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Chapter 1
Lena’s POV The house had never felt this big. Or this empty. I stood at the kitchen window, watching my mother's car disappear down the driveway. She was laughing at something Julian said — that new, easy laughter she'd developed since marrying him. The laughter that made me feel like a stranger in my own home. Six months. Six months since she'd brought him home. Six months since she'd looked at me and said, "This is Julian. He's going to be your new father." Not stepfather. Father. Like I was supposed to forget the man who'd actually raised me. But I hadn't thought about my real dad in weeks. Instead, I thought about him. Julian. His hands. The way he'd brush past me in the hallway and leave heat on my skin like a brand. And I thought about Oliver. His son. My new stepbrother. The one who'd looked at me at the wedding reception like he wanted to devour me whole. The car disappeared over the hill. I was alone. Or so I thought. --- The front door slammed open leaving me with three voices, their annoying laughter and the clink of glass bottles. I'd forgotten Oliver said he'd have friends over. I retreated to my room like the coward I was. Pressed my ear to the wall and listened. "Where's your stepsister?" That was Marcus. I remembered his voice from the wedding. Deep yet stupid. "Hiding," Oliver said. "She's always hiding." "Is she cute?" The pause was too long. "She's family," Oliver said finally. But the way he said it , like he was trying to convince himself and it sent a shiver down my spine. I bit my lip. My hand was already moving. I told myself I was just adjusting my shorts. Just scratching an itch. But my fingers lingered at my waistband, tracing the elastic like it was a dare. You shouldn't. You know you shouldn't. But you're going to anyways. I slipped my hand inside. The voices in the other room blurred into background noise. Oliver's low laugh. Marcus's sharp commentary. Ethan's occasional grunts. The thud of a controller hitting the couch. They were right there. Three guys, fhree pairs of hands and definetely three sets of eyes that could walk through my door at any second. I pressed two fingers against my clit, just pressure, just a tease that made my hips bucked. “Fuckkk……aahhhhh” i moaned, hands digging faster. This is what they do to you. This is what he does to you. I closed my eyes. Oliver's face appeared behind my eyelids, then Julian's, then Oliver's again. Both of them. Both. “Mmmmmmhmmm….” I imagined Julian walking in first looking so calm and controlled. He'd stand in the doorway and just watch , watch me touch myself, watch me fall apart and he wouldn't say a word. Not until I begged him to. Then Oliver would push past him. Impatient and rough. He'd grab my wrists and pin them above my head and tell me to stop touching yourself — that's my job now. My fingers moved faster. I was so close, so close I could taste it and then Oliver knocked on my door. I froze. "Hey." His voice was muffled through the wood. "You want pizza? We're ordering." I couldn't answer. My fingers were still inside me. If I moved even an inch, the bed would creak. "Hello?" Another knock. "You alive in there?" I swallowed hard, forcing my voice to remain steady. "Yeah, i’m fine, just studying." Liar. He didn't move. I could still see his shadow under the door, broad and solid, waiting. Then he laughed softly, almost to himself. "Sure you are," he said. And I swear, I heard something in his voice. Something that I knew. His shadow stayed for three heartbeats, then he walked away. I didn't exhale until I heard his footsteps retreat and then, because I was stupid, because I was desperate, because I was already this close, I finished. Three quick strokes. I came apart in the dark, biting my pillow, thighs shaking, while my stepbrother went back to his friends in the next room. I lay there afterward, breathing heavily with my shorts soaked. My phone buzzed on the nightstand. Oliver: Saved you a slice. Come out when you're done. I stared at the message. WHEN YOU'RE DONE!! Not when I finished studying or when I was ready but when I was done. The room felt too small or rather too hot. He knew what i did. He definetely knew. I pulled my shorts up, fixed my hair and took a deep breath. Then I walked towards the door, hand on the knob and twisted it. And then, I heard another voice. One I didn't recognize. "So that's her?" Ethan asked. His voice was deeper than Marcus's and sounded stranger. "Yeah." Oliver's reply was quiet. "That's her." Ethan laughed. "And you're telling me you haven't….." "Shut up." "Bro, your dad's gone, her mom's gone so what are you waiting for?" I couldn't breathe. Oliver's voice, low and dangerous: "She's not ready yet." Not ready yet. Yet. That means he was planning. He’s been planning all this while. I stepped back from the door. My heart hammering and my pulse racing. My phone buzzed again. Oliver: I know you're at the door. Open it. I stared at the message, then I heard him walk toward me. Three steps. Two. One. His hand touched the other side of the door. I could feel the vibrations through the wood. "Open it," he said, not a text this time. His actual voice. Right outside. "Or I'll open it myself." I unlocked the door. And when it swung open….Chapter 144By Tuesday evening the house had stopped performing politeness.Ava no longer asked what anyone wanted for dinner. She put food on the table and expected them to sit. Oliver came and went with less explanation. Lena moved through the rooms like someone counting exits. Helen’s messages arrived twice a day—photos of a harbour, a plate of food, Julian half-asleep in a chair—and each one made the kitchen feel more temporary, as if the real owners might appear at any second and ask what had been done in their absence.They hadn’t.Oliver found Lena in the living room after nine, the television on with the sound low, a show neither of them was watching. Ava had gone to the guest room with a book and a closed door. The hallway light was off. Outside, rain tracked down the window in thin lines.“You’re avoiding the upstairs,” Oliver said.“I’m sitting on a sofa.”“Same thing.”He stood in the doorway for a moment, then came in and sat on the other end of the couch. Not close. Clos
Chapter 143 Helen. Helen cried at the door, then laughed at herself for crying. “It’s only a week,” she said, wiping under her eyes with the side of her hand. “Look at me. I’m being ridiculous.” “You’re allowed,” Ava said. She was already in the hallway with her tote bag and a folded duvet cover, as if she had done this enough times to know the house would need both practical things and soft ones. “Go. I’ve got them.” Julian put the last bag in the boot and came back up the path. He checked his pockets for the third time—keys, wallet, phone—then looked at Lena and Oliver standing on the step like people waiting for a verdict. “You know where everything is,” he said. “Call if the boiler does that thing again. Don’t ignore it until the kitchen floods.” “We’ve lived here longer than a week,” Oliver said. “That’s what worries me.” Julian’s mouth moved like he might smile. He didn’t quite manage it. When he hugged Lena, it was brief and careful, the kind of contact that stay
Chapter 142 Sunday morning Helen fixed the dates. She did it at the kitchen table with her laptop open and a pen between her teeth, calling out options while Julian read the paper and Oliver ate cereal like a man who had somewhere else to be. Lena stood by the kettle, waiting for it to boil, and listened to her mother build a week-shaped hole in the middle of their lives. “Monday to Monday,” Helen said. “Train on the way down. Julian hates the motorway when he’s supposed to be relaxing. Ava said yes again. She’ll come Sunday evening so she’s already here when we leave.” Julian turned a page. “That’s soon.” “It’s three weeks away. That’s not soon. That’s civilised notice.” Helen wrote the dates on the calendar stuck to the fridge and circled them twice. “There. Real. No more maybes.” Oliver glanced at the fridge, then at Lena, then back at his bowl. “Do we get a schedule for feeding times, or are we trusted with the cupboards?” “You’re trusted,” Helen said. “Try not to pro
Saturday arrived without drama, which somehow felt more suspicious than if it had.Helen slept late, still soft from the spa, and came down in a robe with her hair loose, asking if anyone had coffee left in the pot. Julian made a fresh one. Oliver was already out—a text on the kitchen table said he had a library shift until mid-afternoon. Lena sat with a piece of toast she was only half eating and listened to her mother describe a steam room as if it were a religious experience.“I forgot what my own shoulders felt like when they weren’t up by my ears,” Helen said, wrapping both hands around her mug. “Ava booked the next one before we even left. She’s dangerous.”“In a good way,” Julian said.“In an expensive way.” Helen smiled at him over the rim. “You’re working today?”“Only a couple of hours. Then I’m yours.”“I’ll hold you to that.”Lena finished her toast, rinsed the plate, and said she was going into campus to collect a book she had left in a locker. Helen waved her off without
Chapter 140Friday morning Helen announced she was taking the whole afternoon for herself.Not a clinic. Not a chore. Ava had booked them into a spa on the far side of town—massages, steam, the kind of slow waste of hours Helen had not allowed herself since before the accident. She said it at breakfast with a slight flush of guilt, as if pleasure still needed justifying.“I’ll be back late,” she said, already checking her bag. “There’s food in the fridge. Oliver, if you’re bringing anyone home, tell me next time so I’m not coming in half-asleep to strangers in my kitchen.”Oliver raised his mug. “Noted.”Julian said he would work from home. Lena said she had a campus shift until four. Helen kissed the top of Julian’s head, squeezed Lena’s shoulder, and left in a light cloud of perfume and borrowed calm. The door shut. The house adjusted around her absence the way it always did: a little wider, a little more dangerous, a little more itself.Julian looked at Lena across the table once t
Chapter 139Helen did not mention the receipt again.By morning it might as well have never existed. She stood in the kitchen in one of Julian’s old shirts, sleeves rolled to the elbows, making eggs with the radio on low. She talked about a sale on garden plants, about whether they should finally repaint the guest-room door, about a neighbour who had asked if they were settled now after all the hospital months. Julian answered from behind a mug, voice still rough with sleep. Oliver ate standing up, scrolling his phone, then rinsed his plate and left for campus with a short goodbye that took in the whole kitchen and no one in particular. Lena stayed long enough to wash her own plate and long enough to feel the ordinary weight of a house that was not, for once, tilting toward disaster.Helen kissed Julian’s cheek on her way past him to the fridge. “Don’t work through lunch. You always say you won’t and then you do.”“I’ll try,” he said, and almost smiled.Lena took her bag from the hook







