Trapped With My Stepbrother novel · Chapter 5 of 6
Chapter 5: The Name
The tent was empty when I woke up. Not empty the way it had been every other morning, with Reid's sleeping bag kicked to one side and his boots gone and the flap half-unzipped so the cold air could find me. Empty like something had been lifted out of it. The sleeping bag was still warm where he'd been. I put my hand flat on the spot before I could stop myself, and the heat of him soaked up through my palm like a secret I wasn't supposed to keep.
I unzipped the tent and stepped out into the grey morning. The rain had stopped sometime before dawn, but everything was still wet. The canvas sagged. The ground squelched under my boots. The whole camp smelled like wet wood and pine needles and the cold ash of last night's fire.
Reid was standing by the fire pit with his back to me, poking at the ashes with a stick. His shoulders were broad under that grey t-shirt, the fabric pulled tight across his upper back, and his hair was a mess, dark and damp and falling forward over his eyes. He must have heard the tent flap, but he didn't turn around. Just kept pushing the stick into the dead coals, scraping at the blackened wood like he was looking for something that might still be alive in there.
I stood there too long. I knew I was standing there too long, and I couldn't make myself move. The morning light was flat and pale, and it made everything look washed out except him. He looked like the only solid thing in the clearing.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–4 of Trapped With My Stepbrother are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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