Chapter Fifty-Two
Tyler
The next day, we arrived back at Ashley’s father’s house and I had to admit that I was fucking nervous.
I knew that Ashley was pretty nervous too, just from the way that she squeezed my hand as we made our way down the beach, but she kept her spirits up.
The night before she was somewhat sad, but in a way, she seemed pleased that she was finally going to get this whole mess rectified; or at the very least, there should be some damn closure.
When her father answered the door, he seemed gracious and welcoming to both of us. I thought that was an improvement from the last time we had met.
At least he didn’t try to take a fucking swing at me… I thought as we walked into the house that was supposed to be our home, but had changed into representing something that was so much worse than that for all of us.
The eerie chill of the air was annoying as shit, but I made do, considering I knew I was there for Ashley. I was there strictly for support. If everything went well, I planned to keep my damn mouth shut. That was not something that came easy to me, but for the sake of fucking compromise, I supposed I would give it a try.
Still, even with everything that went on, I was kind of surprised, not only that I kept my promise to keep my mouth shut, but also because for the first time, probably ever, Ashley and her father had a good conversation without giving one another shit.
I didn’t really listen to the whole thing, since it was none of my damn business, but from what I heard of it, the two of them seemed to be working things out. There was no yelling and I would even go as far as to say the two of them actually listened to one another.
If I was into that kind of sentimental shit, it might have been beautiful, but my ass was just bored; which, I guessed, all things considered, was a good thing.
At one point, Ashley got up and hugged her father, which I took as a cue that things were getting patched up and we could probably leave soon, which made me happy.
However, just as I was beginning to be assured that things were winding down, I heard a familiar voice that I was sure was going to fuck up everything.
“Oh, so you are siding with them, are you?” My mother’s voice called as jealousy oozed from her pores.
I rolled my eyes and stood up, realizing that this was now my cross to bear. “Yes, Mom. I’m siding with them. You made your choice and I made mine.”
“Well, fuck you then!” she screamed as her face screwed up into a scowl, before she spat on the floor. She looked past me toward Ashley’s father and screamed, “Here’s your divorce papers, you dick! Now you and your little whore can live happily fucking after with my son.”
This made me completely irate. “Shut the fuck up!” I screamed, moving up to her, close enough so I towered over her. “I will not stand for you talking about Ashley, or to her father that way.” She cowered away from me as I added, “You need to leave, now!” At that, I snatched the divorce papers out of her hands as I said, “I will take care of this. Don’t worry, you will get divorced, but you sure as hell won’t get anything else.”
“You’re just like your father!” she screamed with the same venom attacking her words as she spoke.
“Good!” I exclaimed. “Because I am sure as hell not anything like you.”
At this, my mother’s mouth dropped opened and she stomped away from the three of us, hopefully leaving us for good.
When I turned around, I was met by Ashley, who ran into my arms and thanked me, before she immersed me in a long, passionate kiss.
And for once, her father didn’t even fucking mind.
Epilogue
Ashley
A year later, I sat across from my father and my boyfriend, having dinner while another glorious summer came to a close.
After the divorce from Tyler’s mother, no one had seen her, but that wasn’t such a bad thing.
Tyler had kept his word and had taken care of all the proceedings, representing his mother, so that my father would not have to give up everything he owned. In fact, Tyler had even exposed the court system to what his mother was doing, which caused them to be very leery of her.
He seemed to have settled into our family quite nicely. He was happy to be able to be a part of the traditions that my father had resurrected once again, in memory of my mother. And because of that, along with my father’s slow, yet steady re-emergence back into the way he acted before my mother died, the beach house, as well as the house that he owned on the mainland, was beginning to feel a lot more like a home.
Tonight, however, we were taking it easy. The three of us gazed out over the ocean and enjoyed the view.
I sighed and looked between my father and Tyler and realized, with some regret, that we would not be able to squeeze many more nights like this out of the summer.
After all, I prepared to go back to school for another year and Tyler was going back on his strong man tour. He had gotten a sponsor in his trip around the country last year and this year, he was beginning to make a good living doing exactly what he loved.
Even though I had only known him a year, I knew that this was the happiest he had ever been. He had opened up a lot more to me over the course of the year and I was starting to truly understand what he was all about.
I felt as though I could tell him anything, but what was better, I also felt as though he knew he could tell me anything.
The bond that we had forged and the relationship that we were building, I felt, was a strong one and I was fairly certain that Tyler felt the same way.
“Hey, Ashley,” Tyler said, putting his hand over my own, breaking me from my thoughts and forcing me back completely into the present.
“Yes?” I answered casually, smiling at him with ease.
“I uh…This seems like a good time,” he said as he glanced over at my father, who nodded his head toward him and smiled.
“A good time for what?” It was now that I could feel Tyler’s hand trembling as it grasped tightly onto my own.
“Ha!” Tyler barked a laugh as I gazed deeply into his eyes. “Oh fuck…” he stated carefully, before he gave another nervous chuckle. “Shit…Forget I said that….Damn, I suck at this…”
My amused expression heightened, but I couldn’t help the feeling of confusion that washed over me. I stared at him with a hard, strange look in my eye, while my head automatically bent to the side.
“What is it?” I asked, reaching out for him.
He quickly caught my hand inside of his, as though I had set off some kind of nervous reflex.
I gave a quick, quiet giggle as my eyes passed over to my father, who I could see was also making very weird faces. It was almost as though the two men were sharing a secret that I had no knowledge of.
I narrowed my eyes before I passed another glance between them and said, “Um. Dad…Tyler…What is going on?”
“I believe Tyler can answer that for you…” my father said before I felt him nudge him underneath the table.
I looked at Tyler just as his eyes, like laser pointers singed into my father, before he hissed something about throwing him under the fucking bus.
My prince charming… I thought, amusing myself.
Then, after a sigh, Tyler grasped my one hand with his and moved closer to me. At this, he looked deeply into my eyes before he said, “I know I curse a lot…And I know that I have had a really, really fucked up past.” He winced then, as though he didn’t mean to say it that way, but continued. “I am not the best man. I have my faults, but you have shown me how wonderful life truly can be. I love my life with you and you…you are truly the best thing that has ever happened to me. I need you in my life and I am ready to take the next step in order to ensure that I am always standing by your side…”
“Oh my God…” I gasped under my breath as I realized what was going on, while Tyler slid onto one knee. Instinctively, I pulled my hand back from him and covered my mouth with my hands, which gave him a moment to pull the tiny square box out of his pocket.
He looked up at me, just as he opened it and exclaimed, “Ashley, will you marry me?”
“Oh my God, yes!” I screamed, reaching down to kiss him as he came up to meet my lips.
As our lips touched, I heard my father laugh in a happy, satisfied way, while a smile spread across Tyler’s lips as well. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in closer.
By this point, my heart was beating so fast while my mind was running a million miles a minute and all I could think was, I can’t believe this is happening. But when we pulled away for a moment and my mouth opened, the words that came out were, “I love you, Tyler, with all my heart.”
His beam widened as he squeezed me tightly, looked deep into my eyes and answered, “Damn, Ashley, you know I love you too!”
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STEPBROTHER BESTIE
By Alycia Taylor
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2016. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
Valerie
Wow…He really went through with it…I thought as I eyed my stepbrother. He was already home and packing his car, just as he had told us he would when he had stormed away from the dinner table the night before.
I shook my head and rolled my eyes.
“What is it?” my boyfriend, Zachary asked me before his eyes crossed between my gaze and down the street to where Shawn was loading his car.
Looking back at him, I shook my head again. “Oh, just Shawn…He’s in a rebellious stage.”
I supposed that was the best way to describe it to him, without going through every grievance my stepbrother had.
Since turning eighteen, life for me had gone from good to great. My mother and stepfather had given me the freedom that I needed to flourish and I was taking advantage of it…responsibly, of course. After all, I still had the rest of the year’s worth of good grades to earn before going off to college.
I had big ambitions, and everything seemed to be falling into place.
“What is he doing?” Zachary asked as we both stopped to observe my stepbrother trying to shove the remainder of the boxes into his car while my mother helped him.
I stared at the two of them for a while before I answered.
Life for Shawn wasn’t as great as my own was turning out to be. So for the past few years, he was bitter.
It was a shame that bitterness had caused us to grow apart pretty drastically. Before my parents, well, his father and my mother, got married, we were friends. I had known Shawn since Kindergarten and we were best friends until about ninth grade.
When our parents first started officially dating about a year before, after years of flirting with one another, we had thought that everything was going to fall right into place. Shawn would finally have an official mother figure and I would have an official father.
Yet, our grand ideas quickly dissipated after the wedding. As it turns out, living together under the same roof as brother and sister didn’t go so well for us. Our friendship quickly turned to rivalry and that dissolved the relationship we once had to almost nothing.
We still cared for one another, but not in the way that we thought we always would. I knew there was still a friendship there somewhere, but it was buried under the regret and poison that had worked against it for the past three years.
Of course, that was far too strange a story to explain to Zachary, since I didn’t quite understand it all myself.
Therefore, I just answered, finally, “He’s moving out…Going to live with his mom.”
Zachary stared at me with a hinged jaw and a confused expression. “Doesn’t his mother ignore his very existence?”
I nodded. “Yeah, pretty much. I doubt she could be very happy with actually having to take care of anyone but herself, but she agreed to have him stay there.” I shrugged, not too sure about my stepbrother’s mother.
I didn’t particularly like her, because I saw what she had done to Shawn. Growing up, all he wanted was a relationship. She would tell him that she wanted to see him and basically lie to him about how much she missed him. But when he asked her when he was going to see her, she would dodge the question, with an excuse at the ready, almost every time.
Then, when she actually would be cornered into making plans with her son, especially when he was little, it was all Shawn would talk about. And on the day that she was supposed to come, he would wait for her for hours. I knew this all too well, because I was usually the one waiting with him; she would never show.
In all the years that I had known and lived with Shawn, I had seen his mother a total of three times. I seriously doubted that Shawn had seen her many more times than that.
She was a selfish, horrible woman and I couldn’t understand why, even now, he would trust her enough to try to live with her. But I supposed it was really his prerogative. There wasn’t much that I was going to do about him going, especially since lately, for whatever reason he wasn’t even speaking to me.
This bothered me and I had confided in Zachary about his, but he just told me that he was jealous.
Though I felt that there was something more than that, I couldn’t disagree with him. I knew that he felt my father treated me better than he treated Shawn, but that certainly wasn’t my fault.
Zachary shook his head as he watched the discussion play out between my mother and my stepbrother. They were always very close, which was why it seemed so natural when his father and my mother decided to get married; she was already a solid mother figure in Shawn’s life and had been for years.
“I don’t get it,” Zachary answered finally, “At least his father wants him.”
Zachary, like me, was raised by a single mother. Both of our fathers had passed away, which was part of what drew me to him in the first place.
We both had similar experiences and feelings, which made him easy to talk to. Zachary understood not only the feelings I had concerning my father, but also the friendship that Shawn and I had once shared.
Zachary was not the jealous type, which was good. When we first started dating, Shawn and I were still trying to maintain our friendship and so, I spent a lot of time with him.
As time went on though, he witnessed the decline in our friendship and was there for me, when I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone else. It wasn’t like I could talk to my mother about it, because she seemed to be on Shawn’s side a lot of the time. And it just didn’t seem right talking to my stepfather about his son, whether he agreed or not; especially because I was afraid of what I might admit once I started to talk.
“At least he has the option to live with both of his parents,” I said carefully, shrugging my shoulders in a way that came across far more envious than I had meant it.
Zachary smiled, though, in an understanding way and closed his hand around my own. He didn’t say anything, but he really didn’t have to. I knew that he understood and I was once again overwhelmed with a sense of thankfulness.
I looked back at Zachary, leaned up and kissed him, simply needing to feel that extra sense of comfort wash over me. Feeling this comfort and understanding touch made all of the difference in the world to me.
At least I have Zachary, I thought to myself, relishing in the closeness that the two of us acquired easily.
With him, I found that special connection that unfortunately, I had once felt very strongly between Shawn and I. Even though I yearned to have that feeling once again with Shawn, I was happy that for now, what I had with Zachary was enough.