Avery

The click of the electronic lock was the loudest sound in the quiet hallway. I barely had time to process it before the hotel room door was yanked open from the inside. A hand, rough and warm, closed around my wrist and hauled me across the threshold.

The door slammed shut, plunging us into near-darkness, save for the faint city glow bleeding around the edges of the curtains. Before I could gasp, his mouth crashed against mine.

It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claim.

His lips were insistent, demanding, his tongue sweeping past my own with a hunger that stole the air from my lungs. I melted into him, my hands flying up to clutch at the hard planes of his shoulders. Logan. After four years of stolen glances, of silent, aching want since I was eighteen, he was finally here. My brother’s best friend. My secret obsession. The taste of him—whiskey and mint and pure, unadulterated male—was a drug I’d been dreaming of.

A low groan rumbled from his chest, vibrating into mine as he backed me against the wall. The cool plaster was a sharp contrast to the furnace of his body pressing into me. His hands were everywhere, mapping my spine through my thin dress, tangling in my hair, cupping my jaw to angle my face for a deeper kiss. I arched into him, a soft whimper escaping my throat. This was it. The fever dream I’d replayed in my head a thousand times was finally real, a frantic, blurry release of every what if I’d ever tortured myself with.

“Logan,” I breathed against his lips when he finally broke for air, my voice shaky.

His answer was another searing kiss, his hands sliding down to my hips, gripping me hard. He walked me backward, our mouths never parting, until my calves hit the edge of the bed. We tumbled onto the crisp duvet in a tangle of limbs.

The shadows in the room hid his expression, but I could feel the intensity of his gaze. His fingers found the zipper at the back of my dress. The sound of it sliding down was obscenely loud. He peeled the fabric from my shoulders, his lips following the trail, burning a path along my collarbone. I fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, my fingers clumsy with need, pushing the material aside to feel the hot skin and solid muscle of his chest.

He shrugged out of the shirt, and for a moment, we just stared at each other in the dim light. The years of silence, of him treating me like a kid sister, evaporated in that look. There was nothing brotherly in his eyes now. Only a dark, possessive heat that made my stomach clench.

He lowered his head, his mouth finding the lace edge of my bra. His teeth grazed the sensitive skin just above it, and a full-body shiver wracked me. “God, I’ve thought about this,” I whispered, my fingers threading into his dark hair. “For so long.”

He didn’t answer with words. His mouth closed over the lace-covered peak of my breast, the heat and wetness searing through the fabric. I cried out, my back bowing off the bed. His hands slid down my sides, over my hips, gripping the waistband of my panties. In one fluid motion, he stripped them from me, leaving me bare from the waist down except for my bra.

The cool air kissed my skin, followed immediately by the scorching heat of his palm as it slid up the inside of my thigh. My breath hitched. He paused, his hand a brand against my skin, his thumb tracing a maddening circle so close to where I was throbbing for him. This is happening. This is really happening.

He kissed me again, swallowing my moans, his body settling more heavily between my legs. The rough texture of his jeans against my inner thighs was a delicious friction. I could feel the hard, insistent press of him against my core, and my hips lifted of their own accord, seeking more. A silent, desperate plea.

He broke the kiss, his forehead resting against mine, his breath coming in ragged gusts that mingled with my own. For a few precious, breathless seconds, we just existed in that suspended space of almost. The air crackled with the promise of everything I’d ever wanted.

The words tumbled out of me in a hushed, reverent rush, born from four years of pent-up fantasy. “Next time,” I whispered, brushing my lips against his stubbled jaw, “we should take our time. We have so much to make up for.”

The stillness that followed was instantaneous and absolute.

It was as if someone had thrown a switch. The heat radiating from him didn’t just cool; it vanished, replaced by a chill that seeped into my bones. He pulled back, lifting his weight off me. The loss of his warmth was a physical shock.

I blinked up at him, confusion clouding the haze of desire. “Logan?”

He swung his legs off the bed and stood up, his back to me. The dim light outlined the rigid set of his shoulders. He grabbed his discarded shirt but didn’t put it on, just held it in a white-knuckled fist.

“Get dressed.”

The two words were flat. Icy. They didn’t sound like they came from the man who was just kissing me like I was oxygen.

“W-what?”

He turned around. The mask was back. The easygoing, smiling friend of my brother was gone, replaced by a stranger with hard eyes and a clenched jaw. “You need to leave.”

The shame hit me first, hot and swift. I scrambled to sit up, crossing my arms over my chest. “I don’t understand. Did I… did I do something wrong?”

“No,” he said, but the word offered no comfort. It was a dismissal. “This was a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened.”

A mistake. The two words were a knife to the chest, twisting. My four-year crush, my fantasy come to life… was a mistake he wanted to erase.

He stood there, a statue of cold indifference, and laid out his verdict. His rules. Each one was a hammer blow.

“First,” he said, his voice devoid of all the passion it held minutes ago. “No sleepovers. You don’t stay the night. Ever.”

I flinched.

“Second.” He ticked it off on his fingers, a brutal, businesslike gesture. “No repeats. I don’t do second chances. Or second times.”

The hopeful, whispered “next time” I’d uttered curdled in my stomach.

“And third.” He leaned forward slightly, and the intensity in his eyes was no longer desire, but a cold, commanding threat. “Complete secrecy. No one finds out about this. Especially not your brother. You look at him, you talk to him, and you forget this ever happened. Do you understand?”

The full, devastating realization crashed over me. This wasn’t the start of something for him. It was a transaction. A one-time error in judgment. To him, I wasn’t the girl who’d loved him silently for years; I was just… a woman. One of many. A rule he’d broken and now needed to contain.

The heartbreak was a physical wave, so strong it stole my breath. Tears, hot and humiliating, welled up, blurring his cruel, beautiful face. He wasn’t the hero of my story. He was just a jerk who’d used me to scratch

an itch.

A sob caught in my throat. I couldn’t be here another second. Shame gave me a frantic, scrambling energy. I lunged for my dress, yanking it up over my shoulders, not even bothering with the zipper. My panties were a forgotten scrap of lace on his hotel room floor. I didn’t care. I just needed to be gone.

I fumbled for my shoes, not looking at him, the tears now streaming down my face. I stumbled toward the door, my hand shaking as it reached for the handle.

His voice stopped me, cold and final from across the room. “Avery.”

I froze, not turning around, a pathetic sliver of hope making me hesitate.

“Forget tonight.”

I wrenched the door open and fled into the bright, impersonal hallway, leaving my dignity, my fantasy, and my four-year crush in the wreckage behind me.

Avery

I collapsed into the back of the taxi, a shuddering, silent mess. The city lights blurred into streaky gold smears past the window, indistinguishable from the hot tears still leaking from my eyes. The driver didn’t ask. He just drove. Good.

By the time I stumbled through the front door of our shared apartment, I was a hollowed-out wreck. My dress was still half-zipped, my hair a wild tangle from his hands. I smelled like him—whiskey, expensive cologne, and shame.

“Avery?”

My brother’s voice, sharp with concern, cut through the fog. I didn’t even have the strength to hide. He was on the couch, a game controller forgotten in his lap. In an instant, he was across the room.

“Jesus, Ave. What’s wrong?” His hands were on my shoulders, his eyes scanning my face. Seeing his little sister—broken—transformed him. His gentle concern hardened into something protective and furious. “Who did this? Talk to me.”

He pulled me into a hug, and the dam broke. Sobs wracked my body, ugly and uncontrollable. I buried my face in his shirt, the familiar, safe scent of laundry detergent a stark contrast to the memory burning in my senses.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay.” His voice was a low, tight rumble against my ear. Then it changed, turning to steel.

“Just give me a name. I swear to god, I will find the jerk who made you cry like this and I will end him.”

The irony was a poison dart straight to my heart. The jerk is your best friend. The man you’d take a bullet for. The words screamed inside my skull, but I just shook my head, crying harder.

He guided me to the couch, his arm a solid, comforting weight around me. As I curled into his side, my mind betrayed me, spiraling back. Back to when all this stupid, hopeless wanting began.

Four years ago. I was eighteen.

My uniform was thick glasses, baggy sweaters that swallowed my frame, and a permanent residence behind fortress walls of textbooks. Downstairs, my brother threw another one of his infamous parties. The bass thumped through the floor, a soundtrack to a world of beautiful, confident people I didn’t belong to.

I was hiding. Always hiding.

A soft knock on my bedroom door. I froze, pretending I wasn’t there.

It opened anyway.

He stood in the doorway, backlit by the hallway light, a silhouette of effortless cool. Logan. He leaned against the frame, a faint smile playing on his lips as he took in my nest of books and my oversized hoodie.

“Why,” he asked, his voice a quiet, intimate rumble in my quiet room, “is such a beautiful girl hiding up here instead of having fun with the rest of us?”

My heart didn’t just skip a beat. It stopped.

He walked in, not waiting for an invitation. He picked up a philosophy textbook from my desk, thumbed through it. “Heavy reading.” His gaze lifted, meeting mine. It felt like being seen for the first time. Really seen. Not as my brother’s awkward kid sister, but as… someone.

That single sentence, that look, was the catalyst. It lit a fuse.

The memory shifted, a montage of my own making. Trading textbooks for makeup tutorials. Swapping hoodies for dresses that hugged the curves I’d learned to stop hiding. The glasses replaced by contacts. Each change was a silent message to him: See me now?

But there was always the shadow. The unspoken law, laid down by my brother in one of his rare serious moments. “Logan’s my brother, Ave. But he’s… not a good bet for girls. He treats them like distractions. Fun, but temporary.” A hard look. “You’re not a distraction. You’re off-limits. He knows that.”

I thought it was just overprotectiveness. I thought I saw a secret softness in Logan’s eyes when he looked at me across a dinner table. I was a fool.

The memory slammed into last night. The charity gala. Him finding me on the empty terrace, the city sparkling below. The smell of expensive whiskey on his breath as he leaned close. “You look incredible,” he’d murmured, his gaze dropping to my lips. And then he’d kissed me, a stolen, searing promise in the dark. The cold, hard edge of the hotel keycard pressed into my palm. “9:00 PM. Don’t be late.”

I’d thought it was a beginning. It was just his standard operating procedure.

My brother’s voice dragged me back to the present, to the safety of his couch and the wreckage of my mistake. “Was it someone at the gala? Someone from work?”

I just shook my head, unable to speak.

Suddenly, my phone buzzed in my clutch, which was still clenched in my death-grip. The vibration was an obscene intrusion. I pulled it out, my vision still swimmy.

A text notification glowed on the screen.

It wasn’t from him. Of course it wasn’t.

It was from Mark. Sweet, reliable, nice Mark from the finance department on the floor below mine. A subordinate. A man who always held the door open.

> Hey Avery. I know it’s late. I saw you at the gala tonight… you looked really beautiful. I’ve been wanting to ask for a while. Would you maybe want to go on a date with me tomorrow night?

A hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat, morphing into another sob. The universe’s cruel joke. The man I’d carved a four-year fantasy around had discarded me before we’d even finished, his rules still echoing in the

silent hotel room. And here was someone else, offering the very thing I’d wanted from Logan—a beginning, a date, a chance—on a silver platter.

My brother felt the fresh tremor that went through me. “What is it? Is it him?” His voice was deadly calm.

Before I could even formulate a lie, my phone buzzed again. Another text. My blood ran cold.

This one was from him.

The contact name—just L—blazed up at me. I couldn’t breathe.

“Avery,” my brother said, his tone leaving no room for evasion. “Give me the phone.”

Avery

I didn’t give him the phone. A new, sharp anger—cleaner than the heartbreak—flared in my chest. I clutched it to my chest, shaking my head.

“No,” I said, the word coming out stronger than I felt. “It’s nothing. Just… work.”

His eyes narrowed, seeing right through me. “Avery…”

“I’m fine,” I lied, pushing myself off the couch. “I’m going to bed. Please, Mark. Just drop it.”

I didn’t wait for his answer. I fled to my room, locking the door behind me. I leaned against it, my heart hammering. I looked at the screen.

L: We need to talk.

Three words. No apology. No explanation. Just a demand. The anger boiled over. We need to talk? After he’d thrown me out like trash? After his rules? I let out a choked sound, half-laugh, half-sob. My thumb hovered over the keyboard. I could unleash everything. The years of longing. The humiliation. The way my skin still burned where he’d touched me.

Instead, I powered the phone off. The screen went black, taking his demand with it. Let him wonder.

The silence in my room was absolute. I stared at the dark screen for a long time. Then, slowly, I turned it back on. I ignored the notification from L. I opened the thread from Mark.

> Hey Avery. I know it’s late…

He was sweet. He was kind. He looked at me like I was a person, not a secret. He was the antidote. A distraction from the poison Logan had left in my veins.

My fingers trembled, but I typed back.

> Tomorrow night sounds perfect. Thank you for asking.

I hit send before I could overthink it. The decision was a bandage on a bullet wound, but it was something to do. A way to prove, mostly to myself, that I could still function. That my world hadn’t just permanently narrowed to the memory of a hotel room and a pair of cold, hard eyes.

*

The next evening, I stood in front of my mirror, applying a final coat of mascara. My reflection showed a woman in a sleek, emerald green dress, her hair smoothed into soft waves. On the surface, I looked put- together. Confident. The hollow ache in my chest was a secret I tucked away behind a bright smile.

The universe, it seemed, had a cruel sense of comic timing.

The bistro Mark chose was chic and intimate, all soft lighting and murmured conversations. He was already there, rising to pull out my chair with an easy smile. “You look incredible, Avery.”

“So do you,” I said, and I meant it. Mark was handsome in a clean, approachable way. His smile was warm, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He talked about his work, asked about mine, laughed at my stilted jokes. It was… nice. Perfectly, pleasantly nice.

I leaned in, forcing a light laugh at something he said, my hand brushing his forearm in a gesture I hoped looked flirtatious. I was trying. God, I was trying to be present. To feel something other than the ghost of Logan’s hands on my skin.

That’s when I felt it.

A prickle on the back of my neck. A shift in the atmosphere, like a storm cloud passing over the sun. My breath caught. Slowly, almost against my will, my gaze drifted from Mark’s kind face, scanning the dimly lit room.

And I found him.

He was seated at a corner booth across the restaurant, surrounded by three men in suits. A business dinner.

But he wasn’t looking at them. He was looking directly at me.

Logan.

His expression was a frozen mask, but his eyes… they were blazing. Dark, intense, locked on the point where my fingers still rested on Mark’s arm. I saw his jaw tighten, a muscle ticking in his cheek. He didn’t blink. He didn’t look away. He just watched, a predator witnessing a trespass on his territory. The raw, primal jealousy radiating from him was a physical force, a heat I could feel from across the room. It stole the air from my lungs.

The rest of the date passed in a blur. I smiled. I nodded. I pretended to listen. All the while, I was hyper- aware of that searing gaze pinning me to my seat. Mark, thankfully, seemed oblivious. When he walked me to my car parked a block away, he was a perfect gentleman.

“I had a really great time, Avery,” he said, his hand resting lightly on my lower back for a brief, guiding moment.

“Me too,” I whispered, the lie ash in my mouth.

He leaned in, and for a terrifying second, I thought he might try to kiss me goodnight. I flinched, just barely, and he pulled back, his smile faltering only slightly. “Can I call you?”

“Sure,” I said, my voice faint. I just needed to be alone.

He nodded, gave me one last warm smile, and turned to walk back toward the bistro. The moment he disappeared around the corner, the brave face I’d been wearing shattered. I sagged against my car door, fumbling in my clutch for my keys. My hands were shaking.

I never found them.

A hand shot out of the shadows, a vice clamping around my wrist. I yelped, a sound of pure shock, as I was wrenched backward, away from the car, away from the streetlight.

“Hey!” I managed to gasp, but a hard palm covered my mouth, stifling the rest. I was hauled bodily into the narrow, dark alley beside the restaurant. My back slammed against cold, rough brick, knocking the wind from me.

And then he was there.

Logan. Looming over me, his body caging me in. The scent of rain and that same expensive, devastating cologne filled my senses. The faint light from the street painted the hard angles of his face in stark relief—the furious set of his mouth, the dark storm in his eyes.

He didn’t speak. He just looked at me, his chest rising and falling with ragged breaths. Then, he moved.

His mouth crashed down on mine.

It wasn’t like the hotel room kiss. That had been hungry, passionate. This was punishing. Desperate. A furious, territorial claim. His lips were hard, demanding, his tongue invading my mouth with a possessive fury that made my knees buckle. One hand fisted in my hair, tilting my head back, while the other pressed flat against the brick by my head, his forearm a barricade. I moaned into his mouth, a helpless sound of shock and undeniable, traitorous arousal. My body, the stupid, betraying thing, arched into him of its own volition.

He tore his mouth from mine, his breath hot and harsh against my wet lips. “What the hell are you doing?”

he growled, his voice a low, dangerous rasp.

The sound of it, the sheer audacity, broke the spell. Fury, bright and cleansing, surged through me. “I’m on a date,” I snapped, my own voice trembling. “Or did you forget Rule Number Two? ‘No repeats.’ You made it very clear I was a one-time mistake.”

“That guy is a nobody, Avery.” His words were clipped, dripping with contempt. “He’s my subordinate. You don’t belong with him.”

The claim, the arrogance, lit a fuse. “I don’t belong to anyone,” I hissed, shoving against his solid chest. It was like pushing a wall. “Especially not my brother’s best friend who treats me like a secret he’s ashamed of. If you don’t want me, stay out of my way while someone else tries.”

His eyes darkened, the simmering rage in them mixing with something else—something that looked painfully like regret. He leaned in closer, his body heat scorching me through the thin silk of my dress. “You think I can just stand there and watch him touch you?” he breathed, his lips a hair’s breadth from mine. “You have no idea what you’re doing to me.”

My heart was a wild, frantic drum against my ribs. Tears, born of frustration and longing, welled in my eyes.

“Then break your rules,” I challenged, the words a whisper. “Or let me go.”

For a long, suspended moment, he didn’t move. He just stared at me, his gaze dropping to my lips, then back to my eyes. The conflict in his face was a raw, open wound. The air between us crackled, thick with unsaid words and four years of pent-up want.

His head dipped, his forehead coming to rest against mine. His breath shuddered out. “Avery.”