Forbidden Mate: My Brother's Obsession

Chapter Three: Keeping Distance

Lily didn't remember walking back to the car. One moment she was pinned against the lockers with Ethan's gold eyes burning into hers, and the next she was sitting in the passenger seat, her hands pressed flat against her knees to keep them from shaking, staring straight ahead at nothing while Ethan drove them home in heavy, suffocating silence.

You're mine.

The words kept looping in her head, over and over, refusing to make sense no matter how many times she turned them over. People didn't say things like that. Normal people didn't. And normal people definitely didn't have eyes that changed color, didn't make sounds low in their throats like something out of a nature documentary, didn't corner their new stepsister against a wall of lockers in front of an entire hallway of students who thankfully had been too far away to notice.

"Are you going to say something?" Lily finally asked, when the silence became unbearable.

Ethan's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "No."

"No? That's it? You practically..." She stopped herself, glancing at him, unsure how to even describe what had happened. "You said I was yours. What does that even mean?"

"Forget it," he said, voice flat, eyes fixed on the road. "It was nothing. I wasn't feeling well."

"You weren't feeling well," she repeated, disbelief creeping into her voice. "Your eyes turned gold, Ethan."

"They didn't."

"I saw them."

"You imagined it."

Lily turned fully in her seat to look at him, frustration boiling over. "I didn't imagine you slamming me into a locker and growling like an animal. I didn't imagine...."

"Drop it," Ethan snapped, sharper than she'd heard him speak yet, and something about the finality in his tone made her swallow the rest of her sentence. His jaw was tight, a muscle working beneath his skin, and his knuckles had gone white on the wheel. Whatever had happened back at school, he clearly didn't want to talk about it any more than she wanted to have imagined it.

They didn't speak again for the rest of the drive.

By the time they got home, Lily had decided on one thing: whatever strange, unsettling thing had happened between them, she wasn't going to let it happen again. If Ethan wanted to pretend nothing was wrong, fine. She could pretend too. She could be the invisible stepsister he clearly wanted her to be, keep to her side of the house, keep her distance at school, and survive senior year without whatever that had been happening again.

Dinner that night was almost normal, if you ignored the way Ethan barely looked at her across the table, answering his father's questions about football practice in short, clipped sentences while Susan chattered on about paint colors for the guest bathroom. Lily pushed food around her plate and said as little as possible, grateful when Richard mentioned an early morning meeting and excused himself, and grate fuller still when she was finally able to escape to her room.

She spent the rest of the evening on her phone, scrolling through Ridgemont Prep's social media pages out of morbid curiosity, and immediately regretted it. Half the photos featured Ethan at parties, at games, surrounded by girls who looked at him like he'd personally hung the moon. Vivian Shaw showed up in at least a dozen of them, always pressed close to his side, always smiling like she owned something the rest of the world only got to admire from a distance.

Lily set her phone down and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the small, unwanted flicker of something ugly and jealous curling in her chest. That wasn't jealousy. It couldn't be. She barely knew the guy, and what she did know of him so far, cold, dismissive, occasionally terrifying, wasn't exactly the foundation for feelings.

She fell asleep telling herself that, and woke up the next morning determined to prove it true.

Officially starting at Ridgemont Prep a week later felt like walking into a war zone with no map. Lily kept her head down, following the schedule she'd memorized the night before, ignoring the curious glances that followed her through the hallways, the new girl, the transfer, and worst of all, the stepsister nobody had quite figured out how to categorize yet.

She made it through her morning classes without incident, sitting alone at the back, speaking only when called on. By lunch, she'd found a quiet corner table and was working up the nerve to eat by herself when a girl with warm brown eyes and a friendly smile plopped down across from her without asking.

"You're the new girl," the girl said. "Lily, right? I'm Dana. You looked like you needed rescuing from eating alone on your first day, so, congratulations, you've been rescued."

Despite herself, Lily laughed. "Thanks. I think."

Dana grinned and launched into an easy stream of chatter, classes, teachers to avoid, which cafeteria food was actually edible and for the first time since arriving at Ridgemont, Lily felt something close to normal. It lasted exactly until Vivian Shaw appeared at the end of their table, arms crossed, eyes locked on Lily like she'd been hunting her down.

"So you're the stepsister," Vivian said, in the tone of someone announcing a diagnosis. "Kai's little house guest."

"Lily," Lily said evenly. "My name's Lily."

"Sure." Vivian's smile was sharp as glass. "Just so we're clear, Kai and I have history. A lot of it. So whatever weird sibling bonding thing you're planning, keep it far away from me, and far away from anything that isn't strictly family business. Understood?"

Dana rolled her eyes the second Vivian walked away. "Ignore her. She's been obsessed with Kai since sophomore year. Doesn't matter that he's never actually dated her, she's decided he's hers by default."

Lily nodded, only half listening, because across the cafeteria, she'd caught sight of Ethan at his usual table, surrounded by the usual crowd, laughing at something one of his friends said. As if he felt her looking, his eyes lifted and met hers across the room, and for one suspended second, neither of them looked away.

Then his gaze dropped, deliberately, and he turned back to his friends like she didn't exist.

Message received. Lily forced her attention back to Dana's chatter and told herself, once again, that she didn't care.

She almost believed it too, right up until her chemistry teacher announced new lab partners for the semester, and read out a pairing that made her stomach drop straight through the floor.

"Lily Hart and Ethan Cole."