Sloane
I stood glued to the door with a bouquet, a cake, and a wrapped box in my arms, and watched my stepbrother get f****d.
That was Frank’s birthday.
He was on all fours on his bed. Shirt shoved up his back. Jeans at his knees. A man behind him with a fist in his hair and hips snapping forward hard enough that the frame hit the wall. Frank made a sound I had never heard out of him. Not the bored snap he used on me in the kitchen. Not the silence he gave me in the hallway. A broken, punched-out moan, like the arrogance had been f****d out of his throat for one second and something honest had come through.
I should have left.
I didn’t.
The whole house had forgotten him. Mom and his dad had been married weeks, and they were still performing the new family downstairs like birthdays we
