“Why?” he yelled back.
“I need a favor,” I said. He didn’t respond, but I could hear his bedroom floor squeaking like he was walking. I rushed back over to the kitchen. “Okay, he’s coming. Stay calm.”
Charlie looked up, unimpressed. “Are you talking to yourself or me?”
I sat down in the chair next to him and kissed him quickly. “I think both.”
“What do you need, Madison? Because I…” Matthew’s voice faltered to a stop as he came into the kitchen and saw Charlie sitting there. His face turned into a glare. “What are you doing here? I told you to stay away.”
“Matthew,” I said. “Please just sit. Hear us out.” He stared at me, face hard and unyielding. “Please.”
Matthew sighed and sat down. “You have five minutes.”
I took a deep breath and looked at Charlie, who nodded encouragingly.
“Matthew,” I said. “I know you don’t like the idea of me dating your friends.”
“Really?” Matthew asked. “What was your first clue?”
“However,” I continued as if he hadn’t interrupted, “sometimes things don’t go to plan. Two years ago, I was randomly pulled into a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven that wasn’t supposed to mean anything… and instead, I kissed the one boy that I wanted more than anything.”
Matthew made a strange sound. “You already liked him before that?”
“I’ve liked Charlie for as long as I can remember,” I said honestly. “And I know what you’re going to say—that I’ve dated so many other boys since then, that I shouldn’t care about him… but the truth is, the reason none of those relationships ever worked out was because I knew I couldn’t love them. Not like I loved Charlie. So… I know you don’t like it. I know it isn’t ideal. But the simple fact of the matter here is that it doesn’t really matter if you approve or not because it’s not going to stop Charlie and me from dating. All it will do is ruin a lifelong friendship.”
Matthew stared at us for a long minute, eyes shifting between my face, Charlie’s face, and our intertwined hands on the table.
“Do you love her?” Matthew demanded. Charlie squeezed my hand and looked at me lovingly.
“I do,” he said. Honesty was written all over his face. I looked to Matthew again, whose angry facade had seemed to crumble.
“If you ever hurt her...” he said.
“You’ll kill me,” Charlie finished for him. He rubbed a hand along the side of his jaw, where his bruises were only now starting to fade. “Yeah. I don’t doubt it.”
Matthew turned to me next. “I guess out of all my friends... You picked a good one.”
I smiled. “I couldn’t agree more.”
I had no idea what would happen from here or how Charlie and I would turn out, but at least our biggest obstacle was out of our way now. I had fallen in love with my brother’s best friend and had somehow lived to tell the tale.
Now, I just had one final battle: explaining the whole situation to Violet without admitting that she had been right all along—that Charlie was in love with me too and that somehow, against all odds, we had made it work.
epilogue
One YearLater
“Did you really have to bring your whole wardrobe from home, Madison?” Matthew huffed as he carried my third box of clothes into my new off-campus house.
“I need options,” I insisted from where I was, holding the front door open for them. I was more than happy to just stand here while my brother and my boyfriend unpacked for me.
“Ignore him,” Charlie said as he passed by. He had a box tucked under one arm and a duffel bag slung over the other shoulder. Even though both of them must have been insanely heavy, he stopped to kiss me briefly. “He just likes to complain.”
“Why couldn’t you have done this by yourself?” Matthew asked Charlie. “Isn’t that your role as a boyfriend? Why do I have to be here?”
“Like you would have let him move me in without you,” I teased. “You hardly ever let us be alone together.”
“Well, somebody has to keep an eye on you,” Matthew said. He put his hands on his hips and eyed Charlie suspiciously. “I still don’t trust him.”
