My Boyfriend's Brother

Meghan POV I stood by the bedpost, my fingers wrapped tightly around the polished wood, as my eyes slowly traveled around the room that had once been our love nest. The room still looked the same our curtains, our bed, our memories,but everything else had changed. It was no longer ours. Not because we had divorced. Not because we had separated. None of those things had happened. How I wished—how desperately I wished—that it had been one of those reasons instead. Divorce or separation would have given me hope. Hope that one day he might walk back into my life. Hope that time could heal us, that love could pull us back together. Because one thing I had never doubted was the love we shared. It was pure, honest, and painfully real. A love built from nothing. A love that grew slowly, magically—so quietly that no one noticed it blooming until it had already taken over our souls. But this… this was different. I was twenty-two years old, standing in our bedroom, already a widow. The word itself felt unreal. Widow. It didn’t belong to me. We had been married for only a few months. Just a few months of stolen kisses, late-night laughter, whispered promises, and dreams of a future that now no longer existed. We were madly in love,so deeply, so recklessly in love that I had believed nothing in the world could tear us apart. Yet here I was. I moved slowly across the room, touching everything as though it might disappear if I didn’t. The bedside table. The lamp he liked to switch off before crawling back into bed beside me. The picture frame holding our wedding photo me smiling too hard, him looking at me like I was his entire world. Each object carried a memory, and each memory cut deeper than the last. There were too many moments to count. Even if I spent an entire year naming them one by one, I would still not be done. My fingers finally closed around one of his T-shirts. My breath caught. The night before he left, he had worn this very shirt. I remembered it clearly because I had bought it for him with my savings money I had carefully put aside, coin by coin, sacrifice by sacrifice. When I gave it to him, his face had lit up like a child on Christmas morning. From that night on, it became his favorite. He wore it almost every night before bed, always claiming that he wanted to keep me close to his heart, even while he slept. “I love it because you bought it,” he used to say, pressing a kiss to my forehead. I lifted the shirt to my nose, inhaling deeply. His cologne still lingered on the fabric-faint, but unmistakable. The scent broke something inside me. My tears spilled freely, hot and unstoppable, sliding down my cheeks as my chest tightened with grief. I missed him. I missed him so much it felt like my lungs were collapsing. I grabbed his jacket next, clutching it to my chest. Everywhere I looked, he was there. In the creak of the floorboards. In the empty space beside me. In the silence that screamed louder than any sound. They say love is many things. My friends, romantic movies, and countless novels had all tried to teach me what love was supposed to be. Some said love happened at first sight. Others insisted it began with friendship. There were endless definitions, endless theories each one contradicting the other, leaving me confused and contemplative. I had read Pride and Prejudice, where scholars argued that Elizabeth Bennet only fell in love with Darcy after discovering his wealth. I had read Tess of the d’Urbervilles, soaked in tragedy and suffering. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet painted love as innocent and reckless, powerful enough to drive two young souls to their deaths. Each story carried its own version of love. But none of them described mine. No scholar had ever written about love the way I knew it. No book had prepared me for this kind of pain. My love story was different. Complicated. Messy. It did not begin with soft glances or poetry. It began in fear, confusion, and an attempted forced intimacy,something I was not ready to face yet. That story was for another day. But somehow, slowly, against all odds, I fell in love with my husband. I fell hard. And now he was gone. I moved toward the bed-our bed and lay down carefully, as if he might still be there, as if I might disturb him. But it was no longer our matrimonial bed. It was just furniture now. Cold. Empty. We had promised each other everything. Children. A home filled with laughter. Growing old together. Taking our last breaths side by side. Those promises now lived only in memory. I had nothing. Nothing at all. “Meghan.” The sound of my name pulled me from sleep. I hadn’t realized when I had drifted off, exhaustion finally overpowering grief. “Hmm,” I sighed, sitting upright. That was when I saw her. My mother-in-law, Mrs. Morgans, stood beside the bed, her eyes soft with concern. She had been my anchor these past two weeks—ever since the news of Jeff’s death shattered our lives. She had lost her son, yet somehow still found the strength to comfort me. “Be strong, my girl,” she said gently, pulling me into a warm embrace. That was her constant message. Strength. Strength for Jeff. Strength for myself. “I’m trying, Mrs. Morgans,” I whispered, even as tears betrayed me once more. She stayed for a while, speaking softly, reminding me that grief had no timetable. When she finally left the room, I felt slightly steadier—though the pain never truly faded. Everyone kept telling me the same thing: Be strong. Live your life again. That’s what he would want. I was trying. But I was failing. Jeff had been all I had. My parents had died years ago, leaving me alone in the world. I had struggled through school, surviving on bursaries and sheer determination. Somehow, I had made it through. Somehow, I had graduated. And then I had met Jeff-a man most girls could only dream of. Being with him felt like finally having everything I had ever wished for. Our love story had started from nothing and grown into something more beautiful than any fairy tale. Better than Cinderella. Real. Imperfect. Ours. And now it was over.Or so I thought. Pain like this does not disappear overnight. It lingers, carving itself into your bones, teaching you how to survive without the one person who made life worth living. A Cinderella story always has ups and downs. I just never imagined mine would break me this way.