My gaze drifted over her mantle. Photos. Dozens of them. Ethan and Maya at the beach. Ethan and Maya at a New Year's party. Ethan, always at the center, glowing with that effortless, arrogant charisma, and Maya... Maya was always half-turned toward him. Even in a frozen frame, she was leaning into his orbit, a moon that refused to believe its planet was made of cold stone.
"Jesus," I muttered, the word tasting like lead. "This is worse than I thought."
Maya bristled, her small frame vibrating with a tension she was trying and failing to hide. "What? My apartment? I didn't exactly have time to renovate for your arrival."
I turned away from the photos to face her. She looked fragile in the morning light, her eyes red-rimmed and her skin pale, but there was a spark of something under the surface. A fire she'd been dampening for years.
"Not the apartment," I said, my voice low. "The obsession. You're in love with him. Completely. Desperately."
She flinched as if I'd thrown a punch. "I don't..."
"Don't bother lying," I cut her off. I stepped into her space, watching her pulse jump in the hollow of her throat. "I saw you last night, Maya. I saw the way you touched his hair when he was passed out. The way you looked at him like he was the only source of oxygen in a room full of smoke. It was pathetic. And it was beautiful. And it's going to kill you."
The first tear broke then, trailing a slow path down her cheek. "Why are you here, Cade? To mock me? To tell me I'm a fool? I think your brother did a good enough job of that with a high-five emoji."
"I'm here to tell you the truth no one else will," I said, closing the distance until I could feel the heat radiating off her. "The truth your friends are too polite to say and my parents are too oblivious to notice."
"What truth?" she whispered, her voice trembling.
"He's never going to love you back, Maya. Not the way you want. To Ethan, you're the safety net. You're the ego boost he keeps in his back pocket for when the 'real' women leave him bleeding. You're his comfort, his anchor, his favorite habit. But you will never, ever be his choice."
The sound of the slap echoed through the small apartment like a gunshot.
My head snapped to the side. The sting was sharp, a blooming heat across my cheekbone, but I didn't flinch. I didn't even blink. I just slowly turned my face back to her, tasting the metallic tang of blood where my tooth had caught the inside of my lip.
"There it is," I murmured, a grim satisfaction curling in my chest. "The anger you should've felt six years ago."
"Get out," she choked out, her hand still raised, shaking violently. Her chest was heaving, her eyes wide with a mix of horror and newfound fury. "Get out of my house. You don't know me. You don't get to come in here and..."
"Hit me again if you want," I challenged, stepping even closer, my chest nearly brushing hers. "Get it out. All that rage you've been swallowing every time he brought home another girl. Every time he called you his 'best friend' while he looked for a lover elsewhere. Give it to me, Maya. I can take it. He can't."
"I don't know you!" she screamed, the sound breaking into a sob. "You're a stranger! You don't get to judge my life!"
"I spent three years in a hellhole overseas waiting for a woman who married another man while I was still clearing minefields," I growled, the raw truth of it stripping the air from the room. I grabbed her wrists, not to hurt her, but to still the shaking. "I know exactly what you're feeling. I know the hope that kills you slowly, inch by inch, until there's nothing left but a shell. I'm not here to hurt you, Maya. I'm here to wake you up before you disappear completely."
She stopped fighting then. Her body went limp in my grip, her head dropping forward against my chest. She was shaking so hard I thought she might shatter.
"It's too late," she whispered into my shirt, the words muffled and broken. "I don't know who I am without wanting him. He's the only world I've ever known."
I let go of her wrists and reached up, my hand cupping the back of her head, my fingers tangling in her hair. It was a soft gesture, but there was nothing gentle about the way I felt. I wanted to burn those photos on the mantle. I wanted to drag her out of this shrine and show her a world that didn't revolve around a mediocre man with a golden name.
"Then let me show you," I said, my voice dropping to a dangerous, silken thread.
The tension in the room shifted. It wasn't just anger anymore. It was something primal, something electric that had been humming between us since I saw her in that kitchen at 5 AM. Her breath caught, her eyes lifting to mine, searching, terrified, and intensely alive.
I was too close. I could taste the salt of her tears on the air. My thumb traced the line of her jaw, and for a second, the world narrowed down to the space between our lips.
Then, I forced myself to step back.
The sudden cold between us was jarring. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a scrap of paper with my number scrawled on it, and set it on the counter next to her cold coffee.
"Think about it," I said, my voice regaining its iron edge. "When you're ready to stop being a footnote in his story and start being the headline of your own... call me."
I didn't wait for her to answer. I walked out, the click of the door sounding like the start of a countdown.
APP STORE
GOOGLE PLAY
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Caught Between Two Brothers ( love triangle) 
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