I’m In Love With My Brother’s Best Friend?! – Episode 02
Cole Hart’s name carried Kaitlyn backward three years, to an afternoon she had tried to preserve and forget in equal measure. She had been fifteen and certain that the cruelest girls at school possessed the power to define her. They had cornered her after class, laughing about the fact that she had never been kissed. By the time she reached home, their taunts had become proof, in her mind, that no one ever would.
Cole found her crying on the old swing behind the Sinclair house. He had always seemed older than Ryan and the other boys, not simply in years but in the calm way he paid attention. When he asked what had happened, Kaitlyn tried to dismiss it as stupid. He sat beside her anyway and waited until the whole humiliating story spilled out.
“They said it’s because I’m ugly,” she admitted, hiding inside the sleeves of her sweatshirt. Cole’s expression hardened, but not at her. He told her the boys her age were idiots who could not recognize beauty when it stood in front of them. Kaitlyn accused him of saying it only to make her feel better, and he answered with a certainty she wanted badly to believe: she had never been ugly and never would be.
Her tears slowed, though one fear remained. She whispered that she would probably never be kissed. Cole fell quiet, his attention dropping briefly to her mouth. Then he cupped her cheek and brushed his lips over hers, gentle enough that she wondered afterward whether she had imagined it.
The kiss lasted only a heartbeat, but it changed the shape of Kaitlyn’s world. Cole pulled back with an awkward smile and told her no one could make that claim again. Then he asked her to keep the moment secret because Ryan would kill him if he found out. Kaitlyn promised, even as she understood that the kiss would never feel unimportant to her.
Now, standing in Cole’s bedroom wearing his shirt, Kaitlyn felt every buried emotion return at once. The boy from the swing had become a striking man, and she was no longer the frightened girl he had comforted. Unfortunately, her body remembered him before her pride could recover. She lowered her gaze and tried to sound unaffected.
She explained that Ryan had offered her the apartment while he studied abroad. Cole lifted an eyebrow and informed her that he had moved in with Ryan several months earlier. The broken warning on the phone finally made sense. Ryan had not given her an empty refuge; he had unknowingly placed her alone with the one man she had never learned to resist.
Cole rested a shoulder against the wall and let a teasing smile appear. Since Ryan was gone, he said, permission for her to stay was technically his to give. He asked what she planned to do to convince him. The playful challenge—and the way he looked at her in his clothes—sent heat through her that had nothing to do with embarrassment.
Kaitlyn accused him of becoming a jerk and tried to laugh, but the day caught up with her. Cole noticed the stains in her hair, her swollen eyes, and the way her smile refused to hold. His teasing vanished. When he asked who had made her cry, she could not bear to explain Brent’s betrayal while half-dressed in front of the boy she had once loved first.
“Never mind,” she murmured, reaching for her suitcase. She apologized for intruding and said she would find somewhere else. Before she could lift the bag, Cole caught its handle. His voice lost every hint of a joke when he told her she was not going anywhere.
He reminded her that they had known each other for years and that he would never leave her homeless. Kaitlyn searched his face for reluctance but found only concern. When she asked if he truly meant it, he told her she could stay on one condition: she could not distract him from his graduate studies. The condition sounded safe enough, though the tension between them already suggested it might be impossible.
Relief loosened the knot inside her chest. Kaitlyn promised to be the perfect roommate, and Cole pointed solemnly at the shirt she had stolen. Mortified, she began to pull it over her head before realizing she wore nothing beneath it. Cole laughed and stopped her, telling her to keep it because it looked better on her.
She escaped to the guest room before he could see how deeply the casual compliment affected her. Alone, Kaitlyn pressed her fingers to lips he had kissed three years ago. Brent’s betrayal should have left no room for another man in her thoughts. Yet the person occupying every corner of her mind was not the boyfriend she had lost.
That evening, Kaitlyn dressed for a freshman party rather than staying home to mourn. The fitted green dress was shorter and bolder than anything she usually wore, but that was precisely why she chose it. Brent had made her feel undesirable and foolish; she wanted one night in which she decided how she saw herself. When she stepped into the living room, she asked Cole how she looked.
Cole glanced up from his textbook and forgot to answer. His gaze moved over her before snapping back to the page, but the brief lapse was unmistakable. Kaitlyn was no longer the skinny teenager who followed him and Ryan around the neighborhood. The realization unsettled him enough that he reached for the safest role available—the protective substitute brother.
He told her the dress was too short and ordered her to change. Kaitlyn folded her arms, stung by how quickly he had retreated behind that familiar boundary. She reminded him that he was not her older brother and had no authority over her clothes. Cole rose from the couch, tension tightening his jaw as he insisted she could not go out dressed that way.
Kaitlyn refused to let him disguise jealousy as concern. She stepped closer and asked what, exactly, he would do if she walked through the door. Cole’s answer died before it formed. Vanilla perfume and the warmth of her body made coherent thought increasingly difficult.
“I need you to be a good girl and go change,” he finally said, his voice lower than either of them expected. The words hung between them, far too intimate for a brotherly warning. Kaitlyn saw his eyes darken and felt a spark of confidence return. Perhaps she was not the only one remembering that secret kiss.
She tilted her head and asked what he would give her if she obeyed. Cole stared, visibly caught between desire and restraint. Kaitlyn had spent years believing he would never see her as anything but Ryan’s little sister. For the first time, she glimpsed evidence that he was fighting to see her that way.
Neither moved as the apartment fell silent around them. Cole could invoke Ryan, their history, or the difference in their ages, but none of those reasons explained the way he was looking at her. Kaitlyn lifted her chin and waited for his answer. Whatever line had once kept them safely apart was still there—but tonight, both of them were standing dangerously close to crossing it.