Trapped With My Stepbrother novel · Chapter 1 of 6
Chapter 1: The Countdown
Perry lies awake in the tent, feigning sleep while listening to his stepfather's snores, and watches the sheet slide off Reid's bare chest until Reid's eyes open and catch Perry frozen mid-reach.
Rain hammered the canvas like it was trying to get in. Perry lay rigid under the shared sleeping bag, his back to Reid, the heat of Reid's body a line of fire along his spine, and he tried to remember how to breathe without making a sound.
His stepfather, Professor Callum Reid, snored three feet away in the only actual sleeping bag, a deep, rattling sound that had been going on for two hours. Perry had counted the intervals. He had counted the raindrops hitting the tent's outer shell. He had counted the number of times he had told himself to close his eyes and go to sleep.
He was at forty-seven.
The tent smelled like wet canvas, pine, and the faint, sharp tang of woodsmoke that seeped in from the fire outside. The camp was quiet except for the rain and the snoring and the sound of Reid breathing, soft and even, right behind him.
Perry had not moved in over an hour. His left arm had gone numb under his own weight. His hip ached from lying on the hard ground. And still he did not move, because moving meant adjusting, and adjusting meant shifting the shared bedsheet, and shifting the sheet meant touching Reid.
He was not going to touch Reid.
That was the whole point of the last two years.
Reid shifted in his sleep. The movement sent a wave of heat rolling across the small space between them, and Perry's entire body went still, every muscle locking down.
Don't turn around.
He turned around.
The sheet had slipped. That was the first thing he saw. The second thing was the bare chest, broad and tan, the skin still faintly damp from the rain that had soaked through Reid's clothes hours ago. The grey t-shirt hung from the tent's internal frame, dripping slowly onto the floor, useless now.
Reid had come back from the forest soaked to the bone, laughing about it. He had peeled off his wet clothes in the dark, right there in front of Perry, and Perry had looked away so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. He had stared at the tent wall and listened to the sound of fabric hitting the floor and told himself it was nothing.
It was not nothing.
The sheet had slid down to Reid's waist. His chest rose and fell with each breath, slow and deep. The firelight outside cast long, amber shadows through the canvas, painting the ridges of his stomach in gold. His trunks rode low on his hips, the waistband loose, the drawstring undone.
Perry's mouth went dry.
You are not looking.
He was looking. He was staring, actually, with the kind of focus he usually reserved for bird calls and tree identification. He could see the faint trail of dark hair below Reid's navel, the way it disappeared beneath the waistband of his trunks. He could see the rise and fall of his chest, the way his lips parted slightly in sleep.
He could see everything.
The countdown started without his permission.
Ten seconds until the sheet slips further.
Nine seconds until his trunks shift.
Eight seconds until he wakes up and catches me staring.
Perry's heart was pounding so hard he was sure it would wake the whole camp. His stepfather snored on, oblivious. The rain kept falling. And Reid kept sleeping, beautiful and infuriating and completely unaware of the war happening three inches away.
This was Reid's fault. All of it. The forgotten tent, the forgotten sleeping bag, the forgotten everything. Reid had shown up at Clearwater Ridge with a backpack full of snacks and no actual camping gear, grinning like it was a personality trait. And Professor Callum had looked at Perry with that tired, expectant expression and said, 'We're family. We'll make it work.'
Family.
Perry had spent two years trying to believe that word meant something safe.
It didn't.
Reid shifted again, and this time the sheet slid a little lower. The waistband of his trunks dipped, revealing the sharp cut of his hip bone. Perry's fingers twitched. His hand was halfway across the space between them before he realized what he was doing, reaching for the fallen sheet, reaching to cover him, reaching for something he had no right to touch.
He froze.
What are you doing?
He didn't know. He genuinely didn't know. Part of him wanted to pull the sheet up, to cover Reid, to restore the boundary that had been slipping for two years. Another part of him wanted to keep watching, to let the countdown run its course, to see what happened when there was nothing left to hide.
And under all of it, buried so deep he almost couldn't hear it, a third part of him whispered the truth he had been filing under 'definitely nothing' since the day Reid first smiled at him across his mother's kitchen table.
You want him to wake up.
You want him to catch you.
Because if he catches you, then you're not the only one who wants this.
The thought hit him like a physical blow. His breath caught in his throat. His hand hovered in the air, frozen mid-reach, the sheet still pooled around Reid's waist, the firelight still flickering across his skin.
Reid's eyes opened.
They were dark in the dim light, deep-set and heavy-lidded, still blurred with sleep. For a long moment he just blinked, his gaze unfocused, his breathing slow. Then his eyes found Perry's face.
Then they found Perry's hand.
Neither of them moved.
The rain hammered the canvas. The professor snored. The fire crackled outside.
And Perry lay there, caught, with his hand hovering over his stepbrother's bare chest, and he could not think of a single lie good enough to explain it.
Reid's lips parted. His eyes cleared, sharpened, focused on Perry with an intensity that made the air feel thin.
He didn't look away.
Perry didn't either.
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