Royal Prick (A Stepbrother Romance #2)(73)

“Crap.” I clutched at my chest and quickly reached for the napkins sitting in the center of the table.

“Just because your mom is a raging bitch, doesn’t mean that you are. You’re nothing like her. Nothing. If you were I wouldn’t be so in love with you.” He placed a kiss against my forehead, and then walked over to his mother and wrapped her up in his arms. She sank into him the same way I did. Like she needed him to live.

“I wasn’t going to leave. I just didn’t know because you never told me. I don’t want to be a reminder of the pain.” My mom’s hate toward me made so much more sense now.

“You’re a reminder of the good that comes from evil.” Olivia spoke before Royal could. “We can’t hate you for someone else’s actions.” The sentence she spoke reminded me of the words I said to my mom before Royal came. We couldn’t judge someone based on their past. A checkered past didn’t make for a bad person. It just meant that somewhere along the lines you veered off track.

“I didn’t know she trapped him. I was never under the impression that Mark was my father. I love Mark like a stepdad, and he has always taken care of me but that’s it.” I didn’t know why I was defending myself when I knew that I didn’t have too.

“Stop. It’s okay.” Olivia’s voice soothed me like a salve over a bleeding wound. She was everything my own mother wasn’t. Sweet. Sincere. Loving. Things that I craved in my own mother for years.

“You’ve changed me, baby. Without the things that happened I wouldn’t have met you.” Royal winked at me. It was then that I realized he was shirtless. God, everything was so f*cked up. I wanted Royal again, and I felt a barrage of emotions as I stared at him and his mother. It was like finding your home after being gone for years.

This was where I needed to be, and it all finally made sense.

“That’s very true, Royal. See, you have changed him, and I can guarantee that he never would have said that before,” Olivia laughed as she made Royal a cup of coffee too.

The conversation between them continued as I watched Royal make fun of his mother, laughter filled kitchen, happiness radiating out of both of them. They seemed so alive and happy with one another. It was such a different sight than I was used to seeing at home. We never joked or played around with each other in my family. I liked this.

“I knew she was the one you loved the second I opened the door and saw the look on your face as she walked in,” I heard Olivia whisper as Royal started making breakfast. I pretended as if I wasn’t listening. I had yet to say the words out loud to him. I couldn’t because if I did they may be jinxed.

“I bet you did, Mom, and you want to know something? I wouldn’t change how my life has been for the world, because all the pain I had to endured led me straight to her.”

Of all the millions and billions of people in the world I could end up with, I got Royal Black. My prick of a stepbrother to love.





Chapter Thirty-One


-Royal


The days slipped by me far too fast and I started to wonder if I could handle letting Noelle go home. Every time I thought about it my chest started to ache.

There was just no way I could let her go back to living with Viviana. It would be like me signing her death certificate, and there wasn’t a chance in the world that I was going to do something as stupid as that.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why her mother didn’t try to contact her yet. Why she didn’t try to come out here and get her? She had to know that she left to see me. The fact that she didn’t call or try on her proved exactly what I already knew. Her mother didn’t give a shit about her.

I was going back to school next week, and I didn’t know if I could handle wondering if she was okay every day. The anxiety of it all would probably kill me.

“I spoke with your father on the phone last night.” My mother said in passing as I headed toward my bedroom where Noelle was taking a nap.

“He called you?” I stopped dead in my tracks, whirling around and walking back out to the kitchen to finish this conversation. I had to know what was said between the two of them, they hadn’t talked in years aside from anything but me.

“Yes he did. It turns out he cares about his stepdaughter’s safety more than her own mother does.” A frown formed on her face as she spoke.

“He wanted to fly out and check on her but I insisted that everything was okay, that I was taking care of her, and had the situation under control.”

“Is it okay? I mean, what’s going to happen with her? I can’t send her back there, Mom. You have no idea the kind of woman Viviana is and what she did to Noelle.” My heart was beating out of my chest as I spoke. Panic was a very real emotion right this second. It was wrapping around my throat and threatening to suffocate me.

“Honestly, I don’t know, Royal. Everything is kind of up in the air right now. Mark is legally Noelle’s parent so he has just as much of say in the matter as her mother does. Right now, anything could happen.” She left the sentence open ended as if to say, are you going to ask her to stay? I wanted to, but I also didn’t want her to feel like she had to make a choice between her mother and me. I might have hated Viviana, but I could never expect Noelle too. That was her mother, and blood is always thicker than water.