Layla

Tears streamed down my face, matching the wet streaks that raced down my window as the storm raged on outside. Thunder crashed just as another lightning bolt struck the ground in front of the restaurant's window, and I fell back with a scream that would most definitely draw attention. If I wasn't totally alone in the building.

At least, I thought I was up until I heard a laugh cloaked in an impossible amount of sarcastic enjoyment. I knew that laugh. I hated that laugh. I dreaded that laugh. But I also, secretly, shamefully, longed for that laugh.

"Scared you right out of your self-righteous skin, didn't it, Layla?" Nash Winslow, my stepbrother and the bane of my existence, walked up behind me, looking down at me as he always did. Even when I wasn't flat on my ass on the floor, Nash always managed to look down at me.

I wanted to reply with something cutting, something that would wipe that sneer right off of his face and make him cry. I wanted him at my feet, a puddle of shame as he begged me for my forgiveness. That wouldn't happen though. Nash and his younger sister, Alanna, hated me and there was nothing I could do about it, not even defend myself. Mainly because my tongue would tie itself up into a throbbing knot that wouldn't move whenever he was near me.

"Come on, let me help you up." His face looked sincere, but I knew him, and I knew my reaching for his hand would result in some kind of humiliation. "Come on, Layla. It's just you and me, let me help."

I glared up at him, not wanting his help. I didn't need his help. But I did want to touch his hand, my fingers actually twitched from the promise of forbidden contact with his skin. "Fuck off, Nash."

Score one for me, I actually managed to make words come out of my mouth.

"No, come on, Layla, let me help you up. I mean it."

Another bolt of thunder had me cringing away from him, the sudden noise startling me into acting like a child. It was Sunday afternoon in the late summer, and I had one more year of dealing with Nash and Alanna, the worst stepsiblings anyone could ever have nightmares about.

I rolled over onto my hands and knees, not caring that I gave Nash a full view of my bottom covered in my cheap uniform pants. I pushed myself up until I was standing on my feet in skid-proof black sneakers, my long red hair pulled through the hole in the back of the regulation black baseball cap I had to wear as part of my uniform. The white blouse, a size too small but all that the company would give me, strained a little across my ample cleavage and I had to twist around to get it all back in place. Nash watched, amused as I fiddled with waistlines and armholes.

"You're too good to ask for help, aren't you? That's why your mom prefers me and Alanna, you know that right?" he asked cruelly, his blue eyes full of glee when he saw how my eyes narrowed at him. He knew he'd struck gold and sneered a wider grin that revealed perfectly straight, white teeth. "Ah, are you going to cry 'cause your mommy doesn't love you like she loves me?"

I wanted to tell him to fuck off again, but my jaw was clenched shut and my mouth was too dry to reply. I stared at him, horrified that every night this asshole, this total douchebag was the guy my brain gave me wet dreams about. I hated him for being so mean, I hated him for having my mother's love, but most of all, I hated myself for wanting to give my virginity to him.

"I see you're too good to defend yourself. I guess you'll go home and cry some more about how mean me and Alanna are to you." He shrugged, stalking closer to me. "But I'll tell you this for nothing, you say one word to him, and I'll have every cheerleader on the football and basketball team hunt you down and beat your ass for you."

I hadn't said a word to anyone about either of them. And my mom didn't care, they were her golden children and could do no wrong. I was, quite literally, the redheaded stepchild that nobody but my father wanted. Nash stepped closer, making me gulp as I looked up into his blue eyes.

Something softened in his features, and he looked down at me as if seeing me for the first time. My heart started to pound in my chest when his hand came up to stroke my cheek. I didn't trust him, didn't think for a second that this was anything but another joke to him, but my body responded. I felt my lips part as his face came closer, ready for his kiss. My entire body felt as if it had been hit by a bolt of lightning, charged and ready to explode at his slightest touch.

That thumb of his stroked at my cheek and he leaned even closer, his breath a touch on my skin now. My head tilted further back, my eyes begging for what my lips would not say. Kiss me, Nash. Please.

I saw his lips twitch up into a smile just before he brought my face to his and kissed me, deep and hard. His tongue swiped at my lips, prompting me to open and for once, my lips obeyed. They obeyed his command, though, not my own. I moaned into his mouth, instantly lost in the taste of orange flavored gum and the sensation of his tongue stroking mine. I inched closer, my fingers clenched in the jersey with the number ten written on it, his number as the quarterback at the university he attended.

Not only was he forbidden because he was my stepbrother, he was older than me by three years, a difference that might as well have been twenty since I was only eighteen years old. I'd wanted to kiss him since I first met him when he was eighteen and he had moved to Snowy Mountain with his dad. I'd had the most horrible crush on the boy that was a senior that year, an all-consuming fascination with the boy that brought out the sun when he smiled.

All of that had changed when his dad met my mother. Nash and Alanna had both ignored me, for the most part, up until the day our parents married each other, and we became stepsiblings. Alanna claimed me and my friends bullied her, which anybody with some common sense would have known was a lie, because I didn't have any friends. Not really.

It accomplished Alanna's goal though, we stopped sharing a bedroom and I was packed off to live with my dad on the other side of town. Dad made a good money, but I still worked an after-school job that allowed me to buy my own car and pay for my own clothes. I had no social life, no real friends, so I worked a lot, studied, and had already been accepted into a nursing program at my favorite university. Which was only my favorite because it was out of state, far away from here.

I knew that this was a mistake, a huge mistake, and that I needed to push him away, but I was unable to fight my own body's need to touch him.

Maybe Nash really did want to kiss me? Maybe he didn't hate me as much as I thought? Maybe things could be different now?

"Ha! What a nasty slut!" I heard Alanna's voice and shame washed over me in a wave of nausea. "God, I knew she was desperate for attention but to kiss your own brother? Gross, you sick bitch!"

"He's not my brother!" I protested, swiping at my mouth and my face, horrified more deeply when I saw she had her phone out. "Did you just record that?"

That was the moment my heart shattered into a million pieces, when I knew my life in Snowy Mountain was over. She and Nash had planned this, had hoped I'd fall into their trap and like the idiot that I was, I'd fallen for it. Alanna would post the video to all of her friends, maybe even to Facebook and YouTube.

"I did, and unless you do exactly as I say from now on, you're going to end up the talk of the town. Now who's Miss High and Mighty, Layla?" Alanna's sneer was an exact copy of Nash's and suddenly I hated them both more strongly than I ever had before. But she had me over a barrel and those twin sneers told me they both knew it. Fuck my life. I can't wait to get out of this fucking town and away from them both. If I didn't lose my mind before graduation, I'd leave and never come back. That's the best I could hope for, right now, the promise that one day, this would all be over, and I could have a life without these two assholes bringing me down.

I glanced over at Nash, saw a moment of uncertainty on his face as I stared at him in utter betrayal, but the look disappeared. Nash looked away from me entirely, but Alanna stared, her face triumphant and full of glee.

"I think I'll start with that dress you just bought for the new school year. The one you posted about on Facebook. I want one just like it, only not in fat-ass size." Alanna laughed with delight; her face happier than I'd ever seen it before.

I still have no idea what I'd done to either one of these kids, other than simply exist, but I knew both of them had me in their clutches. I looked from Alanna to Nash, a bitter hate forming in my chest for both of them. "I'd expect something like this from you, Alanna. You're an attention-seeking little bully, but you Nash? You're a grown man. I'd expect more from you."

"You're the bully, Layla. And you're going to pay for what you've done to Alanna now. If that makes me a child, so be it. But you're getting what you have coming to you. Or else." His hard, grim stare turned my cooling blood ice-cold. This was not going to be a fun year, at all.

"Fine." I sighed, knowing when to admit defeat. "You two win. I'll get her the dress."

It would eat up my paycheck for the week, but if it would keep the pair silent, I'd do it. Maybe I could exchange mine for a smaller size? I would never wear the dress now, not knowing that Alanna had the same dress, that I'd had to pay for. I thought about all of the mean things these two had done to me over the years, Nash sneaking into my room to dye my hair green that one time, Alanna spreading rumors around school that I masturbated with cucumbers-and yes I know it was her because she admitted it to me with glee-, that time that Nash deliberately splashed his car through a mud puddle to splash me as I walked back to my Dad's after school, the way they both blamed me for what they did when we forced to all be together for holidays or my birthday, and all I wanted to do was run them both down with my car. But I didn't want to go to prison so I clamped down on my rage and took it. I'd get my revenge, one way or another. One day.