All Chapters of CRAVING MY FORBIDDEN STEPBROTHER: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

137 Chapters

Chapter 91: Trust Me

CAINLayla’s hand drops from mine.I feel every finger leave. One at a time, like she’s peeling herself off something hot, and the air hits my empty palm and I keep my hand open because closing it would mean she’s actually gone from it.“I’m pregnant, Cain.” Sienna says it again. Slower. Her hand flat on her stomach. “And it’s yours.”“No.”The word comes out before I think. Hard and clean and immediate.“I didn’t touch you.” I step forward. “I haven’t been near you in months. Whatever this is, whatever you’re doing—”“I was afraid you wouldn’t remember.” Sienna’s voice cracks. Perfectly. The exact right amount of breaking at the exact right moment. “It was two weeks ago. After your accident at the gym. That fight that went wrong.”My jaw tightens.“You came to my place.” She wipes her eye with one finger, careful not to smudge anything. “It was late. You were drunk. You could barely stand. You knocked on my door and when I opened it you told me you missed me.”“I didn’t—”“You said y

Chapter 92: Choices

I can hear her through the wall.Not loud. Just movement. The soft thud of a bag being set down. A drawer opening. The creak of the bed frame as she sits on it, or lies on it, or does whatever Sienna does when she’s making herself comfortable in a room that is six feet from mine.My mother gave her sheets from the linen closet. The blue ones with the white trim that smell like lavender because my mother puts sachets in every drawer. I stood at the top of the stairs and watched her carry them down the hall with a pillow under each arm and I didn’t say anything because what do you say? Don’t give her the good sheets? Don’t put her next to me? Don’t let the girl who just detonated my entire life sleep in our house?My mother’s face when she walked past me was red and swollen and she didn’t look at me and I didn’t look at her and we both pretended that was fine.The ceiling is dark. My room is dark. I’m lying on my back in the same clothes I drove home in, Cain’s t-shirt, and my hand is o

Chapter 93: DNA

My mother made pasta.Penne with red sauce, bread she sliced herself, the good napkins. Five plates. Five glasses of water. She set this table the way she sets it for Sunday dinners and she’s been moving around the kitchen all evening with a focused, tight-lipped energy that I recognize from the eleven days after my father’s funeral when she made lasagna until the freezer couldn’t close.Sienna pulls out her chair and sits across from me. She’s wearing a cream sweater with the sleeves pulled over her hands and she takes her napkin and spreads it across her lap and smiles at my mother.“This is so good, Linda. Seriously. You didn’t have to do all this.”“Of course I did.” My mother passes the bread basket. “You need to eat properly. You’re eating for two now.”Cain’s fork stops moving. My jaw locks. My mother doesn’t notice. She says it warm and easy because that’s my mother, she opens her arms before she opens her eyes.“I’ve been so nauseous lately,” Sienna says. She takes a small bi

Chapter 94: Checkmate

CAINI drive her because nobody else is going to.Linda offered. Twice. Stood in the kitchen with her car keys already in her hand saying I can take her, Cain, you don’t have to, and I told her I wanted to. Which is a lie. I don’t want to be in a car with Sienna. I don’t want to be in a room with Sienna. But I need to see this for myself. I need to watch a doctor put a screen in front of her and either confirm what she’s claiming or catch her in the lie I know is there.She sits in the passenger seat with her hands folded in her lap and her seatbelt stretched across her stomach and she doesn’t try to make conversation. Smart. The few times she looks at me I can feel it on the side of my face but I keep my eyes on the road and my hands at ten and two and my mouth shut.The clinic is small. Clean. A waiting room with pastel walls and magazines with babies on the covers and a woman behind the desk who smiles at us when we walk in.“Sienna Whitmore?”“That’s me.” Sienna smiles back. Touch

Chapter 95: Never have I ever 1

The studio is empty at six in the evening.Nobody books it this late. The lights are half off, the mirrors dark on one side, and the barre is cold under my hand when I touch it. The floor is scuffed and the speakers in the corner have a crack in the left one that makes the treble buzz if you turn it past seven.I haven't been in a studio since I quit dancing at the club.Eight months. Eight months since I stood in front of a mirror in heels and moved my body for money and told myself it was still dancing, it was still the thing my father watched me do at nine years old in a pink tutu, it was still mine. It wasn't. The club took it and bent it into something I couldn't look at straight and I stopped going and I stopped dancing and I stopped everything.But today my body is buzzing with something restless and sharp and I need to move or I'm going to lose my mind. The house is suffocating. Sienna in the kitchen with my mother. Cain in his room with his door closed. Marcus working late. T

Chapter 96: Never have I Ever 2

"Hey!" The girl waves at Zara. "Sorry I'm late. I brought Sienna, I hope that's okay. She's been having a really hard time and I didn't want to leave her alone, you know, with the pregnancy and everything...""Megan." Zara's voice is careful. "I didn't know you were bringing anyone.""I know, I know, I'm sorry. She's just been so lonely and I thought...""It's fine." Sienna steps forward. Her hands are clasped in front of her stomach. Small. Apologetic. "I can leave if it's a problem. I don't want to intrude."She's wearing an oversized sweater. Her hair is loose. She looks fragile and grateful and nothing like the girl who leaned across a car console and said do your parents know you're fucking your stepsister."It's fine," Megan says again, already pulling off her jacket. "Sit, sit."Sienna sits. On the floor. Cross-legged. Right across from me."What are we playing?" she asks. Bright. Easy."Never Have I Ever," Priya says."Oh, I love that game." Sienna picks up an empty glass. Pou

Chapter 97: Apology

The front door is unlocked. The hallway light is on. And I know before I step inside that Sienna got here first.I can hear my mother’s voice from the living room. Not the soft voice. Not the pasta voice. The tight, high, barely-controlled voice she used the one time I came home at 3am without calling and she’d been sitting on the couch in the dark for four hours imagining my body on the side of a highway.I close the door behind me. Walk toward it.My mother is standing in the middle of the living room with her arms crossed and her jaw set and her eyes red. Marcus is on the couch. Sienna is in the armchair with a bandage on her cheek, her legs curled underneath her, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea that my mother made her.A mug of tea. My mother made her tea.“Sit down,” my mother says.“Mom—”“Sit. Down.”I sit. On the edge of the chair nearest the door because every part of my body wants to be close to the exit.“Do you want to explain to me,” my mother says, and her voice is

Chapter 98: One Month

CAINI give her one night.One night of lying in my bed staring at the ceiling knowing she’s at Zara’s apartment with her bag packed and her necklace in a drawer and her face when I said she should apologize playing on repeat behind my eyelids every time I close them.She looked at me like I shot her.And I did it anyway because Sienna was sitting in that armchair with Linda’s tea in her hands and the words you know what’s at stake aimed at my head like a loaded gun and if I didn’t play the part she was going to pull the trigger right there. In front of my dad. In front of Linda. In front of everyone.So I played it.And Layla walked out the door and didn’t look back and that’s the second time I’ve watched her walk away from me in this house and I am running out of chances.I drive to Zara’s at noon the next day. She buzzes me up without asking questions. Opens the door and looks at me the way women look at men who’ve fucked up.“She’s in the guest room,” Zara says. “And if you make h

Chapter 99: Remorse

LaylaI was sitting on the edge of Zara's guest bed with my knees pulled to my chest, scrolling through the same texts I'd already read six times. Cain. Asking if I ate. Telling me he'd come by later. Telling me he'd figure it out.I wanted to believe him. I really did. But every time I closed my eyes, I saw that footage on the living room TV. My mother's face. His father's silence. And Sienna, standing behind them all with her hand on her stomach like she'd already won.A week. Seven days of sleeping in Zara's lavender sheets and pretending I wasn't falling apart.From the front of the apartment, I heard the buzzer go off. Then Zara's bare feet slapping against the tile as she went to the intercom screen."Oh." A pause. Then her voice dropped into something I almost didn't recognize. Something warm and curious and totally unlike her. "Who is that?"I didn't move. Zara had a habit of narrating every delivery driver and neighbor who walked past her camera like it was a runway show. I l

Chapter 100: Remorse 2

"I was angry," he continued. "And I was hurt. And Sienna reached out to me. She told me things. She told me what she was planning, and I just... I wanted you to feel something. Even if it was bad. I wanted to matter enough to cause a reaction." He lifted his head and looked at me again. No tears. Just tired, honest eyes and a mouth pressed into a hard line. "I took his hoodie. I went to her door. I stood there long enough for the camera to catch it, and then I left. That was it. That was all I did.""I didn't know she'd take it this far," he said quietly. "I didn't know about the baby. I didn't know she was going to move in. I thought it was just about embarrassing him. Making him sweat a little. I swear, Layla, I didn't know."And the terrible thing was, I believed him. Because Tyler wasn't cruel. He wasn't calculating. He was a nineteen-year-old baseball player who had loved a girl who never loved him back, and he'd done something stupid and reckless because the pain had to go somew

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