Claimed By My Step Brother

Chapter 2: Someone Easier

I didn't sleep.

How could I?

Every time I closed my eyes I heard the same thing.

A door.

Clicking shut.

His door.

I gave up at five AM. Showered. Pulled on jeans and my old grey hoodie and told myself I just needed coffee.

That was all.

Just coffee.

Get downstairs. Get caffeine. Get your head straight.

Simple.

I found the kitchen by smell.

And I found something else entirely.

Kai was at the counter.

Back to me.

Grey sweatpants.

No shirt.

I stopped moving the second I saw him. Stopped breathing the second after that. Because he had tattoos. Dark and intricate, spreading from his left shoulder all the way down his back in patterns that looked like they had taken hours. Days maybe.

Like someone had decided even his skin deserved that kind of attention.

Like he was worth the time.

He hadn't turned around.

But his hand reached up to the cabinet above him and pulled down two mugs.

Two.

Before I said a single word.

My chest did something I refused to acknowledge.

"You take it black?" Low voice. Unhurried. Like speaking was something he did on his own schedule.

"Milk," I said. "Two sugars."

He opened the fridge without turning around.

I walked to the island and sat down. Watched him make my coffee like he already knew how. Like he'd done it before. Like my preferences were something he'd already filed away somewhere without asking.

He put the mug in front of me.

Still didn't look at me.

"Thank you," I said.

Silence.

He leaned against the counter opposite me. Both hands around his own mug. And then —

He looked at me.

God.

That look.

Same as last night on the staircase. Steady. Unhurried. Like he was reading something written on my face that I didn't even know was there. Like I was a page he was halfway through and hadn't decided what he thought yet.

I stared back.

I wasn't dropping my eyes first.

"You locked your door last night," he said.

My stomach pulled tight. "You checked?"

"I noticed."

"Same thing."

"It's not."

I tilted my head. "What were you doing outside my room?"

Nothing. Not even a flicker. Just that steady unbothered gaze that made me feel like I was the only one in this conversation who actually cared about the answer.

"The hallway is shared," he said.

"At midnight?"

"I don't have a curfew in my own house."

"That's not an answer."

"No." His eyes didn't move. "It's not."

And he left it there.

Just — left it sitting between us like it weighed nothing. Like my discomfort was a weather condition he'd noted and moved on from.

I hated him.

I hated how calm he was. How completely unbothered. How he could stand there half dressed looking at me like that and feel absolutely nothing while my hands were wrapped so tight around my mug my knuckles had gone pale.

"How old are you?" he asked suddenly.

The subject change was so clean I blinked. "Twenty-two."

"You look younger."

"You act like someone twice your age," I shot back. "Does it impress people usually?"

Something moved behind his eyes.

Fast.

Gone before I could name it.

"Twenty-four," he said. "Since you didn't ask."

"I wasn't going to."

"I know."

I looked away from him. Out the window. The garden sat in early morning light doing its perfect unbothered thing. Every hedge trimmed. Every flower exactly where someone had decided it should be.

Nothing wild. Nothing accidental.

Like this whole property.

Like him.

"You don't want to be here," Kai said.

I looked back.

Not a question. A fact. Stated the way you state something you confirmed a long time ago and are only just saying out loud.

"No," I said. "I don't."

"But you're here."

"My mother is happy." I held his gaze. "So I'm here."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Longer than felt comfortable.

Longer than felt neutral.

"Interesting," he said quietly.

"What is?"

"You."

My skin felt suddenly too tight for my body. "What about me?"

His eyes moved over me.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

Top to bottom and back up again like I hadn't noticed. Like he didn't care if I did.

"You're not what I expected," he said.

"What did you expect?"

One beat of silence.

"Someone easier."

The air left my lungs in one clean pull.

Someone easier.

What did that mean? Easier to what? Ignore? Dismiss? Push to the edges of a house I hadn't asked to be in and pretend didn't exist?

Or something else.

Something that sat in the back of my throat and refused to become a thought I was ready to have.

He pushed off the counter before I found words.

"Stay out of my wing." Flat. Final. Like a policy being delivered to a new employee. "Third floor office. East basement gym. If my door is shut — don't knock." He paused. "We don't need to interact."

"You mean you don't want to," I said.

"Same thing."

He turned toward the door.

And then —

His arm brushed my shoulder as he passed.

One second.

Bare skin against my hoodie.

Warm.

Gone.

He didn't slow down. Didn't look back. Just walked out like it hadn't happened. Like it was nothing. Like it was an accident.

But men like Kai Voss didn't have accidents.

Everything he did was a decision.

I sat at that island for a long time after he left.

Staring at my coffee.

Telling myself my heart was loud because of the confrontation.

Not because of him.

Not because of someone easier and the way he'd looked at me when he said it.

Not because of one second of skin against fabric that should have meant nothing and somehow meant everything.

Breakfast was worse.

He came back dressed.

Black shirt. Hair pushed back. Looking like he hadn't just taken my entire morning apart in a kitchen without even trying.

He sat at the far end of the table.

Didn't look at me once.

Not when Mom asked him something and he answered in three words. Not when Marcus made small talk and the table briefly came alive. Not once during the entire meal.

Good.

Good.

That was exactly what I wanted. Distance. Clean space between us. Simple uncomplicated coexistence in a house we were both stuck in.

I pushed my chair back to leave.

And felt it.

Eyes.

I looked up.

Kai was watching me from the end of the table.

Not casually. Not the way your gaze drifts during breakfast without meaning to.

Deliberately.

Like he'd been watching for a while. Like he'd only just decided to let me catch him doing it.

He didn't look away.

My breath stopped completely.

"Riley?" Mom's voice cut through.

I turned to her. Smiled. Said something I couldn't remember the second it left my mouth.

When I looked back —

Kai was already on his phone.

Expression blank.

Like nothing had happened.

Like I was nothing.

I walked out of the dining room. Up the stairs. Back to my small single-panel room with its cream walls and its too-perfect garden view.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

Pressed both palms flat against my thighs.

Breathed.

Someone easier.

Easier to ignore? Easier to hate? Easier to fold into a corner of his life where he didn't have to look at me?

Or —

Stop.

I lay back and stared at the ceiling.

Kai Voss was cold. Controlled. Cruel in a way that didn't raise its voice. He'd handed me rules like I was staff and walked away from a conversation like its ending was always his decision to make.

I hated him.

I was sure of it.

So why was the only thing I could still feel —

The ghost of his arm against my shoulder?

One second.

One second of contact.

And it was the only thing in my head.

A knock at my door made me sit up fast.

"Riley?" Mom's voice. Soft. Careful.

"Come in."

She opened the door and leaned against the frame, still in her silk robe, smiling at me with those bright happy eyes that I didn't have the heart to dim.

"How are you settling in?"

"Fine," I said. "Room's great."

She looked around the room.

Something crossed her face — quick, gone. She knew it was the smallest room. She wasn't stupid.

But she didn't say anything.

And neither did I.

Because her happiness was real and fragile and I wasn't going to be the reason it cracked.

She said goodnight.

I sat in the dark after she left.

Thinking about a man who made me coffee before he turned around.

Who pulled down two mugs.

Before.

I said.

A word.

Someone easier.

I pressed both hands over my face.

This was going to destroy me.

I already knew.