He's Not My Brother

Chapter 8

After that night, everything became a question of distance.

How close they could stand in the kitchen before it meant something. How long they could hold a look across the dinner table before someone noticed. How much space had to stay between them in a house where two people were always one wrong moment from being caught.

They were careful.

They were terrible at it.

"You're staring," Aria murmured.

It was breakfast. Daniel was reading something on his phone. Victoria was making eggs. And Cayden was across the table looking at her like the other two people in the room didn't exist.

"I'm not staring," he said.

"You're staring."

"I'm looking at the general area where you happen to be."

She kicked him under the table. He didn't even flinch, just smiled into his coffee, and Aria had to look down at her cereal to hide her own.

"You two are getting along better," Victoria said happily, setting down a plate. "I knew you would."

Aria and Cayden both went very still.

"We're tolerating each other," Aria said.

"Barely," Cayden added.

Victoria beamed like she hadn't heard the strain in either voice. "Progress."

Under the table, Cayden's foot found hers and stayed.

School was the hard part.

At school they couldn't even have the small things — the foot under the table, the look held one second too long. At school they were Cayden and Aria, stepsiblings, and everyone was watching, and so they did the only thing they could.

They pretended.

He went back to being cold in public. She went back to rolling her eyes at him. They built a wall of fake irritation so convincing that even Priya bought it.

"I don't know how you live with him," Priya said at lunch, watching Cayden laugh with his friends across the cafeteria. "He seems like so much."

"He is so much," Aria said.

It wasn't even a lie. He was so much. Just not in the way Priya meant.

Across the room, Cayden glanced over.

Their eyes met for half a second.

Then they both looked away, like the rules said they had to.

But Jordan caught it.

Jordan caught everything.

"Okay," he said, dropping into the seat beside Cayden. "I'm just gonna say it."

"Say what."

"You and the stepsister."

Cayden's expression didn't change. "There's no me and the stepsister."

"Mhm." Jordan stole a fry. "See, the thing is, I've known you since we were twelve. And I've seen you with a lot of girls. And you have never once looked at any of them the way you look at her when you think nobody's watching."

Cayden said nothing.

"I'm not gonna make it weird," Jordan said. "I'm just letting you know that I know. And that whatever's going on, I'm not gonna be the one who blows it up."

Cayden looked at him for a long moment.

"It's complicated," he said finally.

"Yeah, no kidding. She's your stepsister."

"It's more complicated than that."

Jordan raised an eyebrow. "More complicated than secretly being into your stepsister? This I have to hear."

So Cayden told him. Quietly, at the edge of a loud cafeteria, the short version. The party. The dark. Eight months of looking. The photo.

When he finished, Jordan sat back.

"Okay," he said slowly. "That's actually insane."

"I'm aware."

"Like genuinely, that's a movie."

"Jordan."

"You found her. Eight months later. And she turned out to be—" Jordan exhaled. "Man. The universe really hates you."

"Yeah."

Jordan was quiet for a moment. Then, more seriously: "Are you gonna do something about it? Or just suffer at the dinner table forever?"

Cayden looked across the cafeteria, to where Aria was laughing at something Priya said, completely herself, completely unaware that she was the only thing he could see.

"I don't know," he said. "If we do something and it goes wrong, it doesn't just wreck us. It wrecks the whole family."

"And if you don't?"

Cayden didn't answer.

Because he already knew. He'd already tried not feeling it, for weeks, and it hadn't worked for a single day.

"That's what I thought," Jordan said, standing. "For what it's worth — I've never seen you like this. So whatever you decide, don't be an i***t about it."

He walked off.

Cayden sat there, watching Aria across the room, the impossible thing sitting heavy in his chest.

And as if she felt it, she looked up.

Found him.

And this time, just for a second, neither of them looked away.