I was expecting it. But the courier still made me jump. The fact that I was in the bath didn't help. I wrapped myself in a towel, padded to the front door of my apartment and opened it.

"Can you just sign here, please?" The courier said and I wondered briefly what would happen if I said no. I took the parcel from him and examined it. It was a large plastic zip up pouch, deep and heavy.

Derek's manuscript. (and I'd blocked out two days to read it.)

After I dumped the parcel on the kitchen table, I dried and dressed myself slowly, thinking about the words on paper contained within that pouch.

What did it say? What did I want it to say? Did it mention growing up in the McDonald-Venturi household or did it start with his career? Did it mention his siblings and step-siblings or did it gloss over the time in our life that we actually shared?

Did it even cover the girlfriends? There were lots, before and after me. I'd seen the ones before. I'd read in gossip magazines about the ones after. I was one in a long line of conquests. I had no illusions. My mind briefly toyed with the idea that he might have written about all of them, with a kind of Truman-like rating system. It seemed unlikely.

But had he written about me?

Pulling on leggings and a long sweater, I made myself a coffee and set out to do my job.

Initially, I sat at the kitchen table to work so that I could make notes, but after I read the first two paragraphs, I grabbed my notepad and pen and moved to the sofa. It was the tone of his writing that made me move. Derek charmed with his writing the way he charmed with his mou…I mean…speaking voice. I couldn't sit rigidly on a hard chair because his writing made you want to relax. Or maybe, it was that the writing was so obviously him that I could hear his words in my head, in his own voice, and it was that which made me relax.

The soft voice of the man I loved.


The first question was answered quickly. He had started his story with the visit of the hockey scouts to college.

I took a deep breath. God! I remembered that week! It had started with the catastrophic jerk in the tectonic plates that were Continental Casey and Drifting Derek. He was starting his autobiography right at the time we got together!

Like real tectonic plates, we had bumped and ground against each other (figuratively) until the tension grew so great something had to give.

And when it did…

Memories overtook my mind, and I lay the section of the manuscript I was reading on my lap and closed my eyes…

We had arrived at Queens, and the relationship I had with Derek shifted. On the surface it was the same old, same old hate-hate. But, since the moment he helped me move into my dorm room on our first day at our new university, things had been different.

Because when he came to leave my room, he had pulled me into his arms and pressed a kiss against my lips.

I knew he had done it to wind me up. He expected a degree of violence…

…but I failed him. I hadn't smacked him. I simply stood there, trying not to panic as I realised this was the moment when we stopped living together, and that his gesture could be taken as a 'goodbye'.

"When will I…?" I started.

"When will you what?" He asked quietly, his gaze was intense; more even than it had been that night in our kitchen.

I coughed. "Nothing."

He gave an almost imperceptible shrug, simply pressed a second kiss against my forehead this time and muttered the name of his dorm and his room number, and then he left.

It was the most affectionate we had ever been to each other.

After that, I saw him at least once a week, normally on a Friday. By "saw", I mean I passed him on campus, his arm slung around this week's "special", no doubt on his way to one or other of the nightclubs.

I was normally on my way to the library.

He would break away from the girl (I never knew their names) say something that provoked a belly laugh from her and a stare towards me.

Great!

Then he would come over to me and drag me round the nearest corner.

"Der-ek!"

Once around the corner, he would lose the hard man pose and smile softly at me. "You okay?"

And no matter what the animosity between us at other times, I couldn't help myself smiling back.

"Yeah…you?" He would nod, and I would continue. "She looks…pretty."

He nearly always frowned as though he had no idea who I was talking about, and then enlightenment would appear on his features.

"I'll kick her out at breakfast."

I'd pull a face. He'd smirk and then he'd be leaning forward and would whisper in my ear.

"I don't have sex with them Casey. They are for show only."

It was disarming and his breath on my skin made me shiver. Every time I would ask the same question.

"So why do it?"

"Because it bugs the hell out of you." He would say, press a kiss to my cheek, pull my hair and disappear off again.

Then came the day of the "earthquake"; the day when our tension finally started to give.

"That hot guy over there is staring at you." Gerry had said in the irritating sing song she had for embarrassing her friends.

Gerry (to her friends, Geraldine! to her Great Aunt) was a close friend of mine at Queens. We had several lectures together.

I glanced up across the library in the direction she was pointing and groaned.

"That's not a hot guy, that's Derek."

"THAT'S Derek?!" I'd let slip once that I had a step-brother.

Evidently, it didn't take much to impress my friend.

I nodded.

"Ooo. He's coming over."

And I rolled my eyes as yet another of my friends fell under his spell.

"S'up?" Derek said as he tried to stroll nonchalantly towards me.

"Nothing – but now that you're here I'm sure that will change." I smiled with a false sweetness and couldn't help the retort.

He smirked at me. "Am I not allowed to check in with you sis?"

"No." I said, probably a bit rudely, but the last time I had seen Derek, two weeks ago, he had upended my lunch over my head. He wasn't my favourite person right now. Even if I had missed him.

It was just a shame that my knees always had to lock whenever he turned those eyes towards me. If they didn't I'd collapse in a gibbering heap.

"What do you want, Derek? I'm busy."

"No you're not. You're reading."

"Exactly, I'm busy." To prove a point, I stuck my nose back in the book and tried to block him out.

Derek glanced up at Gerry. "Hey. Cute stuff, give us a minute would you?"

I could almost smell Gerry wetting her pants as she walked away.

It was disgusting.

"Back off, moron, I'm not in the mood." I snapped. Liar! Derek had been away for two weeks on a college hockey tour and I'd missed our fights.

And then his lips were at my ear and his breath tickling my neck.

"I am." He said, and his fingers took my book from my fingers and placed it on the desk.

He wasn't talking about fighting.

I closed my eyes and bit the inside of my cheek.

"Casey." He said, and he had never said my name like that before.

"W-w-hat?" I stammered stupidly.

"Ditch the friend and I'll buy you dinner."

It was one of those rare moments when I did as Derek told me.

We ate at a little Chinese restaurant close to the campus. And though I knew differently, it felt like a date.

Derek behaved himself.

"Did you miss me?" he asked after we had ordered.

"Don't be ridiculous."

He laughed.

"So what's with the taking the sis out to dinner?" I asked. "You're after something."

He shook his head. "Not this time."

"Yeah…right, Derek."

"Honestly."

I laughed. "The day you do something honestly, I'll keel over from the shock."

"Good thing I know CPR."

"Der-ek."

"Casey." He said in that way again. I could feel myself pooling under the table.

We stared…sorry…gazed at each other. I felt something brush my hand and his fingers were easing their way between mine. He took my hand in his own.

"You okay?" he asked, looking down at our hands. Was I okay with that?

I nodded and we moved onto banal conversation until we had eaten; when he wasn't using his hand to eat, his fingers sought mine.

We left the restaurant and Derek walked me back to my dorm.

Yes. I did just say that. Derek walked me home! I got the impression, somewhere along the line tonight, he had forgotten about a little detail.

The girl he had been holding hands with, had a date with, was his step-sister…

Half way there we passed through a park. It was after ten and therefore dark. As we crossed the open space, he slipped an arm around me, and leaned close.

"This is weird." He said as if to himself. "You're driving me crazy, Casey. I spent the whole of that hockey tour thinking about you."

"I'm not in the mood for Derek-pranks." I sighed, but I didn't pull away.

Derek stopped, caught my waist and pulled me against him.

"Neither am I."

We watched each other for a long while and I could almost feel the earth tremor as the Derek-Casey earthquake began.

His fingers moved to the back of my neck and I closed my eyes as he leaned towards me and his lips pressed against mine again. But it wasn't like the first day in my dorm room.

I couldn't help it.

I had to respond.

His tongue touched my lips and my mouth opened. I opened my eyes briefly.

Derek smiled as he kissed me, but it wasn't a smirk. I leaned against him and deepened the kiss, my eyes closing again. His hand had slipped behind my back to keep our bodies pressed together. We moved together, against each other, gasping for breath between kisses.

Despite Derek's teasing in the past, I wasn't a prude, even then. I'd had boyfriends. And I'd had boyfriends who majored on the physical. They knew how to kiss…how to leave me breathless. I was still a virgin, but I knew what it felt like to want sex. But I had never wanted sex as much as I did that night.

And in typical Derek fashion, he didn't give it to me.

That night, he pulled away from the kiss, took my hand and carried on walking. He was slower this time so that we could catch our breath and we didn't say a word until we stopped at the main door to my dorm.

"Casey." Soft again, his fingers grasped mine and linking together made a gesture between us. "I want this whatever it is that's growing between us."

"And what Derek wants…" I started to say.

"No!" He snapped. "Not like that." He sighed and sat down on the low wall so that I was standing over him. "I want you to want it, Case." He murmured and kissed my hand.

If this was a prank he was a really good actor. Can you fake an erection?

I sat on the wall beside him as people were coming and going through the building entrance.

For the first time in a long time, I was speechless. Derek twisted his body so that we were sitting facing each other.

"Don't ask me why, Casey. I really don't know why. But, for a long time now I've been more aware of you and…"

He didn't finish his words, because neither of us was particularly interested in talking. I stroked his lips with my finger and he kissed the finger tip. Trailing the fingers along his jaw line I moved closer and he met my mouth with his own.

We both gasped a little at the break in tension, before the kissing grew intense. So intense I nearly fell off the wall. That caused us to break apart laughing. I stood up, suddenly brave.

"Come on, let's go talk about this somewhere else."

We entered the dorm building and I led him up to my room, grateful beyond words for the fact this dorm had single rooms.

"Your room?!" Derek said, surprised as I unlocked my door.

I frowned. "Yeah…why?"

"I just had visions of chaste hand-holding in the common room."

I elbowed him in mock annoyance.

"Who says you are getting anymore in my room?" I said pointedly.

Derek laughed. "You. If you kiss like that in public, I can't wait to find out what you are like when I do this." He shut the door behind us with a dramatic slam.

I rolled my eyes at him, dumped my purse on my bed and put my hands on my hips.

"We should talk about this." I said, holding my ground.

"Really?" he was still amused. "Princess, don't do the hand on hips thing, I can't take you seriously when you do that. You look like my ninth grade teacher and I really don't want to be confusing my feelings for you with images of her."

I slumped, suddenly exhausted. Derek walked across to my desk and sat on the chair. I hadn't been expecting that. I sort of assumed he would sit on the bed. Maybe he was finding this as exhausting as I was.

"Space." He said flatly and I decided he was giving me an explanation for the distance rather than using a nickname. I was so confused!

And the silence was oppressive.

"What the hell are we doing?" I asked, wearily.

"Experimenting with step-sibling bonding." He replied. His eyes looked conflicted too. "I don't know, Casey. It's allowed, though."

"I know we're allowed to get involved, I just think it's a really bad idea."

He sighed and rested his elbow on the desk, his fingers in his hair.

"So do I."

"Then why did you do it?" I asked.

He frowned. "Why did I do what?"

"Why did you kiss me?"

He chuckled. "You seriously think this all started with the kiss? Casey, what planet are you on? This has been going on since we graduated. All those heavy tension moments."

"Derek. We've been having "tension moments" since we were fifteen."

"You're right. This has been building for nearly four years then…"

I smiled. "That's silly."

"True though."

We fell silent again.

Derek sat up. "Come here." He said softly and held out a hand.

"Why?" I was cautious, but already stepping towards him.

"Because I don't want to talk about this. I just want to do it." He replied, catching my hand and dragging me onto his lap.


The whole flashback thing hadn't taken long, but it left me weary. That had been the start of our brief relationship, and while we were both sure it was all going to end in tears, we really didn't want to stop.

Derek left late that night, but he largely behaved himself. My virtue remained intact…just. The relationship between us was clearly going to be intense and physical when it got going.

…And yet just two weeks later, and just hours after admitting we were deeply in love with each other, the whole affair was over, and the rest of my life had begun.