Falling for my Best Friend’s Brother

Chapter 5

Sonia’s POV

I thought grief had already taken everything from me.

I thought losing my parents, burying them, and standing hollow in the aftermath was the worst pain I would ever feel. But I was wrong. Because pain doesn’t only come from absence, sometimes it comes from the cruel weight of words, spoken by the one person you have spent your entire life quietly loving.

She doesn’t belong.

She never will.

She’s just another responsibility I didn’t ask for.

Those words clung to me long after I fled the hallway outside his office. They echoed louder than the silence of my empty home, sharper than the finality of the funeral bells. Each syllable was a knife, carving deeper into the tender part of me that had still dared to hope.

I stumbled back into the room the Lims had given me, clutching the doorknob as though it could hold me upright. My reflection in the mirror startled me, pale, hollow-eyed, hair tangled from nights of restless grief. I didn’t recognize the girl staring back. She wasn’t Sonia Brown, beloved daughter of Rosemary and Victor. She wasn’t Molly’s other half, the girl who had once laughed too loudly in lecture halls, who had believed love was worth waiting for. She was someone else now. Someone broken.

I collapsed onto the bed, pressing my fists against my mouth to stop the sobs from spilling out. But they came anyway, violent and choking, shaking my whole body. I screamed into the pillow, soundless but raw, until my throat burned. My tears stained the sheets, and I curled into myself, trembling, shivering, unraveling.

I wanted my mother. I wanted my father. I wanted their arms around me, the smell of my mother’s perfume, the warmth of my father’s laughter. I wanted to hear them tell me I wasn’t a burden, that I belonged somewhere, anywhere. But they were gone. And Alexander, the one person my heart had foolishly chosen years ago, had made it clear that I was nothing more than an obligation.

Days passed, but the words never left me. They settled into my bones, heavy and cold, poisoning everything I did.

At breakfast, I pushed food around my plate while Clara fussed and Lewis gave quiet encouragement. I smiled when they looked, but it was brittle, empty.

At the university, I sat through lectures with Molly, scribbling notes my brain couldn’t process. She noticed, of course she did. She always did. Her sharp eyes caught the tremor in my hands, the way my gaze drifted toward nothing, the forced curve of my lips.

“You’re not okay,” she said one afternoon as we sat on the lawn outside the library. The air smelled of grass and ink, students chattering around us. But Molly’s voice was firm, unwavering.

“I’m fine,” I lied, pulling my knees to my chest.

“No,” she countered, shaking her head. “You’re not. You’ve been different since… since that night at the hospital. And now it’s worse. You’re shutting me out, Sonia.”

Her words pierced through me, but I couldn’t tell her the truth. How could I? How could I admit that her brother, her golden, perfect, untouchable brother, had sliced me apart without even knowing it? That the secret I had carried all my life, the love I had hidden so carefully, had been turned into ash in a single overheard conversation?

So I smiled again, the mask I was becoming so skilled at wearing. “I’m just tired. Grief does that, Molly. Don’t worry about me.”

But Molly wasn’t convinced. She didn’t press me, though. Instead, she simply looped her arm through mine, resting her head on my shoulder, silent but steady. And I hated myself for lying to her, for letting her believe she was enough to soothe a wound far deeper than she knew.

At night, the house became unbearable. The laughter that drifted from Molly’s room, the low murmur of Clara and Lewis talking in the study, the sound of Alexander’s footsteps down the hall, all of it pressed against me, suffocating. I lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, replaying his words over and over until they became a rhythm in my veins.

One night, unable to bear it, I crept into the garden. The moon hung low, pale against the velvet sky, the flowers whispering in the breeze. I sat on the cold stone bench, hugging my knees, and for the first time, I whispered aloud the truth I had buried for years.

“I love him,” I confessed to the night. “I’ve always loved him.”

The words felt like glass in my mouth, sharp and dangerous. Because what good was love if it was one-sided? What good was love if it branded me as nothing more than unwanted responsibility?

The garden swallowed my sobs, and I stayed there until dawn, broken but unseen.

The days stretched into weeks. Molly kept trying to pull me back, Clara kept offering warmth, Lewis kept giving quiet support. But I was drifting further away, locked inside my own grief and heartbreak. And Alexander… Alexander remained the same. Cold. Distant. Unreachable. His indifference became its own torture, because I wanted so badly for it to be different.

And then, one night, the fracture widened.

I was passing by his office again, late, when I heard voices. Not just Alexander’s, but Clara’s too. Her tone was sharp, urgent.

“She needs you, Alex,” Clara said firmly. “She’s lost everything. You can’t treat her like a stranger under our roof.”

“I didn’t ask her to be here,” Alexander snapped, his voice low but laced with frustration. “This isn’t my responsibility. She isn’t my responsibility.”

I froze.

Clara’s voice softened. “She’s like family.”

Alexander’s response was cold, final. “She’ll never be family to me.”

The words were a blade, sharp enough to cleave through the fragile pieces I had left.

And as I stumbled back into the shadows, heart pounding, I knew I couldn’t survive much more of this.

The Lim household became both my sanctuary and my prison. By day, I wore my mask of composure, sitting through meals, attending lectures, leaning into Molly’s endless warmth. But by night, when the house quieted and my thoughts grew too loud, I unravelled.

Alexander’s words haunted me. She isn’t my responsibility. She’ll never be family to me.

They looped endlessly, slicing through every fragile stitch I tried to sew into my broken heart. I had loved him for so long, quietly, foolishly, faithfully, and now every look, every silence, every indifference became a weight pressing down on me. Living under the same roof with him was suffocating.

The grief of losing my parents was already too much to bear. His rejection, even unspoken, was the final stone crushing me.

I couldn’t stay.

The thought came to me one sleepless night, and once it took root, it refused to leave. If I left the Lim house, maybe I could breathe again. Maybe I could grieve in peace, without the sting of his indifference reminding me daily of everything I had lost, and everything I could never have.

I waited three nights before I gathered the courage to act.

I packed quietly, folding only the essentials: a few clothes, the photo frame of my parents I had taken from my old home, my journal, a handful of cash Molly had insisted I keep for “emergencies.” My hands trembled as I slid the items into my old duffel bag. Every zip of the bag felt like thunder in the silence of the night.

I hesitated at the window, the garden bathed in silver moonlight. The gates beyond seemed impossibly far, but freedom waited there. Freedom from the constant reminder that I didn’t belong. Freedom from Alexander’s cold gaze.

I slipped into the hall, clutching the duffel against my chest. The house was quiet. Molly’s room was dark, her soft breathing faint behind the door. Clara and Lewis slept in their chamber down the hall. Alexander’s office light was off for once. My pulse raced, this was my chance.

Each step creaked like betrayal beneath my feet. The staircase stretched longer than ever before, each descent heavy with the weight of my choice. When I reached the main door, my hands shook so violently I struggled to turn the knob. But finally, with a faint click, it gave way. The cool night air brushed against my face.

Freedom was only a step away.

But then…

“Sonia?”

The voice froze me mid-step. Molly.

She stood at the foot of the staircase, her hair tousled, her pajama shirt hanging loose. Her eyes were wide, sleep-blurred but sharp with hurt. She took in the duffel, the way I stood half in, half out of the house.

“You’re leaving?” Her voice cracked.

My throat tightened. I couldn’t lie. Tears stung my eyes as I whispered, “I can’t stay, Molly. Not here. Not anymore.”

Molly’s face crumpled, but before she could rush forward, another sound broke the silence. Footsteps. Heavy, deliberate.

Alexander.

He emerged from the shadows of the hallway, tall, sharp, his presence cutting through the air like a blade. His eyes locked on me first, then on the bag slung over my shoulder. His expression was unreadable, not anger, not surprise, but something darker, something unreadable that made my chest ache.

The silence stretched, suffocating.

And then he spoke. Low. Controlled. Dangerous.

“Where do you think you’re going, Sonia?”

The duffel slipped from my trembling hands, landing with a soft thud on the marble floor. My heart pounded so hard it hurt.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. His gaze pinned me in place, his voice a tether I couldn’t break.

And in that suspended moment, with Molly’s sob of protest behind me, Clara’s footsteps beginning to stir upstairs, and Alexander’s question hanging in the air like a verdict, I realized I had reached the edge of a precipice.

One step forward, and I would fall…