Free Stepbrother Troubled: The Complete Series by Sybil Ling Page A

I’ve been treating you.”
    Emily opens her mouth to say something, but then closes it. She nods at Blair who, for the first time since she’s known him, looks nervous.
    “Emily … I’m sorry for how I’ve treated you. I didn’t mean to get this attached to somebody — especially somebody like you. Especially … my stepsister. I’ve been cruel to you, and you deserve an explanation for everything that I’ve done. And that’s what I’m going to give you, now.”
    He pauses, steeling himself, and Emily feels her heart going out to him, despite the anger that’s still in her.
    “Has my dad or your mom told you anything about my past?” he asks her.
    “Um … no,” Emily answers. She remembers that her mom told her that Blair is quiet when she came home from the airport, and that he likely wouldn’t become that close to her, but she never said why. “No, neither of them have.”
    Blair takes a deep breath in, and lets it out slowly.
    “I already told you before that I used to be a Chemical Engineer. I got my Bachelor’s in Chemistry and started working for a firm, doing an internship, just like you are. And that’s where I met Victoria. She was one of my lab partners. We didn’t like each other that much at first — actually, I almost requested to be changed into another lab because of her. But I didn’t, and in the end, and we became friends. And then we became more than friends: we became lovers.
    “Victoria was everything to me. She was my … everything. We moved in together, and I found out that she had some friends who liked to party, so we started going out after work and on the weekends. Back then Victoria and I were drinking a lot, and we were doing a lot of drugs — nothing hard, just some pot and ecstasy every now and again. I could tell I was getting hooked to the lifestyle. It was something I wasn’t used to — I was a pretty straight kid when I was growing up.
    “Victoria, though. She got pretty into it, and she had this idea that we could use our lab equipment to make something else … something new. I know I should’ve said no, but she insisted that we could hide it in our numbers everything we took. So we stayed late in the lab at night and started experimenting, cooking things up. Our first few attempts were complete failures, but we got better, and one day we made this solution that cooled into a crystalline structure. Kind of similar to methamphetamine, but with a different protein binding to what you’d typically find. It’s hard to explain.
    “Anyways, we were so excited that we’d finally made something good. We could maybe sell it, and it was something that nobody else had ever tried before. Victoria said that she wanted to give it a test, to make sure it was okay …”
    Blair sniffs, and Emily sees that his eyes are glimmering.
    “She … she didn’t make it. The effect was instantaneous. I recognized it from people who we’d seen take too much E, but in her it seemed to happen all at once. Her mouth was foaming, and she began to convulse and collapsed on the ground.”
    Emily feels her heart breaking for Blair, but he simply wipes away his tears and continues talking.
    “I called for an ambulance immediately, but she died in my arms, before they even arrived. There was nothing they could do. The drug was too strong. It had come out too pure.”
    He blinks and two shiny drops fall from his eyes. Emily feels ready to cry herself as Blair tells her more.
    “I haven’t done any drugs since that day,” he says. “I haven’t had any alcohol, I haven’t done anything. That’s why my chart at the hospital said for me not to have any Morphine. And that’s why I’ve been so cold towards you: you look exactly like Victoria.”
    Emily’s breath catches in her throat.
    “What?” she says.
    “It’s uncanny,” he tells her, shaking his head. “I thought that she’d come back to life when I saw you, or that I was dreaming. But you were alive — you are alive