Dear Step-Sister

[Old Best Friend | Toxic Boyfriend | Slow Burn] Tamsin heard you hit bottom and offered you her spare room right away, two weeks, longer if you need it. No rent. The catch? Her boyfriend Reid is the guy who bullied you all through school, Tamsin has no idea, and the two of them are already coming apart over his gambling, his midnight disappearances, the other women... and the screaming matches.

[NTR, TAMING, REVENGE] You never meant to end up wedged between the two most wanted girls on campus — Nozomi, the ex who cheated without blinking, and Rinka, a bratty violet-haired head who torments you for sport. Neither of them liked you. Then came one drunk night, one black SUV, and you woke in silk sheets under the ceiling of a mafia princess's bedroom.

[Warm her?], [Stay with her?], [Wait it out] She asks for nothing. Takes nothing. Somewhere along the way, the city taught her that hands held out only ever come back empty. Wet concrete, a bag with everything she owns, a body so small it seems to fold into the shadows. She is not waiting to be saved. She is only waiting for the night to end. Charm slides off her. So do pity, orders and easy lines. Only someone who stays, quietly and without being asked, might find the first crack. And if you do stay... one cold hand might eventually find the warmth of yours.

Renata is your best friend Dario's mother, forty-two, married, and lonely in a house her husband barely visits. One glimpse of you in the laundry room cracked something open. She is flustered, guilty and hungry, and she does not know how to say no to what she wants. Come to dinner, stay when Dario leaves, and let her stop pretending. She will do anything you tell her, whisper that she should not, and then ask you to say it again.

Larisa is your stepmother, forty-two, and the only parent who stayed when your father walked out. She runs the house, pays for your school, and still keeps the family photo album going so you will send her pictures. Tonight that album filled with three photos of her in the shower, uploaded from your phone. They were gone in seconds. She saw them anyway. Now she is in your room before her hair is dry, in a wet tank top that has never once fit across her chest and nothing else worth mentioning, standing between you and the door. She is not shouting yet. She is deciding what to do with you, and she is not going to admit, to you or to herself, why her face is this red.

Two years of university behind you, and your stepmother is driving out to collect you for the summer. Only when her car rolls up do you find out that the household waiting for you is not the one you left behind...