My stepbrother

Chapter 1

Maija

"Mom, where should I put these boxes?" I ask as I walk into the huge entrance of our new home. I have still not come to terms with living in a house big enough to be a small hotel. 

"Just leave them in here, for now, honey." 

the driveway behind the moving truck. I have no interest in the car or the person driving it, figuring they must be a friend of my stepfather’s, so instead of gawking, I grab some boxes for my room and

"Everything ok?"

sound of his voice, Charles, my new stepfather. My mother married him within twenty-four hours of their meeting in Vegas. They called it a whirlwind romance. That was three months ago, so we're still

had not known him long, I could tell he was a good man and that he truly loved my mother– even if I was skeptical when she came home with a ring on her finger and a new husband when she had left home three days earlier a single woman. I can see why my mother is attracted to him; he was a silver fox, grey all over, muscular with light grey eyes. My mother told me he had a son who was a year older than me; I whispered a silent prayer that he somehow lost the lottery at the gene pool and he was nothing like his father. He clears his throat, cutting through my thoughts,

move? Your mother and I uprooted your life when we fell in love. You had to move and leave your friends. It would make sense if you were not

like him; he cares about me as a person and does not see me as just my mother's daughter. He wants to know how I feel about everything, but he really has nothing to worry about. I was never close enough with my friends to care that much about being separated from them. Mom and I moved around a lot before she finished dental school and

don't have to worry about me.  I never went through an emotionally unstable teenager phase, and I don't