Lahat ng Kabanata ng Forbidden Desire:My Best Friend's Brother : Kabanata 211 - Kabanata 220

Xavier I drop shrimp into sizzling garlic butter, the pan spitting and hissing. The chaos mirrors the storm inside me—anger at Melanie’s selfishness, carefully hidden for Hazel’s sake. I sip my riesling, keeping my calm façade intact.When dinner’s ready, I call Hazel and plate the food. Her familiar footsteps on the stairs are comforting, but when I see her, I freeze. For a moment, it’s Melanie—the same bright red hair, slim shoulders, and lean frame. Hazel has grown so much, and for a fleeting second, I almost imagine my wife is back.I serve the pasta and pour another glass of wine, offering Hazel a smile. She’s so much like Melanie it’s startling. The resemblance is uncanny—her body slim and delicate, yet striking—but her face is softer, her icy blue eyes wide and innocent, free of Melanie’s hardened edge.Hazel devours the meal like she hasn’t eaten in days, and worry twists in my chest. How could Melanie abandon her own child?“What did your mom say before she left?” I ask, alr

The comment takes me by surprise, but pleases me. I know I can never really be Hazel’s father, but all I’ve ever wanted is to make her feel safe.“Okay, good.” Annette closes her notebook and slips it into the large tote bag at her feet, standing up. “You have my number.” She looks at me. “If you hear from Ms. Holland in the next few days, please give me a call. Otherwise, I’m happy to know that Hazel has a safe place to be, and this is our goodbye, since somebody is turning eighteen soon.” She grins at Hazel, who smiles back.Eighteen years old. Technically an adult. Maybe that’s what Melanie was thinking when she left. That Hazel was old enough. That they’d gotten close enough to the finish line that Hazel could make it on her own from there.I shake the social worker’s hand and walk her to the door, feeling a surge of protectiveness for my stepdaughter. I want Annette to leave so that I can be alone with Hazel, so that I can enfold her in my arms and never let her go.Eighteen is n

When we get to the house, I insist that Hazel sit at the dining room table and start her homework, a habit I’m trying to re-instill. In so many ways, her year away with Melanie has rusticated her; she’s like an escaped animal who’s gone feral. I have to retrain her on all her old, good habits.I sit across from her where my laptop is already open on the table, and take a moment to watch her. She’s completely unselfconscious, her head bent over her work thoughtfully as she scrawls notes on a page. She bites her bottom lip, two white teeth stabbing the swollen flesh of her full lip, and her hair—pulled back but coming loose—drapes over the sides of her face. Her mother’s brilliant red hair. A little Melanie, but one who’s sweet, and unjaded, and sincere.When she finishes her work, I close my laptop, too. “Spaghetti for dinner?” I ask, and she nods happily. I’d almost forgotten what a pleasure it is to cook for her, how making dinner for her night after night had always been one of my g

I smile at her joke. “Uh, separated, for a year now. So I guess my marriage was a thwarted dream. One kid. Hazel. She’s with me full-time right now while her mother…I don’t know…is off finding herself, I guess.”“Oh!” Cynthia’s eyes widen with interest. “A kid, eh? So you’re Daddy.” She says it coquettishly, swirling the toothpick of olives around in her glass, and it gives me an odd rush. Heat rises to my cheeks. “How old is Hazel?”Not old enough, I think, images of Kye flashing in my mind. So help me God, he better not be at my house.“Seventeen,” I answer. “She’ll be eighteen next week.”“Ooh, eighteen. Legal. Daddy’s going to have his hands full.”It’s the most inappropriate thing to say about someone’s daughter, yet it elicits a hot, throbbing arousal in me. Maybe it’s the way she says it, her cat’s eyes narrowing, the slow, suggestive smile creeping over her face. She runs a hand over her sleek, black hair, tucking it behind her shoulder and revealing the smooth skin of her cle

HazelI’ve always been a good kid, especially for Xavier, whom I would never want to disappoint, but his order that Kye not step foot on this property seems irrational and unfair. Why shouldn’t I be able to have a friend over? Xavier’s made a point of saying that his home is my home, too. If that’s true, I rationalize, then I should be allowed to invite people over.So in defiance of Xavier’s orders, I don’t cancel my plans with Kye, figuring I can count on my dad to be out for dinner for at least three or four hours, and there’s no reason he ever has to know.It’s a bit awkward when Kye arrives. He’s chill as ever, but I second-guess everything I say, wondering if I even know how to talk to my own peers anymore after spending so many weeks alone, killing time in an apartment I couldn’t afford to leave. We go downstairs to the den and put a dumb Will Ferrell movie on, and it’s easier when we don’t have to speak. After a while, Kye puts his arm around me, and somehow, by the time the c