“Why?”
“Because I love you, Cole. I’ve been in love with you since you found me in the park that day and pulled my hair and told me you wanted my firsts. I’ve loved you more through the years, and I hated every time I had to face the reality that I couldn’t be with you.”
“I thought you hated me.”
“That was my way of saying I love you.”
He taps my nose. “You’re so weird.”
“Not more than you. You’ve been a dick to me for a long time.”
“That’s because I wanted you to stay interested in me. To never get tired of me. I beat you in everything just to see that fire in your eyes as you challenged me for a rematch. I beat you to keep you coming back to me.”
My lips part. I didn’t know that. “Really?”
“Really. I might have been in love with you for as long as you’ve been in love with me.”
Tears glisten in my eyes. “Oh, Cole.”
“Moan it. My name, I mean,” he says with mischievousness.
“I love you, Cole.” I sigh.
“Does that mean you’re mine now?”
“I always have been.”
He wraps a hand around my throat and his lips claim mine.
Epilogue 1 - Silver
Three years later
“What the hell are you doing here?” I whisper-yell as Cole leans against the bathroom’s door and clicks it closed behind him. “This is the ladies’ room.”
“I know.” He stalks towards me, and every step he takes is like he’s walking straight to my heart.
I was right. There’s no way my feelings for him would ever fizzle out.
With every passing day, I fall harder and faster into him.
With every day, he becomes my everything.
We moved to Oxford for university, and soon after, we told Mum and Papa about our relationship.
I can’t be with him officially. At least, not yet. Papa won the election and became the prime minister, then remarried Mum a year after Helen’s death.
That caused quite a ruckus in the media, despite their strategic approach. Frederic made it look like Mum consoled Papa and they rediscovered their initial attraction.
It’s true that Cole and I don’t live under the same roof anymore, and he eclipsed himself from the family circle to not be associated as my brother. But it’ll take years for the world to come to terms with us.
We’re bigger than the world, he and I. They’re not ready for us.
Papa and Mum are the Conservative Party — despite their non-conservative actions with that affair. I can’t exactly bring their votes down by announcing I’m in love with my ex-stepbrother.
I can only do that once Papa is out of 10 Downing Street.
Because of that, our relationship is just known on a familial and close friends level. As in only Aiden, Xander, and Ronan from our friends.