I’m In Love With My Brother’s Best Friend?! – Episode 15
Cole stopped between the two women, his attention fixed on the mark across Kaitlyn’s cheek. Anger moved through him with the same cold intensity she had seen at the party. He asked who had touched her.
Amber rushed forward and called him babe. She claimed Kaitlyn had confronted and attacked her out of jealousy. The performance was polished, but Cole stepped away before Amber could take his arm.
“I’m not your babe,” he said. The rejection landed publicly, stripping Amber of the intimacy she had claimed. Cole reminded her that their relationship had ended months earlier.
Kaitlyn stared at them. So Amber was not merely an admirer but Cole’s ex-girlfriend—the woman whose history with him had fueled every insult. Knowledge answered one question while creating dozens more.
Cole explained that he ended the relationship after finding Amber in bed with one of his friends. He had agreed to meet her only because she repeatedly refused to collect her belongings. Amber’s tale of a celebrated campus couple collapsed in a few sentences.
Amber insisted Kaitlyn had attacked her because she was obsessed with him. She held up the photograph as proof. Cole barely glanced at it before returning his gaze to Kaitlyn’s injured face.
He knew photographs could lie and Amber frequently did. More importantly, he knew Kaitlyn. The girl who apologized when strangers bumped into her at parties did not hunt down women for sport.
Amber said Kaitlyn was jealous of what they had. Cole answered that they had nothing. His certainty erased the last ambiguity Amber hoped to exploit.
She changed tactics and confessed that she still loved him. If he felt anything for her, she pleaded, he could not let a freshman come between them. The appeal might once have moved him; now it only revealed how little she understood him.
Amber called Kaitlyn a degrading name. Cole’s patience ended. He warned her never to speak about Kaitlyn that way again.
He told Amber he had known Kaitlyn his entire life. Memories moved behind the words: backyard summers, the girl crying on a swing, the young woman asleep beneath his roof. “She means more to me than you ever will.”
Kaitlyn forgot the pain in her cheek. Cole had denied her, embarrassed her, and fled from their kisses, but no one had ever defended her with such unmistakable feeling. Even Amber went silent.
Cole warned his ex that another attempt to hurt Kaitlyn would make campus life very difficult for her. As a respected graduate student and teaching assistant, he possessed influence Amber could no longer dismiss. The warning was not theatrical; it was a promise.
Amber’s face twisted with humiliation. She pointed at Kaitlyn and declared the conflict was not over. Kaitlyn would regret stealing her man, she said, even though Cole had just made it clear he had never been hers to reclaim.
She walked away before the gathering crowd could see more of her defeat. The students followed her with their phones and whispers. By nightfall, another edited version of the confrontation would circulate across campus.
Cole turned to Kaitlyn and asked if she was hurt. His hand lifted toward her cheek, then stopped as though he feared touching her without permission. The hesitation felt more intimate than Amber’s possessive performance.
Kaitlyn said she was fine, but her composure finally cracked. She accused him of pretending not to know her in class, humiliating her before everyone, kissing her, fleeing, and then returning as a knight whenever someone threatened her.
Cole tried to explain that he avoided favoritism and acted for her own good. Kaitlyn told him she could not endure being protected and rejected in alternating breaths. His contradictions made it impossible to know where she stood.
When he admitted she was his favorite, the confession arrived wrapped in teasing, but she heard its seriousness. Cole apologized for Amber and said their relationship had ended for good. Kaitlyn realized the beautiful, confident woman had never possessed the secure place in his life she claimed.
Then Cole drew a breath and began explaining what Amber’s betrayal had cost him. Kaitlyn listened, sensing she was about to meet a part of him hidden beneath the campus legend—and perhaps understand why he ran whenever desire demanded trust.