I’m In Love With My Brother’s Best Friend?! – Episode 03
Kaitlyn held Cole’s gaze, refusing to retreat from the challenge she had created. The green dress skimmed her thighs, and his attention kept drifting toward it despite the discipline that made him one of the best students on campus. He had called her a good girl in a voice that sounded nothing like brotherly concern. Now she wanted to know whether he understood what he had revealed.
“What will you give me if I change?” she asked. Cole blinked, momentarily stripped of every clever response. He folded his arms and said she would earn the privilege of leaving the apartment, but the answer lacked conviction. Kaitlyn smiled, enjoying his discomfort more than she should.
She mentioned another dress in her closet, one even shorter than the first. When she innocently offered to let him watch her change into it, Cole nearly choked. His strained warning only widened her smile. After the way Brent had humiliated her, discovering that Cole found her attractive felt dangerously healing.
Still, she had not dressed for Cole’s approval. Kaitlyn picked up her purse and announced that she was going to the party exactly as she was. She told him not to wait up, then left before her courage deserted her. The closing door left Cole alone with a textbook he could no longer pretend to read.
He dragged a hand through his hair and asked himself what had happened to the little girl who used to trail after him and Ryan. The more honest question was what had happened to him. He had promised Ryan, without ever saying the words aloud, that Kaitlyn would always be safe around him. Wanting her complicated that promise in ways he did not dare examine.
Music shook the fraternity house by the time Kaitlyn arrived. Students crowded the porch and spilled across the lawn, already forming the social hierarchies that would define their semester. Inside, one name surfaced again and again. Everyone wanted to know whether the famously elusive Cole Hart would waste an evening at a freshman party.
Girls compared rumors about him: graduate student, academic star, impossibly fit, and indifferent to nearly everyone who pursued him. One student claimed Cole had recently moved in with a freshman woman, setting off a new wave of speculation. Kaitlyn heard enough to understand that sharing an address with him might attract attention she had never anticipated.
Then she stepped fully into the room, and the conversation changed. Heads turned as the lights caught the green fabric of her dress. Whispers followed her through the crowd—questions about who she was, whether she was new, and how she knew Cole. Kaitlyn forced herself not to shrink beneath their attention.
Tonight was not about replacing Brent or earning anyone’s admiration. It was about reclaiming the part of herself he had tried to destroy. She squared her shoulders and crossed the room as if she belonged there. For several precious seconds, the confidence felt real.
Then she saw Brent near the drinks table with Maddy. His expression changed the instant he recognized her. Surprise gave way to open hunger, followed by something darker when he heard someone identify her as Cole Hart’s roommate.
Maddy noticed his stare and stiffened. That morning she had dismissed Kaitlyn as plain and sexless, but the entire room now watched the same woman with fascination. One of Maddy’s friends whispered that Kaitlyn had cleaned up well. Maddy silenced her with a glare sharp enough to wound.
Brent could not reconcile this Kaitlyn with the girlfriend he had thrown out. He had expected her to remain heartbroken and available, not to arrive looking radiant while rumors connected her to the most admired man on campus. Regret pricked him, but possession quickly overwhelmed it. In his mind, her refusal to sleep with him had made her first time something he had earned.
Kaitlyn saw him start toward her and turned away. She refused to let his presence ruin another moment of her life. A group of students welcomed her into their conversation, and she introduced herself with a steadier voice than she felt. Each ordinary exchange carried her farther from the apartment where Brent had betrayed her.
Across the room, however, Brent watched every smile she gave someone else. He imagined Cole seeing her in the dress and felt humiliation twist into rage. Kaitlyn had not moved on, he told himself; she was trying to punish him. The story was easier to bear than accepting that she no longer belonged to him.
Maddy demanded to know why he cared who Kaitlyn lived with. Brent dismissed her question, though his clenched jaw answered clearly enough. Their alliance had been built on cruelty and appetite, not trust. Already, Kaitlyn’s presence exposed how little either of them believed they had truly won.
More students gathered near the entrance when the front door opened. Excited whispers claimed Cole had finally arrived, and several girls rushed to look. Kaitlyn’s heart reacted before she could remind herself that she did not need him to rescue her evening. Part of her nevertheless hoped he had followed.
The figure at the door disappeared into the crowd, and disappointment flickered through her. She scolded herself for expecting anything. Cole had told her to change, not promised to accompany her. Whatever attraction she had glimpsed in the apartment did not erase the years he had treated her as family.
Brent read that brief disappointment differently. To him, it confirmed that Kaitlyn was waiting for Cole. He beckoned Lydia and Nat—two women loyal to Maddy—and asked for a favor. Their amused expressions suggested they needed little persuasion.
Kaitlyn accepted a greeting from another stranger, unaware of the conversation unfolding behind her. She believed the worst part of her day was over and that the party might become the first good memory of college. She did not see Lydia pick up a drink or Nat glance toward Brent for instructions.
Brent watched Kaitlyn laugh beneath the pulsing lights and made a silent promise that Cole Hart would not have what he considered his. If Kaitlyn would not choose him willingly, he intended to take the choice away. As Lydia and Nat began moving through the crowd toward her, the party stopped being a celebration and became a trap.