Submitting To My Stepbrothers novel Chapter 18

Chapter 1

“What is wrong with her lately?”

Dad didn’t answer. He just shrugged. That didn’t surprise me,

though. Lately, Mom had been on edge and so easy to set off.

Every time I tried to figure out why, though, I was given the silent

treatment. It wouldn’t have made me so angry if it weren’t for

the fact that Mom and I had always been much closer than we

had been lately.

We had to be that way. For the longest time, it was just her and

1. My biological father had walked out on her when I was still five

years old. While he made every child support payment on time

over the years, he had made it pretty apparent that he wanted.

nothing to do with Mom or me. It wasn’t until I was fourteen that

Mom met the first man who I ever came to call Dad. Up until

that point, it was just her and I against the world.

“Daddy,” I started, changing my voice to the soft girlish one that I used whenever I wanted something from him. “Tell me what’s

wrong with Mom, so I can help.”

He was only my stepfather, but, from the moment he had started dating my mother, Rich had been so much more. He had put up with my childish jealousy of my mother’s affection for

Chapter 1

Only $0.29

him and won me over just like he had her. Mom had dated quite

a few men over the years, but Rich was the only one who she

dated who made me feel important. I wasn’t just my mother’s baggage to him. I was the daughter he had always wanted but never had. I had come to admire him over the years for stepping

up the way he did. He had even begun to occupy some of my

more obscene fantasies in the last few years.

Those same fantasies were what had prompted me to move out

on my own. I hadn’t gone very far of course. My apartment was only a few miles away from the house, and I still spent most of the nights I had off work coming over for dinner. It was after I moved out, though, that things had changed with Mom. I didn’t know if my moving out was what triggered it, but it sure seemed that way. If I had known this would have been the result, I would have never moved out. It undoubtedly would have helped me save more money, even if parading around the house in various stages of undress so that I could feel Daddy’s eyes on my body

was inappropriate.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Daddy started. “But your mother isn’t dealing with you being out of the house so well.”

“I thought that might be what it was,” I said. My shoulders

dropped.

I couldn’t stand the idea that my being away was hurting her so

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify