The Stepbrother I Hate to Love novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Call
Ansel steps between his stepbrother and the team captain at a party and is locked in Torin's room; the closet is a wall of his own notes.
Ansel Wray was on page forty of a thermodynamics problem set when his phone buzzed on the library table.
It was Jory Pellett, his stepbrother's best friend.
"Get to Cedar Street," the text said. "Torin's going to kill somebody."
Ansel read it twice.
He was nineteen, a sophomore, and the least violent person in the Brennick State physics department.
Torin Schuler was twenty-one, the center for the Pioneers, and the reason Ansel had stopped using the main stairs in Marsh Hall.
They had been stepbrothers for four months.
Ansel's mother had married Torin's father in June, in a backyard, with a rented tent.
Torin had shaken Ansel's hand that day and held it a second too long.
Ansel packed his bag anyway.
He told himself it was because his mother would never forgive him if Torin got arrested.
It was ten forty on a Friday night, and the cold off Lake Superior went straight through his grey rain jacket.
The Pioneers' house on Cedar Street was loud from a block away.
Every window was lit, and bass was coming out of the walls.
Ansel pushed through the door and into a wall of beer and sweat.
Nobody looked at him.
A guy in a hockey jersey pointed at the kitchen without being asked, and a crowd had already formed in the doorway.
Ansel went under an arm and through the gap.
Torin had Dane Whitlow backed against the refrigerator.
Dane was the team captain, twenty-two, tall and blond, and he was smiling with blood on his teeth.
Torin's right fist was cocked behind his shoulder.
His knuckles were already split open.
His eyes were the wrong kind of bright, the kind that meant he had been drinking since the afternoon.
"Say it again," Torin said.
"I said your stepbrother looks like a good study partner," Dane said, loud enough for the room.
"I'd like to borrow his notes."
Torin's whole body tightened.
Ansel did not think.
He stepped between them and put his palm flat on Torin's chest.
The shirt was soaked through, and the heart under it was running hard.
"Torin," he said. "Stop."
Torin's eyes dropped to Ansel's face and stayed there.
The fist was still back.
Then it came forward, and Ansel flinched and shut his eyes.
It never landed on him.
The punch went past his ear and hit the refrigerator door, and the whole kitchen jumped.
A dent the size of a dinner plate appeared in the steel.
Somebody laughed nervously.
Dane's smile had slipped.
"Easy, Schuler," he said. "Your little brother's getting hurt."
Ansel touched his own cheek.
Torin's elbow had clipped it on the way, and it was already hot.
He felt it more as a surprise than as pain.
Torin saw the mark, and his face changed completely.
The wildness drained out, and what was left looked sick.
"Ansel," he said, in a different voice.
"I'm fine," Ansel said. "We're leaving."
He took Torin's wrist, the good one, and pulled.
To his surprise Torin came.
The crowd parted, and Ansel steered him through the living room toward the front door.
Jory was standing at the foot of the stairs.
He had a red face and a worried grin, and he took Torin's other arm without a word.
"Not out there," Jory said. "He'll just go and find Dane again.
"Upstairs.
"Let him sit down for ten minutes."
Ansel hesitated.
Torin's hand had closed over his, hot and shaking.
It did not feel like a man about to break something.
It felt like a man holding on.
"Ten minutes," Ansel said.
They went up together, with Jory behind them.
Torin's room was at the end of the hall.
It was neat in a way Ansel did not expect.
There was a made bed, a desk with a laptop, and a closet with its door half open.
Torin dropped onto the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands.
"Water," Ansel said to Jory. "And ice."
"On it," Jory said.
He backed out and pulled the door shut.
Then Ansel heard the lock turn from the outside.
He crossed the room in three steps and pulled on the handle.
It did not move.
"Jory!"
"Sorry!" Jory called through the wood.
"He hasn't slept in a month.
"He won't eat.
"He said your name in his sleep on the bus.
"Talk it out!"
His footsteps went away down the hall.
Ansel stood with his hand on the knob and his heart thumping.
Behind him, Torin said, very quietly, "Don't look in the closet."
Of course Ansel looked.
The closet door had swung open a few more inches.
The inside of it was papered.
Every inch held a page, a sticky note, a library receipt, a coffee cup sleeve with a time written on it.
Ansel knew the handwriting on every one.
It was his own.
His physics notes were pinned in rows, and a half-finished problem set was taped over a grey sweater he had lost in September.
At the very center, in a plastic sleeve, was the library locker key he kept on his bag.
He had not noticed it was gone for a week.
Behind him, the mattress creaked.
Torin stood up.
"It took me two months to get them all," he said.
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