Bound to My Fake Brother

I caught my brother drunk, locked in a room, crying. I thought he was done with me. My temper is bad. He was the only one who ever put up with it.

Everyone we knew laughed at him for it. Sisterobsessed. Hopeless. Then one day he changed. He drew a line between us. Then he stopped seeing me at all.

Then I heard him through the door. "System, how much longer until the real heir comes back?" "I really can't be good to my baby anymore?

There's no way around it?" The System had no patience left. "Get it through your head. They're the ones who are bloodrelated. You're an impostor.

Wake up." I stood outside that door and smiled. So my big brother and I weren't bloodrelated after all.

Chapter 1 The year I turned five, my relatives told me the stew on the table was my pet rabbit. I figured out early that I wasn't normal. Every one of them was grinning. "How is it?

You raised her yourself. Does that make her taste better?" I sat there a moment.

Then I picked up the kettle and poured it over the back of my greatuncle's hand, since he was laughing the hardest. His skin went white where the water hit. Cooked.

The smell of cooked meat came up with the steam, and under the screaming, I blinked at him. "That hand grew up with you. Taste it and tell me if it's any good." Chairs went over.

The whole room came apart. "Psycho!" someone was screaming. "That kid's a psycho!" My father grabbed his belt and came for me.

It landed on my big brother instead, because he stepped in front of me. His face lost all its color. His lashes shook.

He reached into his shirt and brought out something small and white, holding it like it might break. "Baby." His voice was so gentle it didn't match anything else in that room. "It's okay.

Your rabbit's alive. I found her in the storage room." "Nothing's going to happen to you. Nothing's going to happen to her either. I'm here." "I promise." He was nine that year.

He took the whole beating without making a sound. That night I heard my mother crying while she patched him up. "He wasn't going to hit you.

Why do you always do this?" "Sable Hale is a psycho. Who does that to a grown man in her own family over a joke—" My big brother shook his head.

He answered her like it was a serious question. "It wasn't a joke. It would have hurt her." I stood in the hallway and listened.

My mother's words had put something hot and jumpy in my chest. His voice smoothed it flat. It always did. The next dozen years, I got worse. My moods swung harder.

My parents looked at me the way you look at a dog that already bit someone once. Only Rowan kept going, steady as a machine with a broken sensor.

As far as he was concerned, I was his little sister and I needed protecting, and nothing ever moved him off it. He forgave all of it.

He picked fights with our parents over me. "If you'd given Sable a normal home, she wouldn't be like this!" "My sister has always been the sweetest kid in this house!" Even his friends couldn't take it. "Look, plenty of guys are protective.

You're just flatout lying to yourself." "Rowan. Is there any chance, any chance at all, that your sister is not sweet?" "You keep letting her get away with this.

You really think nothing bad comes of that?" Chapter 2 Rowan didn't even blink. "Sable is my blood sister.

What's wrong with spoiling her?" I was in my senior year of high school when he graduated college. He'd skipped two grades, and he'd already started taking over the family company.

His days were packed. He still showed up outside my school every afternoon. That day the guy who ran the school asked me out. I beat him until he backed down.

After that he was happy to be my errand boy. He carried my backpack to the car that day, grinning like a golden retriever, and shut the door for me.

Inside, in the dim light, Rowan pressed his lips together. His voice stayed mild. "Is baby seeing someone?" He fed me a strawberry. I shook my head and ate it. "Good.

It's better not to, right now. You're a senior. This year matters." He went on like I'd asked for his opinion. "Your big brother isn't trying to run your life.

It's just an important stage. And that boy who walked you to the car is unfortunatelooking. Baby, keep some distance from him." Rowan was the mildest person I knew.

Nothing in him ever ran hot. That was the first time I'd heard him take a knife to anyone. I bit the tip off the strawberry and looked at him.

His hair had gotten long, falling in pieces across his forehead. There was light moving in his eyes, the way it moves on water. He'd changed into a suit for work.

He still looked like a cloud. Nothing about him could hurt anybody. I'd always known my big brother was pretty. Skin like good china. Pink at his knuckles and the tips of his ears.

When he bent his head, his hair slid off the back of his neck and the blue veins showed through. He looked like the rabbit I raised as a kid. She died the year I turned eight.

I buried her without crying. Rowan stood next to the hole and sobbed. I asked him why.

He said, "Baby, your big brother knows you're hurting." "You just can't say it the normal way." Ugh. That strange hot restlessness came up in me again.

I watched the vein moving in his throat and heard myself ask, too fast: "Will you be my big brother for the rest of my life?" He didn't even pause. "Of course." He lied.

My twentieth birthday was almost here. That was when I figured out he was avoiding me. Our parents couldn't stand to be in a room with me by then.

Rowan was the one who drove me to college.

The first thing he did once we got there was buy a place near campus. "This way baby doesn't have to worry about the dorm, or getting stuck with roommates you don't like." He thought of everything.

The truth is I'd spent my whole childhood learning how to fake it. I can make anyone believe anything about me. But I liked what it did to me, being the thing he protected.

So I nodded like a good girl. "Okay." My mother was right about me. I'm a psycho. My life is threaded around Rowan, strand by strand, all the way down.

As long as he holds still, I lie quiet. The second he tries to pull away— I'll open his skin and wind myself into the meat of him, and stay there. Forever and ever.

My big brother belongs to me. Only me. That thought put its roots down when I was too young to remember putting it there.

Except on days with backtoback classes, I slept at that apartment almost every night. Wherever he was, that was where I slept.

Chapter 3 Because Rowan came home before dark with groceries and cooked for me. That evening I let myself in after class. No Rowan. No table covered in the food I like.

Just a cold, empty living room. I had my phone out before I decided to. This had happened before. Things blow up at the company, he gets stuck in meetings, he runs late.

He always messaged me first. My notifications were empty. Our thread still ended three days back, with what I'd sent him. I'm out of pads. He never answered it.

I called his assistant. "Where's my brother?" He hedged. Talked about the weather, basically. I laughed, soft. "Should we do this face to face instead?" Mr.

Nakamura was scared of me too. I heard him swallow before he gave up Rowan's location. "Mr. Hale isn't avoiding you on purpose, Miss Hale.

There's a charity gala tonight, and it happens there's a deal he needs to close—" "He's got you explaining it to me," I said. "So he is avoiding me." Silence on the line.

He didn't have anything to say to that. I hung up, took the stairs down, and drove to the address he'd given me. The sun went down while I drove.

It laid red across everything, broken up gold, like the whole street was burning. For some reason it put me back six years. I'd just turned fourteen.

Rowan was out of the country on a summer program, and my mother used the window to have me taken to a troubledteen boot camp.

By the time he got there to pull me out, I'd already set the building on fire. "…Sable." He was shaking worse than I was when he grabbed me. "Don't be scared. Don't be scared, okay?

Your big brother's here." I wasn't scared. Not for one second of it. But his voice did something to me anyway, and one tear came out.

I blinked it off slowly and copied the way other girls sound when they want something. "Big brother. You have to protect me." "I will. I promise you.

Nothing like this will ever happen to you again." I let my mouth curve against his shoulder. The fire was still going behind us.

In the light of it I could see my mother, hiding behind him, staring at me like something had crawled out of a grave wearing her daughter's face. "Rowan!

She isn't your sister, she's a monster!" Her voice tore. "She set that fire! Fourteen years old and no one can touch her!

If she doesn't get locked up and taught a lesson, who's ever going to control her?" He didn't answer her.

He picked me up, one arm under my knees, and looked at her without any expression at all. "She doesn't need discipline.

She needs love." I curled into him and breathed him in like an animal. He always smelled good. Warm. Clean. Nothing like anyone else. That summer program had been prep work.

He was supposed to go to college overseas. After the fire, he dropped it. He stayed, went to school here, took over the company.

He wouldn't be away from me more than two days at a stretch. He came on my senior trip. So how was today the day he went to close a deal without telling me anything at all?

I got to the gala and parked where I could see the door. Chapter 4 I didn't wait long before a black Bentley came up the drive. It stopped.

The window came down on Rowan's face, pale and pretty under the lights. He gave the guard a small nod and passed him a business card.

A few years of this and he'd learned to go cold in front of strangers. It works on people. The soft parts. The gentle, patient, smallanimal parts. Nobody gets those but me.

Seeing him fixed something in my chest. I started toward the car. Then the back window came down too. A woman's face appeared in it. Beautiful.

Red mouth tipped up at one corner, everything about her eyes drawn sharp. Her hand rested on the window frame, fingers long and loose.

On one of them she wore a ring identical to Rowan's. Something went off in my head, white and loud. When I came back to myself I was rubbing my own ring finger, over and over.

The same plain platinum band sat there. I took him to pick them out myself, the year I turned eighteen. A matching pair.

After he started wearing it, I heard one of his friends corner him about it. "Rowan. Mr. Hale. Sir.

Do you actually know what it means when a man wears a ring on that finger?" "Sable likes it." "She's your sister!" Rowan looked at him like the guy had asked why water is wet. "Right.

That's why I do what she says." His friend opened his mouth. Nothing came out of it. Rowan checked his watch. "That's my time. I need to get home and cook.

Sable's out of class soon." "Big brother." I pushed the door open and came in, and his face changed. "You're out early today." "I didn't feel like sitting through it.

So I came to find you." He took my bag off my shoulder without being asked and laced his other hand through mine. "What do you want tonight?

Should we eat out?" His palm was cool and dry. Like cool china. I let him keep it, walked two steps, then stopped and looked back. His friend hadn't moved an inch.

He met my eyes, went stiff all over, and put both hands up. Surrender. I looked away and didn't bother with him again. The gala lights brought me back.

I moved my eyes, slowly, over to Rowan. He was out of the car by then, adjusting his watch, and his hands were bare. He'd taken the ring off. He promised me he'd never take it off.

Not once in his life. I walked up to him. "Rowan." He heard me and locked up. Every muscle. A moment later he still hadn't turned around.

He spoke at the building instead of at me. "Why did you come all the way out here?" "Go home." He's tall, and the suit made him taller.

Since he wouldn't face me, all I could get was the edge of his jaw over his shoulder, locked tight. He was avoiding me.

The thought landed, and then I heard my own voice. "I haven't had dinner. I'm hungry." He didn't get a chance to answer.

The woman came over from the other side of the drive, in a suit as sharp as his. She pushed her hair back and smiled at me. "So this is Sable.

Your sister?" "…Yeah." Chapter 5 "If she's hungry, just bring her in with us. Let her eat something." She smiled and put her hand out to me.

The platinum band on her ring finger caught the streetlight and threw it straight into my eyes.

Rowan turned and knocked her hand down. "She's not coming in." His eyebrows drew together. He stood there for a few seconds without saying anything at all. "Sable.

Go home." "I'll have Mr. Nakamura order you something." "I'm going to be busy for a while. I probably won't be around much. You…take care of yourself." Then he was done with me.

He didn't look again. He walked into the hall, fast. The woman stayed behind a beat.

She blinked at me, then held out a slip of paper with a number written on it in lipstick. "Keep that." "Don't be sad. If you want to see your brother, call me. Anytime." Sad?

I got in the car and put a hand on the wheel. In the mirror my mouth was a mess of blood where I'd been chewing on it.

Alone in there, quiet, all the things I couldn't name came back up. Whatever was sitting behind my ribs, it wasn't sadness. It was closer to restlessness. Anger. And.

Something like excitement. So Rowan had finally decided my mother was right. I'm a psycho, and he wants distance. Which meant. Which meant.

Nobody could blame me for shutting him in with me and never letting him leave. The apartment was black when I got back. Three days, and even the pillow he'd slept on had lost him.

So I went back to the dorm instead. My roommates stared. "Sable?

We don't have class for two days." "Aren't you supposed to be out with your brother?" I tipped my head. "I missed you guys.

That's not allowed?" Three sets of eyes went wide at once. "Kidding." I dropped my bag on the desk and opened my laptop. Penny came over to offer me some of her fruit.

Her eyes went across my screen on the way, and she stopped moving. "Sable, you—" I turned to look at her. "What?" "Did somebody do something to you?" I tapped my chin and thought about it seriously.

Do something to me? Not really.

Rowan just made me angry. "Sable." She got very careful with her voice. "Okay, hear me out, I'm not saying anything about you, it's just, we live in a country with laws.

People can talk things out. And if somebody's really being that awful, you can get your brother to handle it for you, right?" "…Some stuff you can't take back.

Once you do it, that's it, there's no undoing it—Sable, are you listening to me?" I turned around and looked her in the eye. "What if the person making me angry is my brother?" "Ha.

Okay, no. Not possible. Your brother is so sisterobsessed it's a medical condition, we've been around him a few times and it was already a lot