Blurb:
At nineteen years old, I never expected to gain a new brother, but that’s exactly what happens when my father decides to remarry. His new wife has a son, and that’s when chaos enters my life.
I’m a choir boy, and he’s a troublemaker. We dislike each other from the very first moment we meet, and things only get worse once we’re forced to share a college dorm room.
I’m convinced he’s my doom. My sensual, sexual, the darkest of dark doom. So, no one - neither my father, nor his mother, and certainly not him - should expect me to be his salvation.
I am not my brother’s keeper.
Not My Brother’s Keeper
1.
Growing up in a religious household meant I learned early to sort the world into clean categories. You know, the whole thing: good versus evil, saved versus lost, or holy… well, that last bit got me in the end. What’s the opposite of holy?
Damned.
Because I was damned from the moment Madeline Shaw pulled into our driveway, and HE climbed out, all loose limbs and ‘I-don’t-give-a-fuck’ attitude, ready to take over my life.
I barely heard my dad’s murmured ‘I guess this is it’, as my eyes were glued to this guy. Have you ever heard the expression ‘green like sin’?
It suddenly made sense, because his eyes were green, so green that they took up the whole canvas of my line of sight, and all I could think of in that moment was, obviously—
Sin.
I was a choir boy; of course, I was. That didn’t mean that my lips gave voice to the purity in my heart as divine words left my mouth. No, I was too busy stealing glances at the others, wondering what made them so convinced that true salvation existed for their mortal souls.
“Madeline,” my dad rushed to meet our guests, brushing my arm in the process to remind me that I wasn’t supposed to stand rooted in place.
I resisted the urge to follow his silent order as I usually did. After all these years of being alone, he and I, why did he want to marry all of a sudden?
Madeline was a short woman with a pixie cut and lovely eyes. She seemed alright. I paid her little to no attention, as my eyes kept drawing to her son of their own accord.
He wore a black singlet that showed too much skin and ripped jeans, which basically told me everything I needed to know: we were different, and we’d always be and remain worlds apart. He stared back at me shamelessly, as if he wanted to provoke me. How did I look to him? Was I too preppy, too skinny, too un-manly?
He’d let me know soon enough. Like he couldn’t give a damn about me and my obviously hostile attitude, he began sweeping his eyes over the façade of our house. There was no need for him to utter a single sound. He judged us, our clothes, and our home, and we came up short.
“Adrian, come meet Gary and his son,” his mom called out loud.
I could feel her stare at me, and I wasn’t raised to be rude. I shook her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Shaw,” I said, emphasizing the last two words.
“Call me Mads, please,” she said with a soft giggle that went straight to my cold, wretched heart. How could a woman who looked like she spread sunshine and good wishes with each step she took give birth to a guy like that, who looked like storm and thunder incarnate?
He must have taken after his dad, because he looked nothing like her. His skin was darker than hers, but his soul was darker than the darkest black, although, at the moment, I could only guess the latter. I straightened up and forced myself to look over his forehead, to pretend to be taller. The first impulse was to assure this stranger that I had no intention to surrender the claim I had over our home to accommodate his sorry ass.
His crew cut seemed rather neat for someone who didn’t care about showing skin, as if he needed to wear tatters to convince the world that he didn’t give a damn about what everyone thought.
“I’m Jordan,” I said, striking out my hand to make sure I’d keep him at a distance and reduce skin-on-skin contact as much as possible.
“Jo,” he drawled, his face breaking into a grin that announced nothing good.
“Jordan,” I insisted, but he ignored my obvious wrath and pulled me into a hug, forcing my face and especially my nose into his armpit. I was so surprised that I inhaled by accident. As if it wasn’t enough that I already hated him, he had to smell like an animal, too, musky and deep, making me dizzy for a moment.
I must have leaned against him due to the shock of being grabbed like that, because he took that as a cue that he could run his hands over my back. In front of our parents!
“Adrian,” his mom called playfully, “don’t scare your future stepbrother like that. Yet.”
“The boys need to get to know each other,” my dad said hurriedly. “Come, my dear. Jordan, show your brother the room we prepared for him upstairs.”
I wanted to protest, but I was already nineteen, and it wasn’t like I was ever anything but serious when Dad wanted me to do something or behave a certain way. That made things easier between us, and each of us kept his affairs private.
“Yes, Dad,” I said, my words coming out muffled, because Adrian was still pressing me against him.
“Adrian,” Madeline warned, this time on a more serious tone. “Don’t tease Jordan, please.”
To my surprise, Dad laughed. “Jordan needs a bit of loosening up.”
Oh, Dad, famous last words. Adrian would do a lot more than ‘a bit of loosening up’.
***
“This is your room.” I pointed around stiffly, without looking at him once. I had spent all my free time painting the room with a fresh coat, dragging in the new furniture, and making sure nothing was amiss. Adrian’s room was much nicer than mine. And for what? Come fall, we’d all be leaving for college. That meant that all this effort had been in vain. On the upside, save for two months of summer, I won’t have to put up with this asshole.
Still, two months seemed like such a long time, and I had no idea that the worst was yet to come.
“Nice digs,” Adrian said, moving around slowly, his hands in the pockets of his ripped jeans. “Are we going to sleep together?”
In anyone else’s mouth, that would have sounded like an innocent enough question, but I was on my guard.
“No. This is your room,” I repeated and turned on my heel to leave.
He caught my arm with ease. I pulled back, trying to break free, but he dug his fingers into my bicep, right above the elbow. They seemed made of steel, so I had to give up unless I wanted to end up bruised and in pain.
“Jo,” he cooed, his eyes lazily moving over my face, making me feel them as if they could turn their gaze into a physical touch, “I have a feeling you don’t like me much. I’m pretty sure we haven’t met before, so what’s your deal?”
“I neither like you nor dislike you,” I replied. “At best, I can say that I’m a bit irritated because I busted my ass to make this room livable for you, and you look around as if we’re housing you in a shack or something.”
“You busted your ass?” He pulled me close to him, and I had to follow because he was obviously much stronger than I was. “How?”
It seemed ridiculous to reply, but I told him everything: how I had done everything by myself, because Dad was too busy with his work, how I had to struggle to fit the bed inside, and how the furniture blueprints seemed like Chinese to me until I understood them and did more than a half-assed job.
He listened with interest, as if I were telling him the most exciting tale, and didn’t interrupt me once until I finished my tirade.
“Well, nice job. But we’ll have to test the bed together to see if it holds.”
With that, he manhandled me until I ended up plopped across the bed on my back. He laughed and jumped on the bed, as well, right by my side. With a possessive gesture, he threw one arm over my stomach and pressed his nose in the crook of my shoulder. “I have just one question, Jo. Are you included with the room?”
I scoffed. “I have my own room. And this bed is a single, anyway.”
“We could make it work,” Adrian said and glued himself to me.
I could feel his hot breath on my cheek, my ear, under it, and on the side of my neck. Goosebumps broke everywhere, while an unsettling feeling gripped my stomach in a chokehold. Adrian’s body was hard everywhere. As he pressed one thigh against mine, I could tell there was an important difference in size between us, although he hadn’t struck me as particularly muscular, but lean, with a swimmer’s build, earlier when he got out of his mom’s car.
“Quit playing,” I said, grabbing his forearm and trying to throw him off of me.
“What if I don’t wanna?” he drawled, obviously only so he could get on my nerves.
The situation was getting ridiculous. I couldn’t start shouting to get Dad’s help. I had to be smart about it, so I changed tack. “How old are you?” I asked.
“Eighteen,” he replied. “What? Did you worry I was underage and putting your preppy ass in a compromising position? I know you’re nineteen. I also know that you’re heavy into Bible study, and that you’ve never had a girlfriend.”
I grunted, trying to break free again. “I don’t know who told you that, but I did have a girlfriend.”
“Just one?”
Theoretically. We had never gone further than first base, and it hadn’t been an experience to write home about, so to speak.
“Not everyone plays the field like some people,” I said primly.
“Some people… you mean me?”
“Sorry to break it to you, but you look like the type.”
“What type?” he asked. He threw one leg over mine, and now his crotch rested against my hipbone. It was a weird thought to have, but I could tell he had good reason to be proud of himself. “The type who puts his hand up girls’ tops like this?”
He was so fast, and I still have no idea how he managed to pull my shirt and undershirt out of my pants so he could put his hand directly on my naked skin.
“Stop it,” I grunted.
I have little to say for myself now because, in all honesty, I didn’t fight him that much. His fingers reached higher and higher until they reached my right nipple. In that moment, I froze, not knowing how to react. The only thing registering with me was the reaction of my body to that bold touch.
He knew how to take cues from the slightest feedback. All of a sudden, he was only interested in pulling and pinching my nipple, quite viciously. At some point, I might have whimpered, because he chuckled low against the side of my neck.
“It looks to me like you’re not so prim and proper, after all.”
That had the effect of a cold shower, because I finally recalled I wasn’t supposed to lie on my back in my stepbrother’s room – future stepbrother – and let him make a fool of me.
Fear of being discovered like that by our parents gave me the strength needed to push him away. I ran out of the room, pushing my shirt into my pants, my heart struggling like a trapped animal inside my chest.
Was this my future stepbrother? I should call him Nightmare. Or Fiend. Things couldn’t be allowed to progress in this manner, because they would lead to my eternal doom.
Why did I let him do those things to me? Someone with fewer hang-ups than I would blame it on him being too sexy and irresistible, but at the time, I was too much the product of my upbringing to name these things for what they were.
Despite my lack of proper terms to describe him, one thing was obvious and would become even clearer over the summer and later: temptation had arrived on my doorstep, and it was up to me to resist it.
tbc
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