His Omega Deal: Owned By My Stepbrother

Chapter 10 Playing House

Lydia’s POV

Friday crawled by like it wasn’t in a hurry to test my sanity.

I told myself I didn’t care. I said it so many times throughout my shift that one of the senior healers actually asked if I was talking to myself.

I wasn’t, I was just repeating a lie until it started to sound true.

Xander hadn't texted and from the way it was going, it looked like he wasn't going to. The deal was dead and I should be relieved–should have been relieved.

But instead, I spent the entire day distracted, fumbling charts, mixing up patient files, apologizing so many times that Vivienne finally rolled her eyes and told me to “go be useless somewhere quieter.” For once, I didn’t even mind the insult. I welcomed the excuse to disappear into a supply closet and check my phone for the hundredth time.

Still nothing.

By the time my shift ended, my nerves had gone thin, stretched between hope and humiliation, and I didn’t know which one I resented more.

Maybe it was better this way. Perhaps some small, self-preserving part of me had been waiting all week for exactly this, for him to prove that none of it had ever mattered to him in the first place.

That would make it easier to hate him, easier to forget the way his hands had felt when he slid them into my soaked underwear, the way his voice had wrapped around every one of my worst impulses and made me feel things no one had ever made me feel with just his fingers..

I clung to that thought the entire walk home.

By six, I was back in my apartment, standing in the middle of my living room in my work clothes, staring at a phone that refused to light up. No calls. No messages. Just the quiet hum of my refrigerator and the sound of my own heartbeat, loud and stupid in my ears.

Seven o’clock came and it went.

I changed into pajamas, an old, worn t-shirt with a hole near the collar, because that felt like the appropriate uniform for admitting defeat. I made myself a cup of tea I didn’t want and sat on the edge of my couch, staring at nothing.

I hated that some small, humiliating part of me had spent all week hoping, actually hoping, that he’d want this. Want me.

I was midway through convincing myself that this was for the best when a knock rattled my door. I nearly dropped my mug.

For one wild second, my hope rose before I could stop it, before logic could catch up and remind me that Xander White did not knock on doors. He commanded rooms, he didn’t ask permission to enter them.

I opened it to find a man in a black suit, hands folded in front of him, an earpiece tucked discreetly behind one ear. “Miss Donnelly?” he asked. “Mr. White sent me. The car’s ready when you are.”

I blinked at him. “I’m sorry, what?”

“The car,” he repeated patiently, “Mr. White is expecting you.”

I scoffed.

Expecting me. Not asking or requesting. Expecting, like I was an appointment already carved into his calendar, like my presence was inevitable and had never been in question at all.

I should have told the man to leave. I should have shut the door, gone back to my tea, and let Xander sit alone wherever he was, wondering why his potential plaything hadn’t shown up.

Instead, I heard myself say, “Give me ten minutes.”

I changed three times.

I told myself it didn’t matter what I wore, that this wasn’t the kind of night where appearances counted, but my hands betrayed me, smoothing down a green dress instead of grabbing anything from the back of my closet.

I kept on repeating to my subconscious that it was because I didn’t want to look like I’d been crying all week over a text that never came and that it had nothing to do with wanting him to look at me and forget every other name on his contact list.

Nothing at all.

The car ride was quiet, the city sliding by in streaks of gold and blue, and my stomach twisted itself into knots the closer we got. By the time we pulled up outside a glass tower that scraped the underside of the sky, my palms were damp and my resolve had thinned to something paper-thin.

A doorman greeted the driver by name. The elevator required a key card just to select the top floor.

Everything about this building reminded me, in painfully specific detail, of exactly how far out of my depth I was.

When the elevator doors slid open, I stepped into a hallway that led to his penthouse.

I lifted my hand to knock and the door opened before my knuckles made contact. But it wasn’t Xander standing there, It was my mother.

“Lyds!” Her face lit up instantly, and she pulled me into a hug so tight it knocked the breath clean out of me. Over her shoulder, I could see the dining table set with more plates than I expected, candles flickering low, and Charles rising from his seat with a warm, easy smile.

My brain short-circuited entirely. “Mom? What are you–” I glanced past her, searching, and found him.

He stood near the kitchen island in a black button-down, sleeves rolled to his forearms, a glass of wine loose in one hand like he hadn’t spent the entire week ignoring my existence. His mismatched eyes found mine immediately, calm and unreadable, betraying absolutely nothing.

“Your brother arranged this whole thing,” Elena said, beaming, tugging me further inside. “He said you’ve been working yourself into the ground and probably missed us. Isn’t that sweet?”

Sweet? I wanted to laugh, I wanted to scream, I wanted to ask her if she had any idea what her sweet stepson had done to me in an elevator, what he’d demanded of me in his office, what kind of man was standing three feet away pretending, so effortlessly, to be my oh! So! loving big brother.

“It’s so thoughtful,” I managed instead, my voice coming out strangled.

“Isn’t he?” Charles clapped a hand on Xander’s shoulder, pride radiating off him in waves. “Glad to see you two finally bonding.”

I snorted inwardly. Bonding, my ass.

If only he knew.

“Come, sit, sit,” Elena urged, already pulling out a chair, fussing over the placement of napkins like this was any normal family dinner and not something out of a fever dream for me. “Charles told me you’ve been putting in fourteen-hour days. You have to take care of yourself, Lyds.”

“I’m fine, Mom,” I said, forcing my voice into something light and convincing. “Really.”

“She works too hard,” Xander cut in smoothly, and my head snapped toward him before I could stop it. “I keep telling her to slow down. But she doesn’t listen to her big brother.”

Charles chuckled, clearly delighted. “Sounds about right. She’s stubborn, just like her mother.”

“I resent that,” Elena said, laughing, swatting playfully at her husband’s arm, and for one disorienting moment I almost forgot where I was, almost forgot the man sitting across from me had spent the last two weeks either avoiding me entirely or threatening to ruin my entire life.

Almost.

Xander set his glass down and crossed the room toward me, unhurried, that same casual arrogance from the resort settling over him like a second skin. He reached my side and rested his hand lightly at the small of my back, guiding me toward the empty seat beside his own like it was the most natural thing in the world.

My whole body went rigid at the contact.

“You’re late,” he murmured, low enough that only I could hear.

“You’re the one who never confirmed,” I hissed back, forcing a smile onto my face for the benefit of the two people watching us with such open delight.

He pulled my chair out for me. The perfect gentleman. The dutiful son. Every inch of him rehearsed, practiced, designed to fool the two people who trusted him most in this world.

As I sat, he leaned down under the pretense of pushing my chair in, his mouth grazing the shell of my ear, his voice dropping into something private and dangerous, meant for me and me alone.

“Miss me?” he whispered, his lips brushing against my ear. “You look even sexier when you think I’ve forgotten you.”

My breath caught in my throat.

“But I never forget,” he added softly, straightening up before anyone could notice, “what’s mine.”