Claimed By My Stepbrother novel Chapter 94

Chapter 94

Ethan POV

After breakfast, things started winding down in that awkward domestic way I never quite liked. Camila quietly stood up from the table, carrying her plate to the sink like a good girl. Then, without saying much–no glance, no snide comment–she padded back upstairs to her room, Still wearing my shirt.

My eyes followed her the whole way, heart drumming slow and heavy.

Greg kissed Camila’s mom on the cheek, murmured something about having “something to take care of, and slipped out of the house like he wasn’t irritated as hell by me. I didn’t miss the way his jaw clenched when he looked back at me on his way out. Whatever.

I waited until I heard the front door click shut before I stood up and made my way into the kitchen. I wasn’t particularly thirsty, but I needed something cold. Something to distract me from the memory of Camila’s bare thighs brushing the hem of my shirt. The ache hadn’t gone away. It just simmered under my skin, low and stubborn.

I pulled open the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water, cracked the cap, and raised it halfway to my lips when I heard her voice.

“I see that you and Camila are getting close,” her mom said gently, like she was trying to be casual but watching me too carefully for it to be just casual.

I froze for a second, hand still around the bottle, mid–lift.

Close.

Close? 1 thought, tasting the word like something bitter.

It felt wrong in my mouth. This wasn’t close. It wasn’t anywhere near enough. But yeah… it was closer than before. Closer than when she fled the house because of me. Closer than when she avoided eye contact, or when she used to flinch a little when I’d sit next to her. Closer than when she avoided standing too close, like I was some kind of threat.

And maybe I was.

But that didn’t matter.

At the very least, she talked to me now.

Walked next to me.

That counted for something, right?

I smiled softly–polite, almost shy–and glanced at her mom. But I didn’t say anything. Didn’t know what to say to that. What was I supposed

to say? Yeah, I dream about your daughter every night and sneak into her room to watch her sleep. Close doesn’t begin to cover it.

So I kept quiet.

Silence was safer.

Let her fill it.

Camila’s mom must’ve taken my pause/as thoughtful, because she gave me that motherly kind of smile. Gentle. Warm. A little sad, like she was remembering something that hurt. She turned to the counter and picked up a small tray of cookies, holding them out to me like I was a guest instead of the thing stalking her daughter in the dark.

I took one. Mostly to keep her talking.

Chapter 94

“Oh, you know,” she started, brushing invisible crumbs off the tray. “Camila finds it really hard to trust people. To get comfortable,

No shit, I wanted to say. Instead, I nodded and bit into the cookie, Chocolate chip. Slightly overbaked on the edge, Sweet but dry, Itali

tasted it.

“She’s always been like that,” she continued, her voice softening like she was sinking into memory. “But it got worse after her father left.

I stilled.

Here it was.

That moment all moms do–the nostalgic walk down memory lane. The tragic backstory. The soft admission of pain wrapped in a smile too tired to hide it.

I welcomed it.

No piece of Camila’s past was useless. Every detail mattered. I collected them in my head like puzzle pieces. Every bit of her was precious even the broken, jagged ones.

“She was just six,” her mom said, eyes distant now, somewhere far away. “And she was so… attached to him. Camila was always a little clingy as a kid. Quiet, but full of these big feelings she didn’t know what to do with. She adored her father. He used to carry her everywhere, sing her silly little songs, make her pancakes shaped like animals. She thought he hung the moon.

I clenched the bottle of water in my hand.

Her voice dropped lower. “And then one day… he was just gone. No explanation. No goodbye. Just… left.”

I watched her carefully.

“She waited by the window for weeks, Ethan. Sat there every afternoon with her stuffed bear and a juice box, waiting for him to come back. Kept asking if he forgot something. Kept saying he promised to take her to the zoo that weekend.”

I couldn’t breathe for a second.

God.

That image burned into me.

Little Camila. Waiting with a juice box in her lap. Her dad’s shadow stretching behind her every time a car passed by.

I wanted to reach back through time and kill the man for doing that to her. For ruining that soft part of her. For making her pull away

from love.

Her mom continued, blinking fast. “She doesn’t talk about it. Not ever. But it did something to her. Made her cold. Not in a cruel way–just… like she shut the door on all her feelings and threw away the key. She’s been that way ever since. Detached. Like she doesn’t let herself feel things because if she does, it’ll break her.”

I nodded slowly, throat tight.

It explained so much.

So she was scared.

Scared that love meant abandonment. That trusting someone meant giving them the power to destroy you.

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