Hard: A Military Stepbrother Romance Read Online Free PDF

the guy I am today, but that doesn’t
mean I want to be faced with it every time I come back here. Her and her fucked
up choices, and the inevitable clashes when I don’t agree with them and can’t
keep my mouth shut.
    So
these visits had become infrequent and perfunctory, even if she didn’t
understand why. Still, I couldn’t exactly say no to meeting the man she was
going to marry - but when tonight was done, I’d try to eject myself from the
situation again. These things never ended well.
    As
the buildings reared up around me, cutting off the starlight in favor of the
glaring street lights that had come on, my mind turned to the other reason that
coming home always spawned mixed emotions. I’d lived in this place all my life,
on a ghetto the other side of town, but when I came back here the only thing I
replayed over and over was a posh hotel room I’d seen the inside of once. A
feisty back-and-forth with the only girl who’d been able to match my fire. And
gleaming red-gold locks that framed a sweet, heart-shaped face with a passion
behind it that had lit my blood and left me longing for the touch and taste of
it ever since.
    Even
after all this time.
    Fuck.
    I
cursed as it hit me yet again; the lingering depths of regret that I’d sworn would be gone by the time I got back. Three damn years. Thousands of miles.
Hundreds of irresistible, insatiable chicks.
    One
passionate night.
    It
should have been enough.
    The
sinking feeling in my stomach told me it wasn’t. It hadn’t been enough sixteen
months ago, when I was last here. It wasn’t now.
    The
phone cheerily announced I needed to take the next left and broke my train of
thought. As if the fake voice had a clue about what I needed.
    I
stared at the brightly colored map without seeing it, my eyes focusing instead
on the number waiting a few taps behind that. It was the one I always came back
to when I was in this neck of the woods again. You’d think I would’ve just
deleted it by now.
    I
even did, once. But then I undeleted it just as fast, something inside me
panicking that I might have lost it for good. It was a nonsense, because after
three years there was no way it would be the same anyway. That didn’t stop
whatever perverted part of me that liked the idea that it could be.
    I
broke out of the city center and the traffic got lighter as I hit a road that
looked to take me along the coast. I hadn’t been this way much when I was
younger - it was upmarket, up here. If I’d wanted a romp in the sand, I stuck
to the other side of the bay where there was a large enough stretch of public
beach that you could find a little privacy. This place was dotted with private
beaches for rich kids’ parties. Fun to crash occasionally, but too filled with
pretentious snobs to stick around long.
    I
had no idea what my mother was doing up here - as far as I could recall, she’d
never had reason to come to this part of town. But my thoughts weren’t really
with her and I just shrugged as I enjoyed the taste of salt on the wind. This
far up, it wasn’t tinged with sewage at least.
    My
eyes drifted back to the phone. I wasn’t sure just when over the last three years
I’d gone from curious to obsessive. If you asked me on a good day, I’d claim I
hadn’t at all - but out here in the dark, with the lonely lights of my
childhood on either side of the darkened coastal road, the argument seemed
unconvincing.
    This
is pathetic.
    Annoyed
at myself, I yanked the car over to the side of the road, snatching the phone
from its cradle and navigating the familiar pathway to that number.
    B.
    I
pulled up the menu and let my thumb hover over ‘delete contact’. My stomach had
that annoying heavy feeling again.
    This
is it, chickenshit. You either delete this number or you’re calling it before
the night’s out.
    It
had been three years. If I was lucky, she might have hated me for a time. If
not, I would have gone straight to the forgotten stage. Regardless, the
last thing