Hybrid Marked by Her Stepbrother

Party Escape: Part 2

The buzz cuts through the dark like a knife.

I’ve been lying here for—I don’t know how long. Hours, maybe. The room went from sunset orange to deep blue to black, and I didn’t move to turn on a lamp. Didn’t move for anything. Just stared at the wall and let the thoughts run in circles until they wore themselves out and left nothing but a dull, hollow ache behind.

My phone lights up the nightstand. The screencasts a white glow across the ceiling, and for a second I consider ignoring it. Let it go to voicemail. Let whoever it is talk to the void.

But curiosity is a reflex I haven’t managed to train out of myself yet. I reach over, grab the phone, and the message is waiting.

Party in 1hr. You in?

No emoji. No context. Just the bare facts, the way the guys in my crew always text—short, to the point, assuming you already know which house, which crowd, which kind of night it’s going to be.

I don’t even think.

My thumbs move before my brain has fully caught up. I’m down.

Three letters. One period. The smallest commitment I’ve made all day, and somehow it feels like the only right one.

I needed this. Needed a distraction like a drowning man needs air. Something loud enough to drown out the noise in my head. Something stupid enough that thinking would be optional. Something that didn’t require me to feel a single goddamn thing except the bass in my chest and maybe, if I’m lucky, someone’s hands on my skin.

Playboy attitude. Bad decisions. The script writes itself, and tonight I am more than happy to follow it.

Perfect.

I sit up. The room is still dark, but the phone light is enough to see by, and suddenly the walls feel too close, the air too still. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and my feet hit the carpet with a purpose they didn’t have an hour ago.

Time to go.

I throw on a black tee that’s seen better days—thin from too many washes, clinging to my chest in a way that I know looks good without trying. Ripped jeans, the kind that sit low on my hips and show just enough skin at the knees to suggest I didn’t plan this as carefully as I did. My favourite leather jacket, worn soft at the elbows and smelling like every bonfire and backseat it’s ever been part of. I run a hand through my hair, messing it up on purpose, and catch my own eye in the mirror.

The guy looking back at me is all sharp edges and borrowed confidence. His eyes are a little too bright, a little too hungry. Good. Hunger is better than whatever the hell I was feeling an hour ago.

The adrenaline kicks in as I’m heading down the stairs—not the fear-based kind that makes your hands shake, but the clean, electric charge of a night with no rules. I slip out the front door without checking if my father’s light is still on. Don’t care. Can’t care. Not tonight.

My car is parked at the curb, a beat-up thing that runs on faith and occasional repairs. I crank the engine and the speakers blast to life with whatever was playing last—some bass-heavy track that vibrates through the floorboards and into my bones. Perfect. I turn it up until thinking becomes impossible, and pull away from the curb with the windows down and the night air rushing in.

The drive is a blur of streetlights and half-remembered turns. The bass thumps steady behind my ribs, and the city slides past in streaks of orange and white. I don’t think about pack houses or stepmothers or daughters. I think about the next red light, the next corner, the next beat drop. My hands are loose on the wheel. My foot is heavy on the gas. The knot in my stomach, the one that’s been sitting there since my father opened his mouth, starts to unwind thread by thread.

When I pull up to the house, the party is already in full throat. Cars line both sides of the street, bumper to bumper, some parked at angles that suggest their drivers didn’t much care about return trips. The porch is strung with fairy lights that throw a warm, uneven glow over the front yard, and laughter spills from every open window like something alive and contagious. Music pours out too—not just the thump of bass but the actual melody now, voices and guitars fighting for space above the rhythm. Someone’s kicked a soccer ball into the bushes. Someone else is shouting a drinking game rule from the kitchen. The whole place hums with the particular energy of a Friday night that’s just getting started.

I kill the engine and sit for a second, letting the transition happen. Home Aiden to party Aiden. Son to something else. The shift is familiar, almost comforting in its predictability.

Then I’m out of the car and through the front door, and the wall of sound hits me like a physical thing. Bodies everywhere. Heat. The smell of beer and sweat and someone’s too-strong cologne. I weave through the crowd with the ease of practice, nodding at faces I recognize, ignoring the ones I don’t, heading for the one spot I know I’ll find my people.

The keg is in the backyard, surrounded by a loose circle of guys in various states of athletic dishevelment. My soccer crew. They’re easy to spot—shoulders a little broader, posture a little more relaxed, the particular way they stand that says they know exactly how much space they’re entitled to. I catch a flash of Jace’s grin before I hear his voice, and then he’s there, red solo cup already extended, his free hand clapping my shoulder with enough force to spill a little over the rim.

“Yo, man! You made it!”

Jace. All teeth and calculated charm, the kind of guy who knows exactly how loud to laugh and exactly when to lean in close. He’s wearing a button-up with the sleeves rolled, his dark hair slicked back in a way that took more time than he’d ever admit. His eyes are bright with whatever’s in his cup and whatever’s coming next.

I take the drink from him and down a swallow without checking what it is. Cheap. Sweet. Burns just enough to let you know it’s working. The alcohol hits my empty stomach and spreads warm, and I feel something in me loosen—not all the way, but enough.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” I say, and mean it.

We fall into the rhythm. Someone produces a soccer ball from god knows where, and we’re passing it around the yard, shouting insults and compliments in equal measure, our bodies remembering the language of play even when our brains are half-gone. The ball arcs through the porch light, and someone headers it back, and we all whoop like we’ve scored the winning goal. Simple. Stupid. Perfect.

But my eyes keep drifting.

It’s habit, maybe. Or it’s the wolf in me, always scanning, always aware. Or it’s just that I came here to not think, and thinking is exactly what happens when you stop moving. So my gaze slides across the crowd, through the kitchen doorway, over the dance floor that’s really just a cleared patch of living room carpet, and then—

She’s there.

Near the edge of the dance floor, surrounded by a ring of girls who are all movement and noise. But she’s the still point. Her hair is a cascade of dark curls that catch the coloured lights and throw them back, copper and gold and deep brown all at once. It frames a face that shouldn’t work—angles that are too sharp to be pretty, a mouth that’s too wide to be delicate—but somehow the pieces add up to something that stops my breath. Fierce and soft at the same time. Like looking at a landscape you can’t quite believe is real.

She’s wearing a cropped white top that shows a strip of toned stomach, the kind of midriff that comes from actual work, not filters. A short, pleated skirt sways with every shift of her hips, catching the light and holding it. The head cheerleader. I’ve seen her at games, heard the way the crowd goes quiet when she takes the centre of the field, watched the routines from the sidelines and pretended I wasn’t watching her specifically.

Tonight, she’s looking straight at me.

Not glancing. Not noticing. Looking. Like she’s been waiting for the exact moment I’d turn her way, and now that I have, she’s not about to let me off the hook. Her lips curve into a smirk that’s equal parts challenge and invitation, and something in my chest does a slow, dangerous roll.

I don’t think. I move.

Pushing through the crowd becomes automatic. Bodies part or they don’t, and I don’t much care which. My heart is hammering—not from nerves but from the pure, animal thrill of the chase, the same feeling I get three steps from a breakaway goal. The music is loud enough that talking means getting close, and I use every inch of that excuse.

When I reach her, I lean in. My breath brushes the shell of her ear, and I feel her shiver—small, involuntary, gone in a second but definitely there.

“Nice moves out there,” I say. My voice comes out lower than I meant it to, rougher around the edges. I’m trying for casual and landing somewhere closer to hungry, and the fact that my c**k is already stirring in my jeans isn’t helping the performance.

She laughs. The sound is bright and teasing, and it does something to my insides that alcohol never could.

“Thanks.” Her eyes meet mine, and they’re darker up close, flecked with something that might be gold or might be the light playing tricks. “You’re not half bad yourself. I’ve seen you on the field—pretty impressive.”

My hand finds the small of her back without permission. The thin cotton of her top does nothing to mask the heat of her skin underneath, and I let my fingers press just enough to feel the ridge of her spine.

“Maybe you should see me off the field sometime.”

Playful. That’s the tone I’m aiming for. But there’s an edge underneath it that I can’t quite sand down, a roughness that comes from somewhere deeper than the line itself. Hunger. Plain and simple.

Her eyes flick down. A quick, deliberate sweep from my face to my chest and back again, and the corner of her mouth twitches. She bites her lower lip—not a nervous bite, a considering one—and holds my gaze like she’s weighing options.

“I think I could arrange that.”

The words land between us, and the air feels different after. Charged. Specific. The kind of charged that has nothing to do with the music and everything to do with the six inches of space between our bodies and what we’re both thinking about filling it with.

I don’t smile. Don’t need to. The look we exchange says everything the night is about to become.

We find a hallway.

It’s not planned. Nothing about tonight is planned. We just move, her hand in mine, through the press of bodies and around a corner where the music drops to a distant thrum and the lights are down to a single bulb in a fixture that might have been fashionable twenty years ago. The walls are lined with framed photos—family vacations, graduations, the generic history of a house that isn’t ours. The carpet is thin under my feet. The air is cooler here, almost quiet, and the change is so sudden it feels like stepping into another room entirely.