All Chapters of CRAVING MY BULLY STEPBROTHER : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

ISABELLEI ate dinner in my room that night. I didn't plan to. I just stood at the top of the stairs, heard Lily's voice drifting up from the kitchen asking Lucas to set the table, heard the clatter of plates and my father's murmured response, and turned around and went back to my room and closed the door.I wasn't hungry anyway.I sat on my bed with my back against the headboard and my phone in my lap and stared at the wall opposite me. The same wall Lucas's room was on the other side of. I thought about that for exactly one second and then stopped thinking about it.My phone had forty seven notifications I hadn't opened.I turned it face down. A knock came at my door around eight.I knew it wasn't my father because my father knocked like he was apologizing for the interruption. This knock was different, it was Lucas. "I know you're awake."I stayed completely still. He didn't use the spare key this time.His footsteps moved away from the door, back down the corridor, and then his o

ISABELLETyler looked at Lucas for a moment, then looked past him and his gaze landed on me.I didn't know what my face was doing."Stepsister?" Tyler repeated. "That's what I said," Lucas said.Tyler nodded slowly. "Okay." He looked at Lucas directly. "And what exactly does that change?""It literally changes everything," Lucas said.“Changes for who? You or her?" Tyler said. The doorway went very quiet, I finally moved, crossing the hallway and appeared properly behind Lucas. Tyler looked at me with an soft eyes that asked if I was okay without using any words, I nodded once.He looked back at Lucas. "I came to return her notebook," he said. "She left it at the library." He held it out past Lucas's shoulder toward me. I reached around Lucas and took it."Thanks for clarifying the situation," Tyler said to Lucas, pleasantly. "Goodnight."He walked back down the path, Lucas stood in the doorway watching him go, one hand on the frame, I went back upstairs without saying anything.I

ISABELLEThe corridor went completely silent.Lucas stared at me, behind him two of his teammates had frozen mid-step.I held his gaze for one more second. Then I turned and walked away.Tyler appeared at the far end of the corridor, read the room in under a second, and fell into step beside me without asking a single question.Behind us Lucas Graham stood in the corridor with my voice still sitting in the air around him, and for the first time since I had known him, he had absolutely nothing to say.I didn't think about it on the walk to the bus stop.I didn't think about it on the bus, or during the twenty minutes it took to get home, or while I changed out of my school clothes and sat on my bed with my knees pulled up and my phone face down beside me.I thought about it at exactly nine forty seven when the house had gone quiet and there was nothing left to put between me and the fact that I had spoken today.My voice came out loud. And in a corridor full of people who had spent the

ISABELLE I stared at the message for a long time. There was no follow up, only the message sitting on my screen at nine forty three like the person had typed it and put his phone down before the person would take it back. I typed back.*Give me one reason.* Three minutes of nothing. Then, *I'll tell you at the lake house.* I put my phone face down and went to sleep. Dinner that night had the tension of a room where two people were performing normalcy for the benefit of two others who hadn't noticed it had become a performance. My father asked Lily about her day and Lily told him in the detailed and enthusiastic way she reserved for his full attention. I didn't bother to pay attention to whatever they were saying. "Spring Formal is coming up," Lily said, at some point between the main and clearing the plates. She looked at me with bright eyes. "Are you going, Isabelle?" I reached for my notepad. *Yes, I will be going with a friend.* "That new kid?" my father asked. I nodded

LUCAS I couldn't stop hearing her voice. I lay on my back in the ceiling of my room at the lake house and stared at the ceiling and told myself I was not the kind of person this happened to. It wasn't working because I knew I wouldn't be able to hide it. The next morning I was downstairs before anyone else. I sat at the counter with coffee I wasn't drinking and listened to the house wake up around me and thought about the fact that in approximately twenty minutes Isabelle would come down those stairs and I would have to be a normal person about it. She came down at soon after, she saw me, paused for half a second, then went to the refrigerator. "Morning, Isabelle, I'm not going to make it weird," I said. She turned around and held up her notepad. *You already made it weird by announcing you won't make it weird.* I looked at that for a second. "That's fair." She poured her juice and we stood in the kitchen in silence. My mom came in and the moment closed. The libra