Free Step F*#K: Part Four (Stepbrother #4) by Scarlett Ward Page A

toward us. The car comes to a screeching halt, but the windows are tinted so dark that I can’t actually see who’s in the driver’s seat. The driver door opens.  
    My jaw drops. It’s Kate. Aw, my good friend, Kate, looking gorgeous as ever—the sculpted cheekbones, those full, pouty lips. She flips her long brown braid over one shoulder and grins.  
    “Surprise,” she says.  
    She comes around the front of the car and I go over and we embrace, both of us laughing. It feels good, this distraction, the way the anger has suddenly dissipated, because here’s a person who understands me without me having to say a single thing, here’s a person that, despite her being undeniably gorgeous, is not someone that I’m going to even think about sleeping with. All pressure’s off. It’s kind of strange how things can shift when sex is off the table. She, more than anyone, really is like a sister, in that I have no sexual attraction to her whatsoever.  
    “What the hell are you doing here?” I say. “I can’t believe it!”
    “Well, I wouldn’t miss this guy’s wedding for the world!” she says, going over and giving Dad a big hug. “I needed a little time away, anyway. I need a break.”  
    “Let’s get your stuff inside and you can meet everyone and have something to drink,” Dad says.
    Kate grins. “That sounds splendid.”
    And I have to agree; a drink (or twelve) doesn’t sound all that bad.  

    I don’t see Emma for the rest of the evening. I’m not even sure where she is, but for now, I think it’s better that I don’t see her. Kate and I spend the better part of the evening sitting down by the lake, drinking beer, catching up on old times.  
    “It’s been a rough year,” she says. “Work-wise things have been great, but not so much in my personal life.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. “Well, I mean, not about work. What’s up? Some girl giving you a hard time?”
She tips the bottle of beer back and take a long swig. “Oh, you know. You know what it’s like with girls. Why do we bother, right? They’re so fucking infuriating!”
    “Yes, but better than the alternative.”
    She grins. “Damn straight.”
    “Or not.”
    “So this girl, Tara, she’s a grad student and she works at a bookstore, and she’s adorable. For the first six months everything was so great between us. It was fucking awesome. And I’m starting to think, hey now, here’s a girl that I could see myself spending the rest of my life with, here’s someone who just really brings out the best in me, who I truly love to be around. And no sooner do I think that then she starts pulling back. Saying that things are getting too serious, moving too fast, that she’s got to focus on school and our relationship, while it’s been great, has also been a huge distraction.”
    “That really sucks. I’m sorry.”
    “That’s not the worst of it though. I mean, yeah, that part sucks, but I can accept it, I can understand. It’s that she keeps going back and forth, changing her mind, telling me that she’s never felt this way about someone before and that she actually does want to try, and then the next week she’s back to singing the other tune. It is an emotional fucking roller coaster and I finally had to get off. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
    I stare out at the lake, the surface of the water smooth as a mirror. It all sounds so familiar.  
    “I don’t understand why people have to go back and forth like that,” I say. “It doesn’t really make sense. It’s kind of fucking infuriating, in fact.”
    “Oh, it is,” Kate says. “But it also makes complete sense.”
    “How so?”
    “Because no one really knows what they want. No one has any fucking clue. Other than we want what makes us feel good, right? And so for Tara, that’s me, at least when we’re together, but we can’t be together all the time, and it’s the time that we’re not together that she starts thinking that things are