Copyright © 2022 Astra Rose

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This is a work of fiction intended for adult audiences only. Any resemblance to
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Excerpts from the following books, or references to, were reprinted with gracious
permission by the authors:
The Arrangement, Amity Malcom
Take Me to Paradise, Jenna Thalia
The Shield and the Axe, MK Robert

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Hailey

IN MY HOUSE, everything is theatre.

My mother, Greta, is a well-known actress, and in our
family, appearances are very important. Just before crossing
the threshold to our dining room, I pause for a second,
smoothing down my hair and straightening my shoulders. I
walk in the room hoping to hell my face looks cool and
composed.
My role in the theatre of our family is the perfect
daughter: pretty, polished, and polite. My stepfather is the
trophy husband. A lawyer before he met Greta and was able
to retire on her wealth, Barry is unusually handsome, with a
strong jaw, broad shoulders, and just the right amount of
distinguished grey at his temples. The fact that he was
never an actor makes him seem stable. For an actress like
Greta, he’s a score.
Greta, of course, is the star of our show. The bright,
shining star whose gravity holds the rest of us in orbit.
My stepbrother Cole plays the role of the bad boy, rebel
child—even though he’d tell you that he refuses to play a
role, that he could never be put in a box. But that’s how
these roles get cast: the influence is subtle, taking your
natural tendencies and grooming them into the typecast
that fits you best. The bad-boy son has value for our family,
too. When family pictures of us get posted online there are
always comments about how hot Cole is, towering over all
of us, even Barry, and smirking at the camera while the rest
of us smile demurely.
Tonight, I’m putting on a special performance all for Cole.
Tonight I’m playing the role of Girl Who Never Got Her Heart
Broken.
Sure, this girl may have slept with her stepbrother last
summer, but the important thing to convey here is that it
was so insignificant she barely remembers it…even if, in
truth, it’s been dominating my thoughts ever since. It’s
important that I get good at this role. I’ll have to play it at
family dinners for the rest of my life.
I’ve been dreading this day for the past nine months, the
day I finally see Cole in person again. Ever since he sent me
that final cruel text message. The last time I saw Cole in
person I was lovesick and smitten. The last time I saw Cole
in person I was weak.
He’d always picked on me and teased me, but last
summer his interest grew sexual and then his fixation on me
became something else. Shame on me for ever thinking
things could go differently than they did. I took it too
seriously. Opened myself up to him. Became vulnerable.
And then, once he had my trust, he turned it all around on
me. One big joke. The greatest indicator of future behaviour,
of course, is past behaviour. I should have known.
“Sweetheart!” My mother beams at me as I enter the
room. I smile warmly, keeping my eyes trained on her,
beautiful Greta, at the head of the table, flanked by her PR
agent, Nicole, and assistant, Matt. I pull out my chair, letting
my eyes scan slowly across the table to where Cole is sitting
beside his best friend, Xander, and give them both a blank,
neutral smile.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Hails,” says Cole, cocking his head back with a
confident grin. Unlike me, Cole doesn’t appear to be acting
—he actually could care less about what happened between
us.
“Hey,” says Xander, meeting my eyes with slightly more
warmth.
At the other end of the table, Barry lifts his wine glass
and says, “Cheers to the summer.”
We all lift our glasses and smile in round at each other,
and then Greta starts pointing out the food in the middle of
the table: green beans with lemon and almonds; barbecued
chicken with harissa paste; potato salad; asparagus, which
Cole doesn’t like; baba ghanouj, which Xander doesn’t like;
and the spinach strawberry salad that Nicole loves.
My heart is beating a little bit faster than I want it to as I
reach for some chicken at the same time as Cole. His hand
moves into my field of vision, and the sight of it is so
achingly familiar it hurts. A strong, long-fingered hand. A
hand that’s touched my body, fingers that have been inside
of me. I almost shiver with the effort of repressing the
memories, and serve myself chicken without looking at him.
Last summer, I was a different Hailey. A younger, more
naive Hailey. And the truth is that a lot of the anger I feel
towards Cole is actually anger I feel towards myself. I let him
use me. I let him take my virginity and I let him parade me
around in front of Xander like a toy. And then I willingly gave
him my heart even though he had only ever stomped on it.
“You all settled into your room?” Greta asks Xander,
making me raise my eyes to her in interest. Catching my
look, she explains: “Xander’s family has moved to France, so
he’s staying here for the summer.”
Oh. Great.
“It’s like you’re finally being adopted,” says Cole, with
mock sweetness, and both boys laugh.
“Thanks so much, Greta,” says Xander. “It’s so nice of
you, really. I’m very grateful.”
“We couldn’t be happier to have you,” she replies
sweetly. “And how about you, Coley? You happy to be home
for the summer?”
“I sure am, Grety,” Cole cracks, making my mother bark
out a laugh press her hand to her heart in delight.
Cole is forever making my mother laugh like this.
Infuriatingly, she finds him both funny and charming. And
apparently she really missed him. As she looks at him, her
smile falters and tears fill her eyes, making her blink.
“Okay, has everyone got everything they need?” asks
Barry brusquely, interrupting the moment, and after a round
of assent we start eating.
The conversation focuses mostly on Greta’s movie, with
her, Matt, and Nicole discussing details for tomorrow.
Although we’ve all come home for the summer, this will be
the only time we see Greta, who’s flying out to Greece at
the crack of dawn for several months of filming. Usually
when she’s on location the family joins her at some point,
but there’s been no talk of that this summer, and I’m
grateful. I’m hoping to spend as little time together as a
family as possible.
It’s normal for Greta to be sentimental on a night like
this, when she has her family around her and she’s
anticipating how much she’s going to miss us. But the
undercurrent of melancholy I can feel coming off of her is
strong. I have well-trained intuition after a lifetime as her
daughter, and I’m positive that there’s going to be drama at
the dinner table tonight. “Live theatre,” Cole and I used to
call it…back when we were speaking to each other. For a
moment, I wish I could shoot him a glance to see if he’s
thinking the same thing, but I can’t. Any attention I give him
might be used against me.
By the time we’re on coffee and dessert, the tension
around the table has grown unusually thick. Cole and
Xander and I are quiet, each with our own reasons, I’m sure,
and Barry, too, is eating silently. When Greta finally breaks,
it’s a relief. Like rain after weeks of stifling heat.
“Kids…” she says, her voice sudden and loud. She
pauses for effect, pinching her lips together and squeezing
her eyes shut.
“This isn’t the time, Greta,” interjects Barry quickly, in a
raised voice. Nicole and Matt both carefully avert their
gazes, I notice, and I can’t help it—I shoot Cole a look, and
he flashes one back. Much as we like to joke about Greta’s
“live theatre,” it’s clear that she’s warming up for the Oscar
clip.
“For God’s sake, Barry,” Greta snaps. “Aren’t you the one
who said ‘there’s never a good time’?”
His nostrils flare. Whatever Greta is insinuating has hit its
mark.
“Sweethearts,” she starts again, sweet and sad. She
furrows her brows as much as her Botox will allow. “Your
father and I have something we need to talk to you about.”
 “We’re getting a divorce,” says Barry abruptly, again in
that same, strangely loud voice. Greta closes her mouth
mutely, eyes flashing. Barry is breaking the rules, doing
improv when Greta has a script.
“There’ve been problems,” he continues, and Greta
protests this assessment by sucking her teeth irritably. “We
want you to know it’s not your fault. It’s nothing to do with
either of you.” He looks at Xander and adds, “Any of you,”
which should make us laugh—it’s hilarious that he’s treating
Xander as one of us—but the moment is too loaded and
surreal. No one says anything.
He picks up his coffee, happy to leave it at that, and
takes a sip. For a moment no one speaks.
“Of course we’ll always be a family,” says Greta, picking
up the narrative. “I know you must have so many questions,
and I’m so sorry we had to tell you this way.”
On either side of her, Matt and Nicole have a sympathetic
hand on her back, eyes respectfully downcast. Despite his
abruptness in announcing this news to us, I find myself
pitying my stepfather, who seems so alone at his end of the
table without his own team of supporters.
Cole is the first person to break the silence. “You’re
telling us today, at this big family dinner in front of
everyone, that you’re getting divorced?”
Barry rolls his eyes. “Well, I didn’t want to, but yes.
Apparently we are.”
“I wanted to tell you in person,” objects Greta. “I want us
to be able to talk about this like a family.”
“What about fucking Nicole and Matt?” Cole retorts,
venom lacing his tone. “What about Xander? Did you want
to discuss this with them, too?”
I look up at Xander, who returns my gaze levelly. For a
moment, I can almost imagine that his look is one of
empathy.
“We are all family!” Greta keens. “Nicole and Matt have
seen me through some of the hardest times of my life.” Her
voice wavers, eyes filling with tears, and Matt lifts a hand to
her back again, rubbing a small circle between her
shoulders and staring at the table.
“For fuck’s sake!” Cole slams a hand down and stands
up, making his plate clatter. Kicking his chair out of the way,
he turns and storms towards the doorway, drawing
everyone’s attention to him. It’s a relief, his outburst. His
anger is cathartic, just as his ability to emote when I can’t
has always been cathartic. He swipes a bottle of what is
surely expensive whiskey off the underlit glass bar near the
door in an act of rebellion.
“Cole,” warns his dad.
“Barry.” Cole imitates his tone mockingly, and then lifts
the bottle in the air as he leaves the room. “Great dinner,
you guys!” he shouts over his shoulder. “Thanks so much.
Have a great divorce. Nicole, Matt, a pleasure as always.”
Xander stands and shrugs apologetically at my mother,
following Cole into the hallway.
Exit Cole and Xander, stage left.
The silence Cole leaves in his wake is deafening. I blink
down at my plate and swallow. Just when I thought Cole and
Xander were the last two people I ever wanted to see on
Earth, I suddenly wish they would come back. I can’t think of
a single thing to say.
“Honey?” My mom turns to me. “How are you feeling
about all this?”
I look up at Greta and gape. “Uh,” I manage. “It’s a lot to
take in.”
End scene! screams my inner voice. End scene!
“I know, sweetheart.”
I push my chair back and stand. “I’ll, um…I’ll go talk to
him.”
I walk quickly towards the door, uncomfortably aware
that I’m breaking character, but nobody tries to call me
back or stop me. I can’t leave the room fast enough.
 “Cole!” I call, running down the hallway to the stairs. The
boys turn at the foot of the stairs and look at me. “Cole,
wait.”
They tower over me as I approach, both tall, strapping,
athletic…and slightly intimidating.
“This is such bullshit!” Cole exclaims, rage twisting his
finely carved features. At least for the moment, his smug,
cocky mask is down. He’s his real, raw self, and not the
douchebag version of himself he always seems to be around
me.
“I know.” I reach for the railing and wrap my hand around
it, needing something solid to hold onto. Suddenly I’m face
to face with Cole and we’re talking about something other
than us. This night isn’t going at all the way I thought it
would.
But then he gets a familiar look on his face, the corner of
his mouth turning up in a sneer, and the tone of his voice
lowers. Gone is the sincere Cole of only a second ago. This
one speaks low and insinuatingly.
“Come to my room. Let’s get fucked up.”
It doesn’t feel like a friendly invitation, and I glance at
Xander before replying. “I was hoping we could talk.”
“We can talk in my bed,” Cole says, without missing a
beat. “You, me, and Xander. We can talk all night long.”
“Jesus, Cole.”
“C’mon, Hailey. You’re not my sister anymore, so why
not?”
“You’re being an asshole.”
He sniffs and takes a step up, moving out of my personal
space. “And you’re being a fucking uptight bitch.”
I shoot a look at Xander, incredulous, but his expression
is unreadable as he follows my stepbrother up the stairs.
“Fuck you both!” I call up angrily after them, and Cole
stops in his tracks, turning around triumphantly.
“Hmm,” he says with exaggerated thoughtfulness,
pretending to stroke an imaginary beard. “Fuck us both?
Yes…that’s not a bad idea. What do you think, Xan?”
I’m ready to scream obscenities back at him, but Xander
at least has the sense to break the moment.
“C’mon,” he says to Cole, placing a hand on his shoulder.
“Leave her alone.”
Cole shrugs himself free, but follows Xander upstairs,
leaving me fuming at the bottom of the staircase.
I’m heated and angry—angry at Cole for being an
asshole, and ashamed that I ever thought he was anything
else. Ashamed that I let him touch me. Ashamed that I lost
my virginity to him. My own asshole stepbrother.
I wait till the boys are out of sight and then climb the
stairs myself, nowhere to go but my bedroom to hide.
At least the divorce will mean I probably never see Cole
again, I think. But instead of comforting me, the thought
makes me feel utterly hopeless.

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Xander

“YOU WERE A bit of an asshole to Hailey, man.” I pass the

whiskey bottle, which we’ve made a good dent in, back to
Cole without taking my eyes off the screen in front of us.
 “What are you even talking about?” he retorts, taking the
bottle and dropping his game controller. “My fucking parents
are getting divorced. Sorry if I’m not in the best mood.”
I pause the game and turn my head towards him. “Her
parents are getting divorced, too. She was just trying to be
nice.”
He flashes angry blue eyes at me. “What do you fucking
care about Hailey?”
For a moment, the question catches me by surprise. Of
course I care about Hailey, just like I know he cares about
Hailey, too. But Cole always has to be untouchable. He has
to have all the power in any relationship by pretending he
doesn’t care. Nobody knows this better than me—except
maybe Hailey.
“Forget it,” I say, too annoyed to want to get into it any
further. “Let’s just keep playing.”
“No.” He scowls, lifting the remote and clicking over to
the internet browser. “Let’s watch something. I need a
distraction.”
A brief current of excitement sparks through me as he
opens up a porn site, followed by bitterness. “I thought we
weren’t doing that anymore.”
He slants his eyes at me. “Obviously we’re both going to
keep watching porn,” he says, as if I’m being ridiculous.
“Just…no touching.”
I don’t say anything, and he turns his eyes back to the
screen and starts scrolling through the videos.
Cole and I have been best friends since we were kids,
and we’ve had a casual sexual relationship since we were
thirteen. Mutual masturbation led to handjobs and then to
blowjobs, but it was never about anything other than getting
off. We’ve always identified as straight guys—a couple of
“red-blooded jocks,” Cole would say. But behind the privacy
of closed doors it’s been a friendship with benefits. At least
it was until two weeks ago, when I pushed things a little
further, and violated an unspoken rule.
 It was a lazy Saturday. We’d woken up late and had been
playing video games for hours in our dorm room when we
decided to take turns jerking each other off.
Maybe I misread the signs, but there was an…
involvement on Cole’s part that wasn’t usually there. Lately
he had seemed more romantic when we did these things,
leaning in close and breathing in my ear as he stroked me.
He’d even started using a bit of dirty talk, too, asking me if I
liked that and telling me he wanted to see me come. It all
seemed to be going in a certain direction.
I’d been getting increasingly interested in man-on-man
sex, which my internet browser bore proof of, and when he
grunted softly against my neck that day, his hot breath
making my skin goosebump and nearly pushing me over the
edge, I impulsively did something I’d been contemplating
doing for a while: I turned my head and kissed him.
For a second, he didn’t move, the pressure of his lips
surprisingly firm against mine, so different from a girl’s—and
then he recoiled and leapt off the bed like a shot. The
expression on his face told me everything I needed to know.
I’d gone too far, even for us.
First he was angry and incredulous. When he calmed
down he simply said, “We can’t do this anymore.” Since
then, we had done absolutely nothing sexual together; we
hadn’t even talked about it.
That’s why I feel bitter now, as Cole changes the new
rules to decide that we can watch porn together. It’s always
Cole who gets to decide everything, and I know he wants to
do something sexual because he’s pissed off at his family
and stressed about the news of the divorce. Sex is always
Cole’s preferred escape.
But I want us to go back to the way we were before, I
miss fooling around with Cole, so I don’t say anything more
as he clicks through to the gay category and chooses a
video with two men in it. I don’t dare react or look at him,
wondering what point he’s making. But he doesn’t say
anything either. He doesn’t look over at me to gauge my
reaction. He hits play and leans back against the headboard
of his bed as if we’re settling in for a normal movie.
Two men are kissing passionately in what looks like a
hotel hallway. One is thinner and younger, the other huskier,
with a moustache. Moustache Man tears at both their
clothes, undressing both the younger man and himself until
they’re naked in the hallway, then he pushes the younger
man’s head down to his cock, tilting his chin to the ceiling
and closing his eyes as he moves the man’s head up and
down with a large hand. Blood rushes to my groin, making
my dick crowd uncomfortably against the zipper of my
jeans, but Cole makes no move to touch himself, so neither
do I. I keep my eyes glued to the screen with what I hope
isn’t too much interest, meanwhile devouring the hot scene.
Soon the older man gets down on his knees, and the
younger man gets behind him and starts fucking his ass.
‘That’s it,’ cries the man with the moustache. ‘Give it to
Daddy. Fucking give it to Daddy.’ I’m practically panting,
mouth parted as I try to keep my breathing quiet. My heart
is thudding and I focus all my awareness on my rib cage,
trying to control its rise and fall.
I feel Cole’s attention slide over to me even before he
turns his head, leaning in so close his mouth almost touches
my shoulder.
“That’s what you like, isn’t it?” he whispers. There’s no
hint of malice in his tone, just a question, but I don’t dare
respond.
We’ve never been “gay.” That’s never how Cole and I
have defined ourselves, and I’m worried that my growing
interest in men sexually will push my best friend away. So I
keep my mouth shut and don’t say anything about how
much the imagery on the screen is making my dick fucking
ache. How the sight of one man fucking another utterly
transforms me, making me crave something I’ve never
experienced.
 The eroticism of my best friend’s male mouth on my cock
has never been lost to me. The way it feels forbidden has
always been part of the appeal. But the idea of fucking a
man’s ass, or being fucked in the ass, is like that times a
thousand. I can’t take my eyes off the hard swinging
erection of the man with the moustache as he gets fucked—
everything so close together, cocks and assholes and
thrusting. Everybody hard.
“We can’t touch each other anymore,” Cole continues,
the feel of his breath on my neck making the air go out of
me. “But it doesn’t matter if we touch ourselves.”
More new rules.
I take a deep inhale and then look at him, certain the
heat shows on my face and in my eyes, and when we make
eye contact he smiles knowingly. He’s in control, and I’m at
his mercy. Just how he likes it.
My mind races as I wonder where this will lead and what
any of it means, and without waiting for me, Cole unzips his
pants and reaches a hand into his boxers. The fat head of
his cock peeks out from the waistband as his hand starts
stroking up and down and, oh God, he’s hard. He’s so
fucking hard.
“Fuck, I need to come,” he groans, with that smile
playing on his lips. He turns back towards the TV and pulls
his pants and boxers down around his hips until his cock is
free. I try not to stare, but I’m mesmerized by the sight of
his hand moving up and down over his thick, swollen shaft.
‘Oh fuck, that’s good,’ cries the man on the TV. ‘You’re
fucking giving it to me so good. Oh, fuck yeah. Just like
that.’
I look back at the TV, taking a breath to loosen the
tension around my ribs, and unzip my own pants. My hand
feels good, gripping my poor, needy dick, and soon the
friction of my palm has me right on the edge. A groan
escapes my lips, shaky and desperate, as on-screen the
man with the moustache fists his own dick and starts jerking
himself as the younger man thrusts harder into his ass.
“Tell me when you’re going to come,” breathes Cole, his
voice strained. “I want to watch.”
Fuck. “I’m coming,” I whimper, almost crying as the
unbearable tension breaks through me and ropes of my cum
spurt into my hand.
“Oh, fuck,” moans Cole, and I manage to turn my head
just in time to see his cock jerk, cum hitting his shirt as he
squeezes his eyes shut. It’s so unbelievably hot, and I have
the strongest yearning to bend over and wrap my mouth
around the head of his dick, sucking back the last drops and
swallowing it down, but instead I just watch, my own hand
slowing as my cock starts to soften.
One last spasm travels through him, and then he
collapses against the headboard with a breathy laugh. He
turns his head towards me with a relaxed smile on his face,
all tension gone. “Fuck, I needed that.”
“Me, too.” I take a deep breath and close my eyes for a
second. When I open them, Cole’s looking down at his shirt.
“You sprayed yourself,” I say with a lazy grin.
“That was a lot of cum.” He sits up and pulls his shirt
over his head before getting off the bed and walking
towards the laundry hamper. I try not to stare at the smooth
muscles of his back and torso, the way I always try not to
stare when Cole is undressed around me. Even though I
want to reach out and run my hand over the flat, lean ridges
of his abdomen and feel the way his body is so much harder
than a girl’s.
I sigh and close my eyes again, leaning back against the
headboard.
I guess I needed that, too. The news of Cole’s parents’
divorce has me feeling a little worried. The Vile-Smiths have
been like a family to me for years, especially now that my
own parents have moved back to France, where my mother
is from. I’m not sure what the divorce means for my summer
stay at their house, and I’m not sure what the kiss means
for the future of my friendship with Cole. The uncertainty of
the situation is sitting like a heavy weight in my stomach.
Lying back down with his shirt off, Cole picks up the
remote again and this time turns on an action movie,
picking up the whiskey bottle and taking a swig. He holds it
out to me but I shake my head, feeling the effects of the
whiskey making me sleepy. Before long, I let my eyes close
and drift off.

I wake up in the morning in Cole’s bed, still in my polo shirt

and unzipped jeans. Bright sun is streaming in from the
window and I can hear Cole speaking.
“Seriously?” he’s saying in a low voice. “What, are you…
living together?”
I roll my head over my shoulder to see him standing by
the window talking on the phone. He’s shirtless and in
boxers, hair mussed by sleep. He lifts a hand to his forehead
and rubs his brow as the person on the other line speaks.
Cole looks strained.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay.” When he puts the phone down,
he runs a hand through his hair and looks blankly out the
window.
“Who was that?”
He startles at my voice and turns clear blue eyes to me.
They’re a piercing shade of sapphire in the bright light.
“That was my dad,” he says numbly, as if he’s in shock.
“He’s…he’s at his girlfriend’s house.”
I’m stunned as his words sink in. “His girlfriend?”
Cole nods slowly. “Yup. Apparently he’s going to stay
there for the summer.” His voice dripping with sarcasm, he
adds, “Neither of them would feel comfortable staying in
this house.”
I raise my eyebrows, not knowing what to say. Greta is
beautiful, rich, famous…and Barry has always seemed to
worship her. This turn of events in their relationship is hard
to wrap my head around. “Fuck.”
“No kidding.”
“Well, this really explains the divorce,” I deadpan.
“Fucking Barry.” Cole looks back out the window and we
fall silent, processing the strange news.
Then Cole turns around with a grin on his face, all
thoughts of his father seeming to vanish from his mind.
“Well! Good news for us, though,” he says brightly, rallying.
“We’ve got the fucking Vile-Smith mansion to ourselves for
the whole summer!”
I lift my eyebrows. Cole and Hailey and I alone in this
house all summer? The possibility feels dangerous and
exciting after what the three of us got up to last summer.
“Shit,” is all I can say. Cole whistles.
“Fucking right, bro! This could actually be the best
summer of our lives.”
“What about Hailey?” I ask.
“What about her?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Are you two going to get along?
Or…?”
“Fuck Hailey, man.” He frowns. “Who cares?”
You do, I think. Cole’s whole act about not caring about
Hailey is getting a little thin, at least for me.
I know how devastated he was after he texted her last
fall to tell her it was over. He could deny it, but he had lost
something—a spark he’d gained over the summer. He was
sour-faced, moping around the dorm room and keeping to
himself—more irritable than usual…which in Cole’s case is
saying something.
“We’re family,” he had said by way of explanation. “It’s
fucked up.” He blames himself for what happened between
them, and between us, and eventually I learned to drop the
topic.
Now with the prospect of being alone in the house with
Hailey all summer, I have the distinct feeling that some
unresolved issues might come to the forefront.
But if Cole wants to deny it, that’s his business, I guess.
He pulls a t-shirt out of his dresser and puts it on, and
then grabs his phone before walking out of the room.
“I got phone calls to make,” he says over his shoulder.
“To who?”
He yells back to me from the hallway. “We’re having a
party!”

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Hailey

I SHOULD BE having fun. I’m nineteen, I’m at the biggest

kick-off party of the summer, and I’m flanked by my two
best friends with a drink in my hand. This should be fun.
 For most people my age, this is fun.
I look over at Sasha beside me, then Gustavo on the
other side, and they don’t really look like they’re having
much fun, either. Well, Sasha doesn’t—Gustavo has a
captivated smile on his face.
We’re all staring across the pool at my stepbrother and
the bikini-clad girl on his lap, Ariel Malek, the most popular
girl from our high school until she graduated a year ahead
of us. Ariel is laughing and tossing her hair back with
exaggerated affect, and Cole, two hands resting comfortably
on her hips and grinning wolfishly at her, seems to find her
enchanting.
She’s at the same university as Cole and Xander, and I
wonder if they’ve been spending time together over the
school year. Ariel and Cole could even be dating for all I
know.
“He’s a dick,” says Sasha, pursing full lips accentuated
by bold red lipstick.
“He’s been working out,” observes Gustavo, unable to
tear his eyes away. Sasha crushes the empty Solo cup in her
hand and throws it across me at Gustavo, hitting his leg.
“Read the room, dummy!” she exclaims, cocking her
head meaningfully in my direction. Gustavo raises his hands
in innocence.
“Can we not contribute any further to the mess, please?”
I say, eyeing the Solo cup and hugging my bare legs close. I
know I sound anal-retentive, but I can’t help worrying about
what the house is going to look like tomorrow—and how I’ll
probably be the only one to try to clean it.
“Well, her bathing suit looks cheap,” says Gustavo,
placatingly, in what he thinks is a valid point against Ariel.
“Yours is fire.”
He runs a finger along the deep green strap of my bikini
top, glancing down over my body appreciatively, although
it’s only the designer bathing suit he’s looking at. A fashion
student and personal shopper, Gustavo has an eye for
designer labels.
But the quality of Ariel’s skimpy string bikini is the last
thing on my mind as she squirms and giggles on my
stepbrother’s lap, tilting her head to whisper something in
his ear that makes the grin spread even wider across his
chiseled features.
Between us, there must be at least forty people jumping
in or lounging by the pool, and countless more sitting on the
grass or the back patio. I don’t even know how many people
are currently in the house. But all of them fade into shadow
for me when I look over at Cole. He’s going to sleep with
her, I think. Right upstairs in this house, in the same bed
where he once slept with me… There’s a sharp pain in my
heart, like I got punched in the chest, and I look down at my
feet and try to cut off the thought. It’s better not to
remember. I need to forget.
But nothing can distract me from my ruminations, it
seems. Not the loud thumping of the music, not the
screaming chit-chat of my friends as they struggle to be
heard over the noise, not even getting up and dancing when
we hear our favourite song and Sasha and Gustavo pull me
to my feet. Soon I’m singing along to the music, pounding
back every drink that comes my way, but even as the whole
party becomes a blur, the figures around me
indistinguishable and the music just background noise, my
awareness only seems to sharpen on Cole. I’m keenly aware
of the way he speaks to Ariel, the way he touches her lightly
everywhere…hands on her hips, on her arm, leaning in to
whisper in her ear. By the time Gustavo brings me my fourth
drink, whatever it is—something sweetly sour and fruit-
flavoured—Cole has Ariel backed up against the wall of the
pool bar, and he’s running his thumb across her bottom lip
as he speaks intently to her.
It makes me feel sick, actually physically ill, and I down
the entire contents of the cup before shouting, “Let’s go
inside!” to Sasha and Gustavo.
Grabbing Sasha’s hand, I pull her after me in the
direction of the yard, right past Cole and Ariel by the pool
bar. Against my better judgment I flick a look over to him as
we pass, only to be surprised when I meet his gaze. A shock
of adrenaline goes through me as his eyes, piercing and
watchful, meet mine. I lift my chin and don’t break my
stride, pretending to hardly notice him.
I barely recognize my own house. It’s full of people, and I
have to squeeze through the press of bodies to get to the
living room, where the music is loudest, losing Sasha’s hand
along the way. I don’t even know where the music’s coming
from, whose phone is hooked up to the stereo system, but
we have speakers throughout the house and yard that are
all connected, and the same music is playing everywhere.
The atmosphere in the living room is so different from the
pool. All the lights have been turned out and the room is
packed full of moving bodies, people pressing up against
each other as they dance. I burrow through the crowd into
the centre of the room, feeling safe and hidden in the dark
anonymity of the crowded room. I won’t be able to keep
tabs on Cole and Ariel in here. I’m just going to think about
dancing, and being with my friends, and having a good
time.
Except that I don’t see my friends. Peering at the dark
figures around me to try to make out their faces, I realize
that I’m in a crowd of strangers in my own living room. I
don’t see Sasha or Gustavo anywhere, and I don’t recognize
anyone.
A guy dancing in front of me catches my eye and, with a
sudden smile on his face, moves closer. I back up
reflexively, right into a warm, hard wall of muscled bare
skin. Unbalanced, I try to turn around—my head going one
way, and my feet going the other—just as a hand shoots out
to grip my arm, steadying me.
 “Whoa,” comes Xander’s voice, as I lift my head to see
who I backed into. He towers over me, dark hair falling in
one eye, and gives me a slow smile. He’s only dressed in his
swim trunks, but I don’t have to look down to know how flat
and strong his chest is, or how warm it feels against my
skin.
“Hey! Xander! Hi.”
“Hey. How’s your night going?” He has to lean down to
shout over the music, and I catch a whiff of his scent—
something cool and fresh, and perfectly Xander.
I should be angry at him—he is Cole’s little henchman,
after all—but I’m glad to see him. He’s the only person I
know in here.
“Night is good.” I smile, and, emboldened by alcohol, I
raise my hands up to his neck, balancing against him as I
keep dancing. The heat of his body and the light tease of his
skin against mine is giving me goosebumps. “I lost my
friends somewhere.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” he says, tilting his head and lifting
his eyebrows sympathetically. He places his hands on my
hips and closes the distance between us so that our
stomachs are touching. “Wouldn’t want you to be lonely,
Hailey.”
He feels so good against me—his hands on my hips, and
our bodies moving in sync. He has a lean strength that feels
different from Cole’s stockier build, and with every sway of
our bodies we get a little bit closer to each other, until I’m
purposefully brushing my breasts across his chest, and his
hands have spread out across my lower back to hold me in
place against his hips. By the time he leans down to kiss
me, it seems as though I’ve been waiting for it forever, and I
melt as his warm mouth meets mine for what I realize is the
first time.
My cheeks heat thinking back to last summer, when Cole
had me kneeling in front of Xander, challenging me to suck
his cock. But we never kissed. How strange.
 Now I wish we had, because kissing Xander turns out to
be exceptionally nice—nicer than nice. His kiss is firm and
deep; skillful. His mouth possesses me, and as we rock and
sway against each other, all thoughts of Cole finally leave
my mind.
…Until I hear his voice.
“What’s going on over here?” he says loudly. I can hear
the smile in his tone.
Breaking away from Xander, I turn my head to find my
stepbrother standing right beside us, smirking. I’m
disoriented and flustered, missing Xander’s mouth already,
and self-consciously I loosen my hold around his neck,
letting my hands slip down his arms. But Xander just pulls
me in tighter, his hands still firmly on my hips, and smiles at
Cole.
“We’re making out,” he answers, and even though
they’re both smiling, I swear I see something unspoken pass
between them. A flicker of tension. “Want to join?”
Cole puts a hand on each of our shoulders and leans in.
“You’re such a slut, Hailey,” he sneers. “I dump you and
you’re immediately all over my best friend, eh?”
“Hey,” says Xander, in a warning tone, but he smiles as
Cole’s head snaps over to him. “I’m sure she’d be happy to
be all over both of us if you asked nicely.”
A beat passes. For one outrageous second, I almost think
Cole is considering the offer. Then he grins and says, “She’s
all yours, man,” patting Xander on the back and stepping
away, disappearing into the crowd.
He’s such a fucking asshole.
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” says Xander, leaning in
to my ear to be heard. “You just gotta play the game with
him a little, to get him to back down.”
It’s a softer, more human side of Xander than he shows
when Cole’s around, and I pull back and tilt my head, giving
him a curious look as I consider this new side of Xander.
 “What?” he asks, pinching dark eyebrows together at my
look.
“Nothing.” I smile. “You’re just… You can be nice.”
“Of course I can be nice…” The grin spreads across his
face. “If you want me to.” He leans in again and his breath
brushes my ear as he speaks. “I can also be much less
nice…if you prefer.”
A shiver of anticipation goes down my spine.
I spent my whole freshman year at university pining over
Cole, missing out on all the wanton sexual experiences I was
supposed to be having because it felt like no one could
compare. But with one kiss, Xander has managed to do
what no other boy has been able to do for nine months: get
my pulse racing. I run my hands back up his arms and pull
him down against me for another kiss, calling on my liquid
courage for my next suggestion.
“Why don’t we go somewhere more private?” I ask
impulsively, pressing my cheek against his as I speak.
“Somewhere where you can show me how nice you are?”
He doesn’t hesitate, he doesn’t smirk, he doesn’t ask me
if I’m sure. He just smiles.
“Lead the way,” he says with a wink, and I grab his hand
and lead him out through the crush of the crowd and up the
stairs to my room.

I’m relieved when I open the door to my room to find it

empty. There were people sitting on the staircase and lined
up outside the bathroom. I can only hope there’s no one in
Greta and Barry’s bedroom, either. Xander walks in and I
close the door and slide the lock, and immediately he takes
me in his arms, stepping me over towards the bed as he
slides his fingers under the straps of my bikini top, and slips
them over my shoulders.
“Wait!” I breathe, with a sudden thought. I reach for the
hardback chair against the wall and position one of its slats
under the doorknob of the bathroom door, so no one can
open it from the inside. The bathroom connects my room to
Cole’s. Xander gives me a smile and nod before pulling me
back towards him.
“Good thinking,” he murmurs, resuming the business of
removing my top.
He unhooks the back and slides the top down my arms,
throwing it on the floor and staring at my breasts as if
they’re the most beautiful things he’s ever seen, before
lowering his mouth to one nipple and sucking it in softly
between his teeth.
I inhale sharply, sidelined by the rush that goes through
me at his touch, and warmth flutters between my legs. His
hands slide down either side of my waist to the top of my
bikini bottoms as he continues to suck my nipple into his
mouth, his tongue running along the underside, drawing it
into a firm peak, and he slips his thumbs into the waistband
of my bottoms, kneeling in front of me as he pulls them
down my legs. When they’re pooled around my ankles, he
leans forward to press a kiss to the head of my sex,
breathing in deeply before he rocks back on his heels and
looks up at me with dark, molten eyes.
“You are so fucking gorgeous,” he says reverentially, and
then he wraps his hands around the backs of my thighs and
leans forward again. This time when his warm mouth
presses against me, his tongue slides forward between my
folds and over my clit, making me gasp. I put a hand on his
head to steady myself, grabbing a fistful of slick, straight
hair, and before I know it, I’m riding the wave to orgasm as
Xander licks my pussy on his knees.
Within seconds, my breath is coming short and I’m
pulling his hair in a way that is probably painful, except that
I can’t think about it, as the explosion of my pleasure bursts
through me.
“Xander!” I manage to gasp, sucking back oxygen as the
last shudder goes through me, and he growls, rolling back
on his heels again and then jumping up to face me. He gives
me a look—a dangerous smile—and then lifts me by the hips
and throws me back on the bed so fast I scream with
surprise.
“Woman,” he exclaims, standing over me and giving me
a look that, holy hell, nearly wrecks me. “You taste fucking
incredible.”
His dark eyes burn as he yanks his swimsuit down and
then climbs over top of me on the bed. There’s a feral
energy to him, an eagerness that leaves no doubt in my
mind that sex is on the agenda for us tonight. I’m breathless
with how fast things are moving but it’s exactly what I want.
He pauses, hovering above me with the whisper of a smile
on his mouth, and we lock eyes. I find myself grinning back
at him, stupidly—this is Xander—and then his mouth finds
mine and he lowers his hips, and I feel the hard length of his
cock pressing up between my legs, the indecent heat of his
member against my thigh and belly.
This is happening. I’m going to fuck Xander.
He feels so good moving against me, solid and powerful,
his kisses slow and erotic. Soon I’m tilting my hips up
towards him, rubbing against the warm steel of his erection,
and desperate to feel him inside of me.
“Hailey,” he breathes against my mouth, and my name
on his lips makes me melt.
“Fuck me,” I plead in a whisper.
His eyes find mine and he lifts his hands up to my head,
balancing on his elbows, and pushes my hair back so that
his hands are framing my face. His own straight locks fall
forward, brushing my forehead.
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.” I lift my hips up again, grinding
against his cock to show him just how sure I am, and he
smiles as he comes in for another kiss, lowering a hand to
fondle one breast as he repositions his hips so that the head
of his cock is rubbing against my pussy, teasing me.
 His thumb traces little circles around my nipple, and I
moan involuntarily, trying to push up against him as if I
could force him to enter me.
“Please,” I whisper, and he chuckles, flattening both
palms on the bed and lifting himself up and off of my chest.
The loss of his heat is a desperate absence.
“Do you have a condom?” he asks.
For one devastating second, I think I don’t, until I
remember that the Christmas before last Cole put a box of
them in my bedside drawer as a prank.
But the joke’s on him, I think meanly, one arm reaching
out and flailing for the drawer, since I’m going to use them
to fuck his best friend.
I have a brief pang of regret thinking about Cole. Missing
Cole, despite all reason, and then I push it out of my mind.
I’m here with Xander, and actually…it feels amazing.
My fingers dig blindly through the coated cardboard of
the box, making contact with cellophane, and triumphantly I
pull a whole row of condoms out of the drawer with a
flourish.
Xander laughs, reaching for the packages and ripping
one off. “Let’s start with one for now,” he says, pulling out
the condom and rolling it down over his erection, before
climbing back over me again.
Then he grips his cock and positions it against my
entrance. I brace myself—it's been a long time—as he finds
my eyes and then pushes his thick length into me.
All the air leaves my lunges as he stretches me open.
“Hailey,” he whispers against my ear, breathless and
awestruck.
I can’t speak. Heat sears my skin as every thick inch of
him strokes a million sensitive pinpoints inside of me. As he
thrusts, tension starts coiling in the centre of my body, and
before I know it I’m gasping for breath, heart hammering
and eyes going unfocused.
 “Oh God,” he murmurs, lifting himself up on one hand
and pushing my knee down toward the mattress with the
other, thrusting even harder as he chases his release. “Are
you close?”
“Yes,” is all I manage, just as light bursts behind my eyes
and everything inside of me seizes, and then suddenly I’m
coming, my orgasm rippling through my whole body as
Xander keeps riding me, breath ragged and hair falling in his
eyes, completely unhinged as I milk his cock with the
fluttering pressure of my orgasm.
“Oh my God,” he groans helplessly. “Hailey, fuck.”
“I’m coming,” I whisper, and he cries out and shudders,
before collapsing on top of me.
I can barely breathe under his weight, but I don’t dare
say anything that will make him move. Instead I wrap my
arms around him and hug him tight.
Xander on top of me, crushing me with his weight, is
better than I ever could have imagined. I don’t want him to
get up, and I don’t want the moment to end.
For now at least, because of Xander, everything feels
okay.
He lies there for a little while, breathing into the pillow,
and when his cock starts to slip out of me, he grasps the
base of the condom and slowly pulls out.
I watch him as he stands and ties a knot in the condom,
walking it over to the waste bin and then coming back to
climb into bed with me with a smile.
“Are you going to go back to the party?” I ask him. I don’t
know what time it is—only that it’s late. But the music is still
thumping through the floor, and despite the intimacy of
what we just shared, I’m sure he’ll want to go back to his
friends instead of staying with me. To his friends and to
Cole.
“No,” he says, sounding surprised. He wraps an arm
around me and pulls me in against him. “I want to stay here
with you.”
 I sigh happily and nuzzle my nose into his neck.
That’s Xander’s skin against mine, Xander’s arm wrapped
so tightly around my shoulder, Xander’s smell…
We’ve been close before, it shouldn’t be so strange. But
the closeness I feel with Xander right now is something
completely new to me. And far nicer than I ever could have
imagined.
All this time I’ve been torturing myself over Cole—the
one person I could never be in a relationship with, anyway.
But maybe, I think, winding my leg around Xander’s, I’ve
just been crushing on the wrong one.

OceanofPDF.com
Xander

TIMING IS EVERYTHING.
 In the morning, I wake up in Hailey’s bed, my nose
nestled in her sweet-smelling blonde hair, one arm wrapped
around her and holding her naked body against mine. It’s
my second night in the Vile-Smith household and I still
haven’t woken up in my own bed in the guest room. It’s not
unusual for me to fall asleep in Cole’s bed, considering
we’ve been having sleepovers since we were thirteen years
old, but it is definitely unusual for me to wake up in his
sister’s. I ignore the warm, seeking swell of my cock and lift
my arm off of her slowly to stand up. I pick my bathing suit
up off the floor and put it on, and I’m just tiptoeing out of
her room when I look up to see Cole staring at me in the
hallway, dressed only in boxer shorts and holding a bottle of
Gatorade in one hand and a bottle of Advil in the other. I’ve
managed to sneak out of his sister’s room at the exact
moment that he’s coming back from a run to the kitchen.
He scowls darkly. “What the fuck, man?”
Instant guilt shoots through me. It’s not like there’s no
precedent for me fooling around with Hailey, but it’s an
unspoken rule that she belongs to Cole—even if he as much
as volunteered her to me last night. Heat rises to my face.
“Dude,” I whisper, clicking the door shut behind me so
Hailey doesn’t hear, and then I hold my hands out in front of
myself, placatingly.
“Don’t fucking dude me, you asshole,” he growls. “Did
you sleep with my fucking sister?”
“Cole,” I try. You offered her up to me, I want to say, but
it’s a useless argument. What he said last night was a taunt,
a jeer. I’m expected to know better.
“You fucking did, didn’t you?”
I suppress the urge to shush him and take a few steps
down the carpeted hall towards my bedroom door, speaking
quietly. “She’s sleeping.”
Cole’s footsteps are quick as he stalks behind me, his
tone caustic. “That’s just fucking great. You know, I thought
I could trust you.”
 “Of course you can trust me!” I open the bedroom door
and jerk my head, inviting him in. “Can we just talk about
this for a sec?”
He storms through the doorway.
“We were drunk,” I say before he has the chance to say
anything, closing the door behind me.
“Fuck that! That’s such a bullshit excuse.”
“You dumped her!”
He points a finger at his chest before pointing it at me. “I
can’t sleep with my sister. That doesn’t mean you can!”
“She’s not your sister.”
He advances towards me. “She’s mine.”
I sigh and deflate slightly, feeling both guilty and angry. I
should’ve known Cole would react this way, despite how he
was acting last night. Cole is controlling and territorial, and
Hailey has always been sacred ground.
But on some level, I did know he would react this way. On
some level, this reaction is what I wanted. I want Cole to feel
a little bit of what I felt when he pushed me away.
I’ve been as attracted to Hailey as he is all these years,
but he always made it clear she was out of bounds—first by
making her an object of ridicule and later by claiming her as
his own. I deferred to my friend as I always have,
sublimating my own wants and needs, and why? Because
Cole’s aggression automatically makes him the boss? Why
does he get to set the rules for Hailey? For me?
But staring back at him I can’t help but feel a little bad.
Cole’s love for Hailey has always been a desperate,
obsessive thing. I know that. I’m the only one who knows
that.
We’re eye to eye—I’m only about an inch taller than he is
—and Cole has a look like thunder: gritted teeth and intense
stare. I keep my eyes on his, and don’t let them trail over
his muscled shoulders and bare chest.
“I’m sorry,” I say sincerely, and lift a hand to Cole’s arm.
 His reaction is immediate, and he turns the cards on me
with a wrestling move I taught him myself. He lifts one arm
up to bat my hand away. With the other, he grabs my
shoulder and spins me around. I could defend myself. I’m
the captain of our school’s wrestling team and I know the
counter-move, but I let him push me up against the wall,
bracing myself with one hand as he presses the length of his
body against me, his mouth against my ear.
The sudden move gives me a jolt of adrenaline and,
despite myself, my cock twitches as warmth from his body
spreads across my back.
“How did it feel?” he asks roughly. “Fucking her cunt and
knowing I’d been there before you? When she spread her
legs for you, did you think about all the times she spread
her legs for me, too?” He reaches around my waist and cups
the growing bulge in my shorts, squeezing it through the
fabric and making me inhale sharply. Heat burns through me
as my length gets hard and stiff in his hand. “Or were you
even thinking about Hailey at all?”
With his other hand, Cole grabs my hip, holding me
against him as he grinds against my ass. I gasp involuntarily
as I feel the hard ridge of his cock rubbing against my
shorts, my erection jerking against his palm where he cups
me. His breath is hot against my ear as he speaks.
“You like this, don’t you?” he huffs, his rough breathing
matching mine. His fingers find the shape of my cock and
circle around my shaft, and he squeezes it, making my balls
tighten and ache. I can feel how hard he’s getting, his shaft
nudging at my ass cheeks, and I grunt involuntarily as I
push back against him to keep from falling forward. “This is
what you want, isn’t it?” he continues. “You want my cock in
your ass. You want to know what it feels like to get fucked.”
I drop my head forward, mouth slack, my heart slamming
in my chest. It’s a power play, what Cole’s doing right now,
and it’s working—he literally has me in the palm of his hand.
“Mm,” he groans. “That is what you want. I can feel it.”
 Releasing his hand, he tugs the front of my swim trunks
down, freeing my erect cock and then wrapping a warm,
tight fist around it. The feel of his skin against mine is so
different, so intimate, I shiver. He slides his fist down to the
base, thrusting his hips forward at the same time so I can
feel his dick sliding between my ass cheeks.
He drives his hips into me, stroking me in rhythm to his
movements until I’m almost ready to spill, his breathing
ragged against my ear and his torso warm against my back.
“Oh, fuck, you like that,” he groans. I can hear the
undertone of need in his voice, how his control is slipping…
how he likes it, too. “You gonna come? Imagining that I’m
fucking your ass? Imagining what it would be like if I was
fucking you hard and deep and I came inside of you?”
It’s the rough tremor in his voice that gets me—the way
he’s moving, the thrust of his hips, the way he handles my
cock like it’s an extension of his own. When I finally
surrender, a small sobbing sound squeezes my throat as my
balls contract and I shoot into his hand. His fingers slide
down me again, silky with my cum this time, and I shudder
at the excruciating sensitivity while he gasps, realizing I’ve
come.
“Oh, God,” he whispers, stilling his hand at the base of
my cock and tenderly bracing his fingers over my balls,
concentrating more on his own movements, rubbing himself
harder against me.
“Let me suck you,” I breathe.
“No,” he grunts. He turns his cheek to rest it on the back
of my shoulder while he humps my ass. “I want you to
remember what this feels like next time you fuck my sister.
How much you craved my dick in your ass. How much you
wanted to beg me for it. How you wanted me to fuck you.
Oh, shit.” His chest heaves against my back and I push
against the wall harder, holding myself up for him,
supporting us both. “Fuck, I’m going to come.” He inhales
sharply and then everything releases at once. His fingers
around the base of my cock loosen, his body goes slack
against me, and I feel all the breath go out of him. Warm,
wet drops spread over the skin of my lower back.
Almost as soon as he’s come, Cole straightens and steps
back, cooler air passing over my back where his body has
been pressed against it. I lift the waistband of my shorts
over my softening dick and before I can even turn around,
Cole is leaving the room without another word.

OceanofPDF.com
Hailey

“WHAT HAPPENED TO you last night?” Sasha asks. “You just

disappeared.”
 I fidget in my seat and close my eyes for a second, the
blanket of my eyelids a relief over my dry eyes.
It’s almost three o’clock in the afternoon but we’re both
still struggling after the party the night before. Sasha’s in
her bedroom at home and we’re connected over Zoom,
preparing to record our weekly podcast session.
My laptop screen doesn’t do Sasha’s true beauty justice.
Her gorgeous deep brown eyes look flat and black, her skin
a washed-out grey, but it’s still obvious she’s stunning.
Nothing could downplay the drama of my best friend’s thick,
curly hair—or the wicked expression that’s permanently on
her face, letting you know she’s always up for trouble.
I stammer, not knowing how to respond. I don’t really
want to tell Sasha I slept with Xander, but you can’t not tell
Sasha anything. She can always sense when people are
withholding information, and she can always get it out of
them. “Uh…”
“Oh my God, you slept with Xander,” she says—so fast, I
just blink dumbly at her.
“What? How did you know?”
“Oh my God.”
“Sasha! How do you know that?”
“Gustavo said he saw you two heading upstairs.” She
covers her mouth in surprise. “Oh my God, you absolute
slut.”
She says it like it’s a good thing. With Sasha, the word
slut is about as far away from being an insult as any word
could ever be.
Still, though, I’m not sure this is a secret I want to get
out. It was fun last night, but Xander is Cole’s best friend. It
would be naive to think that Cole isn’t going to have some
kind of reaction to this, no matter how nonchalant he was
acting about it last night. I know Cole better than he gives
me credit for.
“Okay, let’s start rolling before you say anything more,”
suggests Sasha eagerly. My computer beeps and a
notification appears on my screen, letting me know that
Sasha has started the audio recording.
“Nooo,” I whine. “Can’t we move straight on to the books
for once?”
“No way.” She shakes her head stubbornly, making long,
gold earrings swing on either side of her face. “This is part
of the podcast now.”
I close my eyes, lifting my face heavenward for a minute
in despair.
Sasha and I have been recording our podcast for just
over a year. For the first few months, we religiously posted a
new episode every week about the books we were reading.
Subscription rates were low, no matter how much we
pushed it on our Insta and TikTok accounts, but we didn’t
really care because it was a passion project.
Then last summer, details of my personal life snuck in
here and there. The questionable relationship I’d embarked
on with my stepbrother was too juicy to ignore, and Sasha
insisted it was relevant to our show. “Look at how many
tropes there are!” she’d said. “Enemies-to-lovers.
Stepbrother. Brother’s best friend… we can’t not talk about
this!”
Eventually I’d conceded, even though at that point Cole
had sent me a devastating text to let me know it was over.
Still, Sasha is a very hard person to say no to, and she
convinced me it would be good for me—“a catharsis.”
The more we talked about my love life—or erstwhile love
life—and about how some of the things that happen in our
books actually do happen in real life, the higher our
subscription rates climbed. Listeners started commenting on
our episodes and sending us messages. The stories
resonated, even though most of them were about how I just
couldn’t get over my stepbrother, whom almost all of our
listeners agreed was a jerk.
Now these updates from me are kind of mandatory,
whether I like it or not. At least—other than using our first
names—we’re anonymous. Once we started telling my
personal story on our podcast, Sasha and I had decided to
stop using any names but our own. Cole and I are somewhat
famous, by association to Greta, so Sasha and I assigned
Cole and Xander the code names “Adam” and “Bob.” As our
listenership grew, we even found we had to edit and re-
release old episodes just to make sure we weren’t
accidentally sharing any identifying information.
“Let’s do the intro first so the recording’s in order,” says
Sasha. “You go this time.”
I take a deep breath and smile as I speak. “Hello, smut
fans. I’m Hailey…”
“… and I’m Sasha…”
“… and you’re listening to the Smutty Books and Spicy
Reads podcast.”
“We’ve got book talk coming up in just a second,” says
Sasha with a wicked grin. “As always. But first we’ve got an
update on Hailey’s love life, and for once it’s not about
heartbreak and rejection.” Her hand moves at the bottom of
the screen as it flies over her keyboard, and then I hear the
sound clip she had created a few months ago on Fiverr. A
man’s deep voice draws out the words over an echo effect:
“What’s new in Hailey’s love life?”
I roll my eyes like I always do when she plays this clip.
But Sasha just claps her hands with delight.
“For new listeners who haven’t been following this story
from the beginning: Hailey first made waves last summer
when she hooked up with her super hot stepbrother. We
couldn’t believe this real-life bullies-to-lovers story, and
frankly, I thought for sure there was an HEA in their future.
But sadly, her stepbrother—whom we call ‘Adam’—ended up
being true to his essential nature, and the story went
bullies-to-lovers-to-bullies. He broke up with Hailey by text
and without giving any real explanation.”
I slump in my seat. It shouldn’t hurt me to hear her say
this, none of this is new information, but it brings back
memories of Cole from last summer—intimate, romantic
memories that I still cherish, despite the fact that he’s
proven none of it meant anything to him.
“But now we have a new development,” Sasha continues,
gleefully. “So Adam threw a giant party at their house last
night, and Hailey slept with his best friend, known for our
purposes as ‘Bob.’ Hailey, why don’t you walk us through
what happened last night?”
“Oh God,” I say with a nervous laugh. “Okay, well, um…
Last night was a big party. Everyone was drinking, and it
was also a bit of a crazy twenty-four hours in general. I was
seeing my stepbrother for the first time since last summer
and…our parents had just told us they’re getting a divorce.”
“Oh, Hailey!” exclaims Sasha. “What? You didn’t tell me!”
“I know. I didn’t really feel like talking about it last night.
But I’m upset, and the feelings were definitely there and
alcohol was being consumed…” I sigh. “And Adam was
getting hot and heavy with a girl we went to school with,
and…I guess I was feeling jealous.”
Flashes of the night before come back to me as I speak—
Cole touching Ariel’s bottom lip, Cole telling Xander, “She’s
all yours, man.” I take a breath to clear my head and try to
keep my thoughts on Xander. The way he touched me, the
way he kissed me, and the way he made me come. It
immediately soothes the rough edges of thinking about
Cole.
“I was dancing with Bob,” I continue, “and I just thought,
like, why has this never happened between us? We did
certain things last summer, because Adam wanted us to,
but we’ve never done anything just the two of us. We’ve
never kissed. And it was…yeah…it was so nice. It was good.
So, we went up to my room and it just…kind of happened.” I
trail off, blushing, and twist my lips into a shy smile.
“Okay, leaving out the details there, but fine,” says
Sasha with a laugh. “Be that way. But…how are you feeling
today? Do you have any regrets? Or do you feel good about
it? What’s going to happen now?”
“Um…” I bite my lip, glancing away from my computer
screen as I recall the night before. My eyes land on my bed,
still unmade, and I remember how Xander felt against me,
right there, only hours ago. How his mouth felt against
mine, his long, lean body moving and rolling and grinding
against me, and heat rises up my neck.
It was…amazing, actually.
It was uncomplicated, reciprocal, and hot as fuck.
“I feel…I actually feel really good about it,” I answer
honestly.
“You sound surprised.”
“I think I am. I’ve been so hyper-focused on ‘Adam’ that
maybe it was making me a little blind.”
“Blind to what? Blind to what was right in front of you?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
It’s not like the fact that Xander is hot is new. I, like every
other girl in our high school, have always been acutely
aware of that fact. It’s that somehow he always felt like the
one who was off-limits, not Cole. It’s as if Cole somehow laid
a claim on me long ago. Even last summer, as Cole guided
my mouth down on Xander’s cock. It was Xander’s cum I
swallowed, but it was Cole’s eyes I stared into as I did.
Everything was always for him.
Until he broke my heart, and then it wasn’t.
Sasha wraps up the segment, making me promise to give
an update on the situation next week, and we move on to
book talk, ending with something new we’ve started doing:
Dirty Quote of the Week. It’s my turn to read one.
“This week’s quote is from The Arrangement, by Amity
Malcom.” I click my highlights on the Kindle propped in front
of me, and select the quote I chose earlier. “‘He rubbed
small circles over her clit, the hand previously on her breast
leaving her hot skin only to reappear around her neck like a
collar. ‘Look at me, baby,’ he commanded, and Mya did
without hesitation, her movement only slightly hindered by
his hold. Pure, heated lust blazed in his blue eyes. ‘God, yes,
is right,’ he groaned. ‘In here, I am your God, Mya.’ He
speared her cunt with two fingers. ‘In here, I am your
savior.’ He slid out before sliding back into her with three
fingers. ‘In here, I am your fucking salvation.’’”
“Hot damn!” exclaims Sasha. After a couple of words of
sign-off, she ends the recording.
“Seriously, though,” she asks me, once we hear the beep
that notifies us we are no longer recording. “Are you sure
you’re all right? That’s a lot of stuff you’ve got going on.”
“It’s all right.” I give my friend a little nod, grateful for
her love and support. “To be honest, at least it’s a
distraction from telling my mom about college.”
“Hailey!” she reprimands me. “You still haven’t told her?
What the fuck? What are you planning on doing? Sending
her a postcard?”
“I know! I will. I’m sorry. I thought I’d have time the night
before she left, but everything blew up when they
announced the divorce. And now not even Barry is home.
But I’ll call her tomorrow. I’m still good for the rent money, I
swear.”
For the past year, I’ve been attending university at
Greta’s alma mater, studying English, which I assumed was
the only thing I could ever be interested in because I love
books. But this past while working on our podcast both
Sasha and I have become extremely interested in radio and
broadcast, and have decided to pursue it more seriously. We
both applied to a technical college with a good broadcast
program, and we both got in. The difference is that Sasha
told her parents and went ahead and lined up a two-
bedroom apartment for us to move into next semester, and
I have yet to tell Greta of my plans.
For one thing, Greta will flip her lid. She’s too fancy to
have a daughter with a diploma from a technical college
instead of a degree from a liberal arts university.
 For another, the college is in the next town over from
Cole and Xander’s school. I’ve also been putting off telling
anyone because I’m not sure how Cole will react when he
finds out.
“But you feel okay about last night, though?” asks Sasha
gently. “For real?”
“For real, Sash. It was nice.”
“You like him, eh? Xander?”
“Yeah. I guess. I don’t know what’s going to happen now,
though.”
“When does Barry get back?”
“I don’t know. Cole made it sound like he would be gone
the whole summer.”
“What!” she exclaims. “Where did he go? Are you telling
me that you, Cole, and Xander have the house to yourselves
for the entire summer?”
“I really don’t know. Cole was weird about Barry; he
didn’t tell me anything. But I know Greta’s supposed to be in
Greece until September.”
“Oh shit, this is crazy.”
“I know.”
“The podcast content we are going to get out of this is
going to be wild.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s always about the podcast with you,” I
chide her. But I’m thinking the same thing—just with less
enthusiasm.
For Sasha, the more complicated my personal life gets,
the better our content gets. But for me, it’s my life. And
every time Xander and Cole and I are around each other it’s
sure to be complicated. We can’t seem to stay away from
each other and we can never be chill. When we’re together,
we collide.

OceanofPDF.com
Hailey

SASHA’S WORDS ECHO through my mind later that evening

as I scour through the kitchen for food. Although I filled
three trash bags with beer cans and plastic cups this
morning, it doesn’t look like Cole or Xander have so much as
lifted a finger. There isn’t a clean dish to be found and every
surface is sticky with various spills. If this is what the house
looks like after twenty-four hours without parents, God help
us if Barry doesn’t come back all summer.
I’m annoyed as I do a sweep of the first floor, collecting
trash and dishes from various rooms, and my irritation only
grows as I load the dishwasher and wipe down the counters.
When a loud laugh outside draws my attention, I snap my
head up irritably to the window and squint to see past the
hedges to the pool. Sure enough, there’s Xander’s
unmistakeable long, lanky form leaping off the diving board
before cannonballing into the deep end.
I can’t believe they’re out there having a good time while
I’m cleaning up. It wasn’t even my party. They’re out there
having fun as if the entire house doesn’t look like it’s been
abandoned and overrun by squatters.
Blowing out a breath, I slip on my flip-flops and check my
reflection in the glass patio doors. I’m in my pyjamas: grey
cotton shorts and a large white t-shirt with no bra on. If
Greta’s taught me anything, it’s that appearances matter,
but Xander and Cole have seen me in my pyjamas a
hundred times…not to mention naked. I tug my thick,
tangled hair into a messy bun with the elastic band from my
wrist, straighten my t-shirt as best I can, and then slide the
patio door open and stride purposefully down the path to
the pool.
If we’re going to be on our own all summer, certain
standards have to be set. I refuse to be the only one who
worries about whether the house is clean or not.
It’s not until I’m passing through the hedge gate, my
momentum already propelling me onto the pool deck, that I
hear something unexpected.
A woman laughing.
I come to a halt as three sets of eyes turn towards me:
Cole’s, Xander’s…and Ariel Malek’s.
 My eyes go directly to Ariel, stretched out on a lounger
next to Cole. She looks outrageously hot in a complicated
black and gold swimsuit with a convolution of straps and
high-cut bottoms. Her tanned skin and rich, dark hair
combined with the black and gold make her look sleek and
sophisticated. I’m all too aware of my shapeless clothing
and messy bun, the frown on my face as I prepare to nag
both boys like some old fishwife.
Here I thought they were being lazy, when the reality’s
even worse. They’re out here flirting, and doing God knows
what, with Ariel fucking Malek.
A rapid-fire mental collage of Ariel with Cole and Xander
makes a shock of jealousy rip through me: Ariel on her
knees in front of them, sucking Xander off while keeping her
eyes locked on Cole. The three of them tiptoeing down to
the sauna for privacy; Ariel getting fucked against the wall
by Cole while Xander watches. The thoughts are so
devastating that I feel like the wind has been knocked out of
me.
“Hey Hailey,” calls Xander from the pool. The heat of his
slow smile makes me feel a little better. Like he hasn’t
forgotten anything about last night.
Cole and Ariel just stare at me. Cole is frowning, blue
eyes blazing and his expression unreadable, but Ariel looks
completely indifferent, as though I’ve come to take her drink
order.
“Hey,” I manage.
The pool area is a mess. There’s a plastic cup floating in
the deep end, and empty bottles everywhere around the
deck. Heaps of towels lie in scattered wet piles. A bikini top
dangles off one corner of the diving board.
Xander grabs the railing beside him and climbs out of the
pool. “Want a beer?”
I shake my head, the idea of drinking anything making
my head throb, and my gaze drops briefly down his body.
His wet swimsuit emphasizes the narrowness of his hips
against the broadness of his shoulders, and the suggestion
of weight in his swim trunks makes my cheeks warm.
“I just…” I clear my throat. “I just came down to say
someone needs to clean the front yard. There’s bottles and
stuff out there. One of the neighbours will call Barry.”
Xander cocks his head, running a hand through his
straight, dark hair and opening his mouth to speak, but Cole
beats him to it.
“Barry doesn’t give a shit, Hails.”
I look past Xander at Cole, narrowing my eyes. He’s
sitting up, leaning his elbows on his knees, and staring into
the pool. Everything about his posture and tone of voice
suggests that he finds me exasperating. I should know. I’ve
been exasperating Cole for the past eleven years, and I
know exactly what it looks like. Ariel isn’t looking at me,
either, just staring into the same spot as Cole.
Is it just me, or is she ever-so-slightly smirking?
“Sit down and hang a minute,” says Xander. “Then I’ll go
clean it up.”
“Don’t fucking clean it up,” interjects Cole, with a bite in
his tone. “Leave it.”
Xander half turns to look at Cole, who raises his eyes up
to his friend and then turns them towards me.
“Sit down and have a drink, Hailey, and just fucking relax
for once.”
I stare back at him, carefully keeping my face neutral.
Cole always has to have the final say, always has to be in
charge. He’s contrary just for the sake of it.
“No, thank you,” I say primly. As if I’m going to sit down
in my oversize t-shirt beside Ariel, who is wearing full
makeup and a bathing suit that can’t get wet. “Thanks for
offering,” I say to Xander, and turn around. My flip-flops
make a smacking sound as I walk back through the gate and
into the yard.
I stalk through the yard angry—and embarrassed. I’m
consumed with shame about the things I did with Cole, the
things I allowed. He doesn’t love me, he never loved me. He
doesn’t even like me enough to treat me with respect. He
cuts me down at every opportunity.
So I’m surprised, then, when I hear his voice directly
behind me.
“Wait up, Hailey.”
The way he says it, low and calm—it’s a command. For a
kid who’s essentially just a shit-disturber, Cole is remarkably
used to being obeyed. I want to keep walking, want to show
him that he isn’t in charge, for once, but I can’t resist his
pull. I need to know what he has to say—what he could
possibly have to say.
“What?” I ask impatiently, stopping and turning to face
him.
He closes the distance between us, and I blink as I cling
to the facade of my resolve, even though it cracks as he
approaches. It’s the way he looks at me—the intensity of his
gaze. It’s the sight of his strong chin close up, the familiar
line of his mouth. It’s the bulky strength of his bare
shoulders, the pec muscles where I once laid my head. I
take a deep breath to steady myself and the warm, familiar
scent of him only makes it worse. I’m almost lightheaded by
his proximity.
His face softens into something like sympathy, the hard
edges smoothing. “I’m sorry,” he says simply, looking me
straight in the eyes.
Even though his unflinching earnestness undoes me, I
straighten my shoulders before asking, “For what?” in a
haughty tone. I need to steel myself against Cole’s power,
against his games. I arch an eyebrow like I have no idea
what he’s talking about.
“I’m sorry for how fucked up everything got, okay? I’m
sorry you’re mad. I’m sorry you fucking…” He lifts a hand
back towards the pool and drops it, irritation creeping into
his tone. “…you fucking felt like you had to sleep with my
best friend.”
 My cheeks heat. There isn’t a world where Cole wouldn’t
find out about me and Xander, I know, but still—the
realization that he knows about it so soon makes me cringe.
Did Xander tell him everything? Did they talk about me?
I’m about to protest when Cole continues, as if he’s
forcing himself to do something he doesn’t want to do: “I’m
sorry about the text message.”
My words evaporate off my tongue, and I clamp my teeth
together and swallow.
The text message. After Cole and I had hooked up last
summer, we went our separate ways to school—him east
and me west—but I was naive and believed that something
meaningful had happened between us. That we were
something. He’d told me that we’d figure out the school
year, that we’d visit each other and make it work, and then
for weeks he ghosted me, ignoring my texts and calls.
When he finally did text me back, it was a brutal blow
that left me reeling. “Just forget about what happened, ok?”
he’d written. “It’s not like this can be a thing. I just wanted
to fucking get off. Get over it, Hailey.” Then he’d gone back
to ghosting me and didn’t even come home for Christmas.
To get an apology now…I’ve wanted it forever, but I don’t
dare let myself believe it.
“It’s my fault,” says Cole quietly. “It’s all my fucking fault.
So why don’t you just come hang and be cool, and let’s all
just try to figure out how we’re going to make it work this
summer.”
It’s not enough. It’s definitely not enough…but it’s a
start.
“Who’s we all?” I ask caustically. “You, me, Xander, and
Ariel?” My eyes narrow as I say Ariel’s name.
A corner of Cole’s mouth lifts, his eyes hardening with
something cruel but pleased. “Why? You jealous?”
“No.” Yes.
“Ariel’s not my sister, Hailey.”
“Neither am I.”
 For a moment, neither of us speaks. I’m all too aware of
my breath, the way it slightly rocks my body as it moves
through me—and of his, the way his chest rises and falls as
he watches me, unflinching. My heart is beating so hard I
can almost hear it. What I want to do, what I really want to
do, is just reach out for him and grab him. Make him clasp
me to him. I want to cry on his shoulder for all the heartache
he’s caused me this year.
But I can’t make him love me if he doesn’t. So I do the
only thing that makes any sense. I turn on my heel to walk
away.
His hand clamps down on my wrist before my foot even
lands and I swivel my head back to look at him, the look on
his face knocking the breath out of me. The nostrils of his
perfectly-carved nose flare, his blue eyes burning darkly in a
way that is so viscerally familiar it makes an electric current
shoot through me.
It’s a look that communicates with me on a whole
different level; a look I have no defences against. It’s the
raw, unguarded side of Cole that only I know.
He doesn’t say anything and we just stare at each other,
but I can read his expression as clearly as if he were
speaking. It’s a lifetime of knowing each other, a deep
understanding that we’ve always had but that he chooses to
turn on or off at his will. In his look, there’s desperation,
pleading, apology, demand… Something eternal between us
and unnameable, an endless longing. Something inexorable.
And I realize with sudden clarity that we’ll never really
put what happened between us in the past.
We never could.
It’s why he’s here now, gripping my wrist and staring at
me like he’s trying to see right through me.
Cole doesn’t really have all the power.
I don’t recognize my own voice when I speak. It’s clear
and commanding. “Send Ariel home.”
 The pulse in my wrist beats so hard against his thumb
that it’s like a little version of my heart that he’s holding in
his hand.
“Fine,” he says without hesitation.
He drops my hand, giving me a final look before heading
back to the pool, and I straighten my posture and follow
him, a new feeling of power coursing through my veins.

OceanofPDF.com
Cole

I STRIDE BACK onto the pool deck, directly towards Ariel. “I

need to call you an Uber,” I tell her. “We’ve got to start
cleaning the house.”
 Her eyes widen. “Now?”
“Yeah, sorry,” I try to give her a sympathetic smile as I
pick up my phone and open the Uber app. “My dad’s on his
way over.”
She sits up and frowns. I sent her home last night after
flirting with her all night, abruptly announcing I needed to
go to sleep, and now I’m sending her home again after she’s
come over in her sexy bathing suit, evidently hoping that
whatever fizzled out between us last night could be
rekindled today.
It’s not that I don’t like Ariel. I like her well enough; she’s
hot. But there’s just something about fucking Hailey. I can’t
seem to get out of her goddamn orbit. I enter Ariel’s address
and place the order, putting my phone down with a smile.
“Let me walk you out.”
Ariel says nothing as she follows me through the house. I
try to make conversation as we wait for her car, but her
answers are short and terse. She’s pissed, and fair enough.
When the car arrives I try to kiss her cheek but she pulls
away.

When I get back to the pool deck, I stand at the end of

Hailey’s lounger and look down at her. “How about a beer?”
I suggest.
“Fine,” she answers. She looks fucking sexy, even though
she’s dressed in what might be pyjamas, with all her hair
piled up on top of her head. She would look sexy in a burlap
sack. She’s trying to frown, but all I can focus on is the full,
rounded weight of her bottom lip, and how much I want to
bite it.
Fuck.
I can’t have a repeat of last summer, I know I can’t. I’m
twenty years old and I need to start focusing on my future.
Sleeping with my stepsister isn’t going to get either of us
anywhere.
 But I know from past experience that spending time with
her will weaken my resolve.
The truth is, I’ve loved Hailey for as long as I can
remember, since before our parents were married, since we
were kids. I liked her first, before Barry married Greta and
made Hailey and I impossible. It’s not so unthinkable that I
like her still; why shouldn’t I? But decisions were made that
were out of my hands, and now we both need to move
forward with our lives.
Even if I can already feel myself being pulled in the
wrong direction, as if forces outside of my control are at
work.
“Get Hailey a beer,” I say to Xander, who’s already at the
bar getting one for himself. He nods and pulls three brown
bottles out of the mini fridge, lining them up and twisting
the top off each one.
He passes them out to us as he walks back, taking the
lounger on the other side of Hailey so that she’s between
us, and I lean back, closing my eyes against the red glare of
the sun.
For a while, no one speaks. I still don’t know what it is I
want from Hailey exactly. Just for her to be here. Just for the
three of us to be together. It seems that, no matter how
much I try to set limits with myself, I can’t stay away from
either Hailey or Xander.
“Let’s go for a swim,” Hailey says after a while, and when
I turn my eyes towards her, I see that she’s speaking to
Xander.
He looks at me and then back at her. “Sure.”
She stands and stretches, and I let my eyes run up the
smooth, tanned back of her thighs before she steps towards
the pool and suddenly, unexpectedly, jumps right in. T-shirt,
shorts, and all.
Xander laughs and cannonballs in after her, spraying
water so far over the deck that I feel drops land on my
cheeks, and then Hailey comes up for air, pulling the elastic
out of her hair and dipping the back of her head under the
water so that her hair falls in a smooth, liquid curtain down
her back. One red plastic cup bounces in the waves they
create and a brown beer bottle, floating on its side, takes in
water and sinks.
I just watch, voyeuristic as Hailey clasps her hands
around Xander’s neck and wraps her legs around his waist,
so that he can lift her out of the water as they kiss. A big
show of affection all for my benefit. Hailey may think she’s
taunting me in some way, but as long as her attention is
attuned to me, I’m a part of this, and I don’t care what they
do together. In fact, the more they do together, the better, I
think, feeling my cock twitch.
When they finally break apart, Xander drops her into the
water like a stone and she screams with laughter before
looking over to make sure I’m watching.
She dolphin-dives under the water a few times before
getting out of the pool, her clothes sodden and heavy as she
walks across the deck, water pouring down her legs with
every step.
I can’t help but stare at her as she lays back out on the
lounger and nonchalantly takes a sip of her beer. Her t-shirt
is clinging to her skin, wet and see-through, and it’s quite
clear she has no bra on. The thin veil of fabric clings
obscenely to her full breasts and the small points of her
erect nipples, and I have to fight the urge to reach out and
touch her. To fondle the full, heavy weight of those fucking
perfect tits.
Instead, I just watch her, trying to control my breathing,
and when she finally turns her head to me and asks what
I’m staring at, I say, “Nothing,” with a small, wicked smile.
Xander is less subtle as he passes out another round of
beer bottles. “Oh, nice,” he says to Hailey, devouring her
with his eyes. “The wet t-shirt look.”
I snort as Hailey looks down at her chest, but she seems
unfazed. She lifts her chin and shrugs.
 “Might as well take it off, then,” she says with self-
satisfied nonchalance, sitting up to pull the t-shirt over her
head and dropping it onto the ground with a wet smack. She
leans back in her chair looking proud of herself, daring us to
say anything. Xander whistles and I chew my lip. I want to
fucking pin her to that chair right now, but I suck in a breath
and look away instead.
“Your shorts are wet, too,” I say with a smirk, and Xander
barks out a laugh.
“Oh?” she mimes innocently, looking down as though she
hadn’t noticed that, either. “Oh, dear.” She stands up and
slides them off, too, standing completely fucking naked in
front of us, and then sits back down again.
It’s a challenge, and it takes every ounce of willpower I
have to remain seated.
“Fuck, Hailey,” Xander murmurs, staring at her. “You’re
killing me.”
“Why don’t you fuck her, then?” I ask sharply. The words
are biting, an accusation. I want them to know I haven’t
forgotten what they did without me, even if the idea of it
gets me hard. Xander doesn’t take the bait, though, and no
one says anything. We sit in our loungers drinking our beers
as if it’s completely fucking normal that Hailey is stark
naked between us.
“Want another beer?” Xander asks after a while, holding
up his empty bottle and looking at mine.
“Hailey does,” I answer quickly, from the part of me that
wants to keep pushing things just to see how far they’ll go.
“Sure do,” she confirms cheerfully, sitting up and looking
smugly at me. I’m not sure what her game is—she’s
tempting me, I guess? And although I’m refusing to show a
reaction, she has no idea how close she is to tipping me
over the edge.

We continue to lie out in the sun for a while, alternately

drinking and sleeping off our hangovers, and when it starts
to feel like dinner time, we talk about ordering food.
Hailey stumbles when she gets up off her lounger, and
spotting the number of beer bottles around us, I realize that
she’s drunk.
“You’re such a lightweight,” I scold her, and Xander
places a hand on her back, half holding her up as we walk
back into the house.
Inside, I order Thai food and then pull out a package of
Barry’s pot gummies that I hid before the party on the top
shelf, and offer one to Xander.
“I want one,” declares Hailey with a giggle.
“No, little sister,” I say archly, looking down at her.
“You’re cut off.” When Xander passes the package back to
me, I pop one in my mouth, then seal the bag and reach
behind me to stuff it in the waistband of my shorts.
“Gimme,” she insists, reaching one drunken, naked arm
out towards me. “C’mon.”
I swat her arm away. “Hailey,” I can’t help but laugh.
“You’re an animal. Trust me, you’ve had enough.”
“No.” A wide, sneaky grin cuts across her face and she
throws herself at me, wrapping her arms around my waist to
reach the package, pressing her naked breasts against me
in the process. She pushes me back against the counter
with the weight of her body and I don’t push her away as
quickly as I should. It all feels too good. It’s familiar horsing
around with Hailey this way. And it’s exciting to feel her
against me. I lift one hand to the small of her back, the
other to the firm, smooth skin of her ass, and pull her harder
against me, kneading my hands into her flesh. Blood rushes
to my cock and I tilt my pelvis to press it against her.
“Hailey,” I murmur into her hair, all of my willpower
officially out the window.
She giggles, and I feel the package of pot gummies slide
out of the waistband of my shorts as she pulls away from
me with a victorious grin. She scurries to the corner of the
room and manages to get the package open and pops a
gummy in her mouth.
“You’re going to be fucked up,” I say, shaking my head.

We sit in the formal dining room when the food comes,

purely for the absurdity of it. Greta likes to save the formal
dining room for special occasions, like Christmas…or
announcing that she and my father are getting a divorce.
But tonight the dining room is a mockery of itself, strewn
with party debris and generally chaotic. There’s a broken
bowl on the sideboard and a dusting of pot on the table
under my plate.
Hailey is giggly and getting more intoxicated by the
second. She’s way less used to drinking and getting high
than Xander and I are, and even though I like being able to
stare at her breasts across the table, I know she’ll have to
go to bed soon.
“I feel so comfortable right now!” she declares at one
point, running her hands over her tits and lifting and
squeezing them in a way that makes the semi I’ve had all
night twitch. Xander makes a low noise of appreciation.
“It’s because everything just feels right, you know?” she
continues. “Like, the three of us together? It’s just like…it’s
always the three of us, you know, and I like that. It feels like
we belong this way. Like…together we’re a home.”
Xander arches an eyebrow at me, a private message
about how far gone she is, but I don’t smile or acknowledge
it. I frown and tuck into my noodles, trying to ignore how
much her words have struck me.
Soon, Hailey lapses into silence and eventually she
stands up, unsteadily, and declares it’s time for bed. I see
her eyes go unfocused before she stumbles, and I’m up and
out of my seat in a flash, catching her before she falls to the
ground.
“Oh my gosh, you saved me!” she burbles, words
slurring, and I swing an arm under her legs to lift her up,
cradling her like a child so that she doesn’t fall again.
She giggles and lays her arm across my shoulders and I
carry her down the hall and up the stairs, Xander following. I
try not to look down at her breasts or her smooth, shaved
pussy, and when we get upstairs, I push her bedroom door
open with my shoulder and then lay her out on the bed.
“Sleepy time, Hails,” I say, as though I’m talking to a
child, but she stretches out seductively on the bed, giving
me a come-hither look and no longer seeming very sleepy.
“Don’t go yet,” she purrs. “Sit down for a moment.”
It’s not a good idea, but I can’t tear my eyes off of her
body, and my cock practically insists that I sit down on the
edge of her bed and look down at her.
“Xander, too,” she says, looking at him past my shoulder.
He sits down on the other side and she closes her eyes,
smiling happily.
“My two boys,” she murmurs. “My two loves.”
It’s time to let her sleep. But all I do is say, “Night night,”
while one of my hands seems to lift of its own accord and
spread out on her thigh, my thumb rubbing her skin in small
circles.
“No, don’t go,” she says again, and reaches her hands
down to grasp each of ours, pulling them towards her
stomach and sliding them up over her breasts. “Touch me,”
she whispers.
Fuck. The soft weight of her breast in my hand makes
arousal slam through me, and my dick gets hard. I shouldn’t
be doing this, but I can’t seem to pull my hand away, and
she sighs and arches her back, and God, the only thing I
want in this whole fucking world is to fuck her right now. To
feel her pussy wrapped around my cock. To come inside of
her and then watch Xan fuck her and then come again
inside of her mouth.
The room gets quiet, the air heavy, and I become aware
that the only sound is the three of us breathing.
 I manage to look over at Xander to see his eyes fixed on
Hailey, his own telltale bulge in his shorts. But when I look
down at her, she has her eyes closed…completely drifting
away from consciousness as we fondle her.
I take a deep breath and lift my hand off her body,
fighting internally with myself to muster my self-control.
“C’mon,” I say sharply to Xander. “Let’s go. She’s
asleep.”
“No,” she whispers, eyes still closed. “I’m awake. Please
don’t go. I want you to fuck me.”
Xander gives me an urgent, imploring look. “Dude,” he
says to me.
But my voice when I speak is low and sharp. “I said no.”
He blinks twice without moving, angry that I’m denying
him this free fuck, then sucks in his breath as he lifts his
hand off of her and stands up.
I don’t hold it against him. I’m having just as much
difficulty walking away from my incapacitated, naked
stepsister as he is.
But believe it or not, I have standards. Xander and I will
just have to deal with our boners in some other, more
appropriate way.

OceanofPDF.com
Cole

WE PASS THROUGH the bathroom that separates my room

from Hailey’s, and Xander lays down on my bed as I close
the bathroom door. We’re so used to being together, in each
other’s space, there’s not any question of him going to his
room. Since we’ve arrived, I’m not even sure he’s slept in
there yet.
I sit beside him without saying anything and turn on the
TV, and after a minute he stands up again, saying, “I’m
going to have a shower.”
I feel a curious sense of disappointment.
I know I’ve been pushing Xander away since he kissed
me—or I’ve been trying to, anyway. I’m the one who
declared that we had to stop fooling around, that things
were going too far. But I’m high, and I’m horny, and…
…I really want to get off with Xander, whether it’s the
“right” thing or not.
“Don’t jerk off in there,” I say impulsively as he opens the
door to the bathroom.
He stops and turns, levelling dark brown eyes at me.
“Why?”
“Because. I thought we could…fool around together.”
A beat before he responds, and for a second I’m afraid
he’s going to say no.
“Okay,” he says, indifferently, and passes into the
bathroom, leaving the door open behind him.

It’s not that I’d never thought of kissing Xander before,

myself. I’d thought of it a lot, actually, even fantasized
about it—that and more—while masturbating. I just couldn’t
admit it. Couldn’t just take the plunge one day and do it, like
he did. Like my attraction to Hailey, my attraction to Xander
has always felt like a dirty secret. A measure of my
perversion.
She’s my stepsister, and he’s my best friend. And I’m the
fucked-up loser who lusts after the very people I’m not
supposed to have sex with, instead of actual girls who like
me, like Ariel.
 I’m the one who pushed both Hailey and Xander past
their boundaries, into this ill-defined territory where
sometimes I prey on them sexually, and sometimes I push
them away. I’m the one who confronted Xander about
masturbating in his camp bunk when we were thirteen and
made him do it in front of me. And I’m the one who
harassed my own sister until she let me take her virginity.
I’m the asshole.
But I can’t explain what it is with me and Hailey, or me
and Xander, and it’s so fucking hard to fight it.
When I saw Hailey again after nine months of not seeing
her, nine months of hiding and denying how much I missed
her, and nine months of her obsessing my thoughts, I felt a
physical ache in my heart. Even after berating myself for so
long over what we’d done and trying to break her hold on
me through sheer force of will. Just the sight of her after all
that time brought me right back to exactly where I’d always
been. Besotted and possessed by her.
It would be the same with Xander, I’m sure, although
we’ve never spent that much time apart. The thought of a
week or a month away from Xander is unthinkable—painful
just to imagine. No matter how I try to turn this thing off
inside of me, it seems I can’t. I’m powerless.
It feels useless and exhausting to fight it, and right now,
my mind floating as the gummy kicks in, my cock hard, and
my whole body tingly and sensitive, I just want to give in to
it. For once, I want to have what I want without feeling guilty
about it.
I lie on the bed a moment longer, my conflicted thoughts
paralyzing me, until desire wins out.
Fuck it, I think, getting up off the bed. I’m just going to do
it.
I strip off my swim shorts as I walk into the bathroom, my
eyes on Xander’s lean, dark body behind the water-glazed
glass wall, and he turns his head towards me, watching me
as I open the door to the glass enclosure and step in behind
him, neither of us saying anything. The hot steam from the
shower makes my shoulders drop, loosening the tension
inside of me, melting away the last of my reserve. My hard
cock throbs pleasurably.
Xander steps out of the stream of the shower to make
room and trains his eyes on me as I get under it, watching
me as I soap up my hair and body. I don’t break eye contact
as I run lathered hands over my chest and shoulders and
down over my stomach to the pulsing heat of my cock. I
hold his gaze as I wrap a slick, soapy hand around my girth
and stroke myself, until the movement of his hand distracts
me, and I drop my eyes to watch him grasp his own thick,
half-swollen cock.
My dick jerks at the sight of him touching himself, his
long shaft snapping to its full length as he runs his grip
along it, and I have to admit to myself that it’s fucking sexy
seeing him like this.
The muscles of his chest and arms bunch and flex as he
thrusts into his palm, emphasizing the athleticism of his
physique. His dark hair, perpetually falling in his eyes, is
slicked back for once, held in place by the water and off his
face, revealing the smouldering darkness of his eyes as he
watches me. He’s just so fucking masculine.
And I love that about him.
“Do you want me to suck you?” he asks, and I shake my
head. Of course I want his warm, wet mouth on me—of
course—but tonight I’m in the mood for something more. I
want to push it further. For just one night, I want to forget
the rules and do what feels good. I release my cock and step
forward, planting my hands on the shower wall behind him
and caging him in. And then I lean forward and kiss him.
For a moment he doesn’t react. He freezes completely,
just like I did when he kissed me. But then I cup his
shoulders in my hands and step closer until our chests are
touching and kiss him harder, letting him know that I’m all
in and won’t pull away. I press my mouth against his with
urgency, and then something releases in him and I feel his
mouth soften against mine.
When his tongue parts my lips, my cock jerks and hits
his, making a shudder of heat go through me. Our dicks are
touching. I tilt my pelvis towards his as my tongue swirls in
his mouth, rubbing the underside of my cock and balls
against the side of his shaft.
Xander lifts a hand to the back of my head, threading
fingers into my wet hair, and his kiss gets fierce and
demanding. I push him back against the shower wall,
matching his strength and grinding against him.
I want to fuck. I want to thrust and pound and slam my
cock into him. I want it as rough and hard as his kiss.
I don’t care about anything anymore. I need this now.
I tilt my chin away from him, still pushing my cock up
against him and whisper in his ear.
“What if I fucked your ass?”
He turns his head to look at me, eyes searching.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh fuck,” he breathes. He leans his head back against
the wall, creating space between us, and lifts his eyes to the
ceiling. “I’m not sure.”
My stomach drops and I swallow hard. I dig my fingers
into his shoulders as I push my pelvis against him, wanting
to keep him in the moment, to remind how good it could be.
“C’mon.”
He lets out a little laugh, a surprised puff of air. “I
thought…you didn’t want to do any of this.”
I’m impassioned as I speak, pressing my forehead
against his and looking deep into his eyes. “I want all of it,
Xan.” My voice blazes, on fire with desire and earnestness.
“I’ve been a fucking jerk. But I want it.” I pause for a second
before saying the words. “I want to fuck you.”
His dark eyes stare back at me, black in the dim light of
the shower, and he takes a deep breath.
 “Okay,” he says finally. “Yes.” And I’m pulling back and
grinning before he’s even done speaking. “But we have to
take it easy. Go slow.”
“Of course!” I lean in and kiss him again, and his mouth
and tongue against mine are gentle and slow this time. I run
my hands down his hard, wet arms, exploring the novel feel
of pressing myself up against a strong, muscular body, of
my cock grinding against another.
When we break apart, I reach back and turn off the
shower while Xander opens the glass door and grabs two
fluffy bath towels. He tosses one to me, and we roughly rub
the water off our skin and squeeze it out of our hair before
dropping the towels on the floor.
Walking out of the bathroom behind him, I stare at his
ass, nervous and excited, a million questions running
through my mind.
“I might come really fast,” says Xander in the bedroom.
He stands beside the bed holding the base of his hard cock,
as if he’s got it on a leash.
“Me too,” I agree, pulling open the drawer of my bedside
table. “I’ve been fucking hard all day.”
I rummage through the drawer, digging through layers of
my forgotten debris—broken earbuds and faded receipts, a
collection of high school student cards and even long-lost
bits of Lego—and finally manage to find both a half-full
bottle of lube and an old condom. I lift the condom to the
light, checking the expiry date, and then tear the cellophane
open.
“What should I do?” asks Xander, eyeing the bed
uncertainly as I roll the condom on and squirt lube into my
hand.
“Get down on all fours,” I say with fake confidence, as if
I’ve done this hundreds of times before.
I spread lube generously over the condom, stroking
myself as Xander gets onto the bed on his knees, his feet
hanging off the edge and his long, hard cock bobbing
beneath him and hitting his stomach. Positioning myself
behind him, I drip more lube out onto his ass, watching the
clear drops hit the clean, slightly hairy slit between his ass
cheeks. Xander’s ass. I can’t believe I’m looking at it. I reach
forward and rub the lube in and around his tiny red hole
with two fingers, pressing into it slightly. The firm muscular
ring resists my finger and I have to repress a shiver. It’s
going to be so tight.
There’s a part of me that wonders how much we’ve been
missing as I start rubbing the head of my cock across the
slick, puckered hole. This has always felt off-limits to me—
forbidden—and now I’m trembling with excitement as I think
about penetrating Xan, about grabbing his hips, touching his
body, about fucking him. Am I going to wonder why we
haven’t been doing this all along?
Because even though it’s something I swore I’d never do,
I’m so fucking hard I feel like my cock is going to burst. I
can’t remember the last time I was this turned on.
My balls are so tight they’re aching by the time I press
my head against the tiny bud and start pushing into him.
“Fuck,” hisses Xander, as the head of my cock enters
him. “Ah, fuck. Hold on.”
I freeze, and as he exhales I can feel the muscle relax. I
inch in deeper, stopping when he clenches up, and continue
carefully in this way until my cock is fully seated in his ass.
“Oh, fuck,” he mutters, a low, guttural moan that sounds
involuntary, and I have no idea if it feels good or terrible.
When I start pulling back out, his ass milks me from the
base of my cock to the tip, and Xander gasps, “Ah, ah, ah,”
with a heavy breath, marking every inch with an
exclamation.
When I enter him again it’s easier, and his groan when I
reach my full depth sounds less like pain and more like
pleasure.
“Is it okay?” I ask, starting to move more rhythmically.
“It’s good,” he grunts.
 “Okay.” I dig my fingers into his hips, pulling him back as
I plunge forward, moving with increasing ease until I start
rocking back and forth naturally, riding the exquisite,
intense pleasure that’s radiating throughout my whole body.
Fucking Xander’s ass feels incredible.
I can’t believe this is a man underneath me, this is
Xander. I wonder if it feels as good for him as it does for me,
so I reach a hand around in front of him and find his cock,
bouncing with his movements as I ram his ass. He’s rock
hard, rock fucking hard from getting fucked, and as I
squeeze his cock he lets out a shaky cry and a quiver goes
through his whole body.
I want to come in Xander’s ass. But I want to watch
Xander come, too, however that looks in this scenario. I
thrust into him two more times and then pull out slowly, all
the way out.
“Get on your back,” I command him. “And lift your knees
in the air.”
He rolls over obediently, looking flushed and exhilarated.
His cheeks are rosy, and there’s a sheen of sweat on his
brow. His hair falls back off his face as he lies down, and he
lifts his knees and holds them up and apart with both hands
so that his asshole is presented in front of me. But it’s his
cock that I’m focused on as I reapply lube to both of us and
then sink back into him.
It’s watching his hard cock hitting his stomach that takes
this whole experience to the next level for me, and when he
brings a hand up to it, starting to jerk himself as I fuck him, I
finally get to that point of no return where I know I’m about
to blow my load.
I’m going to come hard.
“You’re going to make me fucking come,” I pant. “Stroke
that cock. I want you to come when I do, okay?”
“Okay.” His voice is a helpless whisper.
“Are you going to come this way?”
“Yes,” he whimpers.
 “When?”
“Now.” His face contorts, eyes closing and mouth falling
open as a powerful shudder rocks through him. “I’m fucking
coming now.”
His ass squeezes down like a vice around me and cum
erupts over his stomach. He clenches and releases, a
rhythm so hard and powerful that when my orgasm breaks
it’s like he forced it out of me. I fall onto my hands, dropping
forward over him and crying out—a loud, primal sound that
seems to originate in my belly and radiate out through my
cells until it’s vibrating the very walls around us. Everything
shakes loose in me.
When I pull out my chest is still heaving, and when I
collapse onto the bed beside Xander my heart is still racing.
“That was fucking hot,” I whisper, eventually, and when
Xander doesn’t respond I turn my head to see that he’s
already asleep, eyes closed and mouth slack.
I let my eyes linger, admiring the straight, even lines of
his profile—his sharp nose and full lips. He’s all angles and
edges, I think, stretching my fingers until they find his.
He gives my hand a light squeeze and then it relaxes
again, his long fingers intertwined with mine.

OceanofPDF.com
Cole

MY FATHER IS scowling as I follow the waitress across the

restaurant towards his table. He’s wearing a white button-
down, open at the throat, and has his large, perfectly-
groomed hands clasped in front of him on the table. When
the waitress indicates my seat, she gives him a smile, and
the scowl drops right off his face as he returns it, beaming
warmly at her. Then he shifts his eyes back to me as I slide
into the chair and there it is again: disappointment.
“Hey,” I say, by way of greeting.
“Thanks for meeting me, son.”
“Uh-huh.” I’m not sure there was much choice. Barry
called me in a rage this morning because the pool
maintenance company had called him. They said there was
broken glass all over the pool deck and empty bottles in the
bottom of the pool. I’m just grateful that Barry decided to
discuss this over lunch with me, instead of coming to the
house unannounced, discovering the mess everywhere, all
of us sleeping off our hangovers, and Xander and I naked in
bed together.
I’d answered the phone the third time he called, groggy
and confused. His sharp, angry tone had been so loud he’d
woken up Xan, out cold beside me, and soon I had enough
adrenaline pumping through my bloodstream that I
obediently agreed to meet him in an hour at his favourite
restaurant.
I feel like scum sitting across from my father. I’m
hungover and exhausted, haunted by the low-grade sense
of guilt and disappointment in myself that I can never seem
to shake. My hands, when I lay them on the white
tablecloth, look dirty and rough, like they don’t belong
there. Hands that I can’t keep off my stepsister. Hands that
grabbed and rubbed and stroked my best friend as I fucked
him. Hands I just can’t seem to keep to myself.
Barry looks impeccable and fresh, as always. Tanned and
shaved, his wavy hair carefully styled back from his face,
and his fit physique evident even through his shirt.
When the waitress returns to take our order, she bats her
eyelashes at Barry, as women always do, and he flirts back,
as he always does. Barry is the perfect heterosexual man.
Toxically masculine, maybe, but nobody seems to mind. As
long as he acts like a man, everyone’s satisfied. He’s never
fucked his sister, or another man. All he’s ever done is
cheated on his wife—a perfectly normal male thing to do.
He orders the sea bass and a crisp chardonnay, and
when the waitress looks at me, with admittedly less interest
than she looked at my father, I ask for a plate of fries and a
coffee. My father’s lips get ever so imperceptibly thin as I
order. It’s the order of a hungover boy, not a distinguished
man.
But I’m anything but distinguished.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” he says to the waitress as she
leaves with our orders.
“Don’t call her that,” I hiss.
He lowers his chin and narrows his eyes at me. “You
might want to watch your attitude right now, son, because I
have half a mind to kick you out of Greta’s house effective
immediately.”
Greta’s house. Not our house.
I clench my jaw and don’t say anything. My father, a
lawyer before he married Greta, has always told me to
never incriminate myself.
He watches me for a moment and then takes a breath,
speaking in a softer voice. “Do you want to tell me what
happened there?”
“We had a party,” I say stubbornly. “We didn’t clean up
the mess fast enough.”
“Evidently,” he replies, with a slight roll of the eyes. “Do
you mind telling me why you thought you had the right to
throw a party there, and why you haven’t bothered to clean
it up?”
“It’s only been a few days,” I protest, although even as I
hear myself say it it sounds weak. “Hailey and I just wanted
to blow off some steam after we found out about…you
know…” I wave my hand vaguely. “The divorce.”
 It occurs to me that I have no idea where my father is
living, who this woman is that he’s living with. As the
waitress comes back with our food, I give her a sidelong
glance. Could it be her? Is that why he called her
sweetheart?
“Right,” he says archly, raising one brow as he lifts his
wine glass to his lips. “You and Hailey, blowing off steam.”
He takes a sip and lowers the glass, a look of disgust on his
face.
I blink. Did I miss something? “We’ll clean up, I promise
we will. Tell the pool people to come back tomorrow. We’ll
make sure everything is the way it was before.”
He takes a bite of his fish, chews it, and swallows. “The
thing is, Cole. Nothing is going to go back to the way it was
before. It’s never that simple in life. We need to make sure
our actions are supporting our future, instead of keeping us
locked in the past.”
I eat two fries. They’re tasteless and heavy on my
tongue, and I push my plate away and focus on my coffee
instead. The hot, bitter liquid goes down easily, with its
promise of clear-headedness.
“Okay,” I say.
He doesn’t say anything further, and for a few minutes
we sit in silence, Barry eating and me drinking my coffee.
“School okay?” he finally asks.
“It’s summer, Dad.”
“Yeah, but I mean, your exams go okay? We haven’t
really talked.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Passed everything.”
“Basketball good? You going to do any training this
summer?”
“Yeah.” I will need to get some games in over the
summer to keep my scholarship, but I’ve never slacked on
playing basketball before in my life—there’s no need for him
to worry about it.
“What about girls?”
 I shrug. “I don’t know. What do you want to know?”
“Is there anyone special? Anyone you’re dating?”
I sit up and sigh, searching my mind for the right answer.
Those are two distinct questions to me, even though he
phrases it as one. Dating someone Barry would approve of
basically cancels out the option of dating anyone special to
me.
“Uh, I was thinking of asking out Ariel Malek,” I lie.
His face visibly relaxes. “That’s good. That’s a good
idea.”
I take another sip of my coffee and wonder what I’m
doing here. It doesn’t feel like this meeting is strictly about
the pool.
As if he can read my thoughts, Barry clears his throat and
speaks up. “I would like to introduce you to Pauline, son, if
you think you’re ready for that.”
I snap my head up. Pauline?
I think I’m shocked that he’s telling me her name,
shocked that he wants me to meet her. What the fuck do I
care about my dad’s mistress? I don’t want to meet her.
“I don’t…” I stammer. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“Okay,” he sighs. “It’s too soon right now. But maybe a
little sooner than later, okay? I think that…well, I think that
you should probably come live with us, you know? When
Greta and I… Well, Greta’s going to keep that house. And
maybe you and Hailey need a little space.”
“Me and Hailey?” I repeat incredulously. Anger burns
through me, and I’m aware I’ve raised my voice. “What does
any of this have to do with us? Because you cheated on
your wife, I’m not allowed to see my sister and now I have
to move into your girlfriend’s house?”
“Cole. Watch your tone.”
“My tone?” I stand up, leaning over the table until I’m
only a few inches from his face. “I’m sorry, Dad.” I
deliberately raise the volume of my voice. “Am I speaking
too loud for you?”
 Eyes pivot in our direction, the other diners getting quiet
as my father and I become the centre of attention. His face
reddens with anger, and shame. He never did like being the
centre of attention. Maybe that’s why he stepped out on his
movie star wife.
“Sit down right now,” he snarls quietly.
I clench my teeth, my nose flaring with my breath, and
hold my ground for a second, enjoying the feeling of leaning
over my father, the way the embarrassment of the moment
makes him cower. I push it long enough to make him
uncomfortable, and then I sit back down and cross my arms
over my chest.
“I’m not moving out of the house,” I say. “What about
Xander? Are we both supposed to move in with your
girlfriend?”
My father presses his lips together. “Xander can stay at
Greta’s, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you and Hailey
to be living together unsupervised.”
I grimace in confusion, not following my father’s
meaning. Last summer, we told our parents that Hailey and
Xander were dating to throw them off any suspicion of the
two of us. If there’s anyone Barry’s worried about being
unsupervised, it should be Hailey and Xander.
“Why?” I ask, suspicion pricking at the edges of my
awareness.
He lifts a hand to his forehead, rubbing a forefinger
across the furrow in his brow to smooth it out. “You know
why,” he says quietly. He stares at his wine glass as he lifts
it again, as if he can’t look at me.
“No, I don’t.”
He closes his eyes for a long moment and puts the glass
down before leaning towards me.
“Son, do you honestly think I don’t know what’s been
going on between you and your stepsister? Do you think I’m
blind? You’ve been following her around since you were nine
years old. You think I can’t tell when something is going on
right under my nose?”
For once, I’m speechless. My lungs get so tight it’s
difficult to breathe.
Barry drops his voice even lower until it’s almost a
whisper. “Can you imagine what your stepmother would
think if she knew? What your mother would think?”
His words are like a slap in the face. My mother.
My mother died when I was three, and the idea that she
might have loved me, wholly and unconditionally, has been
one of the sustaining hopes of my life. For Barry to use it
against me both strikes me with guilt and infuriates me—as
it always does.
I can’t believe he knows about me and Hailey, and I don’t
dare ask how. After a minute, I mutter, “There isn’t anything
going on.” And when he looks at me disbelievingly, I know I
have to come clean. “Anymore.”
“Cole.” He shakes his head. “This is serious. It isn’t
right.” He takes another breath. “And what about Xander?”
Fear spikes through me. “There’s nothing going on with
Xander,” I answer quickly, certain the fear is showing on my
face. I can’t breathe. My heart is hammering.
“Well, at least he’s not her stepbrother,” he continues
quietly. “I just hope nothing untoward is going on.”
Relief floods through me. He’s not asking about Xander
and I, he’s asking about Xander and Hailey.
But still I can’t believe that Hailey and I have been
caught out—that Barry knows, and Greta doesn’t. I’m quiet
and wide-eyed for the rest of the lunch, fearful because
Barry knows my secret; because he can give it away.
When the waitress comes with the bill, he hands her his
credit card and then looks at me meaningfully.
“I’d like to set up a dinner with Pauline,” he says. “I’m
serious about you moving out of that house. It’s what’s best
for everyone.”
 “No.” I try to answer assertively, but my voice comes out
pleading. Please don’t make me leave Xander and Hailey.
He lifts an eyebrow. “I’ll give you a bit more time, but I
don’t like this, son. I want to know you’re on the straight
and narrow over there. And I want that pool cleaned up.”
“It will be,” I promise, eager to appease him. “Just give
me some time.”

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Cole

I TAKE AN Uber back to the house in a foul mood. The front

yard has been cleaned of bottles and trash, and the inside
of the house is spotless. In the kitchen, six stuffed trash
bags lined up against one wall are the only evidence left
that there was ever a party.
I should be grateful that Hailey has cleaned up. Or
Xander. I should be grateful that this, at least, has been
taken care of, but I’m not. None of it matters if I have to
leave anyway. I’d rather burn this house to the ground and
leave it in ashes if I’m going to be forced to go, just out of
spite.
No one answers when I call up the stairs, so I step out the
back door, where I can see Hailey and Xander down by the
pool. My stomach clenches at the idea of them living alone
together for the rest of the summer. While I’m living with
Barry and Pauline, they’ll be hanging out by the pool, and
fucking, and falling in love with each other without me.
Fuck.
The pool deck is spotless, too, I notice, as I make my way
over. The chairs are all neatly lined up. Hailey’s reading her
Kindle in a cute little turquoise bikini that shows off her
flawless golden skin and her full, perfect breasts. Her hair is
twisted up in a bun on the top of her head, revealing her
long, slender neck that looks so delicate and vulnerable I
want to squeeze it and caress it at the same time.
Beside her, Xander appears to be sleeping, dressed only
in swim trunks. His flat, leanly-muscled chest is getting so
brown he makes Hailey look pale in comparison. They each
have what looks like a tropical drink beside them: reddish-
pink liquid in stemmed cocktail glasses with straws and
wedges of orange on the side.
Well, how fucking cute.
“Hey!” Hailey gives me a big smile, lifting sunglass-
covered eyes up from whatever porn she’s reading and
looking uncharacteristically happy to see me. Xander lifts a
hand to block the sun and squints one eye open.
“Hey,” I growl. I rip my t-shirt off and drop it on the
ground, noting Hailey’s brief, irritated glance as it hits the
newly-tidied deck with satisfaction. “What are you guys
drinking?”
“I made sangria,” she says proudly, waving a hand
towards the pool bar, where a red liquid-filled glass pitcher
is glistening with condensation. “Grab a glass. We cleaned
everything up!”
I nod without smiling, sweeping a perfunctory glance
around the pool before walking over to the bar. “So I see.
Where did you get the wine?” I pour a tall glass of the red
liquid and take a long slug. It’s sweet and acidic and
refreshing.
“We got groceries, too,” she says, wariness sneaking into
her tone. I’m sure she senses my mood. Behind her, Xander
watches me levelly.
“So you guys cleaned up together and went grocery
shopping? How fucking domestic.” I take another long slug
of the drink before putting it down on the bar and undoing
my jeans. “Aren’t you hungover?” I sneer at Hailey. “You
were fucking wasted last night.”
Her mouth sets into that firm little line it gets when she’s
pissed off at me.
“Hair of the dog,” Xander answers for her.
I don’t miss the small, grateful glance she gives him.
I pull off my jeans and my boxers in one go, leaving them
on the ground. I don’t care that I’m naked in front of Hailey;
it seems fair after she spent most of the day naked
yesterday.
And Xander and I are beyond that being weird now, I
guess.
“That water hasn’t gotten any cleaner,” warns Hailey as I
walk over to the pool.
“I don’t care.” I shrug and dive in.
The water is cloudy and grey but it feels cool and fresh,
as if it’s detaching memory from my skin, washing away
Barry and his judgment and his fucking condescension.
Washing away the waitress who only smiled when my father
called her sweetheart. Washing away Pauline…whoever the
fuck she is. When I finally emerge for air and shake my wet
hair back, it’s with a sense of refreshed wellbeing I haven’t
had all day. I get out of the pool, letting the water run down
my body as I walk back to the bar and finish the rest of my
drink in one swallow.
They both have their eyes fixed on their devices, Hailey
on her book and Xander on his phone, and I fill up another
glass from the pitcher and take a long sip.
Soon I start to feel the alcohol loosening me up, adding
to my sense of wellbeing. I lean against the bar and admire
the pool and the sprawling backyard with fresh eyes. I’ve
taken it for granted all these years, but now that I might
have to leave, it’s as if I suddenly see it.
It’s a beautiful day, hot and humid, but the sky is clear—
a deep, saturated blue that plays off the aquamarine of the
pool. There’s a constant, complexly layered hum of cicadas,
tirelessly sawing in the heat, but otherwise it’s almost
perfectly silent.
Hailey and Xan are the only brown and golden shades,
standing out against the blues and greens and whites of the
yard and pool deck. The sun draws a sheen of sweat off
their skin that gives them a faint glimmer.
If it could just be this way all summer…or forever…just
the three of us, how different would things be? This big
house to ourselves. No parents. No one to judge us or tell us
how things could be. What would we be like then, if we
could be anything we wanted?
I down the rest of my drink and take a deep, relaxing
breath before fixing my attention on Hailey. “Read us some
of the porn you’re reading.”
“Fuck off,” she says casually, without looking up from her
Kindle.
“C’mon, Hails. I just want to know what you’re reading.
Read us something sexy.”
“Nope.”
 “Hailey.” I smile as I draw out the sound of her name.
“Aren’t you guys bored? Let’s fuck around or something.”
Now I have their attention. Hailey lets her Kindle fall
against her thighs and arches her eyebrow at me.
“C’mon. Just tell us if you’re getting wet in your little
swimsuit panties right now.”
“You’re such an asshole, Cole,” she huffs. “Why on earth
would I want to—“ she makes air-quotes with her fingers,
“—‘fuck around’ with you?”
I lift predatory eyes to her, a kind of malevolent glee
stirring. “I don’t know,” I say thoughtfully. “You certainly did
last night. Remember how you grabbed both our hands and
made us feel your tits? Yup, you definitely wanted to fuck
both of us then. Wouldn’t you say, Xan?”
I look over her shoulder at Xander, expecting him to be
grinning back at me, but he’s not smiling.
Well, fuck that.
“You wanted us both last night, didn’t you, Hailey? Horny
Hailey…who wants two dicks at once.”
“You’re being annoying,” she says primly. “Why don’t you
go work out whatever you’re trying to work out on your own,
instead of taking it out on us?”
Us.
“I’m just trying to give you what you want, Hails. You’re
the one who was begging us to fuck you last night.”
Xander’s voice surprises me when he speaks, a low
warning. “Give it a rest, dude.”
I snap my eyes to him. Xander is my friend. My ally. And
now he’s turning on me?
Xander is a calm guy, and laidback—definitely nicer to
Hailey than I’ve ever been—but when I pick on her, he joins
in. For him to rise to her defence, against me, makes bile
rise in my throat.
The anger that surges through me is even more
invigorating than the feeling of wellbeing, as deep red and
disarming as a glass of Hailey’s sangria. It picks me up on a
wave, lifting me away from common sense and freeing me
to act on impulse.
They’re a twosome now, I guess. Xander and Hailey, and
I’m the outsider.
Fuck that.
“Give it a rest?” I repeat tauntingly. “Oh, I’m sorry, I
forgot. You guys are boyfriend and girlfriend now, right?
Although,” I turn my eyes back to Hailey and speak with
theatrical exaggeration, “your boyfriend definitely forgot
about that last night, didn’t you, Xan?”
“Dude,” he snarls, sitting up. “This is your last warning.”
But Hailey only gives a dramatic sigh, sounding exactly like
her mother does when Hailey and I start fighting. She
pushes her sunglasses back up on her head, turning bright
blue eyes to me.
“First of all,” she says calmly. “Xander and I aren’t dating,
but yeah, we slept together. And you know what? It was
great. And if you want to sleep with each other, too, I don’t
care. It’s not like I don’t know what’s between you. And you
know what else?” She sits up, facing me with a stony
determination. “I really liked when you both touched my
body last night. Yes, I took my clothes off. Yes, I put your
hands on my body. I’m not ashamed of that. You’re the one
who didn’t follow through, remember? I’m not the prude
here, Cole—you are.”
My heart gives one quick palpitation, pushing a current of
blood through my veins that makes my dick twitch, and for
once in my life I’m at a loss for words.
Who is this new Hailey who finally managed to turn the
tables on me? Now I’m the prude? A slow grin spreads
across my face.
I’m impressed.
“Brothers and sisters can’t fuck, sweetheart. I’m only
trying to help you be normal.”
She smirks, unfazed. “So you said. You wanna hear what
I’m reading? Fine, I’ll read it to you.” She stands and moves
over to Xander’s lounger, pushing his feet off to either side
so that she’s sitting between his knees, and the easy
physicality between them gives me a pang of jealousy.
They have something without me.
“‘Leo licked his lips,’” Hailey begins, staring at the Kindle
in her hand. “‘His eyes lacked focus as he continued to
thrust. I could see in his face how he struggled to maintain
composure, the flutter of his eyelids a billboard to how
heavy they were with desire. Each push from Fraser’s hips
pulled an animalistic groan from Leo. When Leo returned the
favor, a string of expletives would shoot from Fraser’s
mouth.’”
The low ache of desire starts so fast in response to her
words my dick jerks, swelling fast—right in front of them
where they both can see. I look to Xander to gauge his
reaction and immediately recognize the dark, heavy look
he’s giving Hailey. Without lifting her eyes from her Kindle,
she cups one hand over the bulge in his shorts and rubs it,
making him inhale sharply. He looks up at me and we
exchange a glance—the heat in his eyes making something
clench inside of me.
Now this is fun.
“‘As I approached,’” she continues. “‘Fraser and Leo
raised their hips in tandem, pushing against one another as
they did, each taking a hand off the other’s shoulders in
favor of taking hold of the other’s cock.’”
Xander lets out a tight breath as Hailey massages his
cock, his erection beginning to tent his swim trunks.
Fuck, I love seeing him like this.
“Take it out,” I say to Hailey. She shifts her eyes to me.
“Take his dick out and stroke it.”
She turns her eyes to Xander, who’s giving her a dark,
heated stare. One corner of his mouth lifts into a sly smile—
an invitation. She puts her Kindle down on the side table
and reaches for his swim trunks, pulling them down his
thighs with two hands and freeing his hard cock. My own
swells in response, but still I don’t touch it. I keep my hands
on the bar to either side of me while Hailey pulls Xander’s
shorts all the way off, and then sits back down between his
knees and reaches for his cock, looking at me and giving me
a naughty smile.
“Is this what you wanted to see?” she asks. Xander huffs
a breath as her hand circles around the sensitive tip of his
cock and then slides down the shaft. He closes his eyes and
bites his bottom lip.
Hailey works her hand up and down, smoothly twisting it
with every stroke, and with a sudden, breathless feeling, like
a punch to the gut, I wonder if she had sex with anyone else
during the school year.
It’s something I’ve thought about before, of course,
always putting it out of my head with the excuse that it
would be better for me if she did. But seeing her with Xan
now, I know I could never tolerate the idea of her being with
anyone who wasn’t us.
She’s ours.
Her hand continues in a smooth, easy rhythm that soon
has Xan moaning, and I just stand there, watching, my hard,
untouched cock throbbing with need.
“Suck it,” Xan whispers to her, and she flicks her eyes
over to me to make sure I’m still watching before she wraps
her lips around him and lowers her perfect little blonde head
down.
Finally, it’s too much to resist. I lift my right hand off the
bar and squeeze my dick, my balls contracting as pleasure
tightens up inside of me, and stare at Xander as I start
rubbing myself. He looks back at me with dark eyes, my
sister’s head rising and falling in his lap. I have to pull my
eyes away from his to let them wander over her amazing
curves, lingering over the rounded muscles of her ass as
they work to hold her up while she sucks and strokes him.
This is how it could be without Greta or Barry or anyone
else. Hailey and Xander and I free to do whatever we want,
and no one to tell us we can’t. I could do this for months, or
years, or forever.
“You need to take your bathing suit off,” I tell Hailey, and
when she doesn’t respond, I let go of my cock and step
forward, pulling the bow at the back of her top until the
strings fall free and her top drops forward, bouncing off the
freed weight of her breasts. She doesn’t protest or break her
rhythm, so I untie the strings around her neck and then pull
the top off Xander’s thighs where it lands.
The bottoms are even more fun. I untie one side and
allow myself to trail a hand over her exposed backside
before untying the other, resisting the urge screaming inside
of me to slide my fingers into her pussy and rub the firm,
sensitive nub of her clit until she’s putty in my hands. I pull
the bottoms through her inner thighs and toss them to the
ground, fisting my cock again and straining with the need to
plunge it inside of her and lose myself in her tight, wet
pussy.
I run the palm of my left hand across her ass, down the
back of her thigh, and just tease the edge of her slit with my
thumb, where I want to touch her so badly it’s consuming
me. Xander moans, a low whimper escaping his lips as he
murmurs, “Oh God, baby, I want to come.”
“No.” I pull my hand off Hailey’s ass and step back,
sobering slightly. “Not yet.”
He looks at me, and Hailey turns her head towards me,
lips sliding down the side of Xander’s wet, veiny shaft, her
small, pink tongue licking small laps as she watches me.
“Fuck him in front of me,” I say to Hailey, an edge of
desperation in my voice. “Let me watch.”
She flicks her eyes to Xander, who doesn’t say anything,
but stares back at her so hotly there’s no question about his
willingness. It’s up to her. She sits up and purses her lips
thoughtfully, keeping her hand wrapped around the base of
Xan’s dick.
 I don’t breathe. I’m not holding my breath, I’m simply so
suspended with anticipation that my lungs freeze and
nothing moves.
She twists her lips, looking undecided.
“Please,” I exhale, willing my breath to carry my urgency
to her, to make her bend to my will. “Just do it.”
She pauses for only a second longer, eyes dancing
playfully, and then rises up and straddles Xander,
positioning his cock between her legs so that his head is just
brushing against her.
“What if he’s better than you are, Cole? What if he makes
me come harder than you ever did?”
God, I want to be the one who makes her come.
But right now, I need her to be with Xander. I’m clinging
to my last scrap of willpower with the idea that if it’s only
Xander who fucks her, even if I watch, I still haven’t crossed
a line.
“I just want to watch,” I plead, and she gives me a slow
smile, lowering herself down over Xan’s hard length and
drawing a long, low groan out of him.
He lifts his hands to her waist, gripping her tightly as a
slow roll undulates through his body—from his head rolling
back on the chair to his hips lifting up into the pleasure of
her wet heat, his response travels through him in a way that
makes my breath catch. I grip my shaft harder, focusing for
the moment on Xander’s surrender—his closed eyes and
pinched eyebrows, his parted mouth, and the rolling thrust
of his hips. When he opens his eyes, it’s to look directly at
Hailey, and he’s reverent. Captivated.
She stares back down at him, the palms of her hands
pressed flat against the front of his shoulders and the balls
of her feet on the ground on either side of the chair. As she
lifts and lowers herself, the muscles of her thighs and ass
bunch and contract, creating lines of definition down her
side.
 She rolls her hips, moving with Xander in harmony. When
they each have their eyes closed and heads rolling back, I’m
lost, transported in voyeurism, but when they lower their
chins in unison, locking eyes with a blazing intensity,
jealousy sparks through me. I can’t just watch. I can’t be a
bystander. I need us to be in this together.
I step closer and reach for Xan’s hair with one hand,
threading my fingers through the soft black strands and
pulling it roughly so that he looks up at me, turning that hot,
lustful gaze to me without surprise, as if he’s been waiting
for me. He drops his eyes to my cock where I’m stroking
myself, and when his eyes meet mine again, it’s with a
knowing look. One that makes my dick surge in response.
Hailey, watching us intently, gives a shuddering gasp. She
leans forward to murmur near Xander’s ear, saying the
exact right thing.
“Suck him.”
Xander’s eye contact doesn’t waver. It burns with heat as
he watches me position my cock against his mouth and he
parts his lips, letting me slide my hard length between
them, the warm, wet glide of his mouth sending a shiver
through me as I push myself in as deep as he’ll take me.
“Oh my God,” breathes Hailey, moving faster and forcing
a grunt from Xander’s mouth. “Oh fuck, that’s so hot.”
I’m torn between watching her, the rise and fall of her
pussy over Xan’s cock, the bounce and sway of her full
breasts, and the sheer pleasure on her face, her parted
mouth and hooded eyes, and watching Xan—it’s so erotic to
see the hard, masculine angles of his face as he takes me
deep into his throat. Holding his head, I thrust into his
mouth, pushing myself in to the point of feeling his throat,
losing myself completely against the firm, smooth stroke of
his tongue under my shaft.
When I look back at Hailey, the pleasure on her face is
making her gaze distant. Xander has his hands clasped
around her hips, holding her tight and moving with her—
enjoying the pleasure she’s giving him while he gives me his
mouth.
It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, being so
close to both of them at the same time. I can feel Hailey’s
breath against my arm as I feed Xander my cock, and when
her brow furrows, and her rhythm speeds up and a little
whimper escapes her lips, I feel my own release barreling to
the surface.
“I’m going to come,” she whispers, and Xander groans
around my cock, and then she cries out, a red flush
spreading over her neck and chest as her whole rhythm
changes.
Xander’s attention drifts away from me. His mouth goes
soft and his eyes focus in on Hailey, his arm muscles flexing
as he lifts and lowers her as he needs her, using her now for
his own pleasure as he chases his release. I don’t mind at
all. I pull away, lifting a hand to stroke myself, and watch.
“Pull out,” Hailey gasps, and Xander raises her up
quickly, reaching underneath her with one hand to grab his
cock and immediately scrunching up his face and grunting
as he ejaculates over his stomach.
It’s debilitatingly hot to watch him lose control, the agony
on his face making my knees weak, and when my orgasm
comes it’s like a surge of power, sudden and unstoppable. I
reach for Hailey, mindlessly and urgently, and grab some of
her hair, pulling her head back and aiming as I spew cum
over her tits and neck with a low moan.
“Cole!” she cries out, half laughing and half indignant,
and she steps backwards off the lounger as my grip loosens
in her hair. I try to grin, but I’m gulping down air as my heart
hammers in my chest. She runs a finger through my cum
and sticks her tongue out at me, then pops her finger in her
mouth and sucks it off.

We stretch out on the loungers for a bit after to catch our

breath, Xander in the middle and Hailey and I on either side,
and for a while I’m happy. Maybe the happiest I’ve been for
a long time. It’s pleasurably liberating to lay naked under
the sun, spent from physical release, and it’s comforting to
be alone with Hailey and Xander. In every way, it’s the
opposite of the earlier part of my day, at lunch with Barry.
But I know it’s a fleeting feeling, something I should
never get used to, and soon guilt and shame cast a shadow
over my happiness. That, and envy.
Hailey and Xander are free to do this as much as they
like—for the rest of their lives if they choose. As a couple,
Hailey and Xander make sense. No one would think twice
about them being together.
It’s me that poisons the mix. Me that doesn’t belong. I
can’t be with either of them and I certainly can’t be with
both. My dad is right. It’s untoward, and it’s not right.
It’s embarrassing for everyone.
What feels right to me couldn’t be more wrong. And
unless I’m willing to cast shame on my family and drag the
people I love most down with me, then I’m simply not
entitled to happiness.

OceanofPDF.com
Hailey

MY BEST FRIEND is positively gleeful as she rubs her hands

together and grins into her laptop camera.
 “What?” I ask with a laugh, fiddling with a pen to the
right of my keyboard, off camera. I’m just buying time,
knowing I’ll have to spill everything, and wishing, once
again, that my love life hadn’t become such a big part of our
podcast.
“You tell me, Hailey,” she says excitedly. We’re already
recording and fresh off reviewing our book of the week, The
Shield and the Axe, by MK Robert. It’s ironic to me that we
read a menage book this week, and just spent almost an
hour talking about the complexity of threesome
relationships. “I can just tell something’s up,” she continues.
“You get this, like, nervous look.”
She glances down at her keyboard and moves her hand,
and then a man’s voice booms, “What’s new in Hailey’s love
life?” The echo effect reverberates for an extra second. I roll
my eyes the way I always do when she plays this clip and
purse my lips.
“Okay, yes,” I say, after a deep breath. “I do have news.”
Sasha just squeals—an indistinct, high-pitched noise.
“I slept with…both of them.”
Her eyebrows jump and her eyes open wide. “You slept
with…” She hesitates, so caught off guard by my
announcement that she temporarily forgets Cole’s code
name. “…Adam?”
“Sort of.”
She frowns. “Girl, did you or didn’t you?”
“I mean, we kind of had a threesome…with Bob. Like, we
both…fooled around with Bob.”
“Oh my God.” Her eyes are open so wide I can see the
whites all around her irises. “Is it weird that this is turning
me on?”
“Yes.”
She shrugs, still grinning. “So…you and Adam both slept
with Bob but not each other?”
“Right.”
 She hoots and claps her hands. “Yes! Listeners!
Attention. We have levelled up! We have unlocked…the
threesome!”
I can’t repress a smile at my outrageous friend’s
reaction, although my cheeks are heating up. It’s
embarrassing to talk about this stuff publicly, even if it is
anonymous.
“So?” She leans in towards her camera, as if creating
intimacy. As if it’s just the two of us. “How was it? Did you
like it?”
God. Did I like it? Being right between both boys as they
huffed and breathed and lost control of themselves…
Xander’s hands on my hips, his hard, thick cock inside of me
while I got to watch him taking Cole’s cock in his mouth and
bringing him right to the edge of pleasure? It was unlike
anything I’d ever even imagined.
“It was the hottest experience of my life,” I say frankly.
Then, for emphasis, “Unbelievably hot.”
She whistles. “So, what about all the stuff that came
before, though, with Adam? Is that, like… Are we just done
with that?”
I understand why she’s asking the question. For months
after Cole broke up with me by text, I was devastated.
Heartbroken and humiliated. And Sasha’s the one who had
to hear all about it. Who had to help me pick up the pieces
and move on. She’s probably afraid the cycle is going to
start all over again.
To be honest, so am I.
“I…I’m not sure,” I say honestly.
It would be hard to forgive Cole for breaking my heart
last September. It would be hard to forgive Cole for a lot of
things. But Sasha doesn’t know him the way I do, and when
I try to explain it, I know it’s too nuanced for her to grasp.
It’s in the way I know Cole better than anyone. Anyone.
Better than even Greta or his own father does. When Cole is
teasing or cruel, I still see the real Cole underneath, the Cole
he keeps hidden from the world in order to protect himself.
Deep down, I know Cole is good. But that’s what makes
his cruelty even harder to accept. I don’t understand how he
could seem to love me so much, let himself be vulnerable in
front of me, and then pull away, just like that.
Lines have been getting blurred since we’ve been alone
in the house, and I guess it’s no surprise. Cole has always
been one to push other people’s limits, to try to get what he
wants. There was no chance he would simply ignore me all
summer.
The one thing I didn’t expect was Xander.
Xander’s been in my life for nearly as long as Cole, a
constant fixture by Cole’s side, usually jeering along with
him at my expense, although with Xander it’s always been a
little different. He’s softer than Cole, always relenting before
Cole did, and nice to me when Cole wasn’t around. But even
after we fooled around a little last summer, he never
seemed like a love interest to me. Like a main character. In
my eyes, Xander has always played a supporting role to
Cole.
But since the night we spent together I don’t see him the
same way anymore. Sex with Xander was even better than I
expected. It was transformational. And now that things have
shifted in our dynamic, it’s no longer Cole and Xander
against me. The power balance has been redistributed.
The thing I would hate to admit to Sasha, but which she
surely already knows, is that I’m in love with Cole. Even
after everything that happened.
But now I’m wondering, what would it look like if I were in
love with Xander, too?

I’m all smiles when I come downstairs and find Xander and
Cole in the living room. It’s the first time I’ve seen them all
day and I’ve been a little punch-drunk with memories. A
mental highlights reel from the night before has been
playing in my head all day on an endless loop, and just the
sight of their broad shoulders, side by side on the couch in
front of the TV, makes my heart pitter patter.
They’re so fucking good-looking.
“Hey,” I say with a wide grin as I walk into the room,
anticipating their responding smiles, excited to find out what
the night ahead has in store for us.
“Hey, Hails,” says Xander, looking happy to see me as
well, but I can immediately tell something’s off with Cole.
“Hey,” he says curtly, barely pulling his eyes away from
the TV to look at me and not smiling at all.
It’s like an ice-cold dagger in my heart. I know this game.
Hot and cold…reel Hailey in, and then push her away. It’s
the definition of my relationship with Cole.
But I can’t believe that it’s not different this time—not
after what happened last night. I walk over to the couch and
sit down on the other side of Xander, putting him between
us.
They keep watching the show in silence while I stare
blankly ahead, my mind racing. I’m frozen, unable to say
anything and unable to walk away. I’m just waiting for some
sign from Cole about how the night is going to go. But after
a while, Xander tilts his chin towards me and extends an
arm around my shoulders, inviting me to cuddle in.
“Hey, babe,” he says, giving me a crooked grin that
makes his one dimple show.
When I lean into him it’s incredibly comforting. The edge
comes off of my anxiety, and it feels like we’re going to be
okay. Like Cole’s just a little cranky but we’re all still here
and nothing’s changed. But I should know better than to
underestimate Cole like that.
He turns his head irritably towards us. “Don’t you have
some porn to read, Hailey?”
“We finished our episode,” I reply, understanding his
meaning.
 “Huh.” He grunts and turns his head back to the TV, but
a couple of minutes later he turns towards us again,
massaging his temples.
“Can you guys not do this, like, snuggly fucking couple
thing?”
I frown back at him, from under the protection of
Xander’s arm, but Xander speaks to him with patience.
“Everything okay, bro?” he asks gently. “What’s up?”
“This is up,” he gripes, waving a hand towards us. “This
whole fucking we’re-a-couple-thing. Like what the fuck?” He
stands up and rubs his forehead, pacing in front of the
window as Xander lifts his arm off my shoulders and pauses
the TV.
“It’s not like that,” he says calmly. “We’re not excluding
you.”
“I don’t care if you are!” exclaims Cole. “I don’t want to
be included, I just don’t want this to turn into a whole, like,
summer of us just fooling around or whatever. Like, let’s
have some fucking boundaries, people!”
I almost want to laugh, what he’s saying is so ridiculous.
If anyone has trouble with boundaries, it’s Cole.
“Wait…” I ask innocently, purposefully goading him.
“Like, boundaries like I shouldn’t sleep with Xander? Or
boundaries like I shouldn’t sleep with Xander while he has
your cock in his mouth?”
“Oh, fuck off, Hailey!” he barks, dragging his hand
through his hair. “Like, this is exactly what I don’t want. Just
fucking harping on this shit all summer. It happened and it’s
done, okay?”
“It happened and it’s done?” I repeat, my eyebrows
skyrocketing into my hairline. It’s triggering to hear him say
that; it’s so much like the text message he sent me last fall.
“Dude,” says Xander, lifting his arm off my shoulder and
holding his hand out towards Cole, like he’s trying to calm a
spooked horse. “Just chill. You’re freaking out.”
 “I am not freaking out.” He shoots me a vicious look.
“You know what? You two do your thing. Have your little
cuddle or whatever, have your moment. I’m going for a
walk.”
He spins on his heel towards the hallway and leaves
abruptly. A second later the front door swings open and then
closes.
Xander looks at me and we just blink for a second,
unsettled.
“He’s in a shit mood,” he says.
“No kidding,” I answer.
We remain silent for a couple more beats, stunned, and
then Xander picks up the remote control and we resume
watching TV.
After a few minutes, he sighs and slings his arm over my
shoulder again.
Something’s up with Cole. He’s been upset since he
came home from lunch with Barry. The edge he had
yesterday, his pushy demeanour and that almost desperate
sexual fever, that’s a sure sign that something’s going on
with Cole.
My brow furrows. When Cole’s upset he acts out and he
seeks escape. There’s clearly something big on his mind.
I get up to make a pot of tea and then sit beside Xander
for a while longer, bored by the sports documentary he’s
watching and hardly paying any attention. It’s strange for
the two of us to be alone together, despite the events of the
last few days, but when I put down my mug he circles his
arm around my shoulders again, and the scent of his skin
through his t-shirt is already soothingly familiar.
A memory comes back to me of another time I watched
Cole have a meltdown in this living room. He was thirteen,
and he’d gotten into trouble for something he’d done at
school. Barry was yelling at him. My mom and I were sitting
on the couch, and I remember huddling against her, wishing
Cole would just go away so we could go back to watching
our show in peace. But when he did run out the door,
promising never to return, I started to worry.
“Let him go,” Barry had said to Greta, who was wild with
concern—never one to react to anything mildly.
“But where is he going to go?” she had cried.
“Same place he always goes,” he’d answered. “His
mother’s grave. He’ll be back when he’s worn himself out.”
I waited and waited for Barry to go get him, relieved that
he knew where Cole was, but he never did. He and my mom
just kept watching TV, pretending they didn’t care at all that
Cole was gone. Maybe it was all an act, or maybe it wasn’t. I
was never too sure. But I—only twelve years old, and
worried sick my brother was going to be kidnapped or killed
—couldn’t pretend I didn’t care.
Eventually, I got my bike from the garage and rode to the
cemetery on my own. I had a rough idea of where Cole’s
mother’s grave was, because we always went there on her
birthday. I biked down the quiet paved roads, past the grand
mausoleums and other landmarks, until I reached the hill
where Cassie is buried under a big maple tree.
And when I got there, sure enough, there was Cole,
sitting in front of Cassie’s grave with his yellow bike on the
ground beside him.
“Come home,” I implored him.
“No.”
“They’re upset,” I lied. “Greta’s crying.”
He lifted blue eyes to me, trying to judge if I was lying.
“She is?”
“Barry’s really upset too; he’s saying it’s all his fault.”
He narrowed his eyes, but agreed to get up and return
with me. When I brought him safely back home, I felt like a
hero.
“You found him!” said my mother proudly, beaming at
me.
The memory comes back as vividly as if it were
yesterday. I was so proud of myself for rescuing Cole for
once—Cole, who, at least at that time in my life, was always
the one who was rescuing me.
He’s twenty years old now, and I have little concern that
he’s going to get kidnapped, but with sudden insight, I sit
upright.
“I think I know where Cole is,” I tell Xander.
“Yeah? I don’t know, Hails. I think he might need a bit of
time alone, though.”
I chew my lip and fall back against his arm. He’s probably
right. Cole’s just going to lash out at me if I pursue him. I
should know, I’ve run after him many times.
At least, I used to…until I stopped.
Sometime around puberty everything changed between
us. When we turned that corner to adulthood, he seemed to
get darker and harder, and that’s when I started retreating,
trying not to provoke him. Too timid to rise to his level, to
push back.
And maybe that’s part of where things went sideways for
us.
I sit up again. “I’m going to go. If he doesn’t want me
there at least we’ll know where he is.”
Xander turns away from the TV and gives me his full
attention. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” he shrugs. “Good luck.”
The thing about Cole and I is this: We may fight, and we
may lash out and hurt each other, but deep down, there is
something between us our parents have never been able to
see. A cord that ties us to each other, a bond.
Denying it hasn’t gotten us anywhere. But maybe a
different approach will work better. Cole has all these walls
up to protect himself, and I used to be the one who kept
tearing them down. What would happen if I showed him I
still haven’t given up on him?

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Cole

I DON’T HAVE any clear memories of Cassandra Elizabeth

Smith, just a warm sense of belonging. A loving female
presence. The truth is, I’ve never really known her. It’s
always been me and Barry, since I was three years old.
But I miss her anyway. I believe she would have loved
me. Unconditionally and with her whole heart. If it’s
possible, I hope that she still does—from wherever she is
now.
If she can see me, though, she’s probably disappointed in
me, just like Barry suggested at lunch. If she can see me,
then she knows more than Barry does. Not just about me
and Hailey, but about me and Xander as well. My stepsister
and my best friend. She would want her son to do the right
things, to be a good man. And I can’t.
I feel a tinge of anger at her over her imagined
disappointment, followed by guilt at my characterization of
her as judgmental. I hang my head between my arms. I
can’t even imagine my dead mother right.
The crunch of gravel breaks through my thoughts before
I hear Hailey’s voice behind me.
“Cole!”
I turn my head to see her lower her old bicycle to the
ground beside mine, under the maple tree, and then
continue down the hill towards me.
It reminds me of a scene from long ago, when I’d run
away from home and Hailey came after me. I remember
how it had ripped my heart open to see her running down
that hill—all that long blonde hair swinging behind her and
her favourite Jonas Brothers t-shirt on. She found me, I had
thought with relief. Hailey always did have the ability to find
me, no matter where I’d gone—whether I’d physically run
away or only retreated to some emotional place.
She looks cute now in cut-off denim shorts, a white t-
shirt, and sandals. Her hair isn’t as long anymore, even
though it still tumbles down her back, and her skin is tan
from all the time beside the pool. My eyes trace over the
curve of her breasts and the lean muscle in her thighs even
as my shoulders tense with irritation.
 Stop ogling your fucking sister, says a voice in my head.
“What are you doing here?” I ask without warmth.
She hesitates, just the slightest bit, and her expression
hardens.
“I came to find you.”
“Why?” I’m a bad cliché, trying to push her away with my
anger when I’m really trying to protect her from me. “Jesus.
Are you seriously this clingy? I can’t get a moment alone?”
She lifts her chin and straightens her shoulders,
determined and persistent. “Something’s bothering you. I
know something’s bothering you, Cole. You should just come
back to the house and talk to us. Just tell us what’s going
on. You know we will be there for you. We need you, and…I
know you need us.”
Her words strike a vulnerable part inside of me that I’m
trying to protect, and I’m rolling my eyes before I even have
time to think about it. I stand up and glower at her.
“I don’t need you. I don’t even want you. If I seem
distant, that’s why.” I storm past her, up the hill towards the
bicycles, and she hurries after me.
“Okay, fine,” she calls, unruffled. “But what about
Xander? Are you just going to push us both away because
you’re too much of a baby to talk about your feelings?”
I spin around in anger. I need her to leave so I can go
back to my thoughts. My brooding, self-destructive
thoughts. They may seem pointless, but it’s what I deserve
—to ruminate forever on how trapped I am by feelings I
can’t control.
“You want to know how I feel, Hailey?” I hiss. “Well,
yesterday I felt horny, so I watched my friend fuck you and
then I came on your tits, and today I feel like I want to be
left alone.”
She doesn’t flinch. The old Hailey would’ve flinched. But
it’s like my words have no effect. She narrows her eyes and
leans closer to me. “That’s not true. That’s not true. I know
you feel something. I know…I know you needed us
yesterday. And we were there for you. And that means
something. I know it does.”
Anger is so quick when it comes, so powerful and
blinding. I don’t want Hailey to push me into places I don’t
want to go. I don’t want her to tell me how I feel—not when
I’m trying so hard to deny it to myself.
“For the last time, it doesn’t mean fucking anything,” I
growl, stepping forward and grabbing her by the arms. She
barely reacts, only lifting her chin to show me that I can’t
get to her. But I can. And I will.
Practically lifting her off the ground by the arms, I push
her backwards until her back is against the trunk of the
maple tree. My heart is pounding with anger, but laced with
a vein of excitement. I squeeze her arms harder, the feel of
her flesh so gratifying under my hands. I can smell the
flowery scent of her shampoo. I love having Hailey at my
mercy. Having power over her directs and shapes my anger
into a new kind of energy.
Her mouth parts, and her chest heaves, but the look she
gives me back is steady, like I haven’t caught her off guard.
Like she’s not scared.
“Is this about me and Xander?” she asks. “Are you mad I
fucked your friend after you told me you didn’t want me
anymore? You don’t get to decide who I can be with, Cole.”
“Like fuck I don’t,” I snarl, stepping forward until the front
of my body is pressed up against hers. I reach down and
grab the front of her jean shorts, cupping her pubic bone in
my hand and making her eyes widen in fear.
Finally, a reaction.
“You know I fucking claimed this pussy.”
I lean into her until my nose is only a breath away from
her ear, the smell of her engulfing me, and I roll my fingers,
massaging her pussy through the fabric of her shorts while I
squeeze her arm tighter.
It’s exactly what I promised myself I wouldn’t do this
summer: touch Hailey. But she grunts as I push myself
against her and my cocks stirs, getting harder.
“I thought you didn’t want me,” she whispers,
breathlessly indignant.
But I don’t care about that conversation anymore. “Who
else have you been with besides Xander?” I growl in her ear.
I need to know. Hailey just finished her freshman year at
university. Anything could have happened. I’m the one who
pushed her away, but the thought that anyone other than
Xander and I may have had her makes me burn with
jealousy.
“That’s none of your business! And what does it matter?”
She’s haughty even with her back up against a tree, my
fingers pressing firmly into the crotch of her shorts. Haughty
even though her cheeks are flushing. Haughty even though
she doesn’t resist me.
“It matters.”
Dusk is beginning to fall but it’s still light out, and
movement behind the tree catches my eye, drawing me
back into awareness. It’s a man crossing the gravel road. He
doesn’t look our way, but his presence breaks the spell,
reminding me that I have a woman pressed up against a
tree only steps away from my mother’s grave in a public
cemetery, and I’m getting extremely hard as I fondle her. I
release Hailey suddenly and step back.
“Cole.”
No. I need to get away from Hailey before I do something
I regret. She fucking followed me out here. She’s
everywhere I turn. A tease, a temptation. I wasn’t supposed
to fool around with Xander anymore, either, but then here
comes Hailey encouraging us to do things, blurring the lines.
She’s the problem.
I shake my head as I back away, and then I lift my bike
up and start walking it down the footpath that leads away
from the road. I don’t know why. I just want to go
somewhere quiet to clear my head. Seconds later, I hear the
clicking of her bike chain as she follows behind me.
 “Cole!”
I ignore her and keep walking.
“Cole, wait!”
“Why?” I snap, turning around sharply.
Doesn’t this woman know what I’m going to do to her?
Doesn’t she know how much it’s going to ruin both of us if
we can’t keep our hands off each other? We’ll become the
plot of a bad pornographic movie—the stepbrother and
stepsister who sneak off to fuck in a closet at Christmas,
leaving their spouses to look after the children.
“Because I think…” Her eyebrows pinch together, and
she lifts her eyes as she searches for her words. “Because I
think this can go differently. You’re mad, and you’re taking it
out on me. But I don’t think it’s me you’re mad at.”
“Of course it’s you I’m mad at!”
But she’s right. It’s not her. It’s me I’m mad at. And
Barry, and Greta. I lean my bike against a hedge and step
towards her, and she swallows nervously in a way that
makes my pulse pick up.
Things could have gone differently. If only Barry and
Greta had never met that one fated parent/teacher night at
our school. If only Barry hadn’t been the only parent brave
enough to make small talk with the movie-star mom. Hailey
and I would have continued as we were, me noticing her in
the school yard, or running into each other at a store as we
were buying Pokémon cards. Everything would have been
different. I would have asked her out, and we would have
become high school sweethearts. I wouldn’t be so mad all
the time, wouldn’t feel so cheated or denied. I’d be the nice
guy. We’d be happy.
Although… Memories of Xander at summer camp sneak
into my thoughts. Even without Barry and Greta, Hailey and
I couldn’t have something normal if there was someone else
on the sidelines. And there could never not be Xander.
It’s futile. There is no scenario where everything I feel is
acceptable, there is no respectable outcome where I get
what I want.
No solution to this three-body problem.
I need to be stronger, and just walk away from everybody
that I love…but I can’t.
“You fucked my best friend,” I say. It’s an observation,
levelled neutrally.
“I did.” She holds my gaze. “And you watched. You were
part of it, too. It’s what you wanted.”
Yes…it is what I wanted. Everything we did yesterday was
what I wanted. Everything forbidden and wrong. That’s all I
want.
I take her bike by the handlebars and she releases it,
letting me lean it against a lamppost before I step in close
towards her, until there are only inches between us. “You
fucked him without me. Who else have you fucked, Hailey?”
She snorts. “You don’t get to ask that. You broke up with
me, remember?”
“Who did you sleep with?” It doesn’t change anything,
but I have to know. How important am I to Hailey? How
important is Xander? Who else knows her like we know her?
“No one!” she blurts out, finally, lifting and dropping her
arms in exasperation. “No one, okay? You broke my heart,
Cole! I spent a fucking year pining for you. You broke my
heart!”
Her chin drops and her shoulders slump.
“It’s only been you, and Xander.”
It’s only been us. It shouldn’t matter, but I feel relieved.
We still own her. Just like us, she’s locked into this orbit, too.
The three of us circling around and around and around.
And before I even realize what I’m doing I’m descending
on her, pulling her into my arms and kissing her, and then
she’s hitting my chest and pulling away.
“Stop it!” she shouts angrily, wriggling herself back and
forth until I release my arms.
“Stop?”
 “Stop!” She steps back, out of my grip, angrily
straightening her t-shirt. “You don’t get to... No. This isn’t on
your terms.”
“Why not?” I reach for her hand, but she pulls it out of
my grasp.
“Because you’re a fucking asshole, Cole! You took my
virginity, you made me feel like…like you loved me…or at
least cared for me. And then you broke up with me and
ignored me for a year. And now…what? Now you suddenly
want to sleep with me because you found out I’ve only had
sex with one other person?”
“Yes.” I reach for her hand again. When she pulls it away
this time, she’s even more angry.
“No! It doesn’t work that way.”
“Then how does it work?” I grab her wrist, and this time I
dig my fingers in so that she can’t get free. She pulls her
arm, giving a huff, but I only dig in harder and don’t let go.
“How does it work, Hailey? Is it all on your terms? You want
to fuck my friend and make me watch when you’re in the
mood to be the centre of attention? You want to strip down
in front of us and put our hands on your breasts and talk
about how we can all fool around together, and then when I
want something from you—when I want it—you just pull
away and act like I’m being a jerk?”
“You are being a jerk. You’re always a fucking jerk, Cole.”
“Then why are you in love with me, Hailey?” I grab her
other arm and push her backwards until her back is up
against the wall of a large mausoleum.
“I’m not,” she whispers.
“You are.” I press my body against hers again, burying
my nose in her hair, and grind my crotch against her,
enjoying the pleasure of blood rushing to my cock, rubbing
the hardness against the soft resistance of her body. “I bet
when I reach into your panties I’m going to discover that
you’re wet.”
 “Stop it, Cole,” she twists, uselessly, against the full
weight of my body pressing against her.
“No.”

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Hailey

FOR A LONG time, I considered Cole to be my enemy. For

years, he was relentlessly cruel to me. In high school he was
meaner than any bully.
Yet even while I hated him, I was strangely forgiving of
him; more patient through his teasing and mockery than
most people could understand. It’s because I always had the
childhood Cole in my memory, the Cole who was my best
friend and protector.
Last summer when we hooked up, everything changed
between us…or so I thought. I saw a different side of Cole.
But only weeks later, when he texted me from Kingston to
tell me that not only was it over between us, but that it had
never meant anything to him, I realized that nothing had
really changed after all. He’d been the same mean old Cole
all along.
I swore never to be weak around him again. This time I
would not forgive him. I would not let him push me around
because of the silly schoolgirl crush I’ve had on him for as
long as I’ve known him. From now on, things would be
different.
But as Cole fists the hair at the nape of my neck and
pulls it roughly, yanking my head back and then lowering
his mouth to mine with a wild hunger, I don’t fight back.
I melt into him, losing myself in the familiarity of his
smell, his touch, his kiss.
It’s a relief to surrender. I was kidding myself to think I
could ever push him away, or that things would ever be
different.
We belong together. What’s between us is inescapable.
With his other hand, he circles my neck, rubbing his
thumb against my Adam’s apple and breathing hard through
his nose. He pushes his pelvis forward, rubbing the hard
ridge of his cock against me. He’s wild and desperate, and I
kiss him back with the same fervour.
For all the mean things Cole has said and done to me, I
know he’s an actor like everyone else in our family. The
cruelty is a facade—he plays the role of the damaged bad
boy who won’t let anyone get to him. But the reality is
something much more vulnerable and raw. Something
wounded, passionate, and fierce. Sasha was shocked by the
way Cole pursued me, and then the heartless way he ended
things with me, but I was less so, in a way she couldn’t
understand. Sometimes he just lashes out, I tried to explain.
It sounds worse than it is. She looked at me like I was crazy.
It was hurtful, the way he used me and threw me away.
But on some level I always knew we weren’t done, not really.
How could we be, when there’s something deeper
between us than anyone could understand?
I roll my head back, letting him test the pressure on my
neck, his thick fingers pressing into my jugular. I don’t flinch,
to show him how much I trust him. Because despite
everything that’s happened between us, I do. Only my
hands, pressed flat against the rough stone wall behind me,
continue to resist him. The rest of me cedes to his control.
His tongue is rough and urgent in my mouth, his body
forcefully moving against mine as his grip tightens around
my hair and my neck. He has me pinned so that I can’t
move, and every cell of my body is humming for him. My
panties are soaked. I tilt my hips against his writhing
movements and his erection rubs against me right where I
need it, up and down across my clit, making all my focus
narrow in on the pulsing centre of my need.
He lifts his hand from my throat to my jaw, claiming it
roughly, digging fingers into my jawbone. Pressing his
forehead against mine, he pulls his mouth away just enough
to speak.
“Watching you fuck Xander was so hot,” he rasps. I try to
nod but I can’t move my head; he’s holding it too tightly. My
brows furrow, folding together helplessly while I tilt my
pelvis up higher. I’m so close—so wet and so desperate. He
digs the tips of his fingers harder into my jaw. “But I want to
be there when you fuck him. I don’t want you to fuck him
without me, okay?”
 I try to nod, closing my eyes and making the tiniest
movements against the iron grip of his hand, but I know he
understands me.
“I don’t want you to do anything without me. You’re
fucking mine.”
He covers my mouth with his again, kissing me hard and
lowering both hands to fumble with the button of my jean
shorts.
“No,” I mumble, finding the last thread of my common
sense and pulling my lips away from his. “Stop. We’re in
public.”
“I don’t care,” he growls, and I twist my shoulders to
push him off, but he just leans in closer against me, easily
holding me in place.
I struggle against his hold, despite the roaring need
inside of me. It’s getting dark, but we’ll still be exposed, we
could get caught. At the same time, I don’t even care. I
need Cole. Now.
He wrestles the zipper of my jeans down and then tugs
the shorts aggressively over my hips, pulling my panties
with them until they’re both pooled around my ankles.
“Someone will see,” I choke out, feeling air hit my hips
and ass.
“I’m going to fuck you.” His voice is gravel in my ear, his
mouth so close that I can feel the brush of his lips against
my earlobe as he speaks. “I’m so tired of missing you. I’m
going to fuck you right here and now, and I’m going to fuck
you hard, little sister.”
He pins his shoulder and chest against me, immobilizing
me as he turns to his own zipper, tearing it open and
tugging his pants down to mid-thigh. I can’t see past his
shoulder pressing into my chin, but when I feel him slap his
cock against the front of my hip, I have no doubt what it is.
It just feels different. Warmer, maybe.
Cole has a cock to crave. Where Xander’s is long, Cole’s
is thick—thicker than most penises I’ve seen in porn. I have
a visceral reaction to feeling it slap against my lower belly,
and my pussy floods.
“Wait,” I grunt, as I feel him roughly thrust it between my
legs, pushing the head between my folds to force me to part
my legs for him. “Condom.”
But Cole only pushes his cock in further until he finds my
entrance and then slides in as much as he can at this angle.
“I’ll pull out,” he promises in a throaty whisper.
Fuck. The width of him pushing into me, opening me,
makes heat radiate out from my centre. He lowers his hands
under my bare ass, gripping my thighs just below the
cheeks, and then lifts me up with a grunt, parting my legs
and pushing me up hard against the mausoleum wall. My
panties and shorts fall off of one ankle, freeing me to wrap
my legs around him, and he plows into me then, hard and to
his full length. I gasp, and he starts rocking, lowering and
circling his hips as he pumps all the way into me. He’s so
deep, I can feel his balls hitting my ass as he thrusts.
I close my eyes, absolutely lost as a scorching hot
tension builds deep in my core, my heart pounding and my
breath going ragged.
“Oh shit,” he whispers, without breaking his stride—
pumping, grinding, and slamming into me. There’s a hint of
a smile in his tone. “Someone’s watching.”
“What?” Panic breaks through my euphoria, and I open
my eyes, trying uselessly to look past Cole’s head as his
whole body pounds into mine. “Where?”
“By the trees.” I turn my eyes wildly to the left but all I
can see is Cole’s hair.
“I can’t see.”
“Well…he can see you.”
Oh God. It should terrify and embarrass me. I should
scream and push Cole off of me right now, but I can’t. I
couldn’t stop chasing the release that I know is coming for
me if I tried. Even if a man is watching.
 “He’s watching you getting fucked,” Cole continues in a
low whisper. “He’s just standing there getting hard, wanting
what I have.”
Watching me…seeing me. A quiver of excitement pulses
through my core. I shouldn’t want to be watched, I shouldn’t
be a dirty girl, but, curiously, the shame of being seen only
heightens my arousal.
I try to jut my hips forward to push Cole back so I can
turn my head to the side to look, but he growls and drives
me harder against the wall, almost knocking the breath out
of me.
I shouldn’t like this. I shouldn’t be on the edge of orgasm
because Cole is getting his way again and a stranger is
watching.
But it feels too good. His thick cock stroking into me and
the perfect rhythm of his friction is exactly what I need. His
breath against my neck, his fingers digging into my ass…
God, I’ve missed him. I’ve missed being this close to him.
He’s mine as much as I’m his. We belong together.
“It could be paparazzi,” I whisper, clinging to the last
thread of my reason. But all I can think about is whether or
not the man is getting turned on. Is he getting hard?
Touching himself? Is he imagining himself in Cole’s place?
It’s so wrong, but, let him watch, I think. Let anyone
watch. I don’t care.
The truth is…I like it.
“It’s not paparazzi,” says Cole roughly. He grabs my chin
again and turns my face, kissing me hard and then
murmuring against my mouth. “Dirty girl, getting fucked by
your brother in a cemetery while a stranger watches.”
Suddenly I’m gasping against Cole’s lips as my release
breaks through me. I squeeze my eyes shut, my pussy
pulsing around his dick, and my body becomes boneless
against him; jelly.
“Fuck,” he whimpers, slamming into me harder and then
crying out, helplessly, as his cock jerks and floods me with
his cum.
Inside of me.
I should push him off. I should yell at him. But I just
squeeze my arms around him tighter, pulling him in against
me and trying to breathe in every atom of his smell. I love
this moment most of all, when he’s spent and softening
inside me. He thrusts slowly, moving with a languid pleasure
now instead of the urgent chasing of just a moment before,
rolling his body against mine. He kisses my neck, my jaw,
and then my mouth.
“You’re a fucking asshole,” I whisper, as some of his cum
runs out of me.
He pushes into me harder.
“Hailey,” he murmurs, breaking away from me. He runs a
hand over my hair, cupping the back of my head. “I love
you.”
I know, I think.
He does love me. He’s always loved me, just like I’ve
always loved him. On some level, I’ve always known it, even
if no one else does. What’s between Cole and I, no one
could understand. Except maybe Xander.

“What did he look like?” I ask Cole as we ride our bikes side
by side on the quiet road back to our house. There’s hardly
ever any traffic in our neighbourhood, and no sidewalks. Just
sprawling house after sprawling house, sitting on large,
manicured lawns. We rarely see a neighbour.
Cole slides his eyes over to me, one corner of his mouth
pulling up. “He looked like a man,” he shrugs, “watching you
getting fucked.”
“C’mon! Was there really someone there, or were you
lying?”
“You’ll never know. But it really turned you on, didn’t it,
Hailey? Being watched? You like that.” He smirks and pedals
harder, pulling ahead.
 I twist my mouth and pedal faster as he picks up the
pace, but don’t say anything. As usual, he’s right. The idea
of being watched had been extremely erotic. For the first
time, I wonder if I might be an exhibitionist.
It would be so like Cole to have made that up just to turn
me on. Even though he seems self-absorbed, he has an
uncanny sense of other people’s desires.
And he’s also stubborn as hell. I can tell by the satisfied
sneer on his face that he’ll never tell me if he was lying or
not.
When we get home, we hang the bikes in the garage and
I turn to Cole before we enter the house.
“What about Xander?” I ask.
“What about him?”
“I don’t know. What do you want to tell him?”
He looks surprised by the question. “We just tell him,” he
says. “No secrets.”
“Okay.” I’m relieved by his answer. It’s what I want. No
rules, no secrets. Just us, doing what’s right for us.
And strangely, I don’t feel like anything untoward has
happened, anything that Xander won’t understand. Cole and
I are inevitable, in the same way that Cole and Xander are
inevitable. It’s a thing that only we can understand.

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Hailey

I HEAR GUSTAVO’S voice before I even lift my head out of

the water. Finishing my lap, I pull myself up to the edge of
the pool to find my two best friends standing on the deck
fully dressed, just waiting for me to poke my head out of the
water.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, leaning my elbows on
the deck and out of breath from the exertion of swimming.
Sasha is early for our podcast recording, and Gustavo I
wasn’t expecting at all.
“Gustavo is dying,” Sasha says with a laugh. “He just
listened to the last episode.”
“Girl.” He lifts his eyebrows and cocks his head
emphatically. “I need to hear everything.”
I laugh and swim over to the pool ladder to get out,
gathering up my hair and squeezing the water out of it
before wrapping my towel around myself.
It’s only noon, and I was trying to get a workout in before
Sasha showed up, but I should’ve known Gustavo was going
to freak when he found out about the threesome. The only
person who’s ever crushed on both Cole and Xander more
than me is Gustavo. Gustavo is infatuated to the point of
obsession—or so he claims. But he claims to be infatuated
with a lot of people. The more fit they are, the more he
swoons.
“Where are they?” he asks in sotto voce, scanning the
yard with wide eyes, like he’s hoping to catch sight of rare
beasts in the wild. Gustavo, who was in the same high
school with all of us and has been coming over to the house
for years, has met Cole and Xander an uncountable number
of times.
“They’re here,” I say, biting back a small smile.
“Somewhere. Maybe sleeping.”
It had been an interesting night in the Vile-Smith
household. Not dramatic, low-key. But low-key in a way that
felt new, warm, and comfortable.
When Cole and I came home from the cemetery, Xander
seemed to know or sense what had happened between us,
but didn’t appear in the least bit upset. No one really talked
about anything. Cole ordered a pizza and the three of us
watched TV together on the couch. I lay my head in
Xander’s lap and stretched my feet out in Cole’s, and he
rested his warm, heavy hands on my legs with an easy
possessiveness. Eventually I’d fallen asleep, and when they
woke me up, I went up to bed on my own. It was the most
comfortable I’d ever felt with both of them.
The house had been quiet when I got up this morning,
and quiet when I went out to the pool. Cole and Xander
have been sleeping late for as long as I can remember, but
I’ve always been an early riser.
I invite Sasha and Gustavo inside and make smoothies
for all of us, and then we head up to my bedroom. They lie
back side by side on my bed while I change into a t-shirt and
shorts and then stretch out at their feet.
Gustavo pokes a toe in my rib. “Tell me everything.”
I grin, thinking back to the past few days. I feel soaked
through with love, heavy with it, coveted and protected and
happy. I’m not even sure where to begin.
“I slept with Cole last night,” I say to the ceiling.
Gustavo gasps dramatically and Sasha sits up. “No!” she
protests.
I turn my head to see Gustavo slap her arm.
“Don’t judge her!” he reprimands.
“You better believe I will fucking judge her,” she retorts.
“We spent most of last year picking up the pieces after Cole
broke your fucking heart, Hailey. Didn’t we?”
I sigh, still smiling slightly. “Yes…” I pause. “But…”
“No!” She rolls her eyes and falls back down against the
headboard in exasperation. “I can’t believe this. I should
have known. You’re addicted! You living with him for the
summer is like locking an alcoholic up in a bar and just
saying, don’t drink anything. I should have known this was
going to happen. I did know, on some level. I can’t say I’m
surprised.”
“What’s his dick like?” asks Gustavo, ignoring her. Sasha
kicks his ankle.
 “I’ve already told you a hundred times,” I deadpan,
making Gustavo crack a wide grin.
“Okay, I know,” he admits. “But just tell me again about
that long, thick, uncut cock. I just want...“ he waves a hand
through the air, “…the mental image.”
“No,” says Sasha again. “No. The least you can do,
Hailey—the least—is save anything you have to say about
this for the podcast. If you’re going to destroy another year
for both of us, then please do it in a way we can monetize!”
“Monetize?” I laugh. “Since when is our podcast making
any money?”
Gustavo and Sasha exchange grins.
“What?” I frown, not getting it.
“Okay, well!” Sasha clasps two hands together, making
her beaded bracelets jingle. “In better news, our last
episode, The Threesome, got over six thousand downloads!”
My eyebrows jump up. “Six thousand?” We’d been
ecstatic only a couple of months ago when we’d reached
one thousand.
“Yup! And Gustavo says it’s time to get a sponsor.”
I turn curious eyes to Gustavo. Tall and lean, with jet-
black hair, sharp features, and beautiful dark brown eyes,
our second best friend is a personal shopper and firmly
entrenched in the fashion world. He’s no business man, and
not particularly good with money, either.
“What’s your advice?” I quip. “Get a sugar daddy?”
His eyes dance with delight. “Yes! Sort of. You know that
guy Demetri I’ve been dating?”
“Potato dick or mushroom dick?”
“Potato dick.”
I nod solemnly.
“Well, he’s a podcast producer. We were talking about his
job, and I literally started taking notes for you. There are
actually so many ways you can make money at this.”
“Wow,” I say, rolling my head back up to the ceiling.
“This might sound dumb, but I’ve actually never even
considered that.”
“That’s because you’re rich,” says Gustavo lightly. “But
your girl Sasha could use the cash.”
Sasha shakes her head. “I just want to be an influencer.”
“Influencers make money, you dopes,” says Gustavo.
“Oh my God, I have so much to teach you.”

By the time we’re ready to start our episode—with Gustavo

randomly sitting in as a special guest just because he’s
there—we have a rough, handwritten plan sketched out.
I eye the list as Sasha sets up our mikes and starts
recording.
“Sponsor broker,” it says at the top. Then “Patreon
account,” and below that: “More of Hailey’s love life.”
There’s no doubt about it, the more I share about my
real-life romance escapades, the more our listenership
grows.
And the idea that we could make money at this… It
changes everything.
I know that Greta’s going to flip her lid when I tell her
about going to college and moving in with Sasha. But the
thing I really fear is that she might say no. As the person
who pays for everything in my life, she has the power.
Unless Sasha and I have our own money. Then we could
do anything we liked.
Sasha hits the play button on her computer, and “What’s
new in Hailey’s love life?” booms out, making Gustavo
laugh. I steel myself to start speaking—like it or not, my
honesty is a main draw of our podcast. This is for Sasha and
I.
“I’m in love with two men,” I start. “And I can use all the
advice I can get.”

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Xander

COLE IS A river-runs-deep kind of guy. Usually angry or

combative, there’s always more going on below the surface
than people see. In fact, I think there’s so much going on
that he struggles more than most to keep his feelings
contained. The intensity of that struggle for control is part of
what makes up his charisma—and Cole is very charismatic.
It’s the main reason he gets away with so much shit.
I’m a little bit taller, and I know I’m not a bad-looking
guy, but girls fall for Cole differently than they do for me.
They become obsessed. They get pulled into his gravity, and
then they behave in ways they never would otherwise. The
most popular and poised girls become desperate and clingy.
Girls like Ariel Malek, whom I happen to know has been
texting Cole almost daily, and whom he’s ignoring.
Maybe that’s what’s happening to me, too, now that
we’ve really had sex, and all I can think about is doing it
again.
Hailey is out back with her friends, and Cole and I are
sitting side by side on the couch, watching TV. There’s a
movie theatre downstairs, where Cole and I used to spend a
lot of time. But with the house to ourselves, we’ve all
started spending most of our time in the living room. It’s
closer to the kitchen.
I’m vividly aware of Cole’s thigh beside mine, only inches
away. He’s wearing red shorts, short enough that I can see
the sharp lines and curves of his muscular thighs, and my
eye keeps getting drawn to his skin, to the bulk of his
quads. I want to reach my hand over to his crotch and cup
the warm weight of it just to feel him—and, I guess, to start
something between us. But it’s Cole who usually does the
initiating. It’s Cole who always gets to decide what we do,
Cole who will decide if we ever fuck again.
I lock my eyes onto the TV, trying to ignore the whisper
of arousal that’s creeping up my spine, when Cole breaks
the silence.
“Why did you kiss me that first time?” he asks, turning in
his seat so that his back is against the arm of the couch and
he’s facing me. “At school? I mean, when did you start
wanting, you know…to do more?”
The credits are running on our show, the countdown to
the next episode rolling in the corner. I lean forward, elbows
on my knees, and then turn my head slowly towards Cole as
I weigh my response.
“It had been a while,” I answer honestly. “I started to get,
like, more interested in, uh…gay stuff, I guess, because it
seemed sort of…hot. I didn’t know if you wanted to try more
stuff, too.”
I’m choking on my words, unable to articulate the real
depths of my interest—how much I wanted to know what it
would feel like to have a man take me, how it was
everything I hoped and more. But Cole just nods,
thoughtfully.
“Yeah,” he admits after a moment. “It’s hot.”
The slow burn at the base of my spine starts to pulse.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” A light dances in his eyes, and I let a smile play
on my lips, holding his gaze.
He glances back towards the kitchen, listening for any
sound of Hailey and her friends, and then moves towards
me, closing the distance between us. I watch him,
unmoving, as he lifts a strong hand to the back of my neck
and then pulls me forward, locking his lips on mine.
His mouth and smell are distinctive, so unmistakably
Cole. The rush of arousal that comes over me at his touch
makes my skin prickle, and my cock strains against my
shorts.
I can barely remember a time when I wasn’t attracted to
Cole. His intense blue eyes, his strong, athletic body…his
thick, fat cock. I fantasized about kissing him, about being
fucked by him, for much longer than he’d ever guess. I’m
aroused by men fucking in porn—hell, even in my fantasies
—yet I can’t imagine being with any man other than Cole.
 I’m still as attracted to women as ever. It confuses me,
but there isn’t a side I can choose. I want to fuck Cole, and
I’m attracted to men, and I’m attracted to women.
Women like Hailey. After years of trying to ignore my own
attraction to her, hooking up with her has changed
everything between us. I’ve become besotted with her like
it’s an addiction.
The confusing part is that I’m besotted by her
stepbrother, too.
Cole pulls away from me and reaches for the hem of his
t-shirt, pulling it over his head and throwing it on the floor,
and I smile and take his lead and do the same. When he
leans towards me, I back down onto the couch and he lays
on top of me, kissing me again and grinding his erection
against the bulge in my shorts. The feel of his skin against
mine heightens my awareness of his body, and the feeling
of our cocks rubbing together has got me on the edge of
self-control.
“I want to fuck you again,” whispers Cole in my ear, and
a shiver goes through my whole body.
“Should we go upstairs?” I ask.
“I guess so.” He smiles against my mouth and our eyes
meet—close in a way that’s new and exciting. In all the
years that we’ve been jerking each other off, even sucking
each other off, we’ve never been close like this. There’s
something different about being mouth to mouth and nose
to nose. Cole’s eyes are beautiful—a multi-faceted crystal
blue that, up close, radiate with a warmth he seldom lets
people see. It feels incredible to be this close to him.
Sexually exciting, but emotional, too. When we look at each
other like this, it feels like love.
The clicking sound of the front door closing and the tap
of hard-soled shoes walking over the tiled front hallway
draws both of our attention. Cole looks up, and I wonder
why anyone would have come around to the front door, or
even put on shoes.
 But the voice that speaks isn’t Hailey or either of her
friends. It’s an authoritative baritone.
“Cole?”
“Dad!” Cole scrambles backwards off of me, and I sit up,
my heart pounding with fear. I look towards the doorway to
see Barry frowning deeply. Behind him is a slender woman
with very long, straight hair, whom I’ve never met before.
Her eyes are averted, and she looks deeply uncomfortable.
Barry looks like he might kill us.
“Let’s talk in the kitchen, son,” he bites out in a low,
terse voice. I shrink against the back of the couch, feeling
exposed with my shirt off, although, since the Vile-Smiths
have a pool, Barry has seen me shirtless a hundred times.
Cole stands up, adopting a tall, defiant stance. He’s not
trying to hide away from his father, like I am. “Anything you
have to say to me you can say in front of Xan,” he says.
Barry exhales, while behind him, the thin woman shifts
uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “I should go wait
in the car,” she says to Barry.
“No,” he says to her, with a sharp turn of his head. He’s
the picture of his son with this stubborn set to his jaw. “You
don’t have to leave. Cole,” he turns back to face him, “this
is Pauline. Pauline, this is my son, Cole, and his, er, friend.”
It doesn’t escape me that he doesn’t use my name, but I
don’t mind. I’d rather be as removed from this whole
situation as possible. Nonetheless, I give a weak wave as
she darts her eyes towards me.
Cole crosses his arms over his chest and says nothing.
“I think you’d better pack a bag,” Barry continues, one
eyebrow lifting as he stares Cole down. “Party’s over.
Xander, son, why don’t you go up to your room and get
dressed?”
I stand up, grateful for the excuse to leave the room, but
now Cole is the picture of his father as he snaps, “No.
Xander isn’t going anywhere. And I’m not going anywhere
with you, either.”
 I freeze, not wanting to leave my friend if he needs me
there, and Barry’s lips get thin and his jaw gets tight. He
looks like he’s about to snap.
“I’m going to wait in the car,” says his girlfriend, more
assertively this time, and she turns and walks out.
He doesn’t acknowledge her. He keeps his eyes locked on
Cole, a dark, furious expression on his face.
“You seem to be confused about who has the power here,
son,” he growls. “This is not your house. You don’t pay the
mortgage, you don’t pay any rent, you don’t have any
rights. Your car is not your car—it’s my car. Your credit cards
are not your credit cards—“
Cole interrupts him with a raised voice. “None of that shit
is yours, either, Barry! Everything we have belongs to your
rich wife, remember?” He takes a menacing step towards
Barry, who flinches slightly before flexing his jaw and
scowling.
“Do not test me,” he roars. “I can take everything away
from you.”
“Fuck you!” Cole storms past him, out the front door,
leaving me standing there blinking at Barry.
He shoots me an accusing look, as if this is all my fault,
and turns to follow Cole out the door.

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Hailey

XANDER AND I sit on my bed, facing each other, in silence.

Our legs are crossed, and I’m picking at my bedspread,
wondering if I was ever the one who chose this blue and
pink quilt. It’s not to my taste, but I’ve never really noticed
it before.
From downstairs, we can hear the muted voices of Barry
and his girlfriend talking.
It all feels like a nightmare. Everything had been so
perfect, and it had all been torn down in an instant. Now
Xander and I are afraid to speak, hiding out in my room and
hoping we don’t get caught.
Barry had stormed through the backyard in a fury,
terrifying Sasha and Gustavo and I when he appeared on
the pool deck, yelling that the “party was over,” and that
Sasha and Gustavo had to go home. It was uncomfortable
and embarrassing to watch my friends scrambling under his
flashing eyes, grabbing their towels and belongings and
then hurrying into the house to get dressed and leave. Barry
marched me back, letting me know that our summer of
having the house to ourselves was over and that things
were going change around here, and all I could think was,
You’re the one who left us alone.
Meeting his girlfriend was uniquely uncomfortable.
“This is Greta’s daughter, Hailey,” he’d said to a pale
brunette who just looked back at me wide-eyed and
unsmiling.
Neither of us said anything.
I turned to Barry. “Where are Cole and Xander?” I’d
asked, with a strange tremor of fear as if something bad
might have happened to them. The whole experience was
so surreal it was bending my sense of reality.
“Xander is in his room,” said Barry. “Where I suggest you
go, too. Cole,” he inhaled sharply, “has run off.” He lifted a
cell phone off the counter and waved it at me. “He doesn’t
have his phone, though, so I expect him back shortly.
Tomorrow we can all talk about how things are going to
change around here.”
I pressed my lips together, giving an uncomfortable
smile, and nodded before heading for the stairs, more than
happy to excuse myself from Barry and his weird girlfriend.
Not long afterwards, Xander had come through the
bathroom that connects Cole’s and my room and we’d sat
down together in stunned silence.
“He left his phone in the kitchen,” I say to him, and
Xander sighs.
“At least he’s in his car.”
We keep our keys on a tray by the front door in case
anyone needs to move one of the cars, so Cole would have
grabbed his on the way out. Xander has explained to me
that Cole is only wearing a pair of shorts—and what was
happening when Barry walked in.
I can’t help but wonder if the thing Barry is really livid
about is the fact that his son was fooling around with a guy.
Barry has old-fashioned values. That, and he’s always been
disapproving of anything Cole does.
As if he can tell what I’m thinking about, Xander says,
“Barry knows about you and Cole.”
My head snaps up. “What?”
He sighs again, giving me an apologetic look. “He said
something about it to Cole at lunch. He said your mother
doesn’t know, though.”
“Fuck.” My gaze goes distant as I think about the
implications of this. I wonder how much Barry knows, and
how he could possibly know anything, and shame creeps up
my spine. We’ve always been a family, Greta, Barry, Cole,
and I. Even though we’re not related, to our parents, Cole
and I are siblings. For them to know what we’ve done…it’s
deeply shameful.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
Xander squeezes my knee and seeks out my eyes with
his. “Fuck ‘em,” he says with a half-smile, and it doesn’t
solve anything, but somehow it makes me feel better.
What’s done is done, anyway. Why should Greta and
Barry be the final word on what’s normal or right?
 We continue to sit like that for a long while, until my back
gets tired and I stretch out beside Xander and lie down. He
follows my lead and lies down too, slipping his arm under
my head. I rest my cheek on his chest, breathing in his
comforting smell, and I must drift off, because when I wake
up later I feel disoriented and confused.
There’s a waft of fresh air, and Xander stirs underneath
me. I peel my eyes open and yawn as Xander slides his arm
out from under me and sits up.
“Cole,” he whispers.
“Yeah, man,” comes my stepbrother’s voice. I lift myself
up on my elbows to see him leaning against my desk by the
open window. He looks preppy in his red shorts and a polo
shirt I’ve never seen before, and the sight of him is a relief.
He runs fingers through his thick, dark hair, mussing it up as
he turns his eyes from Xander to me.
“What the fuck is going on?” I ask.
“Barry is a fucking asshole.” He pushes himself off the
desk and walks over to the bed, climbing in on the other
side of me. Lying down on his back, he stares up at the
ceiling while Xander and I both turn to him. “It’s fucked up.”
“But what are you going to do?” I lower my head to the
pillow and rest my cheek in my hand. Xander moves up
behind me, pressing his front against my backside and
propping himself up above my head. I can feel his breath on
my ear.
“I’m fucking leaving,” says Cole emphatically, turning
blazing blue eyes to me. “He’s such a fucking pig. He told
me he was going to take everything away from me—
because why? Because I’m not the son he wanted? Fuck
that guy. And then he has the fucking balls to bring his
girlfriend here? He brings his fucking girlfriend here, to your
mom’s house, and I’m the asshole? Fuck that. I came to get
my stuff and I’m out of here.”
A cold, hollow feeling settles through me. As if he can
sense it, Xander rests a hand on my ribs, and I’m grateful
for his warmth through my t-shirt.
“But where are you going to go?” My voice sounds
empty.
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “Maybe back to
Kingston? I can see if I can rent a dorm for the summer.”
I nod, biting my lip. Cole and Xander have an apartment
rented for September, so I guess he’s trying to think of a
way to get by until then. But the idea of Cole leaving guts
me.
“I think you should talk to Barry,” I say quietly, knowing
it’s a futile point. Unsurprisingly, Cole frowns.
“You didn’t see him, Hails. It’s not something we can talk
about. I’m not going to bend to his fucking rules. It’s
bullshit.”
Xander lifts his hand off my side and reaches for Cole’s
shoulder, rubbing it in sympathy, and Cole lifts his eyes to
him with a look of gratitude. It’s an intimate look, and, as so
often happens when I catch these unguarded moments
between the two of them, it fills me with warmth.
Both emotionally, and down below.
Electricity sparks over my skin, and I become acutely
aware of how close the three of us are—Xander pressed up
against my back and Cole close enough that I can feel his
breath.
Cole lowers his gaze to me, and the heat in it takes me
aback. It’s so intense that it immediately shifts the energy
between us, and as I feel the unmistakeable swell of
Xander’s cock against my ass, I know that he feels it as well.
There’s something a little slower and heavier between us
tonight, though, and when Cole gives a soft sigh and
reaches out to tuck a lock of hair behind my ear, it feels
tender and romantic.
“I don’t want us to be apart,” I say, the words tumbling
out of my mouth before I have time to think them through.
In an instant, I throw away every ambition I had to make
Cole think I don’t care about him or can’t be hurt by him.
We’re past that.
But it’s not just about Cole and I. It’s the balance
between Cole and Xander and I that I don’t want to be
without. I want all three of us to be together, exactly as
close as we are right now.
“I know,” says Cole, in a low voice, and he leans forward
and kisses me.
As his lips touch mine, a responding buzz courses
through me, making the hairs on my arms stand on end. His
kiss is long and slow and deep. It’s this side of Cole I’ve
missed most of all—the side of him that hints at the real,
emotional depths underneath—and sensing it in his kiss has
my heart beating hard, my breath speeding up. He trails a
hand down the side of my body, under the waistband of my
shorts, and grips the bare skin of my hip, pulling himself
closer to me until I can feel his stiffening cock against the
front of my shorts.
Behind me, Xander lifts my hair and starts brushing
kisses over my neck and shoulder, his own erection starting
to push against my ass in a way that’s both exciting and
familiar.
Heat spreads through me at the feel of both of their
mouths, at having all of their attention focused on me.
Xander’s feathery kisses make goosebumps spread over my
skin while Cole’s kiss becomes increasingly passionate.
Feeling their hands and mouths on me is a relief after the
stress of the day, and soon they’re both pressed tight on
either side of me, the three of us moving in rhythm as we
touch and kiss and rub against one another.
Cole shimmies his other hand under my side, and, with
both hands, he starts pulling my shorts and underwear
down my legs. Taking his cue, Xander lifts his mouth from
my shoulder and reaches under my t-shirt to unhook my
bra, and I raise my hands above my head as he pulls both
off of me.
 Cole throws my shorts and underwear on the floor as well
and then both boys sit up and pull off their shirts and shorts,
too. When we lie back down together, the touch of their skin
on either side of me shoots a hot current through me.
Cole finds my mouth again as Xander grips my hip and
starts rubbing his erection against the crack of my ass.
Cole’s hand cups my mound, his fingers slipping between
my legs and I moan against his mouth as he slides one
finger over my clit.
I’m already wet against his forefinger as he glides it back
and forth against the intensely sensitive point of my
pleasure, and he smiles against my mouth as I start
moaning small breathless cries, heat coiling up inside of me.
Xander lifts his hand off my hip and uses it to position his
cock between my legs, sliding his shaft along the length of
my pussy, and I can feel his precum moisten my inner thigh,
slicking his way.
The pressure building in me is like a wave, fast and
powerful, and I’m just riding it, already so far gone from the
touch of Cole’s fingers on my clit and the feel of both boys’
bodies against mine that I know it’s only seconds before I
come. I wouldn’t be able to stop it now. I want to stay on the
edge forever, but when I see Cole’s gaze shift, and then
Cole and Xander both lean over my shoulder to kiss deeply
with eyes closed, it’s so exquisitely erotic I shatter. I suck in
a deep gasp, making an oh sound, as my pussy clenches
and waves of glorious release ripple outwards across my
whole body.
Cole groans as I shiver and quake against his hand, and
Xander chuckles, making his body vibrate against mine.
“So fucking hot, Hailey,” he says, grinding his cock
further in between my thighs until he meets Cole’s fingers.
Cole kisses my cheek and whispers in my ear, even though
we’re all so close Xander can hear every word.
“I want to watch Xander fuck you.”
 Oh God. His words, his closeness… I’m still quivering with
my orgasm but already my pussy is throbbing for more.
“Yes,” I whisper back. Xander makes a low noise in his
throat as I feel his length pulse between my legs. He draws
himself back to position his cock at my entrance, and then
he pushes himself deep inside of me.
I cry out involuntarily as his thick shaft stretches me
open, and as he starts moving back and forth he’s rubbing
right against the exquisitely pleasurable spot inside of me.
“Shh,” says Cole with a wide smile. “We can’t get caught,
sister.” He leans forward and closes his mouth over mine,
kissing me deeply while his friend fucks me from behind.
In an instant, I’m coming again, whimpering into Cole’s
mouth as Xander groans, driving into me harder and
deeper, so that the fluttering pulsations of my orgasm never
seem to stop. Cole raises his head again to kiss Xander over
my shoulder and this time I can feel the effect it has on
Xander as he seems to somehow grow even bigger inside of
me.
When Xander comes, it’s sudden and powerful, and he
lets out a cry as he slams into me. I immediately realize he’s
come inside of me as he gives a few more slow, wet thrusts.
“Fuck,” he whispers. Cole chuckles and rolls onto his
back, tucking his hands behind his head.
I turn my head over my shoulder to look at Xander, who’s
flushed, his straight dark hair hanging in his eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I came inside of you.”
It’s okay, I think, I’m on the pill. It’s probably fine. But
before I can even say anything, Cole turns his eyes to me.
“You’re still on the pill, right, Hailey?”
I hesitate for a minute. There’s more to it than that.
There are STIs to consider, and I’m sure Xander and Cole
haven’t been celibate all year, but Xander looks so worried, I
just answer, “Yes, I am.”
“So it’s fine.”
I shoot Cole a look and he laughs.
 “You’re so uptight, Hailey,” he says, eyes dancing with
delight. I’m just about ready to give him a lecture about
what he does and doesn’t get to decide about my body
when he pushes me onto my back and raises himself over
me.
Holding himself up on his hands, he looks down at me
with a combination of mischief and love and against my
better judgment—way against it—I melt. I love the intimate
way he looks at me, possessive, bossy, and entirely present.
He knows just how to win me over.
“Relax,” he says in a quieter voice. “We’ve been careful.
Besides,” he lowers his hips to grind the base of his erection
against my wet heat, “it makes me so hot to think of your
pussy being full of cum.”
He shoots Xander a look, and I turn my head to see
Xander collapsed on his side beside us, smiling dopily.
“Sorry, Hails,” he says again.
“It’s fine,” I say, and mean it. I appreciate that he has
better manners than Cole.
Cole, meanwhile, tilts his hips so I can feel the head of
his cock pushing against my hole. “I need to fuck you with
Xan’s cum inside you. I need to feel how fucking wet it is.”
He slides his cock into me, making me gasp.
Cole’s thick, heavy girth feels better than ever, his
entrance eased by the cum I can feel slipping out of me,
and the fact that I will have some part of both of them
inside me feels like something special. I want it, this mark of
their ownership.
His eyes get hooded right away, his gaze growing
unfocused as he pounds into me. “You’re going to be so full
of cum,” he groans. “So fucking full of cum.” His eyebrows
fold, his expression getting that worried and distant look
that tells me he’s close, and out of nowhere, it seems,
another orgasm suddenly rocks through me. I gasp as my
pussy squeezes and shudders and Cole loses it.
 “Oh fuck,” he cries, pumping his cock into me with
sudden speed until, with one final thrust, he slams against
me and grunts, shuddering as he comes. He stays that way
for a full minute, holding himself inside until a final tremor
goes through him and he collapses on top of me. His cock
softens, until it slides out on a wave of fluid, and he rolls
onto his side.
“Oh my God,” I breathe, staring up at the ceiling. Xander
shimmies an arm under my neck and I turn onto my side
into the crook of his shoulder, trying to catch my breath.
Cole scoots up behind me on the other side, laying an
arm over top of me and resting his hand on Xander’s belly.
For a while, we just breathe, and nothing else that
happened today matters. I give a deep, contented sigh as I
nuzzle into Xander’s shoulder, and eventually I let myself
close my eyes.
It’s a time of tumult and upheaval in our family and in
our lives—even in my future, as I prepare to move to a new
town and go to a new school—yet I have never felt so safe
and content in my entire life as I do in this moment between
two pairs of strong male arms.

OceanofPDF.com
Hailey

WHEN I WAKE up in the morning, Cole is gone. I turn over

onto my back, Xander’s arm still under my neck, and feel
disappointment settle through me.
 I wanted to wake up between them both. Barry be
damned. I wanted to know that I had been held by Cole all
night, as well as Xander. But I don’t even know how long he
stayed for. I don’t even know where he’s gone.
I flutter my eyes, getting used to the light and breathing
in the warm scent of Xander’s skin, until I finally shake him
awake and tell him to go sleep in Cole’s room, in case Barry
knocks on our doors. I wait until he’s staggered groggily
through the interconnected bathroom before I get up and
have a shower, checking around the room on the way for
any sign of Cole. There’s no note from him on my desk, no
text message from him on my phone. I wonder if he even
had the wherewithal to locate his phone from wherever
Barry’s hidden it. It’s only eight o’clock in the morning, and I
wonder where he’s gone. Is he sitting outside in his car? Is
he actually on his way back to Kingston?
The only message on my phone is from Sasha: We have
a sponsor!
I know I should be more excited about this news, but it
seems there’s no room in my thoughts right now for
anything beyond Cole’s absence and the events of last
night. I put down the phone without responding, without
fully letting the meaning of the message sink in.
Being with Cole and Xander in that way was beyond
anything I could ever imagine, any sexual fantasy I’ve ever
had. Despite the anxiety of what’s happening to our family I
give a little contented sigh, feeling my heartbeat pick up. I
tie my wet hair into a knot and slip on a tank top and jeans,
figuring I might as well head downstairs and get seeing
Barry out of the way for the day.

I stumble to a halt as I walk into the kitchen. Seated at the

kitchen island, my mother is bent over her phone, squinting
at the screen that’s becoming too small for her to see. Her
thick blonde hair is pulled back into a tidy ponytail and she’s
dressed in a white sleeveless shirt and matching linen
pants. She looks effortlessly elegant, as always, but when
she lifts her eyes up to me, she looks tired.
“Oh hi, sweetie,” she says with a smile.
“Hey, Mom.”
She lifts up her phone to indicate it. “They’re saying I’m
having an affair with Ryan Reynolds,” she says with an eye
roll. “TMZ. Unbelievable. As if I even have the time to have
all these affairs they think I’m having!”
The word affair makes me nervous, and I wonder where
Barry is—or more to the point, where Barry and his weird
girlfriend are. I wonder if my mom knows about her.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. “I thought you were
gone all summer.”
She puts down the phone and holds her arms open,
calling me in for a hug. I smile sheepishly and walk towards
her, letting her enfold me in her arms without even getting
up from her stool. She smells good—a fresh, expensive
smell.
“Well, I got a call from Barry,” she says into my hair. “So I
thought I better pop home for a couple of days.” She pulls
back from the hug, wrapping hands around my upper arms,
and gives me a meaningful look that makes me feel a little
guilty. My mom never gets mad at us, and suddenly I realize
I’ve missed her.
“So what happened here?” she asks with a raised
eyebrow. “You guys had a party, huh?”
“It was Cole’s idea,” I say quietly. How quickly the old
patterns come back into play. Last night I was in love with
Cole, today he’s my stepbrother I’m throwing under the bus
to protect myself.
“Mm-hm,” she says through closed lips. Her blue eyes
are piercing as they search mine, and I drop my gaze to the
floor. It always feels like my mother can read my thoughts
through my expression. “And…anything else going on you
want to tell me about? Barry is awfully worried about you
and Cole and Xander spending so much time together.”
 Anxiety spikes through me as I stare at my mother’s
painted toenails and gold sandals, frantically wondering how
much she knows. Fleetingly, I wonder if she can sense my
fear, maybe detect the goosebumps going over my skin, or
smell it, like a dog.
Finally I lift my eyes to her. “No,” I say, as bravely as I
can manage. “Why?”
The look she’s giving me is terrifyingly insightful. For a
second she doesn’t say anything, and then something shifts
and her expression relaxes. She’s decided to change gears.
“Well, there’s clearly been a lot of drinking.” She
indicates a collection of empty wine bottles and beer cans
neatly stacked on the kitchen counter. At least one of the
wine bottles was Barry’s, but I don’t dare point it out. “We
just want to make sure you guys are making good choices,
that’s all.”
“We’re fine,” I say warily. I wonder why she’s really back.
Has she come for a couple of days only to passively-
aggressively suggest I’m not living up to expectations and
then go back to filming? But then the other shoe drops.
“Well…how would you like to spend the rest of the
summer in Greece?” she asks, giving me a proud smile that
tells me she thinks I will love it.
I’m almost too shocked to answer. “With you?” I ask.
Dumb question. I just need to buy time.
“Of course with me!” She laughs. “Would that be so
terrible? A summer with your mom?”
Actually…yes.
The prospect of leaving Xander and Cole is heart
wrenching, not to mention that a summer in Greece with
Greta actually means a summer in Greece completely on my
own. There’ll be the occasional party to go to, dressed up
and following my mom from room to room as she acts like
every single person there is her best friend, and then tells
me everything she hates about them on the way home. The
rest of the time I’ll be in the hotel room alone, watching TV,
or maybe going for walks with someone who works for her
or the film company—some assistant who has been paid to
walk the movie star’s daughter around.
I know exactly what it’s like because I’ve done it before.
Being whisked away to Greece for the rest of the summer
isn’t an opportunity, it’s a punishment—for whatever it is
exactly that Greta and Barry think we’ve done.
Xander’s words from last night come to mind, Barry
knows about you and Cole…your mother doesn’t know.
Could he have told her? After walking in on Cole and Xander
making out shirtless on the couch, could Barry have put the
whole picture together and told Greta?
“I can’t go to Greece,” I say, shaking my head. “You know
what that’s like for me. I just want to stay here.”
“I don’t think it’s such a great idea for you to stay here,”
Greta says in a tight voice.
“Why?”
“Things are complicated right now, honey. Barry and I are
going through something very difficult, and we think it
would be best for everyone to get some time alone to think.
Cole’s going to go spend the summer with Barry in his new
apartment.”
“What?” I’m dumbfounded. “What are you talking about?
And what about Xander? Where’s he supposed to go? Are
you planning on moving Cole and I out of here and then just
leaving Xander alone in our house all summer?”
“No. We’re going to fly Xander home to France for the
summer.”
“What? This is nuts! France isn’t his home!”
“It’s where his family lives, so yes, it is his home.”
“This is bullshit!” I cry, summoning Cole’s energy, and
Greta’s eyes widen in shock.
“Don’t you talk to me like that,” she snaps, and I close
my mouth and just blink. I think I shocked myself.
For a moment my mother’s eyes flash angrily, and then
she takes a breath and composes herself. She turns her
phone face down on the kitchen counter and laces her
fingers together. “What about moving back to Waterloo for
the summer, then? We were thinking of renting you an
apartment this year anyway. We could find something a bit
early and then you’d have extra time in the summer to
settle in and do a little decorating.”
My mind starts racing so fast, I can’t think of a thing to
say. This is a lot for eight o’clock in the morning. I take a
deep breath and pull out a stool, sitting across the island
from my mother. I lean on my elbows and stretch my arms
out, trying to loosen the tension rippling across my
shoulders.
“About that,” I stammer. “I’m not going back to
Waterloo.”

“So how did she take it?” asks Sasha later that afternoon.
I’m FaceTiming her in my room, where I’m hiding out from
my mother and Barry. Sasha’s at the beach. The sun is so
bright it whitewashes the sand behind her, making it look
like she’s calling me from a white, featureless nowhere. Like
she’s calling from Heaven. Gustavo, who’s supposed to be
with her, went to go to the bathroom an hour ago, she
informs me, and we exchange a knowing smirk. Most likely
he’s in the bushes with some new friend he met along the
way.
I take a deep breath, trying to relax, and blow it out.
“Well…not well.” Sasha gives me a look and then we both
laugh bitterly. Greta was never going to take the news of me
leaving my respectable university to transfer to a
community college well, but somehow it went even worse
than I expected.
 Cole and I are completely dependent on our parents for
money—which basically means just Greta, since Barry no
longer works. We’ve never had jobs, and have always been
told we couldn’t get jobs, because we were recognizable
and because we needed the time to invest in other things,
like our studies and extracurricular activities. The real
reason is because it would appear gauche and the paparazzi
would hound our workplaces, obsessed with the news of
Greta Vile’s daughter and stepson being forced to work to
earn their own money. But because of that, we’re powerless
to our parents.
“Absolutely not,” Greta had said when I told her I’d
gotten accepted into the college with Sasha, and about my
interest in pursuing broadcast. “Not on my dime.”
“She says she won’t pay for it,” I tell Sasha, all the
despair I’ve been trying to keep at bay rising like a wave in
my chest. If Greta won’t pay my tuition and rent, there’s no
way I can go. With Greta’s income, Cole and I don’t qualify
for student loans.
“So you’ll pay for it yourself,” says my friend easily.
“With what? What kind of job can I get with no
experience, in a small town? Besides, I wouldn’t be able to
cover rent and tuition on minimum wage even if I worked
full-time!” My voice rises at the end of my sentence, a
keening note of hopelessness.
But Sasha just smiles. “With the job you already have,
dummy. As a podcaster.”
Too late, I remember her text about the sponsorship she
secured. I haven’t even mentioned it once on this phone
call, too eager to lean on Sasha for support over the return
of our parents, Cole’s disappearance, and Greta blocking me
from attending college.
“Oh my God, sorry,” I say, shrinking. I’m a terrible friend.
“That is amazing news about the sponsorship. I’m so sorry I
haven’t even brought it up yet. I’ve been so wrapped up in
my own stuff. How much is it for?”
 She smiles, and holds her hair back off her face against
the wind. “Forty dollars per thousand downloads,” she says
proudly.
I smile weakly. At best that could be about two hundred
dollars a week, I figure. But still it’s better than nothing.
“That’s great,” I manage.
She continues to smile, eyes slanting with mysterious
delight. “Times three,” she adds. “I got another confirmation
this morning and Gustavo closed a deal with one of Joe
Rogan’s sponsors.”
“Oh! Wow.” I can’t help but lift my eyebrows in surprise.
That sounds like a lot. For our little podcast?
“And…” she continues, full-on grinning now. “Our last
episode, In Love Times Three, had thirty-two thousand
downloads—and counting.”
“Wait…what?”
I have to stand up from my desk as the shock of her
news sinks in, and I walk in a small circle before sitting back
down in front of my propped-up phone, pressing my palms
to my forehead and digging my fingers into my hair.
On my video screen, Sasha is smiling broadly, all of her
teeth showing.
“Are you…” I stammer. “Thirty-two thousand…are you
kidding me?”
“Nope.” She shakes her head, swinging that proud grin
from side to side. “This story about you being in love with
both Cole and Xander, and them maybe being in love with
each other, too? People are going nuts for it. So many
TikTokers are talking about Smutty Books and Spicy Reads
right now.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“Believe it, sister. I can’t believe you didn’t suspect
something was up. Haven’t you checked our social media
lately?”
I shake my head, struck dumb. Thirty-two thousand
downloads, times forty dollars per thousand, times three…
That’s just shy of four thousand dollars a week. If we can
continue to sustain that number of downloads, Sasha and I
will be earning more than enough to pay for both of our
tuition costs, as well as our rent.
The feeling is something I’ve never felt before.
Something light and optimistic, like a balloon rising in my
chest.
It’s freedom.
I’ve had a lot of things in my life, a lot of privilege. But
one thing I’ve never had is freedom.
Cole has always been the one who got to speak his mind
and set his own rules, but I’ve always been the good girl.
The pretty, sweet one. The one who smiles nicely on the
step-and-repeat with my mother, avoids controversy, and
always observes proper etiquette. In exchange, I’ve been
given the life my mother wants for me. I’ve never been able
to forge my own path.
Until now.
There’s a blur of movement behind Sasha and she turns
her head, and suddenly Gustavo is squeezing himself into
the camera beside Sasha.
“Hey, girl!” he calls.
“Hi!” I wave, smiling and still stunned.
“Ew, your breath smells like cum,” says Sasha with a
laugh, pushing his shoulder.
He pushes her back. “You’re such a bitch,” he exclaims,
grinning.
“Okay, we’re going to go!” says Sasha. “Let that sink in.
Check out our socials! Post something for chrissakes! And
start lining up those rent cheques you’re gonna owe me.”
They wave, and I wave back without touching my phone. I
just stare at the screen as the FaceTime call ends.
I can’t believe I’m going to be able to do what I want
after all. Going to college and living with Sasha, and all
under my own power?
 Belleville is about an hour from Kingston, where Cole and
Xander go to school. Living that close to them…with
everything between us the way it is right now?
Suddenly I have very, very high hopes for the school year
ahead.
I take a breath and shake my head to clear it, and then
pick up my phone, opening up my Instagram app.

OceanofPDF.com
Hailey

I HAVE NO appetite.
Sitting at the large dining room table across from Xander
is a stark contrast to the last time we sat here, drunk and
giggling—and me naked. This is more like a macabre
pantomime of Greta’s goodbye dinner before she flew to
Greece.
Greta sits in her usual spot by the door, flanked by her PR
agent Nicole and assistant Matt. Barry sits in his usual spot
at the far end, me in mine by the bar. Xander sits across me
by the window. The only person who’s missing is Cole.
I push a Brussels sprout across my plate and then look
over past the centrepiece at Xander. His food is untouched,
too. When I catch his glance, he widens his eyes slightly in
private communication, and I widen mine back.
This is all crazy.
“I’m surprised I haven’t heard from your brother yet,”
says Barry, brash and smug. “Can’t get far without a phone
these days, can you?”
He’s so proud of having Cole’s phone and it makes me
sick. I hate the way he directs his comments at me, as if I’m
going to congratulate him or join in.
“Won’t get far without his car insurance, either,” he adds
with a thinly suppressed grin, and I snap my eyes up to
Xander. Cole has no car insurance?
But Xander is looking at Barry. “Here’s hoping he doesn’t
get into an accident, then, sir,” he says smoothly, his
expression unreadable. “I guess you’re the one who would
have to pay for it if he has no insurance.”
Barry stares Xander down, his eyes getting glassy and
hard, and he speaks in a low, stern voice. “I wouldn’t be
bold right now if I were you, son.”
“What are you three even talking about?” Greta
interrupts. “Can we just take this seriously? Please? As a
family?”
At her end of the table, she’s in a huddle with Nicole and
Matt about the Ryan Reynolds rumour, and Cole couldn’t be
further from her mind. She seems completely oblivious to
the fact that her soon-to-be-ex-husband is sitting across
from her. I wonder if she even knows about Pauline.
 “You have to understand, I know Blake,” she says to Matt,
speaking as though he’s maybe forgotten some key piece of
information she expects him to retain. I’m sure my mother
has exchanged pleasantries with Blake Lively, the wife of
her co-star, but it’s not like they’re friends.
Pretending they are is fake. It’s theatre. And it’s what
Greta and Barry are best at. Pretending.
Greta pretends she’s a bigger star than she is, Barry
pretends to be a bigger man. And they both pretend to be
good parents. They pretend to love us as long as we stay in
line and act the right way. Cole is our rebel, but as long as
he doesn’t push the limits too much, he’s affectionately
tolerated. I’m the good girl who can be relied upon to play
her role.
But it’s all fake.
And something wild and free beats in my heart, for
maybe the first time in my life.
I don’t have to participate in this, I think. I don’t have to
sit through this dinner. I don’t have to pretend like things
are okay.
I don’t have to get an English degree, and I don’t have to
pretend like my brother isn’t missing because my stepfather
has driven him away.
And just when I think I might stand up and start a scene
—that I might be the Cole, for once—the prodigal son
himself walks into the dining room, swaggering and
implacable as usual.
He’s wearing the same red shorts and a different polo
shirt, dark hair mussed as always, and a slight shadow
forming over his jaw. There’s anger and determination in his
eyes.
“Oh, Cole!” exclaims Greta, as if she’s been worried sick.
She stands up and clasps her thin hands in front of her
throat, but she doesn’t step towards him or try to hug him.
From behind me, I hear Barry sniff before saying, “Cole,”
in a thin, imperious voice. “I knew we’d be seeing you
sooner than later.”
Cole ignores his father, only looking at Greta.
“I’ve come to get my stuff. Xan and I are going to head
out to Kingston tonight.”
He cocks his head at Xander, indicating the doorway.
There’s a strength to him that’s on full display. He’s
exuding power. His shadowed jaw is tight, fists clenched at
his side, and blue eyes blazing. When he shifts his eyes over
to me, I feel an immediate spark as if his gaze has
electricity in it.
It’s a look he’s given me a thousand times. A look that
means Cole has plans, that Cole wants to get his way. That
Cole won’t be swayed.
It’s a look that means trouble. That he’s going to pick on
me, or stand up for me.
In this case, I guess it’s the latter.
“You too, Hails,” he says with a nod of his chin. “Go pack
up and come with us.”
Xander stands up just as Greta hits the table with the
palm of her hand.
“For heaven’s sake, no!” she cries. She looks at Xander.
“Sit down, Xander. No one’s going anywhere.”
Xander freezes as Cole interrupts her. “Sorry, Greta,” he
says. “But at least two of us are definitely going
somewhere.” He arcs an eyebrow at Xander, cocking his
head to the side, and Xander presses his lips together as he
backs around my mom, looking apologetic but eager to
leave.
I can’t blame him. Awkwardly sitting through a summer
of these dinners is discouraging enough for me and this is
my family.
“C’mon, Hailey,” says Cole again. “I’ve got a place for
us.”
I hesitate only briefly. I’ve imagined this moment for a
long time. The moment where Cole reaches his hand out
towards me and says c’mon. We lock eyes, and something
sparks in his—a familiarity that was there all along.
Cole. The possessing, charismatic, and strangely loving
figure who’s been a fixture in my life for as long as I can
remember.
Of course I’m going to go with him and Xander.
I would always choose them.

Greta and Barry follow us up the stairs, leaving Nicole and

Matt behind to, no doubt, shoot each other looks about the
drama in the Vile-Smith household.
“Stop right there!” calls Barry, uselessly. No one turns
around. At the landing we scatter—Xander to the guest
room down the hall, Cole and I into the side-by-side
doorways that lead into our rooms. Before we open them,
we shoot each other a quick glance, and I can barely repress
the smile that’s threatening to break across my face as we
look away and step into our rooms.
It was always one of the greatest feelings in the world
when Cole and I united against our parents. We fought so
much growing up—Cole especially picked on me—but in the
moments when our parents were our shared enemy, I felt
incredibly close to him.
I step into my room ready to pack like I’m in one of those
old game shows where you have to buy as much as you can
as fast as you can in order to win the prize. Pulling my
suitcase out from under the bed, I load my laptop, mic set,
and headphones into it, and then I lift the whole stack of
paperbacks from my night table and tuck them in as well.
My to-be-read pile is probably ten or twelve books and
easily takes up half the suitcase. I’m turning towards my
closet when Greta opens the door.
“Hailey, stop!” she says indignantly, dramatically
throwing her hands up in the air. “What is going on here?”
Through the bathroom, I can hear Barry and Cole’s voices
both rising. Clearly the parents have divided and conquered.
 I grab handfuls of t-shirts and underwear and turn around
to face her. “Mom! Don’t play dumb. You’re trying to cut me
off to force me to do what you want me to do. Barry’s trying
to cut Cole off to force him to do what he wants him to do.
You think you can control us with your money. That your
money entitles you to tell us who we are.” I dump the
clothing in the suitcase, now full, and zip it up. “Can you
really say you’re surprised that it’s driving us both away?”
I pat the ground under my bed looking for the other
suitcase I thought was there but only find a reusable vinyl
shopping bag. It will do. I take it over to my bookshelf and
grab another stack of books, all unread, and dump them
into the bag.
It’s heavy, weighing my shoulder down as I carry it over
to the closet. I’ll only be able to add a little bit of clothing. I
grab some bras and socks and a couple of pairs of pyjama
pants and shove them in the bag on top of the books.
Greta watches me speechlessly, for once in her life
unable to think of something to say, and then Cole bursts
through the bathroom door carrying a duffel bag, with Barry
hot on his heels.
“None of this belongs to you, Cole!” Barry is shouting.
“You didn’t pay for any of this. I own everything you think is
yours. We own it,” he corrects himself, his eyes flicking to
my mother.
Cole spins on his heel. “Fine!” he hollers, and lifts the
duffel bag with two hands and throws it at Barry, who
catches it but doubles over as the momentum throws him
off balance. “Keep all of it!”
Cole looks at me, and then his eyes scan over to my
packed bags.
“C’mon,” he says, picking up the vinyl shopping bag. He
looks down in surprise at it, no doubt expecting it to be
lighter. “Xander’s in the car.”
“Your car insurance was cancelled,” I tell him as I follow
him down the stairs, pulling my suitcase behind me. “Barry
cancelled it.”
He steps onto the landing and stiffens irritably, and then
rolls his neck to relax his muscles. “Jesus Christ,” he
mutters. “Okay, fine. We good to take your car?”
“Of course.”
Greta has her flaws, but I know she’ll never use the same
scorched-earth approach as Cole’s father. By the time she’s
back in Greece, we’ll probably be able to talk this through.
But Barry—stubborn, hardheaded Barry—is another story.
“You will live to regret this, son!” he shouts after us,
scurrying down the stairs in our wake.
Cole grabs my car keys from the tray near the door and
holds the door open so I can pass through it, under his arm.
He hollers his final words back at his father just as I’m
opening the screen door.
“Fuck! You!”

OceanofPDF.com
Cole

ARIEL’S APARTMENT IS a third-storey walk-up in an old

Victorian house, situated near campus. She was one of the
only kids to have an apartment in first year—and to live
alone, no less—but, as she’d explain to anyone who
listened, she just really needed her own space in order to be
able to decompress properly.
The Maleks have a lot of money, even more than us, and
as I turn the key in the lock and open the door into a large,
open-concept, and fully-renovated space, I’m not at all
surprised by how beautiful it is.
The high windows that line the far wall have stained
glass panels at the top, the floor is a high-shine hardwood,
and it smells new—like freshly-cut wood and lemon-scented
cleaner.
“Wow,” breathes Hailey, coming up behind me with
Xander on her heels. I drop her bag onto the kitchen counter
—it’s heavy, pointlessly full of books—and turn to smile at
both of them.
“Not bad, eh?” I say with a cocky grin, although I didn’t
even know it was this nice. We owe Ariel one for this, for
sure.
I’d shown up on her doorstep last night after storming
out of the house away from Barry, needing a shirt and
someone to listen to me, and Ariel had been only too happy
to receive me. Her parents were out of town, as they often
are, and she was watching TV alone in her giant house.
She’d been nice enough to let me stay for a while, and feed
me—although, when she gave me a long, meaningful glance
and tilted her head towards me as I was leaving, I’d had to
duck away in a manner I hoped was both clear yet grateful.
As a teenager, I had occasionally snuck in and out of my
bedroom window to go out at night, or to sneak back in.
After I’d been caught a couple of times, Barry had the trellis
that ran up the wall under my window removed, leaving
only the matching one that ran up under Hailey’s.
Climbing the trellis came back to me as easily as if I’d
still been doing it every day for years, although leaving
Hailey’s bedroom this morning I’d nearly lost my footing and
for one terrifying moment thought I was going to end up
impaled on the rose bush. I’d gone back to Ariel’s, giving
her an update on my situation at home, and that’s when
she’d volunteered her apartment. She had no plans to miss
out on a summer back home, but had been very clear she
would need the place to be in pristine condition by
September first. That leaves two months for the three of us
to find jobs and make some money before school starts, just
in case Greta decides to take a page out of Barry’s book and
cancel the apartment she rented for Xander and I.
Hailey had raised a very suspicious eyebrow when I’d
told her where we’d be staying, but with no other options,
and a promise that Ariel wasn’t coming back till September,
she seemed to let it drop. Now, walking into the beautiful
space, she looks impressed and happy.
Xander drops his bags in the corner of the living room
and goes in search of the shower, while Hailey lays her
phone on the counter and bends over it, dictating into an
app.
“The apartment is beautiful, and Adam and Bob and I are
in pretty high spirits, I’d say.” She looks up at me—‘Adam,’
apparently, to her listeners—to confirm, and I give her the
finger. “We’ve been driving for about three hours, so we’re a
little tired, and now we just have to figure out our sleeping
arrangements.” She leans in closer and whispers into the
phone as if I can’t hear her. “I don’t know yet if we’re all
sharing a bed or what.”
Hailey acts like the fucking podcast is her job, and I don’t
mind that she does it—I don’t even mind that Xander and I
apparently have a starring role in it—I just hope she
understands that if we’re out from Greta and Barry’s thumb
it means we need to make real money that we can live on.
And fast.
“That fucking podcast,” I grumble, unpacking some of
the groceries we picked up on our way into town: peanut
butter, Wonder bread, orange juice, beef jerky, and beer.
“Don’t you ever get tired of porn, Hailey?”
“No.” She pushes her bottom lip out. “Don’t you?”
I roll my eyes.
“Anyway, we’re sponsored now, so it’s pretty legit.”
“What do you mean, sponsored?”
“For our podcast.” She beams. “We got three sponsors!
And as long as we keep the content coming, Sasha and I
could be making some pretty good money off of it. Enough
to cover the bills, to say the least.”
I blink at her. “Off your podcast? People are going to pay
to hear you talk about your jerk-off fantasies?” I place three
beers on the counter and twist the tops off all of them.
She giggles. “Yeah, I guess that’s one way of putting it.” I
slide one of the beers towards her and she pushes it back,
shaking her head. “No thanks.”
“Don’t be a douche.” I frown and push the bottle back
towards her. “Just drink it.”
She makes a face at me and sticks her tongue out, and
then picks up the beer. We clink the heavy-bottomed glass
bottles together and then each take a sip.
I like it when Hailey does what I tell her to.
She swipes on her phone and, turning it around, slides it
towards me. “Look. Our subscriptions have been going
through the roof since I started talking about the three of us.
And…” she bites her lip, “…people have really nice things to
say. About us.”
I pick up her phone and look at the post she’s showing
me. I’m actually surprised at the quality of the graphic that
says Smutty Books & Spicy Reads podcast. It looks pretty
professional. Underneath, the caption reads: “Find out what
happens to Hailey, Adam, and Bob when they fall in love
times three.” It has over ten thousand likes.
I scroll down to read the comments, completely
gobsmacked by how many of them there are, as Xander
walks back into the kitchen with a towel wrapped around his
waist, smelling of soap. He takes a seat at the kitchen island
beside Hailey and grabs one of the beer bottles.
I don’t even lift my eyes to acknowledge him, though,
because I can’t take my eyes off what I’m reading.
Comment after comment about me, Hailey, and Xander.
My biggest secrets, the reason Barry wants to punish me
into being normal, being traipsed out on social media for
anyone to see.
I should be furious, really. I should feel violated. But I’m
not.
Looking at all the comments, I’m struck by how positive
they are. Nobody has anything judgmental to say about the
fact that Hailey is sleeping with both “Adam” and “Bob.” Her
community of book friends is…ridiculously supportive.
“I love Adam and Bob and Hailey’s relationship so much,”
says the top comment. “I don’t think they can fight what
they have, because it sounds like they’ve been trying to for
so long, but they keep coming back to each other. It’s like a
destiny, and I hope that they can all find happiness
together.”
“When you feel that strongly about someone,” says
another, “even if it’s two someones, there’s nothing you can
do to fight it. Your feelings are what they are, and love is a
beautiful, pure feeling. We shouldn’t put so much energy
into trying to put it into a box. Sometimes a man loves a
woman. Sometimes a woman loves a woman. And
sometimes a man loves a man and a woman, and they love
him back equally. It’s all beautiful.”
“The way Adam’s dad reacted to seeing Adam and Bob
kiss is so wrong!!! We should focus less on how people are
supposed to be and embrace each other as we are!!!” says
another. “Our time on earth is short! Let love be whatever it
looks like for you while you’re here! Don’t miss out on it
because someone else thinks it should be different for
you!!!”
 I’m astounded by what I’m reading. In my world,
“normal” has been dictated for me by Barry and countless
others, telling me I have a limited set of choices, and that
anything outside that constriction is wrong.
I had no idea that Hailey’s world was different. That for
Hailey, what I call her “porn habit” is actually an exploration
of love and sex that’s positive and inclusive, and that there
are many other people around her that feel the same way.
“Are you literally reading every single comment?” she
asks me, and when I look up at her, I frown, not wanting to
show the wonder I feel.
Xander laughs, giving me a quizzical look, and asks
Hailey, “What the heck is he reading?”
“The comments about our latest episode,” says Hailey
proudly, taking a sip of her drink. “They love us.”
She looks unbearably cute, perched on a stool beside my
best friend and drinking a beer like she doesn’t secretly find
it a little gross. All her thick blonde hair is tied in a big knot
on the top of her head and her bare arms look tanned
against the white of her tank top. A number of beaded
bracelets circle her wrists, and they clink against the bottle
when she lowers her hand.
“It’s…crazy,” I say, with a little shake of my head. “Here.”
I slide the phone towards Xander. “Have a look. Hailey told
the internet she’s in love with us and now everyone’s
hoping we live happily ever after.”
Xander slides his dark eyes over to Hailey. “You told the
internet you were in love with us?” And even though she
rolls her eyes and makes an exasperated groan as she
stands up, she’s smiling.
“No,” she says emphatically. “I just said…I just said what
was going on between us. It was Sasha who named the
episode In Love Times Three.”
“There are so many comments,” he says, eyes widening
as he looks at the screen.
 Hailey in love with us. I let myself enjoy the idea for a
moment, watching Hailey and Xander with a sense of
detachment. Even sitting down and folded over the phone in
his hand, Xander is so much taller than Hailey is. She’s tiny
beside him, smiling proudly at the incredulity on his face as
he reads the comments on her instagram post.
There’s such an ease between them, between all three of
us, when we’re alone together.
This is what it would be like, I think indulgently, if we
lived together. If this was real.
Easy, comfortable, and free. If we were allowed to be in
love with each other, it would be exactly like this.

Once we’ve all showered and eaten a dinner of Xander’s

favourite things—peanut butter sandwiches and beef jerky—
Hailey prances out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in her
mouth, a large white t-shirt barely covering her ass and the
little buds of her nipples giving away the fact that she’s not
wearing a bra.
“Time for bed?” she says with a cute tilt of her head, and
with a clear enough meaning that my cock twitches against
the towel that’s wrapped around my waist.
Since I’ve brought nothing with me except the literal
clothes on my back and my wallet, I’ve already let both of
them know I’ll have to sleep naked. They just exchanged a
suggestive smile.
Now with Hailey calling us to Ariel’s luxurious king-sized
bed, Xander and I barely hesitate. We give each other a
quick nod and follow her down the hallway to the bedroom.
I drop my towel, while Hailey detours into the bathroom
to spit out her toothpaste and rinse, and Xander follows my
lead, dropping his towel, too, and then backing me up
towards the bed.
The steamy look he gives me makes my cock swell. He
pushes me down onto the mattress, and lowers himself
between my knees, wrapping his lips and his hands around
my growing member. I groan loudly as the heat of his mouth
envelops me, his tongue running down the underside of my
shaft, and I’m already lifting my hips and rolling my head
back when Hailey comes back into the room.
The look she gives me is dark and sexy, and there’s
something deeply intimate about what passes between us.
Hailey has been a part of my life forever, in all sorts of
different ways. But to take pleasure in my pleasure, to be as
turned on by Xander’s mouth on my cock as I am, takes our
relationship to a new height. There are no boundaries
between us anymore. Nothing to keep us apart.
She pulls the large t-shirt off as she walks towards me. I
can’t take my eyes off her toned, golden body, and the
round, full weight of her breasts. Her small pink nipples are
hard and pointed already and I can only imagine how wet
her pussy is. She climbs onto the bed beside me and
unabashedly watches Xander take my cock.
“That looks so fucking good,” she murmurs, and Xander
flashes his eyes up to her, smiling around my shaft.
“It feels so fucking good,” I rasp out, rolling my head in
her direction. She places a hand on either side of my jaw
and leans forward, giving me a deep kiss—soft and sweetly
tender. Her tongue feels so small and gentle in my mouth
compared to the firm, broad strokes of Xander’s on my
shaft, and I shudder at the contrast. The sheer pleasure of
feeling them both at once.
I’m not ready to come yet, so I lift Xander’s head off me
and tell Hailey to lie down. She willingly lowers onto her
back and spreads her hands out over the bedspread.
“Such a nice bed,” she says with a naughty smile. “Sorry
for what we’re about to do to it, Ariel!”
Xander laughs and I can’t help but crack a grin. I don’t
think Hailey has yet forgiven me for flirting with Ariel in front
of her—not knowing that I only did it to make her jealous.
I push Hailey’s legs apart and lay down on my front
between them, while Xander kneels down on the bed by her
head, running his fist up and down his cock before lowering
the tip to her open mouth. I part the lips of her pussy with
my fingers, taking a minute to appreciate it—its slick,
glistening wetness, and the beautiful shade of soft pink that
seems so perfectly Hailey. When I slowly run my tongue
along her slit, enjoying the smooth frisson of our contact, I
can feel her shudder in response against my lips.
She tastes incredible.
“Oh God, that mouth’s so good,” Xander moans, the keen
edge in his tone making my painfully-hard cock jerk against
the bedspread. “You look so fucking sexy.”
I can only imagine the birds-eye view of Hailey laid out
on the bed, blonde hair splayed out behind her, knees
spread, one man feeding her his cock and the other buried
between her legs. If we ever did live together, I think, we
would need a mirror over the bed. Or a camera.
I run my tongue back and forth against her soft folds and
then pull her clit into my mouth, sucking on it lightly. She
moans, letting me know I’ve hit the right spot, and in turn
her reaction makes Xander moan, too.
With my index finger, I find her small, tight hole and
slowly push into it. Her pussy pulses as I stroke in and out of
her, her rhythm matching the movements of my tongue,
and then her knees fall open and she lifts her hips until
finally she squeezes down and cries out as she comes.
“Oh fuck, Hailey,” Xander groans. “That’s so fucking hot.”
The comments about Hailey’s podcast are still running
through my mind. And when I sit back on my haunches and
look at Hailey and Xander—Hailey smiling and flushed;
Xander chiseled and hard—I feel full of love for both of
them.
Can I love them both? What if I just do...regardless of
whether it’s right or wrong?
I don’t think they can fight what they have, because it
sounds like they’ve been trying to for so long, but they keep
coming back to each other. It’s like a destiny…
 When you feel that strongly about someone, even if it’s
two someones, there’s nothing you can do to fight it…
Don’t miss out on love because someone else thinks it
should be different for you…
Hailey sits up on the bed and my eyes lock onto the
fullness of her breasts as she leans back on her hands. “I
want to watch you two now, please,” she says. “I think it’s
so fucking hot when you touch each other.”
I look over at Xan, who arches an eyebrow.
“What do you want us to do?” I ask.
She looks thoughtful, given the option, and answers,
“What’s the furthest you’ve ever gone?”
I flash another look at Xander before replying. It feels like
a secret. It is the last secret we have, I guess. But there’s
nothing we have to keep from Hailey. “We’ve fucked,” I
answer simply.
Her eyes widen. “Oh my God. I want to see that.”
Xan and I exchange one more look, checking in with each
other. Willingness is written all over his face, so I answer for
us.
"Are you sure you're ready for that, Hails?" I ask,
smirking as I grab my cock in my hand and fist the base.
“Yes,” she answers emphatically. My horny little
stepsister, hot and bothered at the idea of watching me
fuck. It’s almost more than my poor, throbbing dick can
bear.
I tsk. “Horny Hailey,” I say with a shake of my head, and,
letting go of my cock, I climb over her and lower myself
down, rubbing my erection pleasurably against her inner
thigh.
“I’ll get the condoms and lube,” Xan volunteers with a
smile, pushing off the mattress with his knees and leaving
the room to get his suitcase from the living room.
“You feel so fuckable, little sister,” I whisper in Hailey’s
ear, grinding harder against her and teasing myself with the
temptation of fucking her. I could just slip into her right now,
pumping into her tight, wet heat until I filled her up with my
cum, but she shakes her head and pushes against my
shoulder to lift me off of her.
“I want to watch you,” she says determinedly, and I can
tell from the colour on her cheeks how turned on the idea is
getting her. There’s plenty of time to fuck Hailey later, I tell
myself. If the three of us can be together, the possible
combinations are endless.
When Xan comes back with the condoms, we don’t even
have to have a conversation about who’s on top. It’s just
obvious. He hands me a condom, and I roll it over my dick
while he positions himself on all fours and rubs lube into his
asshole. I lube the condom up as well, and get up on the
bed on my knees behind him, my breath coming faster
already just from looking at him—the way his perineum is so
different from Hailey’s pussy, and especially the weight of
his cock and balls hanging pendulously below.
His ass is tight as I push the head of my cock into it,
tighter even than Hailey’s pussy was around my finger, and
I move slowly as I descend into him, the tight squeeze of his
muscular hole around my head and shaft sending
excruciating waves of pleasure through me. Xander holds
still, grunting uncomfortably as my full length penetrates
him, and then breathing in relief as I pull back out.
Fucking Xander is so unthinkably hot I can’t believe
we’ve never done it in all the years we’ve been fooling
around. I enter him again, his passage already eased, and
soon I’m thrusting myself into his tight hole in the rhythm I
need, wrapping my hands around his hard, bony hips as I
plunge into him.
“Oh God,” he mutters helplessly. “Oh, fuck.”
I know his erect cock is swinging against his belly
beneath my thrusts, and I reach a hand around to grasp it,
gripping his shaft in my fist and working it as best I can
while I fuck him. He’s so hard, and the idea that he’s feeling
every possible sensation—in his ass and in his dick—has me
right on edge. It’s so fucking hot, and I want to transport
Xander to the absolute extreme of pleasure. I want to make
him come harder than he’s ever come before in his life. I
want to feel and be a part of that orgasm.
I lift my eyes to Hailey. My voice is a command when I
speak. “Get underneath him and spread your legs.”
Her answering look sends a current right through me,
and my cock throbs in Xander’s ass, sending a responding
shiver through his body.
She wriggles herself between Xander’s arms, spreading
her knees like she was told, and I lower myself with him as
he bends down to start kissing her, already positioning his
hips, eager for what’s coming next. We take a minute to
arrange ourselves, Xander parting his knees wider, me
leaning forward, and when he slides into Hailey, they both
groan. I can feel both of their pleasure, as if we’ve snapped
together in place and become one.
Xander’s ass tightens even more impossibly around my
dick as he flexes his hips to push into Hailey. Her knees wrap
around him until I can feel the inside of her feet against the
outside of my thighs. We’re all together, the three of us
locked into the same sex act, and it’s so unbearably hot
fucking my friend while he fucks my stepsister that I know I
won’t last long.
“I’m going to come again,” whispers Hailey, and then
Xander whimpers—he fucking whimpers as she gasps
beneath him. Her knees shake as she comes and I almost
black out as a shudder passes through Xander’s body, his
ass clamping down on my cock as I realize we’re both
coming at the same time—my cries loud and guttural, and
Xander’s a low, helpless moan as he comes undone. He’s on
a whole other level, feeling all of our orgasms at once, and I
collapse onto his back as my cock spasms hard inside of
him, the bucking of my hips involuntary as I drain into his
ass, euphoric waves passing over my scalp, better than any
drug.
 I could stay here, on top of our little pile, forever, but
soon I feel the condom shift as I begin to soften, the
lubrication from my cum spreading, so I pull out and throw
away the condom, as Xander rolls off of Hailey and onto his
back.
I climb onto the bottom of the bed on my knees and
squirm my way up between them, making Hailey giggle, and
stretch out on my back. Hailey nuzzles herself between my
arm and my chest, resting in the crook between them, and
Xander’s hand seeks mine out.
It couldn’t be more perfect, lying there between them on
the bed, all three of us fitting together just right. I have the
sense of peace that comes with finally giving up. Barry can
try to force me to change, Greta too, for that matter. But I
can’t. I could never stop loving Xander or Hailey, and the
idea that maybe I don’t have to changes everything. I would
rather have what I have right now than anything else
anyone thinks is better for me.

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Hailey

This is your final warning

My mother’s text message makes me suck in a breath
and chew on one of my fingernails. Standing by the sink and
draining a glass of orange juice, Cole shoots me a look.
“What?”
“It’s Greta.” I sigh and hold the phone out to him. He
takes it and reads the message with a furrowed brow, then
puts his glass down to swipe up to read the whole tirade. My
mother, who’s never really been one for strict discipline or
rules—not like Barry—has finally snapped. The message
thread is just a long list of threats from her that I haven’t
responded to. That she’s going to cut me off, that I’ve
disappointed her, and that I’m ruining this family are just
some of the accusations.
There’s also a hefty dose of your actions have broader
implications than other people’s, you have the media to
consider. She doesn’t specifically say what she’s so
hysterical about—switching from university to community
college is not exactly going to set the paparazzi alight—so I
can only assume that she and Barry are crystal clear on
what Cole and Xander and I have become.
“She’ll get over it,” Cole says with a shrug, and hands my
phone back to me.
Get over it? I have never known Greta to be so mad in
my life and he thinks she’s going to get over it?
“Cole,” I say with exasperation. “Our whole family has
blown up this summer. You think Greta’s going to get over
this?”
He narrows his eyes at me, thoughtfully, and leans over
the kitchen island, taking my hands in his.
“Listen.” His blue eyes bore into mine intently. “She will
get over this. You’re her only daughter and she loves you.
She’s just having one last burst of trying to get her own
way.”
“She said she was going to cancel the lease on your
apartment!”
“I know,” he says, and I can’t believe he’s unmoved by
this. “They’re trying everything they’ve got.”
“Well, aren’t you worried about that? What are we going
to do if they cut us off?”
He lets go of my hands and leans back against the sink,
folding his arms across his chest. “At some point it’s a
decision, Hails. Are you going to let these people have
power over you or not?”
“What choice do we have?”
For the first time since we started our podcast over a
year ago, Sasha and I missed an episode this week, and I’m
still feeling anxious about it. It was my fault. In the chaos of
moving and, I suppose, the excitement of what’s been
developing between Cole and Xander and I, I flaked on
recording with her and didn’t edit any of the audio
recordings I’ve been making about our move to Kingston.
When she texted me to say we’d have to rerun an episode,
and I didn’t respond to her for hours, she’d had to edit it
herself, adding her own commentary at the beginning to
explain that this week was a re-run. Our subscription rate
dropped last week, and suddenly making tons of money off
our podcast seems less believable than it did only a week
prior, when it all seemed too good to be true.
So, like everybody else in my life right now, it seems,
she’s pissed at me.
Everyone but my two boys, of course.
 I hear Xander’s footsteps as he walks into the room, and
then his arms wrap around me from behind, his chin resting
affectionately on top of my head. “What are you two so
serious about?”
“Greta’s sending Hailey threatening texts,” Cole explains.
“Fuck that,” says Xander, releasing me as he takes a seat
and Cole gets a glass down to pour him some juice. “What’s
with those guys?”
“They know about us,” says Cole. “And they’re freaked
out. They think we’re going to end up in the tabloids.”
“But how can they know?” I ask, not for the first time. For
as long as I can remember, my mother’s been imploring me
to get along with my stepbrother. How could she ever
suspect how well I actually am getting along with him now—
him and his friend?
“How could they not?” says Xander, easily. “It’s always
been obvious you two were obsessed with each other.” He
takes the glass of orange juice Cole places in front of him
and takes a long slug, unaware of the way we’re both
staring at him.
Obsessed?
I mean, okay, yes…I definitely had an inappropriate crush
on Cole for a long time, even during the worst of his teasing
and bullying. But Cole…
“Cole used to hate me,” I blurt out.
“I never hated you.”
When I turn my eyes to him in disbelief, he just stares
back, with a frank intensity that unsettles me.
“Not true,” I retort. “You told me you hated me. You said
you hated ‘little princesses’ like me.”
That gets a reaction. He sucks his breath in, tightening
his lips.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and I wait for him to say something
else, but he doesn’t.
“And then you dumped me,” I remind him.
 “I’m sorry,” he says again, this time with a hint of
exasperation.
My face heats up and I realize I’m angry. “That’s it?” I
stand up. “That’s all you have to say?”
“What else is there to say?” he snaps, raising his voice. “I
thought…I was doing you a favour. I was thinking like Greta
and Barry. About how we could never be together. About
how fucked up it was.” He takes a breath and lifts his eyes
to the ceiling. “Is.”
“Guys, stop,” complains Xander.
I swallow and sit down, knowing it’s pointless to keep
bringing this up. I know why Cole said the things he did. I
know Cole lashes out and says things he doesn’t mean, and
just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean I can change it.
Cole, as my mother once said to me, will be Cole, and
that’s that.
But I’m miffed as I cross my arms over the countertop
and shut my mouth. There’s still so much I need to resolve.
My whole future, and my podcast, and my best friend, and
my relationship with my mother, and my relationship with
Cole and Xander…whatever that is. It’s a lot right now.
Cole runs his hand over his chin, looking like he’s at odds
with himself about something, fighting some internal battle,
and then he speaks. “Hails,” he says, searching my eyes.
“I’m sorry about a lot of stuff, okay? I haven’t always
known…how to be.”
I almost retort, staring at him with a firm set to my
mouth and ready to push him to apologize further, when I
realize that this is a lot of progress for Cole. This is
vulnerability.
“Okay,” I say quietly.
“In terms of Greta and everything…just don’t let her get
to you. Greta and Barry’s power is their money. But they
don’t get to decide who we are, okay? Only we get to decide
that. If they cut us off, we’ll figure it out. Xan and I can
move into residence. I have a scholarship. You can get a
loan—“
“—I can’t,” I cut him off, voicing my fears.
“You can,” he says firmly. “Schools have money for
emergency loans, and you’ll be eligible for a student loan if
you’re living with Sasha. That’s if it comes to that. We’ll
figure it out.”
Xander lifts a hand to massage my shoulder. The idea of
us figuring it out together comforts my anxieties.
“It’s going to be okay, Hailey,” says Cole softly, and
something hard cracks open inside me.
For all that he can be an asshole, I have always trusted
Cole to have the answer and to see things through. When
we were kids, he was always the one who knew what to do
and how to get there. Just him saying that things are going
to be okay makes me feel more secure.
“Aw,” Xander chuckles, running his hand across my back
to the other shoulder and then pulling me into a half hug.
“Don’t be scared, Hailey. We got you.”
I can’t help but smile as I lean into his shoulder.
“I know it feels crazy right now,” Cole admits. “But fuck
the haters. Barry and Greta are so upset about us being
together? Like, what the fuck do they know about
relationships? They’re getting divorced, and my dad is living
with some, like, mute, haunted, water spirit.” Despite
myself, I can’t hide a small laugh at his characterization of
Pauline. “I would rather we just forge our own way forward,
like, find our own path, and say fuck them. They don’t own
us, Hailey. Nobody owns us.”
“Yeah!” says Xander in support, squeezing my shoulder.
“Hear, hear.”
I take a deep breath, and decide to say exactly what’s on
my mind. “But you just left me last year, Cole. You just
dumped me out of the blue. What’s to say you won’t do it
again, and I’ll be all on my own, out here trying to forge my
own path like you told me to do, without you?”
 Cole closes his eyes, briefly, and when he speaks his
voice is low. “Because I won’t,” he says resolutely. “That’s
what I’m trying to tell you.”
“And I won’t, either,” adds Xander, bending over to kiss
the top of my head. “No one’s leaving you on your own.”
I can’t help but smile as I lean into his warmth.
“You’re going to have more big brothers than you know
what to do with,” cracks Cole, and I flash him an indignant
glare.
“Gross,” I say with a wry laugh.
He winks. “I’m sick of feeling like I have to bend for other
people, Hails,” he says, growing serious. “If you guys, I don’t
know, if you want to fucking do this…” He lifts a hand in the
air and drops it, searching for his words. “Then let’s fucking
do it. I think we’re, like, happy together. Like this. And if we
are, then we should fight for it.”
Xander, his cheek still resting on my head, sighs. His
breath is warm on my temple. “Yeah,” he says.
I get a cheeky smile. “Because you love us, right?” I ask
Cole, who huffs a laugh and rolls his eyes.
Xander chuckles and pulls me closer against him. “You
love us, right, Cole?” he asks cutely. “We’re all in love with
each other?”
“Fuck off,” Cole says with a half-grin, and even though he
doesn’t say it, I know with complete certainty that he loves
us both. He’s just…Cole.
“Come here,” I say reaching out towards him and
beckoning him with my hand.
Still with that sardonic look on his face—Heaven forbid
Cole should ever show his emotions—he walks around the
kitchen island and approaches us. Xander lifts his hand and I
stand, wrapping my arms around Cole’s waist and pressing
my cheek against his chest, and then Xander gets up and
joins us too, pressing himself against my back and enfolding
both of us in his long arms.
 “Aw,” laughs Cole, his torso rumbling against mine.
Xander squeezes even harder until I’m completely
sandwiched between both of them and my own laughs are
just muffled wheezes against the fabric of Cole’s shirt. I feel
thoroughly supported. I’m with Cole and Xander, and we’re
going to figure this thing out, whatever it is.
Thinking back to growing up with Cole, to Xander coming
into his life, to the inevitable orbit that developed between
all three of us—even though things seem messy right now,
with the threats from our parents and the uncertainty of
what’s to come in the fall, I know for a fact that what draws
us to each other is out of our control. Not loving Cole isn’t
an option; neither is not loving Xander. So we have no
choice but to make it work, because we have to.
We were always going to end up together.

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 Starring
Hailey Vile in the role of The Nice Girl With A Naughty Streak
Cole Smith in the role of The Rebel Bad Boy With The Heart Of Gold
and Xander Marks as The Strong, Silent Type
Also starring
Greta Vile as Actress Mom
Barry Smith as Repressed Mid-Life Dad
And special guests
Sasha Robinson as The Outspoken Best Friend
Gustavo Gil as The Fun One With A Plan
Ariel Malek as The Mean Girl Who Comes Through In The End
And introducing Pauline, as The Non-Actressy Other Woman

Special thanks to Amity Malcom, Jenna Thalia, and MK Roberts for letting me use
excerpts from or references to their excellent books.
There aren’t enough words in the universe to thank my fellow author and friend
Nova Flynn for the work she put in to trying to drag this manuscript out of the
mud. For your unerring, careful, and exceedingly kind attention to detail, Nova,
thank you thank you thank you.
Thank you, too, to Raleigh Damson for her help and support, as well as the
whole of Bookstagram and BookTok, all the members of our Astra’s Anarchy
group on Facebook, and the tirelessly supportive and amazing Jasmine K. forever
and ever. xo

Stay tuned…

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 Other books by Astra Rose

Stepbully
#1 - Stepbully
#2 - Inevitable

Off Limits
Haven
Dominant
Daddy’s Girl
#1 - Daddy’s Girl: A Taboo Stepfather Romance
#2 - Pleasing Daddy’s Friend: A Taboo Stepfather MFM
Romance
#3 - Daddy’s New Girl: An Inappropriate Age-Gap Romance
#4 - Sharing Our Daddy: An Inappropriate Age-Gap FMF
Romance

A Splash of Cream at the Alabaster

Cafe
In the Shadow of the Beast
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 About the Author
Hi, I’m Astra Rose :)
I write about powerful men who are powerless against their
desires.
My stories explore taboos and power imbalances, including
age gap and daddy kink, and I’m proud to write stories that
make you feel something. I believe that smut is (actually,
physiologically) good for you.
Hailing from the icy-cold nation of Canada, I have no choice
but to write steamy dark romance and hot erotic fiction in
order to stay warm. This is also why my words contain so
many extra vowels.
I’m an INFJ, a Scorpio, and my D&D alignment is True
Neutral. I’m interested in Simulation Theory, the multiverse,
and non-local consciousness theories. What even is reality?

Let’s be friends!
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