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I looked at the mirror and my hatred only burned hotter. You are the problem, Asher, I hissed internally. You get what you deserve. He never noticed you because he’s not like you. He’s straight, Asher. He’s fucking straight. Why can’t you get that through your head? He’s not just your stepbrother, the child your mother adopted, but a straight one at that. Give. Him. Up.
The conversation in his room stopped at one point and I figured I might as well say goodbye now. He was leaving early. Chances were, I would sleep through his departure. Not that he would notice my absence.
I knocked on the bathroom door and opened it a heartbeat later. Jordan was in the middle of the room, bent over his huge suitcase, wearing plain green-gray hemp pajama bottoms and nothing else under the sun. He straightened and faced me. “Asher.”
“Hey.” I hated how meek my voice was when I spoke to him. Straight guys intimidated me and I had to work twice as hard when it was a straight guy I had a crush on. This will be good for you, I promised myself. He won’t be around to distract you. You’ll finally be able to live a little. “All packed?” I forced my eyes to remain on his face. The fact that his chest rose so high and stretched his pecs wide each time he inhaled was hard to ignore, but I had to.
“Almost,” Jordan said. We stood in silence. My gaze dropped to the V-line of his abdomen and I yanked it back to his eyes. He inhaled deeply and said the words that set a fire under my ass. “You be good when I’m gone.”
“Jesus, Jordan,” I scoffed.
“What now?” He was already done with the pleasantries. And good thing he was. I hated it when he lectured me.
I sucked my teeth. “I wish you didn’t always talk out of your ass.” I was seventeen years old. I would be off to college soon, too. Two years between us didn’t make him the wisest guy in the world. Especially not because I knew where he had been two years ago. Exactly where he stands now. Unchanged in any way I could think of. He had only grown cockier.
My stepbrother exhaled slowly. “Dad always said I had to be a brother to you.” The words were coated in bitterness.
“And this is what you do? Lecture me at every turn, give vague advice, speak general truths? You’re unbelievable.” I regretted coming in to say goodbye. It would have been better if he’d just left without another word.
“What do you want from me?” he demanded.
I shook my head. “Dunno. And it’s too late, anyway.”
“What are you talking about, Asher?” he asked. His agitation was unmistakable. I didn’t care anymore. He could leave angry with me. It changed nothing. For over three years, we had lived together, only a bathroom separating us, and I had spent countless evenings mentally in this room. My soul was here, watching him sleep, while my body had been too frightened to move out of my bed.
It wasn’t going to change now.
The very best I could hope for was that his absence would allow me to notice the guys who had once occupied my mind so much. Maybe they wouldn’t appear so faded in my imagination when Jordan wasn’t there to outshine them all. “For once, I hoped to get more than empty words,” I said.
Jordan’s spark went out. He watched me coolly. He forced me to wait for the words he was carefully putting together. He shook his head in the end.
“What?” I pressed. “Tell me.”
He blinked and surrendered the responsibility to me. It was like a burden was lifted off his broad shoulders. “Like I said, Dad told me to be your brother. And because you are not my brother, I chose the next best thing. I was nothing to you. Why you’re insisting on hearing yet another general truth, I don’t know, but that’s how things are.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, Asher, and have to explain it to Dad. You know as well as I that we’re not brothers. We’re not even friends. We live here because our parents love each other. It’s got nothing to do with us.”
What would it look like if I told him all my truths? I had chosen hockey because the first time I’d met him, I had liked his physique so much that I wanted to be more like him. I had listened to his stories of Northwood all summer long to the point where I knew it was my first and only choice, too. I had moved my soul to the team house he would live in starting tomorrow because he had been in awe after visiting. I thought the Arctic Titans were the best college team because someone as talented as Jordan Mitchell wanted to play for them.
I knew what it would look like—a pathetic little stepbrother with a head full of dreams.
Instead, I folded my lips, breathed in and out, and calmly replied, “I’m glad it’s out in the open, then.” I turned on my heels and walked out of his room. Screw him. Screw him and his perfect body, his dazzling eyes, his handsome face, and his endless pool of talent. Screw his confidence and his polite lectures.
But for all my attempts to erase his influence over my life, I failed. Close to two years later, I did what I had known I would do all along.
I followed him.
TWO
Asher
As complicated as it was to put my finger on the moment it all started, the hardest thing was remembering when I first knew I hated Jordan. It wasn’t the explosive sort of hatred. Instead, I hated him in a slow and steady way. After all the wrong things he’d said and done, there was neither a murderous tendency toward my big stepbrother nor a wish for any harm. What I felt for him was a deep longing for him never to have existed.
And this feeling hadn’t caught me off guard.
I once stood on a sandy beach when the tide was coming. Waves licked at my feet. Each time, they reached a little further, and as they receded, sand pulled my feet deeper. Before I knew it, sand had cemented around my ankles.
This was no different. Each time the wave that was Jordan’s contempt for me came, it pulled me deeper into my dislike for him. And whenever he came to me late at night — my eyes shut and my hand playing his role — I ignored the nastiness I felt for him, only for it to roar back to life twice as strong once I was done.
The night he told me I was nothing to him should have sealed it for me. But it didn’t. The oddest thing happened. All the terrible encounters that had piled up between us had already made me look at him as more of an enemy than a friend, let alone as part of my family. Hearing the words from his lips vindicated me. Not a shred of guilt remained in me for having used him so freely in my fantasies.
