Free Stepbrother Dearest by Penelope Ward

main plot.
    In one scene, Liam had a crush on the girl across the street, so he asked Lucky to go her house. His
    hope was that the girl would think Lucky was lost and that the dog would lead her back to Liam’s house.
    Instead, Lucky, who was a big dog, ended up humping the girl’s Pomeranian puppy out front. Liam
    watched from the window as she took her puppy inside and slammed the door. Lucky proceeded to take a
    dump on her lawn before running back home to Liam empty-handed.
    But the main plot surrounded Liam’s ability to sense evil via his hypersensitive hearing. The
    information he received was not always clear, often jumbled unless Lucky was present. At one point, Liam
    took information surrounding the murder of a local girl to the police. It turned out that a corrupt police
    officer was behind the crime. He had Lucky kidnapped so that Liam wouldn’t be able to help authorities
    finish solving the murder. Lucky ended up escaping, and the reunion scene between Liam and the dog was
    so touching that it had me bawling.
    Everything was depicted so realistically, from the vivid descriptions of the Ireland landscape to the
    emotions Liam experienced. There was even a fun bonus chapter written from the dog’s point of view at
    the very end. I had found only a few grammatical errors and jotted them down in a notebook for him.
    By the end of the story, I’d felt as though I’d fallen in love with the characters, which was a testament to his writing. At the same time, I felt closer to him and was so honored that he’d given me a glimpse into his incredibly creative mind. I needed to find the right words to properly explain to him how amazing this
    was…how amazing he was.
    So, the next day, I decided that I would sit under a shady tree after school and write down all of my
    feelings in a letter that I would give him when I returned his manuscript. I poured my heart into it and
    explained why I felt he was born to write and that it didn’t matter if his father wasn’t proud of him but that I was so incredibly proud of him.

    ***

    That afternoon, I planned to drop the letter off at his room. When I got to the top of the stairs, my
    stomach turned when I heard a girl’s voice from behind the closed door.
    Giggling
    Lips smacking together
    Elec hadn’t brought anyone home since long before the night we kissed in my bed. I thought that maybe
    he’d been respecting my feelings for him or that he’d changed.
    I was wrong.
    Knowing he was with another girl used to annoy me and make me jealous, but this time, it felt different.
    It just made me incredibly sad. I couldn’t even bear to stay in the house, so I left the book along with the note in front of his door and ran back down the stairs, worried that his writing wasn’t the only thing I’d
    fallen in love with.

CHAPTER 9
    It upset me that he hadn’t even acknowledged my letter after several days.
    Victoria had also given me no choice but to finally tell her the truth about my feelings for Elec. She
    wouldn’t stop talking about how she couldn’t understand the fact that he never asked her out again after
    their kiss at the diner. I had no patience for it anymore and told her everything that had happened between
    us. She was shocked, but at least it got her to stop talking about him once and for all.
    Elec continued to basically ignore me over the next week. He took on more hours at the bike shop and
    during the other times, stayed in his room with the door closed. He obviously knew that I’d overheard the
    girl in his room that day since I had left the book on the ground outside. He clearly didn’t care to apologize or address what impact that might have had on my feelings.
    So, when Corey Jameson asked me out on a date that week, I said yes. Corey was probably one of the
    sweetest guys at school. Truly, I was not physically attracted to him but needed a distraction and knew at
    least, we would have a good time together. He was one of the few males I’d