Falling for my Best Friend’s Brother

Chapter 2

Sonia’s POV

The night air was cold when I stumbled out of bed, the phone pressed so tightly to my ear I could hardly breathe. Molly’s words echoed in my skull, louder than my own heartbeat.

An accident.

My parents.

I didn’t even remember pulling on a sweater or slipping into shoes, just the pounding of my feet against the hardwood floor as I ran downstairs. My car keys shook in my hand, the metal slipping against my damp palms. The drive to the hospital was a blur of red lights and screeching turns, headlights stretching into streaks as tears blurred my vision. Every second felt like it might be the last one I had before the world changed forever.

When I burst through the automatic glass doors of the emergency ward, the sterile brightness swallowed me whole. People in white coats moved like shadows, voices sharp, clipped, urgent. I must have looked wild, because a nurse caught me by the arm.

“I’m Sonia Brown,” I gasped, almost choking on the words. “My parents…Victor and Rosemary Brown…someone called me…please…”

Her expression softened into pity, and I hated it.

“This way,” she said quietly.

The corridor smelled of antiseptic, the floors gleaming too brightly. Every step echoed, loud enough to drown out my thoughts. When we reached the waiting area, I saw them, Clara and Lewis, Molly already in her mother’s arms, her eyes red from crying.

“Sonia,” Clara said, pulling me close before I could even ask. “They’re alive. They’re in surgery.”

Alive. The word should have comforted me, but it only wrapped tighter around my throat. Surgery meant broken bones, blood, doctors cutting them open to try to save what had been crushed.

I sat down hard, my knees refusing to hold me. Molly slid beside me, clutching my hand so tightly our knuckles turned white.

“They were coming back from the gala,” she whispered. “A drunk driver ran a red light. They… they didn’t even have time to swerve.”

Her voice cracked, and I felt the sound in my chest like a blade.

Hours passed. Nurses came and went, doctors too, each one speaking in fragments: “critical condition… extensive injuries… we’re doing everything we can.” I nodded, as if nodding could hold them here, tether them to me, keep them from slipping away.

Sometime after midnight, I saw him.

Alexander.

He stood at the end of the hallway, his white shirt half untucked, his tie gone. His eyes were fixed on the doors of the operating room, his jaw tight, his hands clenched into fists. He didn’t speak to anyone. He didn’t need to. His presence filled the corridor, a silent, restless storm.

For a moment, our eyes met, and the world narrowed to just that, the weight of his gaze, the faint tremor in his shoulders, the unspoken truth that he was just as terrified as I was.

Then he looked away, running a hand through his hair, pacing like a man who couldn’t afford to stop moving.

I wanted to go to him, to feel that strength I’d always imagined in his arms, but my legs wouldn’t obey me. Instead, I leaned against Molly, my body trembling as exhaustion pulled me under.

When I woke, the sun was just beginning to rise, casting pale light across the waiting room. The operating room doors were still shut. The silence pressed down on me like a weight I couldn’t shake.

And then, a doctor stepped out, his face grave.

“Sonia Brown?” he asked softly.

I pushed myself to my feet, my heart hammering so hard it hurt.

The doctor paused, and in that pause, I felt the world start to crumble…

His eyes met mine, full of the kind of sorrow that told me nothing good was about to follow.

My throat closed, and I braced myself for the words that would change everything.

“They survived,” the doctor said firmly at last, his voice low, steady, clinical. “But both of them are in critical condition. They’ve suffered severe internal injuries. They’re stable for now, but…” He hesitated, the kind of hesitation that made my stomach twist. “…they’ve slipped into comas. We can’t predict when, or if, they’ll wake.”

The words echoed inside me like the tolling of a bell. Alive, but unreachable. Here, but gone.

My knees buckled, and Clara’s arm slid around me before I could fall. I didn’t even know when I started crying, only that my chest heaved with sobs I couldn’t control. My mother’s laugh, my father’s steady voice, our dinners together, it all rushed through me in fragments I couldn’t hold on to.

“Can I see them?” I choked out.

The doctor nodded, guiding me through another set of doors, down another gleaming corridor. The room was cold, too white, machines humming in steady rhythms that felt more alive than the people I loved most.

My mother lay motionless, pale against the sheets, her chest rising and falling only because of the machine beside her. My father was in the bed beside her, tubes and wires snaking around him.

“Mom,” I whispered, taking her limp hand in mine. “Dad…”

No response. Only silence.

I pressed my forehead against her knuckles, breathing in the scent of antiseptic, trying to memorize the shape of her hand, terrified it would be the last time.

Behind me, the door creaked. I didn’t need to look to know it was Alexander. His presence filled the room like a storm cloud, tense, overwhelming. He stayed by the door, silent, watching. For a moment, I wished he would say something, anything, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. His silence was its own confession: he didn’t know how to fix this either.

Molly joined me later, her head resting against my shoulder, her tears soaking through my sweater. We stayed like that until the nurses asked us to leave.

The days that followed blurred together. Mornings bled into nights in the hospital waiting room. Classes, assignments, the normal rhythm of final year, all of it faded into the background. My world had narrowed to those two hospital beds and the unbearable weight of waiting.

And through it all, Alexander lingered. Sometimes pacing the halls, sometimes sitting with his head in his hands, sometimes standing so still it was like he wasn’t breathing. He never once tried to comfort me directly, but I saw it, the flicker in his eyes when he looked at me, the way his fists tightened every time a doctor walked into the room. He cared, even if he didn’t know how to show it.

But the truth was simple. My parents weren’t coming back, not really. And every hour that passed, I felt the ground beneath me give way, as if I were standing on a cliff’s edge with nowhere to go but down.