Spring In Her Step: BWWM Stepbrother Romance

Chapter One

❁"It's better to fall from a tree and break your back than to fall in love and break your heart." - AFRICAN proverb.❁

ISIOMA

I look down, my expression collapsing as my eyes train on the humongous white cast crowding me.

I can't believe I broke my frickin' leg.

Again.

While it's not my first rodeo with a fracture—and something tells me it sure as hell won't be the last—only my unique kind of shitty luck would have this happen now.

Spring Break officially began an hour ago, and instead of loading my trunk, filling up my tank, and buckling up to drive down to South Padre with my best friends for the time of our lives like we've been planning to since practically the beginning of the school year, I'm by myself, backstage in the Theater building's second auditorium where it all went down. Sulking in self-pity and the incessant ache lancing my mummified foot as everyone else sprints to leave campus.

I tap on the engraved locket around my neck. One. Two. Three. Sheer habit driving the action. Even though doing the ritual hadn't prevented bad luck two nights ago.

As if mocking my misfortune, the neon glow of the EXIT sign flickers overhead, casting an eerie pallor on the deserted backstage. The applause from the audience still echoes in my ears, a stark contrast to the solitude engulfing me now.

There goes the carefully curated five-hour long Spring Break playlist I put together for the drive.

Sigh.

I guess it doesn't matter anymore. No matter how pissed or sad I am, the drive to Padre isn't happening. I'm not having a Spring Break, and I have no one to blame but myself.

I flinch as I try to take a step forward, gripping onto a nearby prop for support.

The last time I'd seen my ankle, it was three times its normal size and still growing, all swollen and angry-looking; no doubt at me for being so careless and totaling the hell out of it.

If it could speak, I have no doubt in my mind it would spit something along the lines of "Serves you right, you bitch! That's what you get for being such an irredeemable klutz!"

The pain radiates with each awkward step, transporting me back to how this all started—my mortifying fall during Wednesday's performance replaying vividly in my mind.

It all happened so quickly. The play had just ended, with thundering claps and enthusiastic whistles bursting through the auditorium as the audience gave a standing ovation.

Everyone on stage, including myself, gave the customary group bow. But then, caught up in the excitement of performing live coupled with the crowd's emphatic praise, my mind was solely on savoring that electric moment. Before I knew it, I'd already missed a step, and in no time at all, came tumbling down like Humpty Dumpty in front of over two hundred people. Every performer's second worst nightmare had become my immediate reality.

A startled scream left my lips when I realized what was happening, but it was already too late. Even after I fell, shock and shame had rendered my body paralyzed for several seconds, lying on the wooden floor in absolute horror.

Then it kicked in—no pun intended.

The pain. A searing, relentless stab that radiated through every nerve, branding the moment into my memory.

Pinocchio's greatest wish was to be a real boy but, in that moment, I swear to god, I wanted nothing more than to be genied into a folding chair just so I could fold into myself and disappear.