PULSE: A Stepbrother Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

dated boys. I’d even dated
some decent boys, highly attractive
boys that treated me with complete respect. But the boys I’d dated, even the
pricks among them, just never compelled me the way that he did. There was no balance between the two – always
either one or the other. This boyfriend would put me on a pedestal and treat me
like a princess; that boyfriend would consider me a conquest trophy at best, or
just make-out material at worst.

 
    Sawyer challenged
me. Continuously. At the same time I knew that, when it really came down to it,
he was on my side.

 
    He had always
supported me against our parents when they were being unreasonable. Every time
that Mom or Chet had made some heavy-handed, unreasonable request of me –
or the countless times I was accused of sneaking boys home (I never did,
although everyone knew that Sawyer snuck girls in and out non-stop), he was
right there to have my back. As much as I hated to admit it, he was in my corner as soon as he heard
about Paris, which meant that that part
of him hadn’t changed either.

 
    I sighed
heavily, glancing up at the mural of the stars across my ceiling. Seeing him
again after all these years…I had expected that when – if – I laid eyes on the bastard,
I’d want to throttle him for becoming such a large part of my life and then
doing what every important man did to me: they always just walked away.

 
    But the truth
dawned on me, finally: I had to actively try to hate him, even with his stupid smirk and his entire abandonment thing.
All those confusing teenage feelings came rushing back. I’d always attributed
it to stupid hormones and puberty, but goddamn, that wasn’t it.

 
    Sawyer had
been handsome before.

 
    Now, he was stupidly attractive.

 
    I wasn’t sure
how I could much I could bear a summer alone with the cocky, sculpted jackass
now. It had been easy to let the past be the past and just forget the whole
mess, but then he had to come back and make life a living hell again. Now, I
was going to have to figure my feelings out while trapped with the guy. And there was no way I was going to let him have that kind of power over me, not
after he’d betrayed me before.

 
    But that
didn’t resolve the looming crisis. With a couple of months living together
alone, there were really only two options immediately visible, and I had no
idea which one would be more appealing.

 
    Either I’d
want to kill Sawyer, or…

 
    No. I wasn’t
willing to admit it to myself.

 
    I couldn’t
bear to dwell on how much I wanted to fuck him.

 

 
 
    SAWYER

 
    Chapter 4

 
    NEW ORLEANS

 
    FIVE
YEARS AGO

 
 
 
    T he first day
that my trajectory was set in stone was the day that Saffron became forever a
part of my life. Following that logic, the second was the day that I stepped on
a bus to New Orleans. The third and final one was the day that I walked past
Happy Pat’s.

 
    I had been in town for about two months,
sustaining myself with odd labor jobs and sleeping in sheds or abandoned
properties. Scuffling with the local folk was inevitable, but I managed to keep
it down to a minimum – luckily, I never seemed to find myself up against
someone with a knife or a gun. I knew that it was only a matter of time, and I
would have to find a proper roof over my head fast .

 
    “Hey, pal!” I
heard a voice call out to me as I walked past the Happy Pat’s bar. Keeping my
head down, I continued walking along. “Pal! You little shit-stain, you just
gonna keep walkin’ and ignore me? Must be real easy to strut away without a pair between your legs!”

 
    I knew
better, but I whirled around anyway.

 
    “I will knock
the flying fuck out of you if you
don’t shut your fucking mouth,” I furiously answered. “Now, piss off .”

 
    The guy was a
lanky, scruffy fellow in his upper twenties, dressed in only a ragged pair of
cargo shorts. He had been smoking a cigarette with his back to the window.
Dropping it