Caught Between Two Brothers ( love triangle)
She thought patience would earn her love.
She was wrong.
After years of waiting for her best friend to finally see her, she meets the one man she should never want-his older brother. Dark, forbidden, and dangerously perceptive, he sees through every excuse she's ever made for being overlooked.
Now she must choose between a safe fantasy that keeps breaking her heart and a dangerous truth that offers no escape once it begins.
Because the brother who looks at her like that?
He doesn't believe in halfway love.
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Chapter 4
POV: Maya
For three days, that scrap of paper with Cade's number had sat on my counter like a live grenade. I had cleaned around it, stared at it while my coffee went cold, and once, I had even picked it up, only to drop it as if the ink might burn my skin.
I hadn't called. I couldn't. Calling Cade felt like admitting he was right, and if he was right, then the last six years of my life weren't a slow-burn romance-they were a tragedy.
Now, standing on the porch of the Blackwood estate for our Sunday tradition, my stomach was a knot of barbed wire. I'd been coming here every week for six years. I knew the smell of Mrs. Blackwood's pot roast and the exact creak of the third step. I was part of the furniture.
The door swung open, and Ethan was there, glowing. He looked rested, his "emotional death" from three nights ago seemingly replaced by the effortless charm he wore like a second skin.
"Maya! You're late," he teased, pulling me into a one-armed hug and kissing my temple. It was the kind of affection you gave a favorite cousin. "Come in, everyone's already in the parlor."
He didn't let go of my shoulder as we walked in. "Mom, Dad, look who made it! My best friend Maya, honestly, she's basically family at this point."
The word family hit me like a physical blow. It was a cage. If I was family, I was safe. If I was family, I was non-threatening. If I was family, he never had to worry about losing me, which meant he never had to bother winning me.
"Good to see you, dear," Mrs. Blackwood chirped.
I went to respond, but the words died in my throat. Standing by the fireplace, a glass of dark amber liquid in his hand, was Cade.
He wasn't wearing tactical gear today. He was in a dark charcoal sweater that made his gray eyes look like sharpened flint. He didn't say a word. He just looked at me. It was that same look from my apartment, predatory, knowing, and entirely too heavy for a room filled with polite conversation. He looked at me like he knew exactly what I'd been doing for the last seventy-two hours. He looked at me like he was just waiting for me to stop pretending.
"You remember my brother, right?" Ethan asked, oblivious to the vacuum of oxygen Cade's presence created.
"We've met," I managed, my voice thin.
"Briefly," Cade added, his voice a low vibration that seemed to travel across the floorboards and up my spine.
Dinner was an exercise in psychological warfare. Ethan sat to my left, chatting animatedly about a new merger. Cade sat directly across from me.
"So, Cade," Mrs. Blackwood said, leaning forward. "Ethan tells us you're actually staying this time? No more 'classified' assignments?"
Cade took a slow sip of his drink, his eyes never leaving mine. "No more running, Mom. I'm starting a security consulting firm. Staying local. Putting down roots." He paused, his gaze intensifying. "It's time I focused on things that are actually worth keeping."
"About time you settled down," Ethan let out a shallow laugh, gesturing with his fork. "Found a girl yet? Or are you still looking for a fellow mercenary?"
Cade's lips tilted into a microscopic, dangerous smile. "Working on it."
I choked on my water. I coughed into my napkin, my face flushing a deep, humiliated red.
"Easy there, Maya," Ethan said, patting my back. He didn't even pause. "Well, whoever she is, Cade, make sure she's nothing like Claire. God, I forgot how much energy that woman sucked out of a room. Insane. Truly. She complained about my hours, complained about my friends..."
I sat there, frozen, listening to Ethan trash the woman he had been sobbing over three days ago. He spoke about her like she was a bad car he'd finally traded in. He didn't notice that I had been the one to listen to those complaints for months. He didn't notice that I was currently the "friend" he was neglecting while he spoke.
Then, I felt it.
Under the table, a heavy, warm pressure brushed against the side of my foot. Then it slid up, firm and intentional, along the curve of my calf.
I jolted, nearly knocking over my wine glass. I looked up, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
Cade was leaning back, looking perfectly relaxed. He was watching me with a small, challenging smirk. Your move, his eyes said.
I jerked my leg away, but the heat stayed. It felt like a brand. I couldn't breathe. The polite clinking of silverware and Ethan's mindless droning felt like they were miles away. There was only the table between us and the electric, forbidden current Cade was forcing me to acknowledge.
After dinner, I fled to the kitchen under the guise of helping with the dishes. I needed air. I needed to not be in a room where Cade Blackwood was dissecting my soul.
I was scrubbing a pot when the air in the room shifted. I didn't need to turn around to know he was there. The sheer magnetic pull of him was enough.
"You didn't call," he said. He didn't whisper, but his voice was low enough that it didn't carry past the kitchen door.
"I have nothing to say to you," I snapped, scrubbing the pot so hard the suds flew.
"Liar." He was closer now. I could smell the woodsmoke and bourbon. "You have six years of things to say. Six years of 'why not me' and 'when is it my turn.' You're just scared."
"Of what?" I turned, the wet pot clutched to my chest like a shield.
Cade stepped into my personal space, his hand coming up to rest on the counter behind me, effectively pinning me in place. "Of what happens when you stop lying to yourself, Maya. Of what happens when you realize you don't want the boy who ignores you. You want the man who can't take his eyes off you."
My breath hitched. He was so close I could see the individual silver flecks in his irises. "Cade, stop. This is your brother's house. He's right in the next room."
"And he hasn't looked in here once," Cade countered. "He doesn't even know you're missing."
"Maya! Come here! I need your opinion on something!" Ethan's voice boomed from the living room, cheerful and demanding.
The spell broke. I flinched, my instinctual "caretaker" mode kicking in. I started to move, but Cade didn't budge. He looked down at me with a mixture of pity and cold amusement.
"He calls, you run," Cade murmured. "Pavlovian."
Fury, hot and sharp, flared in my chest. I couldn't hit him here, and I couldn't scream. So I did the only thing I could. I leaned in close to his ear, my voice a jagged whisper. "Go to hell, Cade."
I shoved past him, and as I reached the door, I didn't look back, but I felt his quiet, dark laughter follow me.
I walked into the living room, trying to smooth my hair and compose my face. Ethan was sitting on the sofa, scrolling through his phone.
"There you are," he said, waving me over. "Check this out. My buddy just set me up on this new elite dating app. What do you think of this girl, Sarah? She's a corporate lawyer, loves skiing. Should I ask her out? Or is the blonde, what was her name, Elena?... more my vibe?"
The world tilted.
Three days. It had been three days since he cried in my arms. Three days since I thought, this is it. And he was already asking me to vet his next conquest.
He looked at me, his blue eyes bright and expectant, waiting for his "best friend" to give him the green light to go find someone else to love.
Behind him, in the shadows of the hallway, I saw Cade leaning against the doorframe. He didn't say a word. He just watched me, his gray eyes steady, waiting for the moment I finally hit the floor.
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8.6
In my past life, the Cerberus strain leaked, turning the world into a blood-soaked hell of rotting flesh and mutated monsters.
I thought my boyfriend Declan and my best friend Hailee would have my back as we fled the quarantine zone.
Instead, when the surging crowd of the infected cornered us, they didn't hesitate.
They shoved me backward into the horde just to buy themselves three seconds to run.
As I fell into the mud, I saw them fleeing without a single backward glance.
"She's dead weight anyway!" Hailee screamed.
"Just keep running, she'll distract them!" Declan yelled back.
I was torn apart, feeling the agonizing tear of rotting teeth sinking into my neck and the hot spray of my own blood.
Before the apocalypse, my greedy uncle had locked away my ten-million-dollar trust fund, leaving me with nothing but a fake boyfriend who only wanted me for my money.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand how the people I loved most could trade my life for a head start.
Why did I blindly trust them? Why didn't I see through their perfectly choreographed lies?
Opening my eyes again, the stench of decaying flesh vanished, replaced by the sterile smell of my college dorm room.
Hailee and Declan were standing over my bed, faking tears of concern over my meningitis fever.
I was back exactly seven days before the world ended, and my spatial vault ability had come back with me.
This time, I'm extorting my uncle for every cent, hoarding the city's supplies, and leaving them all to rot.
9.3
Born into privilege, Eleanor never imagined her life could shatter in a single night. Then her father disappeared with his mistress, her mother fell from a building and slipped into a coma, and everything she once owned turned to dust.
Determined not to ruin Jonathan's future with her family's disgrace, she ended their relationship and became the bride of a man trapped in a vegetative state.
She believed that was the last time their paths would cross. But two years later, Jonathan pinned her in the dark and whispered, "Long time no see, my sister-in-law."
9.1
My husband, Dante Moretti, the feared Underboss, signed the divorce papers I slipped him without a glance. Too busy texting his true love, Sofia, he was blind to the annulment decree ending everything. The Reaper couldn't see the death of his own marriage.
For three years, I was Elena, his silent wife, the "Caged Canary," cleaning his messes while meticulously planning my escape from our loveless world.
He dismissed me for Sofia's every whim, publicly shaming me after a past love letter was read, then abandoning me again for her fake crisis.
That night, he violently shoved me against a wall, leaving me bleeding and concussed, rushing instead to protect Sofia. Discarded and injured, my invisible love became a weapon against me.
His crushing blindness, the cold realization I was a mere placeholder, fueled a profound injustice. How could he be so lethal, yet oblivious to his wife, favoring the one who betrayed him?
With chilling resolve, I uploaded Sofia's confession, initiated a massive financial transfer dismantling his empire, and staged my own death. Under a new identity, I fled to San Francisco, ready to build my power, far from his bloody, deceitful world.
9.2
Clara was drowning in student debt and barely making rent when she downloaded a fantasy mobile game to escape reality.
Inside the game, an exiled prince named Alex was freezing to death. Pitying him, she spent her last few dollars on microtransactions to fix his shelter and cure his poison.
But the game was far too real.
Every time she paid, the prince reacted. When she complained aloud about going broke, the in-game army suddenly halted, as if the prince had heard her voice.
Then, the terrifying real-world consequences hit.
Clara woke up to find her water glass and a box of Kleenex had vanished from her locked bedroom overnight.
She frantically searched the tiny apartment, her heart pounding in her chest.
She thought she was losing her mind. Had she thrown them out in her sleep? Was there a stalker hiding in her home?
How could physical objects just disappear into thin air behind a deadbolted door?
Until she looked at her nightstand.
Sitting exactly where her missing items used to be was a glowing, weightless crystal cup that defied all logic.
And on her laptop screen, the exiled prince was carefully holding her Kleenex box, offering a mountain of real gold on an altar.
She hadn't just downloaded a mobile game; she had opened a cross-dimensional trade route with a desperate future king.
9.3
Six years ago, my adoptive family framed me for commercial espionage, stripped me of my identity, and threw me out. Now, I finally returned to the Solis estate as a commercial pilot to take back what was mine.
But the first thing my adoptive mother did was threaten me with that forged evidence again. She demanded I take my sister Kiana's place in a marriage contract with a disabled man, simply because Kiana refused to marry him.
When I refused, Kiana ambushed me at the airport with a mob of reporters. She cried for the cameras, publicly accusing me of causing our father's and brother's deaths. She painted me as a ruthless monster who bankrupted the company and ruined the family. The crowd instantly turned on me, screaming that I was a murderer and a gold-digger. Kiana wanted to completely destroy my reputation so I would have no choice but to submit to her arrangement.
I looked at her fake tears, feeling a cold, absolute fury. How dare she use the tragic deaths of the only family members who actually loved me as a prop for her sick show? They had ruined my life once, and now they wanted to bury me alive.
I didn't hesitate. I slapped her hard across the face right in front of the flashing cameras.
"That was for my father and brother."
Then, my real fiancé, a decorated Delta Force commander, rolled through the crowd in his wheelchair. He tossed a classified Pentagon file to the reporters, completely clearing my name and exposing Kiana's lies. I married him to start my revenge, but as I stepped into his heavily secured penthouse that night, I realized my powerful new husband had been preparing for me for a very long time.
9.7
I was an intern nurse working exhausting shifts, yet my mother constantly forced me into blind dates with wealthy, arrogant men to secure our family's social standing.
During a terrifying hospital lockdown, an assassin disguised as a doctor held a scalpel to my throat. I was almost killed, but a high-ranking military colonel threw his own body down a flight of concrete stairs to shield me.
I survived with cuts and bruises, but when I went home, my mother didn't care about my near-death experience. She was only furious that I had rushed out on my blind date with Preston, a rich financial analyst.
She forced me to meet him to apologize. When Preston grabbed my arm, bruised me, and mocked my attack as a pathetic lie, my mother still took his side.
"Men get angry," she told me coldly. "It's your job not to provoke them. You will beg for his forgiveness, or you are no longer welcome in this house."
I had narrowly escaped an assassin, yet my own family was willing to feed me to a monster just for a fat paycheck and neighborhood gossip.
My heart went completely dead.
So, when the intimidating Colonel appeared, offering me maximum military protection through a sudden marriage, I didn't hesitate.
I walked back into my parents' house and calmly slapped a crisp marriage certificate onto the coffee table.
"I won't be apologizing to Preston. I got married today."