step brother rules

chapter 2:New address

Chapter 2: New Address

The moving boxes arrived on a Tuesday, which felt like the wrong day for Mara's life to change. Tuesdays were supposed to be unremarkable — laundry, grocery runs, nothing that required this much emotional bandwidth.

"You can put the kitchen stuff wherever," Diane said, breezing past with a lamp under one arm, practically glowing. "Robert cleared out a whole cabinet for you. Top shelf, I think, next to the—"

"Mom." Mara set down the box marked BOOKS (heavy — sorry) with more force than necessary. "I still can't believe you're making me move in before the actual wedding."

"The lease was up. You know that." Diane paused, softened. "And it's not like you're moving in with strangers. Robert adores you already. And Jonah—"

"Jonah is fine," Mara said quickly, too quickly, and busied herself with packing tape she didn't need to deal with.

Diane gave her a look that suggested she wasn't fooled, but mercifully let it go.

The house was bigger than Mara's old apartment by a laughable margin — a converted brownstone in Lincoln Park with a kitchen that actually got sunlight and a staircase that creaked exactly once, on the fourth step, like it was announcing visitors. Robert had given her the whole west wing, practically, tucked at the end of the hall past a home office and a bathroom she didn't have to share with anyone.

Except she did have to share the hallway. With Jonah, whose room was directly across from hers, door currently propped open, a stack of blueprints spread across his desk like he'd been interrupted mid-thought.

He looked up when she passed with her second box.

"Careful with the fourth step," he said. "It's got opinions."

"I noticed."

"You'll get used to it. After a month you stop hearing it." He nodded at the box in her arms. "Need help?"

"I've got it."

"You clearly don't." He was already crossing the hall before she could argue further, easing the box out of her grip like it weighed nothing, which — fine, it was heavier than she'd let on. "Books. Should've guessed."

"I like to read."

"I noticed that too. You brought four boxes of them and one box of clothes." He carried it into her room and set it by the window, glancing around at the half-unpacked chaos — sheets still folded on the bare mattress, a lamp with no bulb, framed photos leaning against the baseboard waiting for walls. "This is a lot of moving for one Tuesday."

"Tell me about it."

He lingered a beat too long, hands in his pockets, looking at her like there was something he wanted to say and hadn't decided if it was allowed yet. The strange thing was, Mara felt it too — the pull to say something back, something honest, something that had no business existing between two people who'd just become family on paper three weeks ago.

"You okay?" he asked instead. Simple. Safe.

"I don't know yet," she admitted, and it surprised her, how easy the truth came out around him. "It's a lot. New house, new — everything. I keep waiting for it to feel normal."

"It won't. Not for a while." He leaned against her doorframe, arms crossed, watching her with an attention that made her feel unreasonably seen. "My dad got remarried once before. When I was nineteen. Lasted eight months. I moved my stuff into a house I barely got to know before I was moving it right back out."

Mara stopped unpacking. "I didn't know that."

"Not a lot of people do." He shrugged, like it cost him nothing to say, though something in his voice suggested otherwise. "I guess what I'm saying is — I know what it's like when this doesn't work. So I actually want this one to work. For them." He paused. "That's rule one, still. Don't make it weird. Don't be the reason it falls apart."

"I remember rule one."

"Good." His eyes dropped, just briefly, to where her hand rested against the window frame, close enough to his that if either of them moved an inch, they'd be touching. Neither of them moved. Neither of them moved away, either. "We still need rule two."

"You said you'd figure it out."

"I did. I have a proposal." He straightened up, putting proper distance between them again, and the sudden absence of him standing that close felt colder than it should have. "No favorites. If we're doing family dinners, movie nights, whatever this turns into — we're both in it evenly. No pulling rank because you got here first, no ganging up on the other. United front."

"That's oddly specific."

"I have three older cousins who used to gang up on me at every family holiday for a decade. I have opinions about fairness."

Despite herself, Mara laughed — a real one, surprised out of her. "Fine. United front. Rule two."

"Deal." He held out his hand, absurdly formal, like they were closing a business contract instead of standing in a half-unpacked bedroom at eight o'clock on a Tuesday night.

She shook it. His hand was warm, and the handshake lasted exactly one second longer than a handshake should, and neither of them commented on it, though she was fairly sure they both noticed.

"Dinner's at seven," he said, stepping back into the hallway. "Dad's making his famous chili. Fair warning, it's not that famous. He just calls it that."

"Noted."

He paused at his own door, glancing back at her one more time before disappearing inside. "Glad you're here, Mara."

The words followed her long after his door clicked shut — simple, ordinary, the kind of thing a stepbrother should say.

It didn't feel ordinary at all.