I’ve been in love with the same guy my whole life.

No kidding, my whole fucking life.

Now that’s probably why I never even acknowledged his older brother other than for a friendship—because when you decide at eight years old who you’re going to marry, your heart doesn’t exactly leave room for alternatives.

It was always him.

Always the younger one. The golden boy. The reckless grin and grass-stained jeans and scraped knuckles. The one who pushed me on swings and swore he’d build me a house one day. The one who kissed me behind the bleachers at sixteen and told me it didn’t mean anything at seventeen.

And his older brother?

He was just… there.

Quieter. Sharper around the edges. The kind of guy who watched instead of spoke. He drove us places when we were too drunk to stand. Picked me up off the pavement the night I found out his brother had been cheating. Didn’t say I told you so. Just handed me a hoodie and let me cry into it.

I never looked at him twice.

Not really.

Because loving his brother was like breathing. Automatic. Unquestioned. Even when it hurt. Even when it humiliated me. Even when it turned me into the kind of girl who waited for texts that never came.

And he— the older brother — was just my friend.

The steady one. The safe one.

The one who never once tried to blur the lines.

Until the night he did.

It wasn’t dramatic. No rainstorm. No grand confession. Just the two of us on his back porch while his brother was off somewhere being adored by someone new. I was halfway through another bottle of something cheap and bitter, laughing too loud to keep from crying.

“You deserve better,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t start.”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re biased.”

“I’m not.”

I finally looked at him then. Really looked.

And that was my first mistake.

Because he wasn’t looking at me like a friend. He wasn’t looking at me like someone fragile. He was looking at me like I was something he’d been holding back from touching for years.

Like restraint was finally losing.

“You’ve loved him your whole life,” he said quietly. “I know.”

The way he said it didn’t sound jealous. It sounded tired.

“And?” I whispered.

“And I’ve loved you just as long.”

The world didn’t explode. There wasn’t some cinematic swell of music. Just my heartbeat in my ears and the sudden realization that maybe I’d been staring at the wrong brother all along.

I should’ve shut it down.

I should’ve said no.

Instead, I asked, “Since when?”

He huffed a humorless laugh. “Since you showed up at our house in pigtails and told me I was the grumpy one.”

I remembered that.

I didn’t remember the way he’d looked at me back then.

Or maybe I never bothered to notice.

His hand brushed mine on the porch railing. Just barely. Testing. Asking.

For the first time in my whole fucking life, I didn’t think about his brother when someone touched me.

I thought about him.

And that scared me more than anything.