All Chapters of I Didn't Mean To Fuck My Stepbrother : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Everyone was gone.Chairs scraping, bags zipping, people spilling out the door like the bell was a personal attack on their freedom. I was halfway out of my seat when his voice stopped me."Miss Ellis. Please wait behind."My whole body went stiff.Priya looked back at me from the doorway. I gave her the smile that meant I'm fine, go, I will tell you everything later, and she disappeared. Then it was just me and Mr. Vance and the kind of silence that has actual weight to it.I walked up slowly and stopped in front of his desk. Kept my face completely neutral like a person who had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about."What's your name?" he asked."Nova," I said. "Nova Ellis… you said my surname earlier, and I'm curious how you knew that."He looked at me for a second. Then that small smile came onto his face. Not mean. Just… knowing, like he found something quietly funny that he wasn't going to share."Nova." He said it slowly, like he was filing it away somewhere. "Funny thing… I

The hallway was dark, quiet and I was still standing outside his door like an idiot when it opened again.Rhys leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, looking at me with the expression of someone who had been expecting this."You're still here," he said."I was just leaving.""You've been standing outside my door for two minutes."I opened my mouth. Closed it. There was genuinely nothing to say to that.He looked at the letter in my hand. Then back at my face. Something shifted in his expression… not mean, not warm, just calculated in a way that made my stomach tighten."I have a proposal," he said."I don't want your proposal.""You haven't heard it yet.""Whatever it is the answer is no."He tilted his head slightly. "Even if it involves the letter?"I went very still.He smiled. Not the warm one he gave his dad at dinner… the other one. The one that meant he already knew how this conversation was going to end."There are copies," he said simply. "I took pictures… every fucking

Nobody prepared me for what it actually meant to live with Rhys Caldwell.Not the assistant thing. Not the letter thing. Not even the swimming pool disaster or the midnight hallway negotiation that had somehow turned my entire senior year into a hostage situation.Nobody warned me about the mornings.Day three. Six fifty-two. I shuffled toward the kitchen in my oversized sleep shirt, hair doing something tragic, brain not yet technically online, thinking about nothing except coffee and whether I could drink it in peace before the world required anything from me.I pushed the kitchen door open.Rhys was standing at the counter.Shirt in his hand. Not on his body. In his hand, like he had just picked it up and had not yet decided what to do with it. His back was to me… broad, clean lines, the kind of effortless build that comes from actually using your body and not thinking about it… and he was reaching for something on the upper shelf with his free hand like this was a completely norma

"Something you want but cannot have."Mr. Vance wrote it on the board in clean, unhurried letters, then set the marker down and turned to face us like he had just said something completely ordinary.He had not said something completely ordinary."That is your prompt for the next two weeks," he said. "Two pages minimum. No genre restrictions. Fiction, personal essay, prose poetry — the form is yours. What I am looking for is honesty. Specifically the kind most people spend their whole lives learning to avoid."He let that sit.The room was quiet in the way classrooms go quiet when a teacher says something that accidentally lands too close to real life.I was staring at the board.Something you want but cannot have.Behind me, three rows back, I was aware of Rhys in the specific way I was always aware of Rhys now — like a frequency I had accidentally tuned into and could not locate the dial to tune back out. He had AP Literature this period too. I had not asked for that information. The

"Tell me you did not go through his Instagram."Priya did not even look up from her phone. "I went through his Instagram."We were sitting in the back corner of the library during free period, bags on the table, the specific Thursday afternoon quiet that settled over this room like something permanent. I had come here to actually study. Priya had come here to report."Priya.""There are forty-seven posts. He barely uses it. Last post was eight months ago, which tracks with the Harrington timeline." She finally looked up. "But the ones before that are interesting."I told myself not to ask. "How interesting.""Come here."I moved my chair around the table. She tilted the phone toward me.The photograph was eighteen months old. Rhys at some kind of outdoor event, slightly younger in the face, same jaw, same build, but something different in the way he was standing. Looser. Less composed. He was laughing at something off camera, head tilted back, completely unguarded in a way I had only