Chapter 1: Joseph oh my god
The taxi’s tires crackled over the gravel driveway, the sound impossibly loud in the sleeping countryside. Bella paid the driver, heav her bag onto her shoulder, and looked up at the Black house. It was past two in the morning, and the Victorian sprawled under the moonlight like a drowsing beast, its peeling ivory paint glowing, the wisteria on the wraparound porch a curtain of deep shadow. She’d texted Sam her flight was delayed, but hadn’t expected him to actually stay awake. He was a heavy sleeper. The house was dark.
She let herself in with the key he’d given her months ago. The familiar scent washed over her—old books, cinnamon from the always-simmering potpourri, the faint, clean hint of lemon wood polish. It smelled like comfort. Like him. After nearly two months away, the weight of missing him settled in her chest, a dull, sweet ache.
She kicked off her shoes by the door, the floorboards cool under her socks. The grand staircase creaked its usual greeting as she climbed, avoiding the third step from the top that Sam always forgot to skip. The faint, tinny hum of a record player left on low drifted from the den. Everything was exactly as it should be.
Sam’s door was slightly ajar. She was exhausted, gritty from travel, but all she wanted was to be close to him.
She closes the door quietly. She moved quietly, dropping her bag on the floor, shrugging out of her jeans and sweater. The air in the room was warm. In just her tank top and panties, she lifted the edge of the duvet and slid in, the sheets cool against her skin.
She shifted back, spooning against the solid warmth of his body. His arms wrapped around her, pulling her firmly into the curve of his body. One hand splayed possessively over her stomach, the other tucking under her head.
Bella exhaled, tension draining from her shoulders. God, she had missed this. He felt different, though. Bigger. He must have really committed to the gym while she was gone. The arms around her were corded with new muscle, his chest against her felt broader, more defined. She smiled sleepily into the dark. Her sweet Sam, getting all pumped up for her.
He held her tighter, and she could feel the hard, unmistakable press of his erection against the small of her back. A flush of heat spread through her.
She wriggled back just a fraction, a silent answer. His response was a low, sleepy groan against her skin.
It sounded different, deeper, probably because he was half-asleep. She arched her back against him, a gentle press, a question.
He took that as permission. His breath caught. His hand, which had been splayed on her stomach, slid up slowly, over her ribcage, to cup her breast through her thin tank top. He squeezed gently, his thumb brushing over her nipple. She let out a small whimper, making sure to keep quiet. He had never done that before. Not that she minded, though. It felt good. Really good. A jolt of pure, slick heat shot straight through her.
He shifted then, sitting up against the headboard. She rolled over and swung her legs over him, straddling his lap, the duvet pooling around their hips. His hands came to her waist, holding her. They felt different. Larger. More sure. Well, she thought, a dizzy smile playing on her lips, he was going to the gym obviously.
She leaned forward, her hands planting flat against his chest. His skin was hot. The muscles beneath her palms were defined, hard planes she didn’t quite remember but she could get used to. She could feel his heartbeat, a rapid drum against her right hand. She slowly rocked against him, the thin layer of her underwear and the cotton of his briefs between them.
He groaned quietly, a raw, strained sound that seemed to vibrate through his chest and into her palms. His head tipped back against the headboard.
His hands slid from her waist to cup her backside, pulling her tighter against him. The friction made her gasp. She reached blindly for the bedside drawer. The drawer sticking a little as she yanked it open. Her fingers found the foil square.
She stood up on her knees, hooking her thumbs into the sides of her panties and sliding them down. The air was cool on her skin. She heard the rustle of fabric as he pushed his boxers down, then the crisp, unmistakable tear of the wrapper.
She climbed back onto the bed, straddling him. She felt the tip of him pressing against her entrance, and a jolt of electric surprise went through her. He was definitely bigger than she remembered. Before she could even think anything else, he put his hands on her hips, his grip firm and sure, and slowly slid her down as he pushed up into her.
She could feel him stretching her out, her walls clenching in a sharp, sweet shock of fullness. They both groaned quietly. He was definitely bigger, thicker, veined. Her hands came from his chest to fist in his hair, even his hair had gotten thicker, softer between her fingers.
He finally bottomed out inside of her, her head threw back as she gasped. His lips were on her neck kissing softly. God, everything about him felt different. He stayed buried inside as she adjusted. She slowly grinded back and forth whilst he was buried inside her.
The pace was slow, deliberate. Deep. A raw, shuddering breath escaped him, warm against her collarbone. His hands slid up her back, beneath her tank top. His palms were broad, roughened, tracing her spine with a tenderness that made her throat tighten.
His hands hooked on the hem of her tank top, pulling it over her head. The night air was cool on her skin, raising goosebumps. His hands came to her waist again, holding her steady. He slowly started to thrust. He would almost withdraw completely, a teasing, empty ache, then push all the way back in, a deep, filling conquest that stole her breath.
She whimpered softly.
Her hands tightened in his hair, gripping gently. “Fuck.” He groaned, his voice was deep with sleep, she thought.
His hands tightened on her waist, gently holding her in place as he slowly thrust up a little harder. Still slow, just harder. It was a jolt that punched a gasping moan from her lungs. She bit her lip to keep quiet.
His head fell to the crook of her neck, he groaned quietly. His hands left her waist to go to her back, his hands sprawling out over the skin of her back as he pulled her closer, erasing every millimeter of space between them.
She met his slow thrusts, her hands leaving his hair to claw at his back. The muscles there were like carved stone, shifting and flexing under her fingertips. She rotated her hips, a slow, grinding circle that made him suck in a sharp breath, and she could feel the coil in her stomach tightening.
His hands left her back, coming up to cup her face. He tilted her head down and kissed her. His lips were softer than she remembered. The kiss was deep, lingering. It was… different. His hands left her face; one came to the back of her neck, gripping gently, the other slid into her hair, cradling her skull. He was starting to grow a beard, she thought, noticing the scrape of stubble against her chin and cheeks.
His thrusts sped up slightly, still deep, but now with a driving purpose that broke the kiss. She buried her face against his shoulder, her own breathing coming in ragged pants. She could feel him throb inside her, a thick, insistent pulse that seemed to echo her own frantic heartbeat.
He kept that rhythm he just set. She met it. His hands left her neck and her hair, going down to her waist; his grip was a little firmer but still gentle. He moved her hips back and forth as he thrust into her.
They were both close.
She felt it, the coil about to break. She sped up, grinding back and forth faster, harder.
Her head flew back, her hands fisted in his hair tugging.
“Fuck, yes I’m cuming.” she moaned out.
“Bella?”
She hadn’t even heard his voice. She came hard, clamping around him, stifling her cry with her lip between her teeth.
As she clamped around him, he spilled into the condom. “Oh shit.” he moaned, the words a ragged gasp against her shoulder.
They rode out their orgasms. She swirled her hips, his hands gripped her waist harder, dragging her back and forth through the last tremors until they were both still, breathing heavily in the dark.
His forehead rested against her shoulder. His breathing was a warm, steady rhythm against her skin. She felt boneless, spent, her mind floating in a pleasant, empty haze.
She slowly leaned forward, resting her own forehead against his, nuzzling gently. His hands slid from her waist to rest lightly on her thighs.
He was silent for a moment. Then, “Bella.”
The way he said it. It wasn’t Sam’s voice. It was lower, richer, with a gravelly edge sleep hadn’t created. It was a voice that, now that the fever had broken, she recognised.
Her entire body went rigid.
Her breath caught in her throat, a sharp, painful stitch.
Slowly, as if moving through deep water, she pulled her head back. The moonlight from the window, cut across the bed, illuminating the planes of his face.
Black, fluffy hair, messy from her hands. Bright blue eyes, wide and shocked, staring back at her.
For a second, she thought she was hallucinating. The fatigue, the jet lag, the emotional whirlwind of the last hour—it had to be a trick of the dark. But no, why would she be hallucinating Joseph?
“Joseph?” she questioned, the name a brittle thing in the thick air.
His mouth opened, then closed. He tried to say anything. He couldn’t. A muscle jumped in his jaw. His hands, which had been resting so warmly on her thighs, felt like brands.
“Joseph. Oh my god.” She whispered it, the sound sucked into the silent room, leaving a vacuum of pure, screaming horror.
His hands moved from her thighs to her hips, a shaky, mechanical shift. “Sorry.” He whispered the word, choked and raw. He lifted her hips, his strength undeniable, and slowly pulled out of her. He tried not to groan at the sensation, a final, devastating intimacy, but he did—a low, pained sound that seemed to come from his chest. She gasped, the sudden emptiness a physical shock, a violation all its own.
For a long moment, neither moved. The only sound was their ragged breathing, the slowing thunder of two hearts that had been in sync moments before and were now crashing against each other in panic.
He moved first.
He got up heading to the bathroom through the walk in wardrobe. The bed shifted, cold air rushing in to replace the heat of his body. She heard the soft click of a latch.
Bella sat there confused.
The reality began to pierce the fog of pleasure and shock.
It was the smell. Not Sam’s clean, soapy scent. This was deeper. Caramel and that new book smell something inherently, unmistakably Joseph. It was on the pillows, on her skin, in the air she was gasping into her lungs.
She could’ve sworn this was Sam’s room. It was. His was to the left, Joseph’s was to the right. Her eyes, now adjusted to the dark, scanned the unfamiliar shadows. A different dresser. A guitar case in the corner. A stack of books on the nightstand that weren’t Sam’s. A cold, sinking dread pooled in her stomach. She fumbled, her hand slapping against the base of the ceramic lamp. She flicked the lamp on.
The warm, low light felt like an interrogation.
The bathroom door opened. She jerked the duvet up to her chin, clutching it like a shield.
He came out with boxers and a t-shirt on, the fabric doing little to hide the lean, muscular build she had just mapped with her own body. He ran his hands over his face, a long, slow drag from forehead to chin, as if trying to wipe the last twenty minutes from existence. He wouldn’t look at her.
The silence was a physical weight.
“I- we- you’re in Sam’s room?” she questioned, her voice thin and high.
“We swapped a few days ago. My ceiling was leaking. He wanted to change rooms anyway the spare room was bigger.” His voice was flat, drained. He finally glanced at her, his bright blue eyes clouded with something like anguish before flicking away to stare at the wall. “He said he told you.”
He hadn’t. A million texts, a dozen late-night calls, and Sam had never mentioned switching rooms. Maybe he had, and it got lost in the whirl of her trip. It didn’t matter. The result was the same.
So she didn’t walk into the wrong room. No. She did, unintentionally. She had gone exactly where she meant to go. The universe had just rearranged the furniture.
“He didn’t,” she whispered.
The words just hung there. They didn’t fix anything. They just made the room smaller, the air thinner.
She looked at him, at the rigid line of his back as he stood facing the window, one hand braced high on the frame. The muscles in his forearm were taut.
“Did… did you know it was me?” she asked. God, why would she ask that, she thought. The answer could break her.
He lowered his head, a slow, defeated motion. He brought himself to finally look at her over his shoulder. His bright blue eyes were stripped bare, all his usual gentle composure gone. “When you said…” He couldn’t finish that sentence.
She knew when he was talking about. The moment her head had flown back, her hands in his hair, her broken moan of I’m cuming.
“I didn’t know until then.”
The confirmation was a physical blow. So he’d been lost in it too, just as blind as she was, until her voice shattered the illusion. It didn’t absolve a thing. It made it worse. More intimate. A shared ruin.
A sharp, metallic buzz from the nightstand. Joseph flinched as if struck. He turned, his movements stiff, and grabbed his phone. The screen’s blue light washed over his face, highlighting the grim set of his mouth. He stared at it for a moment.
“It’s Sam.” He said.
He looked at it then answered. “Hey Sam.” He said, his voice forcibly normal, a rough approximation of his usual easy tone.
Bella couldn’t hear what Sam was saying. She sat frozen, the duvet a prison. She watched Joseph’s profile, the tense line of his jaw as he listened.
“Uh, yeah she just got here, I think I heard her when I went to the bathroom.” He said, the lie smooth and terrible. He ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “Okay, I’ll see you soon.” He said and hung up.
He placed the phone down on the wood with a quiet, final click. The room absorbed the sound. He looked at her, his blue eyes hollow.
“He said you messaged him that your flight was delayed and then when you were on your way here. He said he’d be home in half an hour.” He said.
The words landed between them like a sentencing.
Thirty minutes.
Joseph moved first, a sudden, practical burst of energy that felt out of place in the frozen room. He strode to where her sweater and jeans lay in a heap on the floor. He grabbed them, the denim rough under his fingers, the sweater soft. He placed them neatly on the bed next to her, avoiding any contact. “I’ll let you get dressed.” He said, his voice tight.
He didn’t look at her again, just turned and walked back into the bathroom closing the door softly behind him.
The click of the latch was deafening.
Bella stared at the clothes. They looked like artifacts from a different life, from the person she was a thirty minuets ago climbing out of a taxi. She stayed there for a moment, the duvet still clutched to her chin.
Then, mechanically, she swung her legs out from under the covers. The air was cold. She pulled on her jeans, her movements stiff. She tugged the sweater over her head, the wool scratching her sensitized skin. Dressed, she felt more exposed than before.
In the bathroom, Joseph leaned his forehead against the cool mirror. His reflection was pale, his blue eyes shattered. He took a breath, deep and shaky, holding it until his lungs burned. He let it out slowly, trying to expel the memory. It was useless. He waited a moment, listening to the faint rustle of fabric from the bedroom, then turned the tap on, splashing cold water on his face. It didn’t help.
He came out of the bathroom. The walk through the closet felt long. He pushed the door open.
She was standing by the bed, her arms wrapped around herself, staring at the rumpled sheets.
He stood just inside the doorway, leaving the maximum possible distance between them.
“He can’t know.” Joseph said it flatly. It wasn’t a suggestion; it was the only possible law.
“I would never—” Bella started, her green eyes wide with fresh horror. “God, Joseph, I thought it was him. You have to believe that.”
“I do.” The words came out quickly, forcefully. He ran a hand through his hair again, a gesture of pure agitation. “I didn’t know it was you either, Bella. Not until… not until it was too late.” The admission hung there, ugly and honest.
“What do we do?” she whispered. She was looking at him now, really looking, and he saw the storm in her eyes: guilt, confusion, a flicker of something else she was desperately trying to shove down.
“We act normal.” He said it like he was convincing himself. “You just got back. You’re tired. You came up, went to bed. In Sam’s room. That’ s it.”
“And this?” she gestured weakly at the bed, at the space between them.
“This didn’t happen.” The finality in his voice was brutal. A part of him, the part that had careful tucked away every glance, every laugh she’d ever given him, screamed in protest. “It was a mistake. A fucked-up, colossal mistake. We were both half-asleep. We were both… confused.”
He was rewriting history right in front of her, and she found herself nodding, grasping at the lifeline. “Confused,” she echoed, the word tasting like ash.
“Yeah.” He shifted his weight, his tall frame tense. “You should go. To his room. Before…”
Before Sam came home and found his girlfriend emerging from his brother’s bedroom, her hair a mess, her lips swollen, the scent of sex clinging to both of them.
Bella nodded again. She took a step toward the door, then paused. Her eyes found his. In the lamplight, his blue eyes were a turbulent sea.
“Bella… I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head, a sharp, pained movement. “Don’t. Just… don’t.” Apologies made it real. Apologies meant they had something to be sorry for, and acknowledging that felt like a betrayal deeper than the act itself.
She turned and left, pulling the bedroom door shut behind her with a soft, definitive click.
The hallway was dark, the only light a pale shaft from the moon through the window at the far end. Bella stood there, her hand still on the cool doorknob. She couldn’t go to Sam’s room. He’d come home and she’d be there, waiting in his bed, and the thought of him touching her, of pretending, made her stomach lurch. The very idea of lying next to him in the aftermath of what just happened felt like a deeper betrayal than the act itself.
She headed downstairs, each step on the creaking wood an accusation. The living room was a landscape of familiar shadows—the bulky shape of the leather armchair, the puzzle left half-finished on the coffee table.
She moved on autopilot, grabbing a soft, knitted blanket from the shelf built into the stairs. She laid down on the couch, pulling the blanket over herself, and fumbled for the TV remote. The screen flickered to life, casting a blue-gray wash over the room. Some infomercial for a vegetable slicer, the voiceover enthusiastic and tinny. She turned the volume low until it was just a murmur.
Her mind was relentless, thinking of everything.
The details assaulted her. The way he kissed her—slow, deep, focused, like he was trying to memorize the taste. The way his hands held her hips, firm but not hard, a gentle control that guided her rather than forced her. His groans, raw and muffled against her skin. The sheer, shocking size of him, the full, stretching ache that had been so completely, undeniably different.
Sam was sweet, but he was rough, a little clumsy, always rushing. Joseph was… not. He was deliberate. He was present. She had felt the difference in every cell of her body, and her body, traitorously, was still humming with the memory.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but that made it worse. The darkness behind her lids became a private screen. She twisted on the couch, pulling the blanket over her head, trying to smother the replay. It was useless. The weight of him. The feel of his hair between her fingers. The exact sound he made when she’d clenched around him.
Upstairs, Joseph laid down on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t bother with the lamp. The dark was his witness.
His mind was the same. A lockbox had been blown open.
The way she kissed him—not the shy, gentle pecks she gave Sam in the kitchen, but hungry, all in, her tongue sweeping against his. Her hands in his hair, tugging, then dragging down his back, her nails leaving faint, burning trails he could still feel. The way she clenched around him, a sudden, perfect, velvet vise that had shattered his control. Her moans, breathy and desperate, swallowed by his skin.
He threw an arm over his eyes. The scent of her was on his sheets, on him. A mix of her coconut shampoo and something else, something uniquely Bella, now fused with the smell of sex. He breathed it in, and hated himself for the way his body reacted all over again.
This was his brother’s girlfriend. Sam, who idolized him. Sam, who’d texted him just last week asking for advice on what to get Bella for their eight-month anniversary.
A cold, sick dread settled in his gut, a physical weight. What the hell had they done? A mistake? That word was too small, too clean. It was a demolition. He’d spent years building a careful wall between the quiet, pointless attraction he’d felt since the day Sam brought her home for dinner, and his duty as the older brother. In twenty minutes, in the dark, he’d torn it down with his own hands.