MY STEPBROTHERS, MY MATES

The squad

CHAPTER SEVEN

VIOLETTA

Jace's hands caught my arms before I'd even finished turning.

"Hey." He ducked his head slightly to look at my face. "Are you okay?"

I opened my mouth, closed it, and then the whole thing just came out.

"Did you hear what your brother did to me?" My voice cracked on the last word and I hated it.

Jace's face went still immediately. His expression moved from concern to worry. He opened his mouth to speak but I didn't want to hear what he's to say because I knew what would come out of his mouth.

"Don't," I said. I put my hand up between us. "Don't do the pity face. I can see it happening and I don't need it."

"Violetta—"

"I'm over it." I exhaled hard through my nose. "I just needed you to know why 'the f**k you' was directed at him."

Jace looked at me for a moment. Then something in his face softened and he let out a slow breath and shifted closer and rubbed my back once, twice, in a slow steady circle.

"Jason is complicated," he said. "He's a pain in the ass and he goes too far and I know that." His hand kept moving on my back. "But don't let him see it lands. The moment he knows his words get to you, he won't stop."

I stared at the floor. My throat was still tight but the hand on my back was doing something to the tightness. Loosening it slightly against my will.

"Thank you," I smiled quietly.

"Don't mention it."

He pulled me in then. Just briefly, tucked me against him with one arm and pressed his lips to the top of my head and patted it once and said, "Be a good girl."

And then he let go and walked away down the corridor like he hadn't just stopped my entire nervous system.

I stood there.

My heart was going so fast I could feel it in my ears.

I pressed both hands to my cheeks and said quietly to absolutely no one, "Get a grip of yourself, Violetta."

I avoided my mother all evening.

I stayed in my room with my textbook open and my actual brain elsewhere. When my mother knocked I said I was studying and she sighed through the door and left me alone. I knew what would happen if I went downstairs.

She would look at my face and ask how school was. I would try to give her the edited version and it would come apart halfway through. I was not ready to cry in front of my mother about what her new stepson did on my first day. I will handle it tomorrow or never. Either worked.

I came down for dinner when Rafael called because skipping meals was a line I hadn't crossed yet.

The table was full. Rafael at the head. Mum beside him. Jace across from me. Jason at the far end, eating like the concept of other people was something he'd heard about once and found unconvincing.

I sat down and reached for the bread.

Rafael looked around the table and said, "I was thinking, Violetta, the school has a lot of clubs and teams. It might be good to join something. Help you settle in, meet some people."

I spread butter on the bread. "I'm not particularly interested in that."

My mother's head came up immediately. "It would give you a routine. Something to work toward. People to—"

"I'll think about it."

"That means no," Jason said without looking up from his plate. He speared something with his fork. "She's probably scared."

I looked at him. "Excuse me. Scared of what exactly?"

He didn't answer. He just continued eating.

I stared at the side of his face for a full three seconds and then looked back at my bread.

"The cheerleading squad," Jace chipped in. He hadn't looked up from his food either. Just said it, calm and flat, like he was reading it off a list. "You're good on your feet. It'd give you a consistent group."

I looked at him across the table.

He glanced up briefly, just long enough for our eyes to meet, and then went back to his plate like he hadn't said anything at all.

I looked at my bread.

Cheerleading squad.

I thought about it through the rest of dinner and through washing up and through the first hour of lying in bed staring at the ceiling. By the time I actually fell asleep I had already decided yes, mostly because the alternative was sitting alone with Petra indefinitely and as much as I liked Petra that wasn't a long-term plan.

I was late the next morning.

I'd overslept by twenty minutes, rushed through getting ready, grabbed my bag from the floor and flew out of my room and down the stairs at a pace that was genuinely dangerous for someone in socks on hardwood.

I hit the landing doing too much speed.

I hit something else immediately after.

Something solid. Something that caught my arms and shoved me away from it with enough force that my feet left the steps. I had nothing to grab and I went down.

The stairs came up fast. I bounced off the second one, then the third, rolled sideways on the fourth, and came to a stop at the bottom in a heap with my bag half off my shoulder and my elbow screaming and my hip doing something similar.

I lay there for a second.

Then I looked up.

Jason stood at the top of the stairs looking down at me. He had his bag over one shoulder and his face carried the expression of someone who had watched something mildly entertaining happen to someone they didn't care about.

He shrugged. "That looked painful."

I pushed myself up onto one elbow. "You pushed me."

"You bumped into me."

"So you pushed me down a flight of stairs?"

"I moved you off me." He adjusted his bag strap. "I don't want to be walking around reeking of human scent all day."

I stared at him. "You pushed me down the stairs because I'm human?"

"Watch where you're going next time." He started walking. "Or worse will happen."

He stepped over my bag where it had landed at the bottom and walked out of the front door and it closed behind him.

I sat on the floor at the bottom of the stairs with my elbow throbbing and my hip aching. My eyes burning in a way I refused to do anything about. I pressed the back of my hand hard against my mouth and breathed through my nose and did not cry. I was not going to cry on the floor of this hallway because of Jason Calloway. I was not.

Footsteps on the stairs.

I scrambled to get up. Too fast... the pain in my hip kicked back hard and I lurched forward and there was nothing to grab.

Two arms caught me.

I ended up with my hands flat on a chest and my face approximately four inches from another face and my entire body held against something warm and solid that had appeared from nowhere and stopped me hitting the floor a second time.

I looked up.

Jace's dark eyes were wide and close. His glasses had slid down his nose slightly from moving fast and his hair was everywhere, falling across his forehead in a way that had no business being as good as it looked at seven in the morning.

"What are you doing on the floor?" he questioned.

I sniffed back the tears quietly. "Nothing."

He looked at my face and then at the stairs and something moved through his expression.

"Are you sure you're alright?" he asked.

And he was still holding me. Both arms. My hands were still on his chest and I could feel his heartbeat under my palms and he was very close and his hair was doing the thing and his eyes behind the slightly-crooked glasses were dark and completely focused on my face.

"Why do you look so hot this early in the morning," I muttered loud enough for him to hear me.

It came out before I could stop it.

Jace blinked.

Then one corner of his mouth moved into a smirk. "I always look like this."

"That's literally what I just said." I felt my face go warm. "I meant.... that was a weird thing to say. I didn't mean—"

"Have you been checking me out?"

"No." The word came out too fast. "Absolutely not. You're my stepbrother and stuff like that isn't... we don't... that's not something that...." I stopped and started again. "No. That's not what I was doing."

He was looking at me with both eyebrows slightly raised and his mouth doing that almost-smile thing and I wanted to evaporate.

"Right," he said. He didn't look like he believed me.

"Right," I nodded.

He tilted his head slightly and his voice dropped just a fraction. "Doesn't mean anything though, does it. The stepbrother thing." His eyes were completely steady on mine. "We're not blood related Violetta. Why are you acting like I suggested murder?”

The floor dropped out from under me.

"What?" I blurted out.

He laughed. Full and genuine, pulling back slightly, the almost-smile becoming an actual one. "Relax. I'm messing you up."

"Right." I stepped back. Put two feet of air between us and nodded. "Yes. Obviously. Right."

"I'll be in the car," he said, and headed for the door.

I stood in the hallway alone and pressed one hand flat against my sternum.

I said very quietly to the empty room:

"What the fuck.”