My Stepbrother Ruins Everything novel · Chapter 1 of 4
Chapter 1: The Message on the Locked Phone
Mira discovers a message on Callum's unlocked phone that reveals their move-in was engineered by her confidant to force them together, and after a confrontation in the kitchen, she lets him into her room and the door shuts behind them.
Mira's hand was already on the phone when the screen lit up. She had only meant to move it aside, to clear the counter for the coffee she no longer wanted. The notification sat there, plain and bright, and the name above it made her stomach drop.
Dana.
She should have set it down. She should have walked away. Instead she swiped, because the first line of the message had already shown itself, and it was enough to stop her breath.
*She won't leave. Not once he's in the house. You just have to be there.*
Mira read it twice. Then a third time, slower, the words rearranging themselves into something she could not unsee.
*The storm will do the rest. I've seen the way she looks at you, Cal. Trust me. You'll be under the same roof by morning.*
Dana. Her friend. The one person Mira had told about the miserable, gnawing thing she felt for her stepbrother, the thing she had spent years trying to starve. And Dana had handed it to him like a key.
So he knew. He knew everything.
She heard the front door open.
Cold air rolled through the house, and with it came the smell of snow and leather. Mira did not turn around. She stood at the counter with his phone in her hand, her fingers gone numb around it, and listened to him stamp the snow from his boots.
'You read it.'
His voice was low and even, and it came from the doorway to the kitchen, not the hall. He had already crossed the house. He had already seen her face.
She turned then. Callum stood just inside the room, his bag still over one shoulder, snow melting in his dark hair. His eyes were on the phone in her hand.
'You and Dana.' Her voice came out steady, which surprised her. 'You planned this. You planned to move in here and just wait for me to break.'
He set the bag down. 'Not break. Stop pretending.'
'That's the same thing.'
'No.' He took a step into the room, and the space between them shrank. 'It isn't.'
Mira laughed, a short, ugly sound. 'You read my private conversations with my friend about you, and then you made a plan with her to trap me in a house with you during a snowstorm. That's not romantic, Callum. That's a violation.'
'I didn't read anything.' He was still watching her, calm as a man discussing the weather. 'Dana told me. She said you'd never admit it to me, so I'd have to make it impossible for you to run.'
'And you agreed.'
'Yes.'
No apology. No hedging. He stood in her kitchen with snow in his hair and admitted it like it was nothing.
She wanted to throw the phone at his head. She wanted to scream at him until her throat gave out. Instead she set it down on the counter, very carefully, and walked past him toward the stairs.
'Mira.'
She didn't stop. She climbed the stairs and did not let herself run. Running would have been a confession. Running would have told him exactly how far under her skin he already was.
Her bedroom door was open. She went through it and slammed it behind her hard enough that the mirror on the back rattled.
Then she stood there in the dark, her back to the door, her hands shaking.
He had known for weeks. Maybe months. Every time she'd caught herself looking at him and looked away, every time she'd made some brittle joke to cover the heat in her face, he'd known exactly what it was. Dana had told him. Dana, who'd held her hand through the worst of it, had sold her out for a plan.
And the worst part was that it was working.
Because even now, with fury still singing in her blood, she was listening for his footsteps on the stairs.
She heard them.
They stopped outside her door.
'Mira.' His voice came through the wood, low and close. 'Open the door.'
'No.'
'Then I'll stand here.'
'Then stand there.' She pressed her forehead against the door. 'I'm not opening it.'
Silence. She counted the seconds. She hated that she was counting them.
'You read Dana's message,' he said. 'You know why I'm here. You know what I want.'
'I know you and my best friend decided to manage me like a problem.'
'You're not a problem.' A pause. 'You're the only thing I've wanted for three years.'
Her throat closed.
'Don't.' Her voice cracked on the word. 'Don't say that.'
'Why not?'
'Because it's not fair.' She turned, her back still against the door, her palms flat on the wood. 'You don't get to stand out there and say the thing I've been trying not to feel. You don't get to make me feel it.'
'You already feel it.' His voice was closer now, like he'd leaned in. 'That's why you're still standing there instead of walking away.'
She closed her eyes.
He was right. She was still standing there. Her hand was already on the lock.
'I hate you,' she whispered.
'No, you don't.'
She opened the door.
The hallway was dark except for the blue light from the window at the end. Callum stood in it, snow still caught in his hair, his leather jacket dark with damp. He looked at her like he'd been waiting for this exact moment for years.
'You planned this,' she said. 'You planned all of it.'
'I did.'
'You let Dana tell you things I never said out loud.'
'I did.'
'And now you're here.'
He stepped forward, and she stepped back, and then her back hit the door again and he was in her room, the door swinging shut behind him with a click that sounded louder than the storm outside.
His hand came up and braced against the wood beside her head. The leather of his jacket creaked. His breath was warm on her cheek, and he was close enough that she could see the individual drops of melted snow in his hair, the way his jaw tightened when her chest rose against his.
'Mira,' he said.
She didn't answer. She couldn't. She just stood there with the door at her back and him in front of her, and the whole house around them was silent except for the wind.
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