Taming My Ice-Cold Stepbrother

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Five years I threw myself at my stepbrother. Five years he looked at me like I was weather.

No blood between us. My dad married his mom, and that was the whole crime. Two parents signed a paper, and suddenly wanting him made me the villain.

He stayed ice. Polite, untouchable, always looking at some point just past my head.

Then the hottest guy on campus kissed me, and my stepbrother walked in on it.

The man who hadn't cracked once in five years backed me into the wall. He dragged his thumb across my bottom lip, slow, pressing, like he could rub the other boy off my mouth.

"Good girl," he said, low enough that only I could hear. "Mine." His thumb went still against my lip. "And here I thought I was the only one you wanted."

Chapter 1

Rhys came late to family dinner, the way he came late to everything that had me in the room.

He pulled his tie loose one-handed and shrugged off his jacket. White shirt, pressed to the point of violence, the kind of clean that makes you notice your own hands. His fingers went to the top button like he meant to open it.

Then he saw me.

And did it back up. All the way to his throat.

He'd sit there strangled by his own collar the whole night before he let me see one more inch of him.

Cheap.

Here's the situation. Three weeks ago I kissed him while he was asleep, and he woke up mid-crime. I braced for the fallout. Figured he'd blow up, drag out the whole he's-your-brother speech, find some moral high ground and nail me to it.

He did none of that.

He just went quiet. Blocked my number, sent every call to voicemail, packed a bag and moved out of the house entirely, like I was something you quarantine.

Blocked or not, he still has to sit across this table and eat pot roast with our parents on Sundays. That's the deal when your mom and my dad marry each other.

So I wore the top I knew he hated and leaned across him for the dish twice, slow.

Rhys kept his eyes on his plate like a monk halfway through a vow. His throat moved once when I reached past him. Only once. He thought I missed it.

I never miss it.

"Rhys, sweetheart." His mom smiled over her wine. "What did you think of Tiffany?"

"She was lovely, Mom." He almost smiled back.

Vivian set down her fork. "The girl I set you up with isn't named Tiffany. You never messaged her at all, did you."

He had nothing. My flawless brother, caught out lying about a girl who doesn't exist. I laughed out loud.

"Dad. Vivian. He doesn't want to date, fine, but I do, and you two are shameless about it. All your energy goes to him. Where are my hot guys?"

Dad's mustache practically stood up. "Brat. Your brother's already got a career. You're a sophomore. Your one job is to study. Dating. What, this family can't feed you? Rhys, back me up here."

I looked at Rhys and waited, bored on my face, something in my chest climbing like a struck match.

His voice came cool and even, straight into the side of my head.

"College isn't high school. Dating's normal. If Cassidy wants to, I won't stand in her way."

Right. What was I even holding my breath for. He'd throw a party the day I aimed all this at somebody else.

"I'm done." I set down my fork and went to my room.

Dad called after me. "Brat. Your brother's home for once and you won't even sit with him? You used to be glued to his hip. Cassidy. I'm talking to you."

"Honestly. Not half the kid Rhys is."

Vivian smoothed it over. "Leave her be. Cassidy ran wild as a girl, she's come a long way. She got into Ashgrove, what more do you want." A pause. "Then again. Who ever measures up to our Rhys."

Nobody. Nobody walks out of a side-by-side with Rhys still smiling.

My whole life, he was the one every room turned to look at. Beautiful. Top of every class. Never rebelled, never let his heart get involved. Fortune 500 poached him straight out of grad school, and he climbed a year's worth of ladder in a season.

People used to tell me how lucky I was. Such an impressive brother. So easy to be proud of.

If only they knew.

Chapter 2

The parents at school always said the same thing. "Cassidy, your brother is so good to you. Not like my boy, torments his sister day and night."

Only I knew the truth. The brother rumored to spoil me rotten kept me at arm's length in private, like I was something that stuck to his shoe.

It wasn't always like that.

My mom died the year I turned ten. My dad's a rough man, raised me on a long leash and a shorter fuse, fed me whatever was in the fridge.

The first time I met Rhys, I'd just walked off a street fight. Split lip, scraped knuckles, dirt to the elbow, all bruises and bad attitude.

He was in a school uniform, pressed and spotless, lashes too long for a boy, like he'd stepped out of a comic panel. A few years older than me and already the calmest person in any room.

Our parents were too busy flirting to notice the state of me.

He noticed. He crouched down with a warm towel and cleaned me up, slow, careful, his voice cool and quiet.

"Good girl. A pretty face like this. Don't go catching other people's fists with it."

His hands were gentle. My cheeks went hot anyway, my breath backing up in my chest.

Being handled like that. Like something worth being careful with. It's a habit you don't kick.

Somewhere in there I stopped being grateful and started being gone. Completely, stupidly gone, on a boy who was still learning to drive.

The year I started junior high, other people's brothers were fighting their sisters over the remote. Rhys had just gotten his first bike, and he started showing up to ride me to and from school, rain or shine. He'd let me hold on to his waist and press my face to his back while I babbled about nothing, and he listened to all of it.

For my birthday in eighth grade he saved up in secret and bought me the collector's pressing of an album I loved, smuggled it past our parents like contraband.

Senior year, a boy slipped me a love letter. My mild, unbotherable stepbrother, who had never once raised his voice, found him behind the gym and beat him bloody. Turns out good boys fight like they've got nothing left to lose. Knuckles open, blood down that spotless white shirt.

First time I ever saw Rhys lose control.

Also the last.

After that day he changed the lock on his door. He started running himself into the ground before dawn, cold showers, the same line copied out a hundred times in a notebook, anything to burn the thing out of himself.

And he stopped calling me good girl.

I've always thought falling for Rhys was less a choice than a law of physics. You're not supposed to meet someone that ruinous that young. You never get a quiet life after.

I steadied my hands and pulled out a practice test. A knock at the door. A pause. Then two more.

Rhys.

I opened it and there he was, already put back together. Sharp suit, oxblood tie, shoes polished to a mirror. Always so cool, so contained, every line of him squared off, no expression anywhere, flawless as a mannequin.

The kind of perfect that makes you want to wreck it. Crush it in your fists. Strip the cold off him and see what's underneath.

"I'm heading back to the office. See"

I grabbed his tie and yanked him into the room, then shut the door behind him.

Two months. Two whole months of nothing. Nobody wants to hear him say goodbye.

Rhys looked down at the shirt and tie I'd crushed in my fist, and sighed like a man being reasonable at a child.

"Cassidy, I was wrong to sulk. You're young, you don't understand what you're doing. I already took you off the block list. Anything you need at school, just come to yourCassidy."

His voice dropped out from under the sentence. His hand closed hard around my wrist.

Click.

That small, bright sound of a buckle giving.

Every belt Rhys has owned as a grown man, I'm the one who bought it for him. Nobody on this earth knows how to get one open faster than me.

Chapter 3

"Rhys, I'm not a kid"

"Rhys, you'll be late for work. Talk to your sister some other time."

His mother's voice, right outside the door. His hand clamped over my mouth and shoved the rest of the sentence back down my throat.

One wall. That was all that stood between us and her.

Her son. The pride of her entire life. Pressed up against the stepdaughter she'd never once warmed to, our clothes wrecked, our breathing tangled together.

I searched his face for something. Anger. Embarrassment. Anything.

Nothing. He peeled me off him, unhurried, straightened his shirt, and walked out.

Just like that afternoon. Our parents were gone. He'd fallen asleep on the couch, still in his suit, sunlight lying across the pale, beautiful line of his profile. I set my bag down soft. Leaned in. Lost my whole mind and dipped my head, and before I even reached that soft pink mouth, I hit a pair of cold, open eyes.

Same face he's making today. Exactly.

"Cassidy," he said. "I'm your stepbrother."

The door opened and shut. It left me alone, still flushed, staring down at a practice test bled through with red X's.

My freshman year, he was finishing his master's. Nobody knows what it cost me to buy one single year as his schoolmate. But Ashgrove was never built for a party girl who coasted. Force two wrong people into the same place and all you get is more of the ache.

Fine, Rhys. I'll let you off the hook.

Priya's text lit up my phone.

Priya: [Cassidy!! Pickup game tomorrow, 3 pm. Campus it-boy's supposedly playing. Tell me we're going??]

Right under it, one from Rhys.

Rhys: [Free at three tomorrow? Dad wants me to drop your clothes at school.]

I answered Priya before I could breathe.

Me: [In.]

Then I muted Rhys.

I'm not like him. Grown man, hits one bump and blocks people like a toddler.

Ashgrove's court, and Priya was shaking my arm half off. "Cassidy. Cassidy, look. Number nine. Nine. That's Chase. That much boyish swagger in one human being. In high school I'd have pined three years easy."

Maybe she was just loud, because Number Nine looked right over at us.

Grinning, he reached up and fixed his headband, amber eyes catching the light, cocky and sweet at the same time, every move so clean it looked rehearsed. Like he came out of the womb knowing exactly what turns a girl stupid.

Game ended. The swarm closed in. Five, six phones out at once.

I pitched my voice over all of them. "I got here first. Add me first."

Priya, dying of social panic, threw me a thumbs-up from the safety of the outer ring.

Chase flicked the ball away, scanned my Snap without hurrying, and gave the rest of them a lazy shrug. "Sorry. Phone's dead."

"Seriously? The player's reforming? Why's she the only one who makes the cut."

"Come on, look at her face. Forget him, I'm a girl and I'd swipe."

They peeled off in twos and threes, sulking.

"Cassidy, right?" He was already typing. "Mind if I just save you as Cassie?"

I nodded.

His voice ran warm and loose, exactly like the rest of him. First smile I'd handed a boy who wasn't Rhys in five years, and it cost me nothing at all.

Chapter 4

Behind him his friends were losing it. "Ohh, Chase. Finally grew a spine and talked to the goddess."

"She added you first. You're floating right now, admit it."

Chase threw them a glare, then turned back to me with a grin and a wave. "Cassie. Food run. I'll hit you up." He tapped his phone, jogged back to his teammates, hooked an arm around two of their necks and hauled them down.

I turned around.

Rhys was standing under a tree a little ways off.

Looked like he'd just finished with Priya, because she was already drifting away. "I'll head out, Cassie. Won't crash the family reunion." And then she was gone.

I checked the time. Five thirty.

Rhys runs on a stopwatch. He says three, he means three, not a second past it.

Which meant he had been standing under that tree for two and a half hours.

"Why didn't you answer." Full sun overhead, and his voice still came out cold. Same as the rest of him.

"Too busy. Didn't see it." I started walking. "If that's all, I'm going too."

He caught my wrist. Rare thing, that frown. "No time to read a text. Plenty of time to add some stray dog's number."

"His name's Chase. Athletics director, top ten in his major. Not a stray." I smiled up at him.

"Cassidy. The way he looks at you isn't"

"I want to date now." I tipped my head. "Isn't that exactly what you wanted?"

Something dropped behind his eyes, dark and slow. "I never said that. And if you date anyone, it won't be someone who plays around like him."

"Then who? You?" I let the smile go sharp. "The almost-thirty virgin?"

He watched me close the space. Watched me lay my hand light on his waist and lift onto my toes. It had been so long since I'd held him I'd forgotten a man's waist could go that narrow under my palm.

The gap shrank, inch by inch.

And he let his eyes fall shut.

I let the seconds stretch. Then I stepped back, laughing until my eyes stung, every word dipped in acid.

"Brother. What were you hoping for?"

His eyes came open slow. His fist closed at his side, knuckles gone white, like he was holding a door shut on something trying to get out.

When he spoke, his voice had dropped to gravel. "I left your clothes with the front desk. Go get them."

Then a breath, almost a sigh. "Cassidy. I remember when you were sweet."

He's not wrong. The old me answered to one person. Texts back in a heartbeat, calls picked up on the first ring. No wasn't a word I owned. He could have told me salt was sugar and I'd have nodded and believed him.

I'm done being easy for him.

Rhys looked me over, slow, the strappy top and the short skirt built for exactly this. Then he pulled off his jacket and settled it around my shoulders, his gaze dragging down my bare arms the whole way, and everywhere his knuckle grazed skin it left a hot, prickling hum behind it.

Here's the secret I was never supposed to have.

The summer before sophomore year, Dad broke out the good stuff to celebrate Rhys's first paycheck. I got up in the middle of the night, and I still don't know how wrecked I had to be to end up at the wrong door. His door. The one night he forgot to lock it.

Moonlight all over him. Beautiful as something carved. A face you weren't allowed to touch, except now it was flushed, and his lips were moving around words.

Not hard to guess what kind of dream puts that look on a man.

I was half sober and halfway back out the door when I heard him say it in his sleep.

"Good girl."

My cold, locked-up stepbrother. The one who takes ice showers before sunrise to starve this thing out of himself.

The girl in his dream.

It was me?

Chapter 5

That was the moment every drop of blood in me caught fire along with the liquor.

His voice climbed, went ragged, and then Rhys's eyes snapped open. Black, unfocused, fixed on nothing and on me at the same time.

I couldn't move. Nailed where I stood.

Then one long arm hooked around me and pulled me down under him, and he smiled like something that lures sailors off their ships.

"Good girl. Open."

First time in my life I saw it. The cold mask gone, Rhys turned deliberate and coaxing, a creature with a hook in its voice.

My breathing came apart.

He bent over me and worked my mouth open, slow, and kissed me like he meant to die doing it. I'd wanted this for years. I didn't pull back. I couldn't have, not if the ceiling had come down.

"Good girl," he said against my mouth. "Stop coming into my dreams." His eyes were nothing but restraint and his face was nothing but guilt. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's my fault. All of it. Mine."

My legs gave out so completely that night I half-crawled out of his room.

I didn't sleep. Before six the next morning I shot up out of bed and found him at his desk, copying the same line down a page in his own even hand, again and again, the way other men pray.

He looked up at me. Cold. Not a flicker in him.

Like the whole warm, shaking night really had been a dream.

He spent the rest of the summer on the road. I couldn't corner him to ask, no matter how I tried.

That night I lay in my dorm bed thumbing through Chase's feed, half-answering Priya.

She jumped tracks with no warning. "Cassie. Your brother is so good to you."

I didn't dignify it.

She dug in. "Babe. I don't know what went wrong between you two. But that man is worried sick about you."

There it is. Rhys does this to everyone. Two minutes of conversation and they'll throw themselves in front of a bus for him, like he slipped something in their drink.

"He stopped me today and asked about you. All of it. Are you eating, are you sleeping, is the coursework too much. He asked me if you get bad cramps on your period, Cassie."

"I'm just saying. A boyfriend wouldn't do one thing more than that."

"He doesn't get to be my boyfriend," I said, low