My Stepfather, My Ruin

16

Roxy

Ever since that night, Evander’s behavior had changed.

“Good morning, Roxy.” He said brightly as I stepped into the dining room. “How are you doing today?”

My guard went up on instinct. This was the same man who’d spat venom at me on the stairs weeks ago, cold enough to frighten me. People didn’t cool off that fast, not for any reason.

I wasn’t going to be naïve twice.

“Good morning.” I took my seat across from him, done running from whatever game this house wanted to play with me. “Brother.”

“It’s so wonderful to see you two getting along,” my mother said, sitting beside him.

“Morning, Mom.” He gave her a warm, easy smile.

That smile unsettled me more than his cruelty had. This was still the man who had promised to destroy us both. Smiling at the woman he planned to ruin made me uneasy. I didn’t want to think too much about it.

“Good morning, son.” My mother squeezed his hand, the same maternal touch she used on me.

“You’re all here.” Dorian took his seat at the head of the table. Evander and I murmured greetings.

“The mood in this house is improving,” he said, pleasantly.

I’d noticed it too, over the past week—Dorian had stopped watching me the way he used to, that dark, tracking attention gone.

No more staged dinners. No more hands closing around my wrist to keep me in a room. He seemed to have settled into treating me like an actual stepdaughter instead of something to monitor.

Whatever fear had lived in me since that night by the door was starting, slowly, to fade, though some smaller, more stubborn part of me refused to fully let it go.

After breakfast, I went back to my room. My final exams were close. Soon I’d have my degree and a real reason to leave.

I was hunched over my desk reading when the door lock clicked. Evander stepped inside.

“Roxy.” His voice was soft and familiar, bringing back old memories.

I stood immediately. “Leave.”

“Why are you like this?” He took a step toward me.

“Like what?”

“Let bygones be bygones,” he said gently. “I’m your brother now. We’re family.”

Family?

“Why are you in my room, Evander?”

“To talk.”

“About what?”

“I’m sorry. For all of it,” he said, his eyes darkening with emotion.

There it is. A week of manufactured kindness, all building to this.

“I told you already, I’ve moved on.” I kept my voice flat. “You don’t need to bring up the past.”

He closed the distance between us, stopping inches away. Heat came off him, and every instinct told me to step back. I didn’t move fast enough.

“You can go now.”

“Roxy.” His voice cracked, and tears spilled down his face before I could react.

“W-what? Why are you crying?”

“I just want to explain.” His breath hitched. “Back in college. Jessica threatened me.”

I froze. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know where she got them, but she had your private photos,” he said, burying his face in his hands. “She blackmailed me. She said if I didn’t date her, she’d send them to the whole school. I did what I did to protect you.”

Something in me went very still. This didn’t match anything I remembered about him, but it also explained a hole in the story that had never quite made sense.

“I... I thought you betrayed me.”

“I didn’t! I was protecting you!”

“Then why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Because you would’ve confronted her yourself, and nobody could have stopped what she’d have done. You remember how evil she was.”

His sobbing filled the room, and something in me, some old, careful wall, started to give. I’d spent two years believing he had thrown me away. If this was true, I’d had it backward the whole time.

Some part of me kept its distance, watching. It didn’t make sense. If Jessica had wanted him that badly, why blackmail him instead of telling me herself and letting everything fall apart? But I pushed the question aside because the rest of me wanted badly to believe him. And sometimes, wanting to believe something is stronger than doubt.

“How did she even get the photos?” My voice wasn’t steady.

“I don’t know. I tried to get her to tell me, and she wouldn’t. I slept with her for three months just to keep her quiet, before you caught us. I couldn’t tell you—I couldn’t stand hurting you more than I already had.” His hands curled into fists. “And then she used my own phone to text you to come to the apartment that day.”

“Damn her,” I said, my eyes stinging now too.

“I’m so sorry, Roxy.” He dropped to his knees in front of me, shoulders shaking. “I wanted to tell you the truth, but I was terrified of losing you.”

“And then you just left.”

“I left because my father threw me out!”

“What do you mean?”

“He never loved me.” He looked up through the tears. “He banished me two years ago over some woman he was seeing at the time; she had a thing for me, and he chose her over his own son.”

“Dorian picked a mistress over you?”

“You don’t know him, Roxy. He isn’t the noble patriarch he pretends to be in this house. He’s cruel. He even abandoned my birth mother without a second thought!”

My head spun as I tried to understand everything. Dorian was always calm and controlled at every meal. If he could turn his back on his own son so easily, then there was no telling what else he was capable of. Maybe I hadn’t been wrong about him after all.

“Where’s your mother now?”

“I can’t talk about her right now.” His shoulders shook harder. “Please. Just forgive me.”

Watching him on his knees like that broke down whatever was left of my resolve. I had spent two years hating him, and it had all been because of Jessica, not him.

“Evander—” Something in my chest twisted watching him fall apart in front of me. “You lied about who you were, though.”

“Because I loved you.” He gripped my hands. “From the first second I saw you. I let you think I was just another student because you were on scholarship; if you’d known I was a Sinclair, you’d never have looked at me twice. We were from different worlds.”

He wasn’t wrong about that part, at least. If I’d known, I would have run the other way.

“I...”

“I’m a bastard,” he said suddenly, and struck himself across the face, hard enough that the sound cracked through the room. “I should have told you. I should have pursued you the right way.”

“Stop!” I dropped to my knees and caught his wrists before he could do it again. “Stop hurting yourself.”

I pulled him into my arms. He collapsed against my shoulder, repeating I’m sorry, I’m so sorry into my neck.

“I forgive you,” I said, stroking his hair, trying to steady him. “I forgive you. Please stop.”

“You really forgive me?” He pulled back just enough to look at me.

“Yes. Just stop.”

He stood, pulled me up gently, and guided me to sit on the edge of the bed.

“I’m so happy,” he breathed, a raw, broken laugh escaping his lips. “You have no idea. All this time I wanted to call you, just to hear your voice, and I thought you’d hate me forever.”

“I had it all wrong.” My nails bit into my palms. “I don’t hate you.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

He sat beside me. My breath caught as his arm slid around my waist, pulling me against him.

“I’ve missed you so much, Roxy.”

The part of me that had gone quiet and watchful earlier was still there, somewhere underneath, keeping track of everything that didn’t quite fit. But it was losing ground fast, drowned out by the warmth of his arm and the years I had spent missing this feeling.

My heart, which I thought had been turned to stone, began pounding wildly against my ribs.

“Evander, I—”

He pressed a finger to my lips.

“We love each other. We always have.”

“You’re my brother now.”

“That’s just a title,” he whispered, his face inches from mine. “We used to say we’d get married one day. Remember?”

“I remember.” I was breathing him in, caught in the same intensity that had overwhelmed me once before.

“We knew each other long before either of them existed to us. If anyone should be the one to walk away, it’s them.”

“Evander—”

His eyes held mine, the same fire I’d fallen for four years ago. The air went thick between us. Neither of us moved.

He leaned in, closing the last of the distance.

Just as his breath touched my mouth, the bedroom door swung open.