I Should Never Have Slept With My Best Friend's Brother

~Nadia~ The view almost made me forget everything. Almost. Floor-to-ceiling windows. White walls. A fireplace crackling softly even though it was summer outside. The kind of place that showed up in architecture magazines and made regular people feel very, very small. I pressed my fingers against the cool glass and stared down at Barcelona. The city stretched below us like something pulled from a dream. Golden rooftops. Narrow streets threading through the warm evening light. The faint smell of salt and something sweet drifting up from the streets below. "This is insane," I whispered. "Right?" Sienna dropped onto the couch behind me, kicking her shoes off with a long satisfied groan. "I told you it was perfect." I turned around slowly. Something about the way she said that made my stomach dip. Sienna had a particular tone she used when she was about to tell me something she knew I wouldn't like. Casual. A little too smooth. Like she was already preparing her defense. "How exactly did you find this place?" I asked. She picked at the edge of her nail polish. She didn't look at me right away, and that small hesitation told me everything before she even opened her mouth. "Well..." She dragged the word out carefully. "It belongs to Cole." The room went completely quiet. I stared at her. "I'm sorry. What did you just say?" "He doesn't know we're here," she added quickly, finally meeting my eyes. "I have the spare key. I figured, why ask when I could just—" "Sienna." My voice came out flat. Careful. The kind of careful that meant I was two seconds from not being careful at all. "This is your brother's house." She sat up straighter, sensing the shift in my mood immediately. "Yes. But he's not going to show up. He's in London for the entire month. I checked his schedule myself." I turned back to the window because I needed a moment. I pressed two fingers to my temple and breathed slowly through my nose. Cole Whitmore. Even just his name made my jaw tighten automatically. "You know exactly what he's like," I said quietly. "You know better than anyone. And you still brought me here without saying a word." "Your thing with Cole is getting out of hand," Sienna said, standing up from the couch. "It's been three years, Nadia." "Three years?" I turned around fully. "He left me sitting in a police station until six in the morning, Sienna. He bailed you out, walked you to the car, and drove away without even looking back. I was there alone all night." "That situation was—" "And the charity gala last winter." I cut her off. "He told your entire friend group that I was a bad influence on you. Out loud. In front of everyone. While smiling at me like he was doing me a personal favour." Sienna went quiet. "He has made me look like the villain in your life more than once," I said, dropping my voice. "And now I'm standing uninvited in his house. Which means when something goes wrong — and something always goes wrong where Cole is involved — I will be the one standing in the middle of it." Sienna crossed the room and stopped in front of me. Her expression went soft and genuinely guilty in the way that only she could manage without it feeling fake. "You're right," she said simply. "I didn't think it through. I just wanted somewhere beautiful for us to stay and this place has been sitting empty and I—" She exhaled slowly. "I'm sorry. Truly." I looked at her for a long moment. I wanted to stay angry. I really did. I was good at staying angry, especially where anything connected to Cole Whitmore was concerned. But Sienna was watching me with those wide eyes and the city behind the window was still glowing gold, and we had an entire month stretching ahead of us with nowhere to be and nothing to answer to. "He's really not coming?" I asked. "London. The whole month." She held up two fingers without hesitation. "I swear on my favourite shoes." I exhaled through my nose. "Fine. We stay." Sienna's whole face transformed. She grabbed both my hands before I could reconsider, already pulling me toward the bedrooms with that particular energy she got when things were going her way. "We're going to see everything," she said, her voice bouncing off the high ceilings. "The Gothic Quarter. The Sagrada Família. That rooftop bar I bookmarked three weeks ago—" "One thing at a time," I laughed, letting her drag me forward. The tension across my shoulders started, slowly, to ease. I told myself I was being paranoid. Cole was in London. He had board meetings and acquisitions and an entire empire that demanded his constant attention. He wasn't going to suddenly materialise in Barcelona just because his sister had borrowed his house without asking. Some things in life didn't go wrong. We unpacked, changed into lighter clothes, and went out to walk the neighbourhood before dark. The streets were warm and loud and alive with colour. Street musicians played near the corner market. The smell of garlic and olive oil drifted from an open restaurant window above us. A group of children were kicking a ball against a painted wall, arguing happily in rapid Catalan. By the time we turned back toward the house, I had almost convinced myself that this trip was going to be everything I desperately needed it to be. Sienna reached the front door first. She pushed it open and stepped inside. Then she stopped dead. I walked in right behind her and felt the temperature in the room change before I even fully registered what I was seeing. He was standing near the window, one hand wrapped loosely around a glass of dark liquor. His shirt sleeves were rolled to the elbow. His black eyes moved to Sienna first. Then slowly, with all the urgency of someone who had nowhere else to be, they shifted to me. Cole Whitmore. In Barcelona. In his own house. His expression didn't move. That was always the worst part about him. He never looked surprised. Never looked unsettled. He just looked at you like he'd already mapped out every possible version of this moment and found them all mildly predictable. He set his glass down on the side table with a quiet, deliberate click. "Well," he said. Low and unhurried. "This is interesting." My stomach dropped completely.