Free Dare: A Stepbrother Romance by Caitlin Daire Page B

makes you think I’m not?”
    “I don’t know. I kinda thought you were, but then I saw you today with all those kids. You’re secretly still nice, aren’t you? Just like when we were children.”
    I hesitated. I’d only agreed to come up to this summer camp and help out as part of my plan to pretend to be nice and entice her, but the fumbled kiss earlier had made me realize that wasn’t exactly what this was all about. I’d actually enjoyed spending time with her and the kids out here. The way I’d interacted with them had been real. I hadn’t even had to try to fake it. It was genuinely fun, and what she’d said earlier about this land having more than financial worth was dead right.
    Her mother was lucky that my business-minded Dad hadn’t already tried to talk her into selling the land to his company so he could develop it, because I was willing to bet they’d both make more than a pretty penny from that scheme, and it was exactly the kind of thing he’d do. Not that he needed any more money.
    “This one’s my mother’s name,” I said, smoothly changing the subject back to my tattoos.
    I rolled up my sleeve to show her the name on my shoulder. Elizabeth.
    “You know, you never talked about her when we were kids,” Sophie said. “What happened to her?”
    “She died when I was two. She was pregnant with my little brother, and she had really high blood pressure. Neither of them made it.”
    “Shit. I’m so sorry. I had no idea. For some reason I always got the impression from your Dad that she just left.”
    I shrugged. “He kinda saw it that way, honestly. He was really cut up after she died, and for a long time he blamed her for leaving him alone with a kid after she died, not that she could help it. It wasn’t his fault he saw things that way, though. Depression can fuck you up, I guess.”
    “Yeah.”
    We were silent for a while, mulling over our own thoughts.
    “So your Dad,” I finally said. “He went missing from his boat a year after I moved away, right?”
    “Yep.”
    “Sorry if this offends you, but thank fuck for that.”
    She shook her head. “It doesn’t offend me, don’t worry. He was a prick. I still feel really bad for saying it, though. I was talking about it to an old friend ages ago, and she made me feel like a total monster for not missing him at all. She said he was my father, and I have to love him no matter what he did.”
    “Yeah, well, she wasn’t there to see the shit he did,” I said, once again remembering Sophie cowering in my arms in the backyard playhouse after the bastard had put out a cigarette on her leg. A lot of kids in my school had taken up smoking to be cool when I was around fifteen or so, but every time I so much as looked at a cigarette, it reminded me of that moment and I felt sick to my stomach. Some things you just don’t forget.
    “I better take a shower and go to bed,” she said, standing up a moment later. “I still have twigs in my hair from when we…um, from when I fell over in the woods.”
    “Okay,” I said, grabbing our wine glasses and walking over to the sink. “I’ll clean these. You go shower.”
    She smiled and said goodnight before walking out the door towards the other cabin, and I watched her out of the window until she’d gone inside. There was a funny twinge in my guts as I looked at her, and strange emotions took hold of my mind; emotions that I’d been trying to suppress for a long time now. It had been in a childish, innocent way all those years ago, but I’d loved her back then…and now I was pretty sure I still did.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    SOPHIE
    I was back in the city now, and I was on Skype with Cerie and Lana as they helped me plan out an outfit for my sixth date with Dan. The kiss with Drew had only happened a week ago, and I’d tried to push it as far from my mind as possible. We’d both agreed that it was a mistake, and I didn’t want to be the kind of girl who cheated on the guy she was seeing, even if