Chapter 1 The girl I would never have

One in the morning.

Too early, he hadn't even stopped inflicting his latent light on that waning moon by the time he woke up. With the slight start of the serene silence that radiated from her room.

A faintly muffled silence. Just the echo of her breath and the sounds from that next room.

He stayed there, just lying on the soft mattress in his bedroom. The curtains were not drawn and the faint halo of moonlight filtered through the dirty glass of the window. His gaze was fixed on the dark sky and his mind, somewhere in his consciousness.

The sound was barely audible, but it tortured him so much, that he felt a furious urge to get up and break the head of the bastard of his brother.

Why so much anxiety? After all, it was already in the past. Time takes care of erasing those things, right?

The noise of the springs of that bed increased. From that bed, a few meters from where he was.

He took one of her pillows and covered himself with it, as if he wanted to drown out the echo of that insolent noise, because, luckily for her, he could hear it.

Listen.

Nah, there was no reason to blame her, but Luke.

Time had run with the speed of the wind, without erasing that sensation that had awakened in him, on that summer afternoon a little over a year ago, when he saw her on the threshold of his house, just when he had returned from the house office. He did not attract her attention because of her figure (which was not worthy of a diva) or even because of the tone of her hair; a rare pink color. She attracted her indifferent attention due to the commotion in the room. He was just about to precede her lighthearted greeting when Luke stepped between them.

"She is Alexa, my girlfriend" he remembered Luke's cold voice as always in a useless imitation of his expressions.

Silly little brother

He would have cared. There was nothing extraordinary about this bland fifteen-year-old. Sure, that's what he had thought then and without knowing her; But in the months that followed and in the few periods of living together as a family, his opinion of him had changed a little.

Just a little, according to him.

Alexa was too lively, and maybe a bit annoying in her conversations (annoying due to the emphasis of her comments). She is sneaky, at least she looked like she had a good head on her shoulders.

Too much for a despotic bastard like Luke.

Did she envy him? What could he envy her? That her little brother had a girlfriend and he didn't?

Bah, that kind of crap didn't have to matter to him. He was the prodigy of the family and recently his father's right-hand man in business matters, not the prissy, troublesome brat that Luke used to be.

But just as the fingers of his hand are not the same, the personality and the relationship between siblings were not the same. Santino was five years apart and had almost a lifetime of experience. Luke, was the one who competed too much to match the academic level of his "admired" older brother and get a little attention from his father.

This is how things used to go, quite tolerably. Then everything got complicated ... from his perspective.

The cushioning of the mattress intensified, pulling her out of his rapture. And this time he could hear her murmur from her neighboring room.

"Luke..hmm ... Yeah ..."

Accompanied by the terse moans of his brother. He felt the creaking of the bed pierce his head.

What the hell had she seen in Luke? Beyond the bad boy look, there wasn't much to choose from. He would be his younger brother, but the boy was not worth much morally. He had changed, from entry to the so-called "troubled age." He had been far away from the family and would arrive late at night if he wanted to go back to sleep.

Santino knew that he had made friends with some little guys considered the scourge of the town, a certain Gio and two other thugs.

And after getting into a couple of trouble, there was a quiet season. It was when he met Alexa.

"Ahh ... Luke ..."

The damn creaking of the bed, again.

Enough!

The deep feeling of anger overcame him.

In the middle of the night, and amid the mental and emotional hubbub, Santino got up, throwing the covers and pillow away with almost exaggerated disdain and anger. As if he wanted to slightly lessen the anger and ...

The envy?

Because that was it, right? That was the reason why he couldn't fall asleep, quieting the din to background noise. So...

That's why he corrupted listening to her ... hearing her having those gasps, those expressions for someone other than him.

For his brother. It wasn't the fact that it was someone other than him, it would have been worth a thousand heck if it were some other beardless idiot from his school... it hurt and burned with pride that it was HIS own younger brother of his. He burned and gripped her heart with a feeling that was too strident, like the awakening of a volcano about to erupt, about to release dense lava that corrodes and corrupts everything within reach.

But it was HIS anger at him and his resentment at the end of the day, he could do little or nothing.

She kept listening to them and she called out her brother's name with intense attachment.

The girl who would never have him, he thought as he unconsciously got out of bed. She emerged from the room, almost sleepwalking. She slammed the door as hard as she could, heeding the intruded resentment that hovered in her head and headed for the bathroom, not even glancing at the door to Luke's room.

She mentally cursed that instant. It was one thing to take advantage of the fact that his parents were away for the weekend and another to commit that impudence.

She undressed feeling the pulse of his hands in a tremulous grasp, even as she tossed the garments to the floor.

He leaned his back against the wall, feeling the temper of the mosaics in it, in contrast to the warm water that gushed from the shower. The ebony strands of her hair were scattered under the slow stream.

Alexa...

The only name came to her mind, almost like the flash of lightning in the middle of a summer storm.

He was thinking of her, he had remained stuck in her mind, immovable from her longings and indelible from her mind. She had treasured a dwelling there, in that conscious and unconscious zone. Defiant before the logic of the thought of him.

Alexa. His brother's girlfriend.

The girl studied, lived, and dated her younger brother.

While he ... was still there. Trapped in that invisible chamber built by the sly and indifferent Luke, who only silently delighted in naming it over and over again. "Alexa, my girlfriend" like that, with that tone so concise and dry and at the same time so laconic and mocking. Like the plump laugh of a lewd demon.