The Stepfamily Cabin Trip

Every year my mom and stepdad drag us to the same rented cabin on the same lake, and every year I count the days until it's over. This year was different. This year my stepbrother came too, and this year I couldn't stop noticing him.

He's only been my stepbrother for three years, since our parents got married. We were polite strangers for most of it, him in his room, me in mine, passing each other in the hallway like roommates. But somewhere along the way he grew up into this tall, broad-shouldered guy with messy hair and a slow grin, and this summer at the lake I started noticing things I had absolutely no business noticing. The way water ran down his chest when he climbed out of the lake. The way his swim trunks hung low on his hips. The way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't watching.

The cabin is small. Two bedrooms, parents in one, us in the other with twin beds pushed against opposite walls. A hot tub on the deck that the listing bragged about. On the second night, our parents went to bed early, worn out from hiking. He and I ended up in the hot tub alone under the stars, the steam curling up around us, the lake black and silent beyond the deck.

We talked. Really talked, the way we never had. He told me he was scared about starting his new job in the fall. I told him I was scared about things too. I didn't say what things. The jets rumbled. The water was hot on my skin. And then he went quiet, and I looked up, and he was watching me with an expression I'd never seen on his face before.

He said I looked different tonight. I asked different how. He swallowed and said like I wasn't his sister. The words hung there between us, steam rising, hearts pounding. He was right and we both knew it. We'd never really been siblings. We were two people who'd been stapled together by our parents' marriage, and the staples had never quite held.

I moved through the water until I was sitting beside him on the bench, our thighs touching under the surface. Neither of us moved away. I whispered that this was wrong, but I leaned into him anyway. He said he knew, and then his hand was on my cheek, and he was kissing me.

It was clumsy at first, the shock of it, the wrongness of it, and then it wasn't clumsy at all. His mouth was hot and certain, his hand sliding into my wet hair, and I kissed him back like I'd been waiting my whole life for permission. The water lapped around us. His other hand found my waist under the water, pulling me onto his lap, and I could feel him hard against me through our swimsuits.

We broke apart, breathing hard, foreheads together. He breathed that we couldn't, that they were right inside. I whispered then be quiet, and I saw the exact moment he gave in.

His hands slid up my sides under the water, pushing the straps of my swimsuit down. I helped him, lifting up so he could peel it down to my waist. In the moonlight, with the steam swirling, he just stared at me for a long moment, his chest rising and falling fast. He told me I was beautiful, and it sounded like it hurt him to say it.

He bent his head and took my nipple into his mouth, and I gasped, my hands gripping his shoulders. Under the water his hand moved between my legs, pushing my swimsuit aside, his fingers finding me already slick and swollen. He worked me slowly, deliberately, his eyes locked on mine, and the combination of the hot water and his touch and the sheer forbidden thrill of it had me trembling all over.

I came with my face buried in his neck, biting down on his shoulder to keep silent, my whole body shuddering in the hot water. He held me through it, his arms tight around me.

Then he stood, water streaming off him, and lifted me onto the edge of the hot tub. The night air was cool on my wet skin. He pushed his trunks down and I saw him fully for the first time, hard and thick, and I wanted him with an ache that scared me. He stepped between my legs, and I guided him to me, and he pushed inside with one slow thrust that made us both moan.

He moved in me carefully, quietly, the deck creaking softly under us, his mouth on my neck to muffle my sounds. It was slow and deep and devastating, every stroke a secret, every gasp swallowed. The stars spun overhead. The lake lapped at the shore. And my stepbrother, the boy I'd shared a hallway with for three years, was inside me, and it was the most right the wrongest thing had ever felt.

I came again, clinging to him, my nails digging into his back, and he followed with a shudder, burying his face in my hair. We stayed frozen like that, listening for any sound from the cabin, hearts hammering against each other.

We never spoke about it the rest of the trip. We went back to being polite. We ate our parents' pancakes and played cards and pretended the hot tub was just a hot tub. But on the last night, as we were packing, he pressed a folded note into my hand when our parents weren't looking.

It said: Next summer. Same cabin. Just us.

I keep it in my diary, folded small. And I count the days, not until the trip is over this time, but until it begins.