All Chapters of Home Alone With My Stepbrother: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Chapter 32The extra day felt shorter than it should have.I spent the morning staying visible — helping my mother with a grocery list, sitting with Tyler on the patio while he answered emails, answering Damon’s father’s casual questions about whether the house had felt too quiet while they were gone. Sophia moved through the rooms like she was cataloguing everything. Damon stayed mostly in the study with his father or outside on short, vague calls.At one point in the early afternoon I passed the open study door and heard Damon’s father ask about “the old settlement matters.” Damon’s reply was too low to catch. When he came out a few minutes later his expression was locked down tighter than before.We didn’t get a private moment until my mother decided to lie down for a rest and Damon’s father took a call in the backyard. Tyler was upstairs changing. Sophia had gone to her room. The main floor was briefly clear.Damon found me near the kitchen and spoke fast.“I hired someone.”I sta

Chapter 34Three days passed with no messages.No unknown numbers. No taunting lines from Elise. No quiet prodding from Reid. The silence sat over the house like a held breath that never quite released. Damon checked what he could from his end and said the wipe still looked clean. Sophia watched us less openly but still watched. My mother planned small dinners and talked about how good it was to be home. Damon’s father stayed busy with work calls. Tyler stayed close, warm, and completely unaware.The ordinary routine should have felt like relief.It felt like waiting.I caught Damon looking at me more than once across rooms — the kind of look that lasted half a second too long before he shut it down. I did the same. The rule about distance still existed on paper. In practice it frayed a little more each time we passed in a hallway or reached for the same glass in the kitchen.On the fourth night the house went quiet early. My mother and Damon’s father had gone to bed. Sophia’s door wa

Chapter 36Sophia waited until the house was quiet enough.It was late afternoon. Lila’s mother had gone into town for a few errands. Damon’s father was closed in the study on a long call. Damon had left an hour earlier with a vague excuse about needing to check something at the garage in town. Lila was upstairs showering. That left Tyler alone in the living room, laptop open on the coffee table, half-working and half-scrolling.Sophia came down the stairs in a soft crop top and fitted shorts, hair loose, bare feet silent on the hardwood. She had timed it carefully. She paused in the doorway long enough for him to notice her, then walked in like she belonged there.“Still working?” she asked.Tyler looked up and offered a polite smile. “Trying to. Reception’s better down here.”“Mind if I sit? It’s quiet upstairs.”He hesitated only a second. “Sure.”She sat on the couch beside him, closer than necessary, and angled her body toward his. The laptop screen glowed between them. She glanc

Chapter 38Morning came too bright and too loud.Lila woke to the sound of her mother’s voice calling up the stairs about breakfast. Tyler’s arm was still draped across her waist, heavy and warm. For a second she stayed still, staring at the ceiling, the ache between her legs a sharp reminder of the night before—Tyler first, then Damon bent over the hood of his car in the dark.She slipped out of bed before Tyler fully woke, showered quickly, and pulled on a soft tank top and shorts. When she came downstairs, the kitchen was already occupied.Sophia stood at the counter in a tiny pair of sleep shorts and a thin white crop top that left a strip of her stomach bare. She was laughing at something Damon’s father had said, pouring orange juice like she belonged there. Damon sat at the table, scrolling through his phone, expression unreadable. His eyes flicked up once when Lila entered, lingered for half a second on the faint bruise just above the neckline of her tank top, then dropped agai

Chapter 40Lila stood in the kitchen long after Sophia left, the sound of the upstairs shower filling the silence. The red marks on Sophia’s hips kept replaying in her mind—four distinct fingerprints pressed into soft skin, already beginning to darken.She told herself it could be anything. A rough grip from Damon. An accident by the pool. Anything except the thing her gut already knew.Still, she went upstairs.The bathroom door was cracked. Steam drifted into the hallway. Tyler stood under the spray with both hands braced against the tiled wall, head down, water running over the tense line of his shoulders. He didn’t hear her until she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.He turned too fast. Water sluiced down his chest. For a second his expression was pure panic before he forced it into something softer.“Hey,” he said. “I was just—”“You okay?” Lila kept her voice even. “Sophia said you felt overheated.”Tyler’s throat worked. He shut the water off, grabbed a towel, and