Free Stepbrother's Kiss by Penny Blake Page B

control of my car, careening off the road and slamming into a tree. 
                  I woke up with twenty stitches in my scalp, a shattered arm, and extensive damage to my arm and shoulder from shattering glass.  The doctors told me I was lucky to be alive.
                  I wasn’t so sure.
                  When I first moved to Maine, I’d felt utterly alone in the world, but now, I was even more so.
                  I’d lost Blaze.  And worse of all was the way I’d lost him.
                  His cruel words echoed in my mind all day in a constant loop while I lay in my hospital bed, and even worse, the bastard never came to visit me.  To ask for the real story behind what he saw in Raine’s office. To ask me why.  To give us a second chance.
                  I told Mirabeth everything.  I was tired of hiding my relationship with Blaze. Tired of bottling up my feelings and living a life of quiet isolation. 
                  I cried on her shoulder and told her everything. 
                  She didn’t offer any advice or judgment.  She just listened, handing me tissues and stroking my back while I cried.
                  Then she told me that Blaze was in a bad state.  He’d moved out of Raine’s house on graduation night and she hadn’t seen him since, but she’d heard from others in town that he was on a horrible bender.  Even getting into a fight that landed him in jail overnight.
                  On the day of my release from the hospital, Mirabeth informed me that Raine and my social worker agreed to make her executor the family trust.  My eighteenth birthday had passed a few days ago, and I was legally on my own.  Mirabeth signed the entire lump sum of my inheritance over to me before we even left the hospital.
                  I stayed with her for the next few weeks while making travel arrangements, and then I left for Europe on my own. I visited the Sistine Chapel by myself.  I spent a whole day reading books and drinking coffee in a Paris café. 
    I never drove the Autobahn or saw the red light district in Amsterdam. Those were Blaze’s dreams, and I would have felt sad doing them alone.
    But I did spend some time seeing more of the United States.  I spent a year just hanging out in New Orleans listening to jazz, eating gumbo and wandering down Bourbon Street. 
    Later I rode a bike through the quaint streets of Portland.  Ate Tex Mex in Austin.  Toured Pike’s Peak Market in Seattle.  Learned to ski in Aspen.  Watched the sea lions in San Francisco. Visited the rose gardens of Minneapolis. 
    And while I did all these things, my heart slowly healed. For the first time, I figured out how to be happy by myself.  How to enjoy my own company, and be alone without being lonely.  How to talk to strangers and keep an open heart, and how to make peace with the past.
    Of course I dated, and even had a few brief relationships, but never with anyone I ever felt truly passionate about.
    Through it all, I kept in touch with Mirabeth, sending her postcards and letters. She once told me that people don’t send letters enough these days, so I set out to change that.
    Mirabeth would send letters back, telling me about her new job at a daycare center.  She’d left Raine’s employ after everything that happened with me.  She said the house wasn’t the same without Blaze and I living there, and she felt like it was time to move on.
    Her letters detailed the latest gossip about her friends or my former classmates.  She never mentioned Blaze, so I assumed she’d lost touch with him just like I had.
    But I was wrong.
    Two years ago, she casually mentioned that she’d been in touch with him for years.  She didn’t mention it earlier, she explained, because she didn’t want to bring up unpleasant memories. She wanted to give me time to heal.
    She admitted that she’d