My Best Friend's Brother: A Standalone Friends to Lovers Romance (Soulmates Series Book 2)
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My Best Friend's Brother
Hazel Kelly
© 2016 Hazel Kelly
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, copied, or stored in any form or by any means without permission of the author. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
All characters, events, brands, companies, and locations in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.
Cover Artwork – © 2016 L.J. Anderson of Mayhem Cover Creations
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1: Andi
Chapter 2: Shane
Chapter 3: Andi
Chapter 4: Shane
Chapter 5: Andi
Chapter 6: Shane
Chapter 7: Andi
Chapter 8: Shane
Chapter 9: Andi
Chapter 10: Shane
Chapter 11: Andi
Chapter 12: Shane
Chapter 13: Andi
Chapter 14: Shane
Chapter 15: Andi
Chapter 16: Shane
Chapter 17: Andi
Chapter 18: Shane
Chapter 19: Andi
Flashback: Shane
Chapter 20: Shane
Chapter 21: Andi
Chapter 22: Shane
Chapter 23: Andi
Chapter 24: Shane
Chapter 25: Andi
Chapter 26: Shane
Chapter 27: Andi
Chapter 28: Shane
Chapter 29: Andi
Flashback: Andi
Chapter 30: Shane
Chapter 31: Andi
Chapter 32: Shane
Chapter 33: Andi
Chapter 34: Shane
Chapter 35: Andi
Chapter 36: Shane
Flashback: Shane
Chapter 37: Andi
Chapter 38: Shane
Chapter 39: Andi
Chapter 40: Shane
Chapter 41: Andi
Chapter 42: Shane
Chapter 43: Andi
Chapter 44: Shane
Chapter 45: Andi
Chapter 46: Shane
Chapter 47: Andi
Chapter 48: Shane
Chapter 49: Andi
Chapter 50: Shane
Chapter 51: Andi
Chapter 52: Shane
Chapter 53: Andi
Chapter 54: Shane
Epilogue: Andi
Note from the Author
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
is just to love and be loved in return.”
– David Bowie
Prologue
We used to call ourselves The Three Musketeers.
I know it's cliché, but we were only kids.
They usually took turns being in charge, which was fine with me. I was just happy to go along with them.
After all, I thought I was the luckiest little girl in the whole world. Most of my classmates only had one best friend, but I had two: my best friend Izzy and her twin brother.
Back then, I hoped things would never change, but that's the problem with more. Once I saw a glimpse of it, it was impossible to stop wanting it.
Especially when it came to Shane.
Chapter 1: Andi
I didn't know where else to go.
All I knew was that I had to find someone I could trust, and unfortunately, that's not always as easy as it should be on a college campus.
I could taste the blood on my split lip as I raised my hand to knock on the massive front door. But before my knuckles made contact, some random frat guy threw it open.
If there had been a single drop of adrenaline left in my system, I probably would've jumped, but I spent it all just trying to make it to that side of campus. It was a strange sensation, though, being so sober and wasted at the same time.
The frat guy barely glanced at me- just enough to walk around me- but he left the door wide open.
I stepped into the doorway and took in the room.
There was a younger guy doing homework on a couch by the back windows. And near the enormous fireplace on the wall to my right, under a huge plaque covered in Greek letters, there was a group of guys playing poker.
One by one they turned to look at me. The last one to glance over his shoulder was Shane.
"Andi." He stood up so fast his wooden chair shot out behind him. "Are you okay?"
As he crossed the sticky floor towards me, I felt some hidden reserves of energy well up in my throat.
"Do you need to sit down or something?" His green eyes searched mine as he set his hands on my shoulders.
I wanted to speak, but I hadn't even considered what I might say, and when all the words I could think of started fighting to be the first out, I burst like a damn.
The tears spilled down my cheeks in uncontrollable surges. Apparently, I did have some feeling left after all.
"Come on," he said, his face full of concern as he linked his arm in mine.
It was only the second time I'd ever seen him make that face.
The first time was in high school when we were in the hospital waiting room after Izzy's car accident.
I remember thinking then that I never wanted to see him make that face again. And now here I was being the cause of it. I tried to stop crying, reminding myself that Izzy had been fine in the end.
If anything, she became even bolder after having her immortality validated. And I would be fine, too. Eventually.
I might even be able to go back there again, to that stairwell where…
"You can't just walk away from the game, Shane," his friend called. "You have to give us a chance to win our money back."
Shane fixed his eyes on me. "Give me one second."
I took a deep breath and rolled my eyes up to see if I could absorb the next round of tears.
He turned around and shouted at the boy hunched over his textbook on the couch. "Pete!"
The kid lifted his eyes towards Shane.
"What are you doing right now?"
"Tyler's chem homework."
"Not anymore," Shane said. "Take my spot at the table."
He glanced back at the workbook in front of him. "But Tyler-"
"Needs to do his own homework," Shane said. "And you can tell him I said so."
Two of the boys at the table groaned. The other looked confident that he'd soon have his money back.
"I'm sorry to barge in on you like this," I said so only Shane could hear.
"Don't be," he said, turning back to me. "You're my knight in shining armor."
My bottom lip started to shake.
His eyes dropped to my mouth. "You're bleeding," he said, tilting my chin up gently so he could take a closer look.
I let my gaze fall to the side. Perhaps I shouldn't have come to him. What if he just said I told you so and made me feel more foolish than I already did?
"What happened?" he asked, leading me up the stairs.
"Mike and I-"
His face dropped.
"-got in a fight."
The muscles in Shane's jaw clenched like a zipper.
"It was just a misunderstanding. It was my fault."
He pushed his bedroom door open.
I stepped inside and took a deep breath. When I turned around, he wrapped his big arms around me, and I buried my head in his chest.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
I could smell the scent of Zest soap off him as I shook my head. “No. I just got s
cared."
He leaned back and lowered his head to meet my gaze. "You know that isn't okay, right?"
I nodded.
"And that you have to tell me what happened because seeing that look on your face when you walked in-" He grabbed the back of his head and exhaled.
For a moment I felt like he was judging me, like he was remembering the disappointment he'd expressed when I first told him Mike and I were dating.
He told me I deserved better and that Mike was a worthless piece of shit who wasn't good enough to carry my books, much less hold my hand.
But I let him do a lot more than hold my books anyway. And now I was in deep shit, scared to death of the only person I'd spent any time with in the last six months, with a sore jaw, a busted lip, and a broken heart.
And despite everything, what hurt the most was that I'd disappointed and inconvenienced my best and oldest friend in the whole world.
The black futon in the corner looked broken in at least two places so I leaned against the edge of the bed.
Shane sat beside me. "What exactly happened, Andi?"
"It was a misunderstanding, like I said. Mike saw a picture of me and-"
"Why do you feel compelled to defend this guy when he's clearly scared the shit out of you? I swear to god if you don't tell me why you keep rubbing your jaw, I'm going to take my best guess and leave you out of finding a solution to this problem.”
I swallowed.
I could tell he was serious because I recognized his tone of voice. It was one I'd heard him use with Izzy dozens of times, but never with me.
"He saw a picture of me kissing another guy on the cheek at a birthday party and flipped."
"When you say flipped…?"
The scene flashed back in my mind, and while I wasn't reliving the pain of the event, each emotion passed through me again…
The shock of him pushing me against the stairwell’s concrete wall.
The fear in my bones as I tried to get away so he'd stop shouting in my face.
The anger that surged through me when I tripped and busted my lip on the handrail.
And the vulnerability I felt when he squeezed my jaw in his hands so hard I thought he was going to break my face.
Chapter 2: Shane
My mouth had never been so dry.
And by the time Andi finished telling me what happened, I was so distracted by how red and blurry my vision had gone that I could barely focus on the words tumbling out of her mouth.
Still, my eyes fell on each part of her body as she mentioned them, and as she told me that Mike had squeezed her small, delicate jaw in his hand so hard she feared it would break, I felt a dark knot of anger harden in my guts.
I recognized the dark feeling, too. I'd had it once before. In high school. When Izzy got in that car accident.
If I’d waited for her after her lacrosse game, it never would've happened. I would've gotten her home safely like I did every other day.
Instead, she told me to go ahead because her team was going out for milkshakes… or something else so stupid you'd never think twice about risking your life over it, if you only knew the future.
Fortunately, she got away with a few bruises and a broken collarbone. Her co-captain, the driver, bled out before she reached the hospital.
For me, the gnawing feeling finally went away when I saw Izzy's face and realized she was going to be okay. But I didn't know if Andi was going to be okay yet.
She kept saying she was fine, but she also kept slipping in these pathetic little excuses, as if she were more interested in defending Mike than anything.
And that worried me because it meant the Andi I knew and loved wasn't just broken up on the outside.
And once again, I had the strange and irrational feeling that it was all my fault.
After all, when she started dating that prick, I pulled away. Frankly, I couldn't stand anything about him, and the thought of him putting his hands on her- even romantically- was more than my mind could tolerate.
They actually came to the same bar where I was drinking with my friends once, and I felt so torn. It had been months since I'd seen her smile or heard the sound of her voice, her laugh.
But I went home minutes after I noticed them.
Because I knew that if I spent even ten minutes watching him buy her drinks, touch her lower back, and bury his face in her hair to whisper in her ear, I was going lose it- and maybe her forever as a result.
But obviously I'd abandoned her when she needed me most. And now the strong, confident woman I used to know was scared and hurt and hugging herself at the end of my bed.
"Say something, Shane."
I went to my mini fridge and pulled out a can of Coke. Then I popped the tab, took the first sip, and handed it to her.
She refused it.
"This isn't your fault," I said, fixing my eyes on her big brown ones.
"Thanks."
"I mean it, Andi. Could you even hear yourself when you were talking just now? The guy's abusive, and you’re defending him."
"He's not abusi-"
“Just don’t. You think that was a fit of passion?"
She pursed her lips and flinched when the dried crack in them stretched.
"Any man who uses his physical strength to hurt or intimidate a woman isn't a man at all."
She scooted back on the bed and crisscrossed her legs.
"You know that, don't you?" I asked. "Even if he's been brain washing you-"
A sharp flash shone in her eyes. "I'm not brainwashed, Shane. Fuck you for saying that."
I was almost relieved to see her express something apart from sadness and exhaustion.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."
She shrugged. "He just got jealous. A little jealousy is normal, isn't it?"
I dropped my head for a second while I considered how to answer her. "Not if you act on it. Not if you use it as an excuse to hurt someone or take something from someone else."
She swallowed.
"The way he robbed you of feeling safe with him."
She sighed. "I know you're right. I'm just trying to get my head around what happened after being so shaken up."
"It's okay. Take all the time you need. You're safe here."
She nodded.
I rubbed my forehead.
"What?" she asked.
I dropped my hand and looked at her, fearing I'd never be able to let her out of my sight again unless she did as I asked. "Promise me you'll never see him again."
"He'll want to talk this through. I have stuff at his apartment-"
"Promise me, Andi. I'm not fucking around."
She furrowed her brow and shook her head.
"Then why did you even come here?"
"I didn't know where else to go."
"No." I sat back on the bed beside her. "You came here because you know you can trust me, because I want the best for you. And this guy is the worst."
Tears began to pool in her eyes again.
"And if he's capable of doing something like this once, he's capable of doing it again, and next time you might not be so lucky."
She nodded and made a face like I was actually getting through.
"Think about it. If he would do this because he saw a picture of you kissing a friend on the cheek, how would he react if he knew you were sitting on my bed right now?"
A scene played behind her eyes that only she could see.
"Promise me."
She squinted. "What about my stuff?"
"I'll get your stuff," I said without thinking.
Her breath stuttered. "Okay."
"Promise."
"I won't try and see him again."
"There is no try."
She rolled her eyes.
I didn't crack a smile.
"I know you're right, okay?" she said. "I'm just a bit too flustered to be making promises of any kind right now."
"Make this one," I said. "For me."
She cocked her head.
"And I'll do everything I can to keep you safe and help you forget this ever happened."
One corner of her mouth curled up. "That sounds pretty good right now."
I leaned forward and kissed her hairline, holding the back of her head to keep my lips there.
"Thanks," she said, squeezing my leg.