Stepbrother JEEZ! (The Stepbrother Romance Series - Book #4) by Claire Adams Page A

worst part of it all was that there was no one I
could even talk to about it. I obviously couldn’t talk to Jaxon about it, since
we couldn’t be alone together without jumping each other’s bones. I couldn’t
talk to my mom about it. She was weirded out enough that it had happened in the
first place; she would never be able to understand the situation from my
perspective. I couldn’t talk to anyone in the frat about it because I was damn
sure not going to be that girl who caught feelings for her new stepbrother, and
it would make everything weird with everyone else in the frat. I couldn’t even
talk to anyone in any of my classes or the dorms about it; I definitely didn’t
want rumors to start about me, or about Jaxon.
    So there I was, stuck in a situation that I couldn’t
really deal with but I couldn’t really talk to anyone about either. I would
just have to keep my distance from Jaxon, and from the whole frat; I was
actually worried that if I let myself be around those guys at all, it would all
come tumbling out of me. One minute I’d be chatting about the scores to a
game—and the next I’d be telling someone everything about the whole stupid,
fucked-up mess. It would be better for everyone if I just kept my mouth shut
and kept to myself for a while. If I could just pretend like everything was okay, eventually that would be the truth.
    As everyone else started coming back from their
holidays, I stayed in the dorms. I dug into the treasure trove of dorm-friendly
food that I kept around when I got hungry: cereal, canned ravioli, ramen, and
other things like that. I told myself that a few days of eating that way
wouldn’t kill me; after all, they were the staples of anyone’s emergency food.
    I couldn’t help but miss the food at Bob’s
place—Thanksgiving had been awkward, but at least the meal itself had been
tasty even if my stomach hadn’t been up to digesting it. I could have gone down
to the dining hall, but I really didn’t want to run into anyone; I needed a couple
of days to myself to get Jaxon out of my head, if it was possible. At least,
even if I couldn’t, I needed some space. And if I went to the dining hall, I
was sure I’d be invited over to the frat house, or I’d run into someone from
the team, and there’d be nothing I could do to avoid everything I wanted to get
out of my head.
    I wasn’t able to deal with being lazy in the dorms
than I was at Bob’s house. I finally decided that if I was going to lose my mind in the process it wouldn’t even be worth it, so I went to
the gym. I made sure to go in the off-hours, when there’d be next to no one
there; I put on my headphones and got into my baggiest, slouchiest workout
gear, and did everything I could to blend in. By the time I got there, there
were maybe two members of the basketball team hard at work, perfectly willing
to ignore me.
    I warmed up on the stationary bike, pedaling at
medium resistance until my heart rate was up, and moved to some of the
cross-training exercises that we’d been practicing: jumps, lunges, squats, and
a few upper body moves, along with some core training, until every muscle in my
body was burning—not exhausted, but at least well worked. I was dripping with
sweat when I got onto the treadmill, but it felt so good to actually do
something, to feel my blood pumping in my veins and my heart pounding in my
chest, that I stayed on for the full twenty minutes, running for fifteen and
then walking the last five.
    It didn’t solve any of my real problems; I was still
as stuck on Jaxon as ever, and my head was still full of everything that had
happened between us, but it had given me at least a little bit of a break from
the four walls of my dorm room, the drone of the TV, and reading everything my
friends were posting online over and over again until I thought I would go
crazy. I went back to the dorms and hit the shower and crawled into bed still
feeling upset, but finally too tired to care.

 
    When