue darted out to wet his lips and I knew he was thinking of a come back. “Princess, you can call me anything you want as long as you know my name and use it when I make you moan.”

  He had back off of the teasing lately so it took me off guard a moment before I reacted. I couldn’t help the snort that came out at his vulgar words. They made me warm in places that shouldn’t be reacting to words like that.

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Romeo.”

  Sliding in front of him I let myself brush against him as I reached for another beaker full of a different type of liquid we were using in the experiment. His quick inhale of breath made me freeze in place with our bodies still touching. Then he was leaning into me and reaching around me to grab at the beaker too. I had lost my grip on it and he caught it just before it would have tipped and spilled the contents across the lab table.

  “Careful.” He whispered into my ear. “Wouldn’t want you spilling it and making a mess of things.”

  “Thanks.” I replied lamely as I moved back to my side of the table. Well, that move backfired. I tried not to grip the sides of the table as I collected myself and made sure my knees were no longer weak. His gaze fell on my hands holding onto the table and I let it go. We finished the lab in silence and I don’t remember the results or the lab. He did it all. I was so screwed.

  He followed me into the hall when the bell rang releasing me from my hell. Then he followed me to my locker. I felt him. As I started my combination to open my locker he leaned against the one next to mine. His gaze was hooded like he was thinking dirty thoughts.

  Not possible.

  My stomach flipped in response and I cursed under my breath as I yanked my locker open. I tossed my bag and book into the locker and then closed it and walked away from Marcus without a word. Still he followed me.

  As we turned the corner heading to the lunchroom I stopped dead in my tracks and spun on him. “What?” I demand. “Why are you following me?”

  “Isn’t that what boyfriends do?” He asked as he leaned against the wall and propped his foot against it. Casual. Relaxed. His every move was grating on my nerves. “I don’t have much experience with being a boyfriend so you’ll have to forgive my naivety.”

  “He’s telling the truth lil sis, he’s never had a girlfriend before.” Wade informed me as his arm dropped around my shoulder. “But if he has to have one, I’m glad it’s you.” He chuckled at his own joke as he turned me around and guided me into the lunchroom, I could feel Marcus following us and I knew that every eye was on us as we came down the stairs into the lunchroom. Not one Frost boy, but two.

  Jackpot ladies.

  Too bad I didn’t feel the same.

  Wade made a beeline for my lunch table and he sat me down in my usual seat taking the one to my left as Marcus sat down into the one on my right. What game were they playing now? My table was thankfully empty of my friends at the moment and I glanced between the brothers as I contemplated what to say.

  “What is it you want Marcus?” I finally asked him. The side of his mouth lifted in a half smile and I could tell he wasn’t going to really answer my question. I mean I really knew anyways. We talked about it. I just couldn’t hold in my frustrations.

  “Sis, that is a dangerous question to ask a Frost brother.” Wade laughed from beside me and I groaned. I had stopped correcting his use of calling me his sister sometime in the last week. It was pointless and I could explain it with my fake dating his brother.

  “I’m serious. Do you want a big scene? I could do it right here. Lots of people are watching us.” I told Marcus. “I know you said mutual. We could do that right here, right now too.”

  I was ready to end this. It was going to drive me crazy. My body was constantly sending different signals than my brain. I knew it was all for show but try telling that to my heartstrings as he tugged on them day after day. Or tell that to my stomach that kept releasing the damn butterflies anytime it thought he was going to kiss me. Which he hadn’t since that day in the parking lot.

  His thumb came up and ran across my bottom lip and it took everything I had not to let my tongue dart out and taste him. “Shhhh,” he murmured and tapped my lips closed, “no more talk like that.”

  Then I watched silently as he leaned over and captured my lips with his own. It was a slow kiss. So gentle it took my breath away with it and I sucked in brand new air the moment he released me.

  Shaking my head to clear it I tried again, “Marcus, come on. I’m done. I can’t-“ His lips came back to my own and silenced me again. Oh god I was going to drown in his kisses. His hand was at the back of my neck holding me to him. His other arm started to pull me closer to him and almost into his lap.

  “Break it up.” Vee laughed as she dropped her tray to the table. “No one wants to see the love birds kissing. We need to eat after all.” The laughter of my other friends pulled me out of the haze that was induced by Marcus and his lips. I straightened up and backed away from him. I had to get out of here. He was making me lose my mind.

  My chair clattered to the floor as I bolted from my seat. I didn’t stop to fix it as I headed to the door. I could hear my friends calling to me from our t
able, the confusion lacing their words. I didn’t care at the moment. Playing this game wasn’t good for me and I was done.

  Chapter 41

  Marcus

  “Shit.” I pushed back the chair, the metal legs scraping across the lunchroom floor. I had pushed Taylor too far. I just wanted her to admit she had some kind of feelings for me. The same ones I had, hopefully. Her talk of ending it sent me into a panic.

  Pushing out into the hallway I take in both directions and they are empty. She was gone. “Shit.” I growled as I hit the brick wall with the palm of my hand in frustration.

  “That went as I expected.” Wade laughed from behind me. “You corner the animal and they will find any way out.”

  “Shut up. I can’t deal with you right now.” I glared at my brother even though he didn’t really have a part in this. He had been trying to push us together. At home over the last week he had given us space to be alone. He had apologized about Saturday morning on the way to the game for interrupting whatever the hell was happening between us. Since Joe’s he has been actively trying to help. “Sorry, ignore me.”

  “Already done.” He laughed again. He took a few steps towards me before continuing. “You finally going to tell her?”

  Shaking my head I let out a deep breath. It might be the only option.

  “I’ll start with her friends.”

  After sliding back down into the lunchroom chair I looked around at her friends. Veronica looked over at me with an eyebrow cocked that seemed to say, what are you going to do about it? I had absolutely no clue, and it was scaring the crap out of me. My shoulder blades ached with how tight they were.

  “I have to tell you all something.” I say looking around at the table at her friends. It wasn’t my right to tell them, not really, but I felt like I had to clean this up. “Taylor and I are not really dating.”

  The silence that met my admission rang in my ears. The sounds of everyone around us echoing in the sudden silence my words caused.