Bad Boy - A Stepbrother Romance by Caitlin Daire, Alyssa Alpha Page A

come up here. You can come too, if you want. I can make you a copy of the key.”
    She squeezed my hand, as if she knew how much this place meant to me. Truth be told, I’d never dreamed of inviting a girl to this place, but it felt different with Rory. Special.
    “Thank you,” she said softly. “By the way….sorry about the way I came in and screamed at you and your friends. I had a bit of a headache, and all I could hear was this bass through the wall.”
    I grinned. “Maybe you wouldn’t have had a headache if you’d laid off the wine. Where were you earlier, anyway?”
    “Oh, just at Clancy’s with a couple of friends for some early drinks,” she replied.
    “Clancy’s, huh?” I said, turning my head away from her and looking out at the ocean in the distance, which was glimmering with lights from boats and the reflections of the moon and stars.
    “Yeah,” she replied, her voice so soft that it was barely audible. I knew what she was thinking. It was the same thing as me—Clancy’s was the first place we’d ever seen each other, and after all these weeks, we’d still never really discussed what had happened.
    Better late than never.
    “I know you said I needed to drop this, but I really want you to know—I’ve wanted you to know this for ages—Candice isn’t my girlfriend,” I said. “She kinda was for a time, but I ended it with her a while back, way before I met you at Clancy’s that night. She didn’t want to accept it, and she’s been trying to screw with me ever since. I did lie to you about who I was that night, though, and that was wrong. I know it was, and I’m sorry. But that’s the only thing I lied about.”
    Her head jerked up. “Really?”
    “Yeah, really.”
    She was silent for a long time, and then she shook her head slowly. “God. I’m sorry, Finn. I feel like such a bitch. This whole time, I could’ve shut up for five minutes and let you explain, but I just kept cutting you off and assuming…”
    Her voice trailed off, and I smiled. “It’s okay. I get it. It looked pretty bad that night. I mean, you’d only just met me, and suddenly there’s this psychotic bitch screaming in your face about how you stole her boyfriend.”
    “Yeah, it was pretty bad,” she said, nodding in agreement.
    “Besides, I still lied about who I was and jacked your blind date’s spot.”
    “True. Why did you do that, anyway?” she asked, her eyes widening slightly.
    “Isn’t it obvious?” I asked. “Because I wanted to talk to you. And you looked so expectant when you thought I was your date, so it was obvious you’d been sitting there for ages waiting for the prick to show up. I felt too bad to say I wasn’t him at first, but I was going to tell you eventually, I swear.”
    She sighed. “It’s my fault,” she said. “I just assumed you were Ben and didn’t even give you a chance to introduce yourself properly. I’m always assuming things. I need to stop it.”
    “Nah. It’s all good,” I replied. “I could have corrected you.”
    She was silent for a moment. “I’ve been avoiding you for the last week,” she finally said. “Because of what happened in the elevator. The…um…the kiss. I thought…I was feeling guilty because I thought maybe Candice was still in the picture, and suddenly I was the ‘other woman’, which I’d never, ever wanted to be.”
    “Ah, so that’s why you’ve been avoiding me. Good to know,” I said. “I thought I just had terrible breath.”
    “Oh yeah, that too,” she said with a hint of a mischievous smile.
    “Ha. So that was the only reason why?” I asked, training my eyes right on hers.
    She squirmed in her seat and averted her gaze from mine. “Well…it’s not just that. It’s our parents. We can’t do anything to hurt them or wreck their relationship. So that kiss…it can’t happen again. Nothing like that can happen.”
    I sighed heavily. She had a point; one which I’d been trying to mentally cast aside for a long