Page 1 of Claimed By My Ex’s Brother

PROLOGUE

DELANEY

Three glasses of the cheapest red wine I could find at the corner store have turned my thumbs into liars.

It’s the only explanation for what I’m doing at one in the morning, folded sideways on a couch that still smells faintly of the man who used to sit here.

I hit send before I change my mind.

Because sober Delaney would tackle me to the floor. Drunk Delaney is a menace with a phone and a five-month grudge.

You know what, Maksim? I’m HAPPY. Genuinely, deliriously happy. Do you want to know why?

The checkmark goes gray, then a second one joins it, then both turn a smug little blue. Delivered. Read. Naturally, he read it. He always reads and never answers. It’s the one thing he’s stayed perfectly consistent about across our entire ruined history.

Which is fine. Read it and choke on it, then.

I don’t wait before I send more.

Because I never gave you the one thing you actually wanted. My virginity. You spent five whole months calling me frigid and cold and a tease, and I almost broke, and thank god I didn’t.

Because if I’d caved, you would have taken it and dumped me two weeks later anyway. And then you’d have crawled straight into bed with the girl I’ve called my sister since we were nine. Which — plot twist — is exactly what you did. In MY bed. On MY sheets.

So really, I won. I kept the only thing I decided to keep. Congratulations on the new life, by the way. Isn’t life just the funniest thing you’ve ever heard?

I drop the phone face-down onto my chest and glare at the water stain on the ceiling. Down the hall my little brother is asleep, eight years old and dead to the world, blissfully unaware that his sole guardian is drunk texting the man who wrecked her.

The phone buzzes against my sternum.

I nearly fling it across the room. He never answers. Not once in five months. My heart does something stupid and hopeful, and I hate it the instant it happens.

Maksim

Virginity? Are you a virgin?

I read it four times. The letters keep sliding around, but the words stay put, and they are so profoundly not the response I braced for that I sit up straight.

No excuse.

What the HELL kind of question is that? Yes. Obviously. That is the entire point I just made. That’s WHY I never slept with you.

Because I’m not handing something like that to just anyone, I want it to mean something. I want to be in love, and I want him in love back, and I want it to matter. My parents had that before they died and left me this life. Call me pathetic. Everyone else does.

I wait for the mockery, but it doesn’t come.

Maksim

I don’t think it’s pathetic.

I stare. What’s wrong with him? Why the hell is he behaving strangely?

Maksim

So how do you want it taken?

The heat that climbs up my neck has nothing to do with the wine. I glance down the hall as though my brother could somehow hear a text message, then back at the screen, my whole silly heart thudding against my ribs.

He’s asking. Maksim is asking. Some drunk, ruined part of me lights up like a struck match—he still thinks about me, he still wants me, maybe the wedding is a mistake and this is the exact moment it all comes apart and he realizes what he threw away and⁠—