step brother rules

Chapter 5: Distance

Chapter 5: Distance

Mara avoided him for four days.

It wasn't hard, exactly — Jonah had a deadline looming on the Pilsen project, which meant late nights at his firm's office downtown, and she'd picked up a rush job at work that gave her a legitimate excuse to eat dinner at her desk instead of at the table with him and their parents. But by the third night, when Robert asked, mid-chili-reheat, whether she and Jonah had had some kind of falling out, Mara realized avoidance had a shelf life, and hers was expiring.

"No falling out," she said. "Just busy."

Robert didn't look convinced, but he let it go, which was somehow worse than if he'd pushed.

She found Jonah on the fifth night, sitting on the back porch steps in the dark, a beer sweating in his hand, looking out at nothing in particular. She almost turned back inside. Almost.

"You've been avoiding me," he said, without turning around, before she could decide.

"I've been busy."

"Right." He finally looked at her, and there was something tired in his face that had nothing to do with the late nights at work. "Mara, can we talk about the kitchen?"

"I don't think we should." She stayed in the doorway, one foot still technically inside, like that made a difference. "I think what almost happened was — a mistake. A three a.m. mistake. Those don't count."

"Do you actually believe that?"

She didn't answer right away, which was answer enough for both of them.

"Sit down," he said, quieter now, patting the step beside him. "Please. Just to talk. I'm not going to try anything, I promise. I just don't want to keep doing this thing where we're strangers in the same house."

Reluctantly, she sat, keeping careful distance between them — enough space for at least one more person to fit, which felt both excessive and entirely necessary.

"I've been thinking a lot," Jonah said, turning the beer bottle slowly between his palms. "About what this actually is. Whether it's real or whether it's just — proximity. New house, weird circumstances, two people who happen to be around each other constantly. Maybe that's all it is."

"Maybe," Mara said, though it came out unconvincing even to her own ears.

"But I don't think so." He set the bottle down on the step below him. "I've liked you since the engagement dinner, Mara. Before any of this. Before the wedding, before the house, before any of it was complicated. I liked arguing with you about a stupid restaurant because you were smart and stubborn and you didn't back down, and I liked that a lot more than I wanted to."

Her chest ached in a way that felt entirely too dangerous to acknowledge.

"That doesn't change what we are now," she said. "It doesn't change what happens if this — whatever this is — falls apart. Your dad and my mom would be stuck picking up the pieces. Holidays would be unbearable. We'd break the one good thing that's happened to both of them in years, over something that might not even last."

"Or it could be the best thing that ever happens to either of us." His voice was steady, but there was something underneath it — hope, maybe, or fear, or both tangled together. "You don't know that it wouldn't last. You're assuming failure before we've even tried anything."

"I'm being realistic."

"You're being scared." He said it gently, without accusation, but it still landed somewhere tender. "Which, for the record, I understand. I'm scared too. I just don't think being scared is a good enough reason to pretend I don't feel what I feel."

The night was quiet except for the distant hum of traffic a few streets over and the creak of the porch swing shifting in a breeze neither of them had noticed until now. Mara stared out at the dark yard, at the shape of the fence line, anywhere that wasn't his face, because looking at his face made this so much harder to resist.

"What do you want, Jonah?" she asked finally. "Really. Not the version where nobody gets hurt. The real answer."

He was quiet for a long moment, long enough that she thought he might not answer at all.

"I want to know what it feels like to kiss you," he said, low and honest, "without wondering the entire time if it's going to ruin both our families."

Mara's breath caught.

"That's not a small thing to want."

"I know." His eyes found hers in the dark, steady despite everything. "I'm not asking you to decide anything tonight. I just wanted you to know it's not proximity. It's not a three a.m. mistake. It's just you. It's been you since before any of this got complicated."

The porch light from the kitchen window cast a thin gold line across the steps between them — an actual, physical line, and Mara found herself staring at it like it meant something, like it was the boundary either of them still had a choice about crossing.

"I need time," she said finally, the only honest thing she had left to give him. "I need to think. About all of it. Please don't push."

"I won't." He picked the beer back up, giving her the space she'd asked for, though his eyes stayed on her a beat too long before he looked away. "Take whatever time you need. I'm not going anywhere. I live here now, remember?"

The joke landed soft, defusing some of the weight between them, and Mara let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

She stood, brushing off