Claim Me, Alpha StepBrothers

He Has A Girlfriend

~Olive~

~Next Morning~

“You’re staring, kitten.”

I am not staring.

Okay. I’m staring. But it is his fault, because Crew Hayes is leaning against the kitchen island in gray sweatpants and no shirt at nine in the morning eating a piece of bacon with his fingers like he’s never heard of a plate, and a man cannot stand around shirtless in a communal kitchen and then accuse the people forced to walk through that kitchen of staring. That’s entrapment. That’s a setup. I should call a lawyer. I am going to be a lawyer. I should call myself.

“I’m getting coffee.”

“Mm.” He tracks me across the kitchen, slow, that lazy half-smile pulling at his mouth. “You’re getting coffee in my shirt — no. Wait. That’s a sad little college sweatshirt.” His eyes drag down. “Shame. I had a whole thing planned about how you’d look in mine.”

“It’s nine a.m.”

“It is.”

“It is nine a.m. and you’re already — “ I wave a hand at him, at all of it, at the abs and the bacon and the bedhead and the general crime against humanity that is this man before noon, “— doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“This.” I jab the coffee machine like it personally wronged me. “The voice. The leaning. The bacon. The whole — Crew of it all.”

He laughs. He pushes off the island and comes around to my side, and he doesn’t crowd me exactly, he just exists very largely in my immediate vicinity, close enough that I can smell him and he reaches past me for a mug and his arm brushes my arm and every hair on my body stands up and salutes him like little traitors.

“Sleep well, kitten?”

There it is.

His mouth, about four inches from my temple and his eyes on the side of my face, and I know.. I know..what he’s doing. He’s asking if I had wet dreams. He’s asking if I stood at that window. He’s asking if I watched, and whether I know he knows, and whether I’m going to crack.

He told me last night he’d know, and now he’s standing here at nine in the morning in his stupid sweatpants collecting.

And the thing is and this is the part I will be taking to my grave..for one stupid, fluttering, idiotic second, I like it.

I like that he’s looking at me like I’m the only person who’s ever walked into this kitchen. I like that the air went hot the second I came in. I like that under all the bacon and the bedhead, Crew Hayes is, right now, on this Saturday morning, completely and embarrassingly focused on me, and the small i***t horny part of my brain that’s supposed to be in a jar is purring like an absolute traitor and going see, this is nice, we could get used to this.

So I do the thing I do.

I lean in.

I lean in, just a little, just enough, and I tilt my face up toward his, and I watch his eyes drop to my mouth and his breath catch..catch, I felt it and I let my voice go soft and sweet and I say, “You know what, Crew? I slept great.”

His pupils blow.

I have him. For one perfect second, I have him, I have Crew Hayes wrapped around my little finger in his own kitchen, and I am winning, and I am about to lean back and walk away with my coffee and my dignity and the upper hand for the first time since I set foot in this house..

“Babe? There’s no oat milk.”

I freeze.

There is a girl in the doorway.

A girl. A gorgeous one. She’s got long legs and longer hair and she’s wearing one of Crew’s shirts — one of Crew’s shirts, an actual one, the kind that hangs off one shoulder and stops mid-thigh and announces to the entire room exactly what happened in the bed it came off of and she’s holding an empty mug and pouting at the refrigerator like the refrigerator owes her money.

And Crew steps back from me.

He steps back from me easy, casual, like I’m a stranger he was reaching past for the creamer, and he says, “Check the door, baby, second shelf,” and the girl says “you’re the best,” and pads across my kitchen in his shirt on her bare feet, and Crew looks at me and there is nothing in his face. Nothing. None of the hallway. None of the driveway. None of have wet dreams of me, baby, I’ll know. Just a flat, pleasant, polite nothing, the kind of look you’d give the new stepsister you’d met once at dinner.

“Olive.” He gestures lazily between us. “This is Vanessa. Vanessa, my new stepsister, Olive.”

Stepsister.

He says stepsister like a closed door.

“Hi!” Vanessa beams at me over the open refrigerator, genuinely sweet, genuinely warm, which somehow makes it ten times worse. “Oh my god, you’re Diane’s daughter? You’re so pretty. I’m so excited for the wedding, your mom is literally the nicest.”

“Thanks,” I say.

I have no idea what my face is doing. I have lost executive control of my face.

“Vanessa’s my girlfriend,” Crew says.

And he’s looking right at me when he says it.

Girlfriend.

There it is. So casually like a little knife slid right between two ribs so cleanly I don’t even feel it land until it’s already in, and I am standing in a kitchen at nine in the morning in a sad little college sweatshirt holding a mug of coffee I no longer want, and twelve hours ago this man had his mouth at my ear telling me to dream about him, and now he is standing two feet away introducing me to his girlfriend with his eyes locked on mine, watching, waiting, measuring — does it land, did it hurt, does she care.

And the worst part? Why do I feel hurt?

My throat goes tight and my eyes go hot and I want to throw this coffee mug directly through the nearest window.

I do not care.

I do not care.

I do not care that Crew Hayes has a girlfriend. Why would I care? I hate Crew Hayes. I have a Google Doc about hating Crew Hayes. I have rules. I have a plan. A girlfriend is good. A girlfriend is great.

A girlfriend means he’ll keep his mouth and his sweatpants and his have wet dreams of me baby energy pointed at someone who isn’t me, which is exactly what I asked the universe for at approximately two o’clock this morning while lying face-down in destroyed underwear.

“Cool,” I hear myself say. My voice comes out perfect. Bored. Bright. “Nice to meet you, Vanessa. Welcome to the chaos.”

And I pick up my coffee, and I walk out of that kitchen with my spine straight and my chin up and my heart doing something furious and humiliated and confused behind my ribs, and I do not look back at Crew Hayes, and I do not give him the one single thing he is standing there waiting for, which is my face cracking.

I make it to the staircase before I have to stop and hold the banister. He has a girlfriend.

Olive, he had his mouth on your ear last night. He watched your window. You watched him in the —

He has a girlfriend.

I do not have time for this.

I genuinely, actually do not have time for this, because today..today, in approximately four hours, my mother is marrying his dad and I have to go put on a pale-pink dress and stand next to her and smile, and I cannot..cannot do that with my chest cracked open over a boy I hate because he introduced me to a girl I have no reason to think about ever again.

So I straighten up. I let go of the banister. And I go upstairs to get dressed for my mother’s wedding, and I tell myself, with every single step, the same three words, like a girl trying very hard to make something true by repeating it:

I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.

I make it to my room before the first tear falls, and even then even then…I tell myself it’s about my dad.

It’s not about my dad. That’s the part that scares me.

I put my face in my hands and I have a talk with myself. Out loud.

“Okay.” Muffled, into my palms. “Okay, Olive. Let’s be normal about this.”

I am not going to be normal about this.

“He has a girlfriend. Great. Good. Amazing, even. This is the best possible outcome. You wanted him to leave you alone, and now he has a whole entire girlfriend named Vanessa with oat-milk opinions and legs for days, and she’s going to keep him busy, and you never have to think about the hallway or the driveway or the, the mouth thing ever again.

This is a win, Olive. Write it down. Put it in the Google Doc. Rule nine: thank God for Vanessa.”

I do not feel like thanking God for Vanessa.

I feel like driving Vanessa’s oat milk into the sun.

And that, that, right there, is the problem, because I have known Crew Hayes for one (1) day. One day. Less than one day.

I have known him for the length of time it takes a yogurt to expire, and in that time he has insulted me, manhandled me at dinner, threatened me in a hallway, told me to dream about him, let me watch him in a driveway not on purpose, I’m not saying it was on purpose, but he knew, he knew I was up there and then introduced me to his girlfriend with his eyes locked on my face like he was charging admission to my reaction.

That’s not a man you have feelings about.

That’s a man you have a restraining order about.

So why does my chest hurt. f**k.

Why does the stupid string under my ribs feel like someone reached in and plucked it, why did it recoil when Vanessa said babe, why have I spent two hours since the kitchen feeling like I lost something that was never mine, that I never wanted, that I have a five-point plan specifically about not wanting.

“It’s the bond,” I tell the ceiling.

A knock at the door.

I sit up so fast I get dizzy.

Two soft taps. It’s not Crew and Crew doesn’t knock, Crew appears. This is a little knock, a can-I-come-in knock, and I stare at the door like it might bite me.

“…Yeah?”

The door opens a few inches, and a head leans in around it..long hair, big eyes, that genuinely sweet face that somehow makes everything worse.

Vanessa.

Oh no.

No no no, absolutely not, because there are only three reasons a girlfriend comes to your bedroom door after meeting you for thirty seconds.

One: she forgot something.

Two: she’s secretly a serial killer.

Three: she knows.

Which one is it?