My Brothers Best Friend [18+]

Chapter Six

Chelsea joins me in the oval room at 5pm with another round of coffees. 

"I could kiss you." 

She places the coffee in front of me. 

"Save it for your hot housemate." 

"Hot housemate?" Zach asks, walking into the room with Loretta and Mohammed. He practically melts at the sight of the takeaway coffee cups, blowing a kiss to Chelsea as he lifts his from the cardboard cupholder. "I thought you lived in a flat?" 

"I've been staying with my brother and his housemate," I tell them as we take our seats. 

"Yeah," Chelsea laughs. "A housemate who is 6'3 of pure muscle, sex appeal and fuck-me eyes." 

I slap her arm whilst the others laugh. 

"He's my brothers friend." 

"Which just makes it sexier, Maddie. He's forbidden fruit." 

He is. It doesn't occur to me until she says it, but maybe that's why I've been feeling so attracted to him these past few days. I can't have him; Matt's made that very clear. 

Noah Laurier is off-limits. He's sweet, and hot, and completely out of reach to me. 

It's not like I'm used to getting every guy I've ever wanted. There have been crushes that have amounted to nothing. Boys that I liked that didn't quite like me back. 

During my first year of University I'd even had my heart broken by a boy named Kyle. Seriously. Kyle. His name wasn't enough of a red flag for my young eighteen year old heart. He was one of my assigned flatmates, with boyish good looks and too much charm for his own good. Blonde hair, blue eyes - a surfer boy from a beach town. 

I'd fancied the pants off him. Literally. 

We'd gotten drunk and slept together within the first month, and then for a few weeks after that we were inseparable. I'd considered us dating. He'd considered us friends with benefits. 

The flat had felt claustrophobic when I realised he felt differently and avoiding him for those last nine months of our tenancy felt like a second job.  

So it's not like I've had every guy I've ever wanted. But I've never been forbade from trying. 

"We need to work," I remind my colleagues. 

And Noah needs to leave my thoughts so I can focus. 

Zach raises an eyebrow, smirking. Loretta and Mohammed are grinning too, pretending to look through the papers in front of them. 

"What?" 

"You're not kidding anybody, Mads." 

I dramatise rolling my eyes at Chelsea, pointedly picking up my tablet, turning it around so the others can see tomorrow's schedule splayed across my screen. 

"Shit, right," Zach mumbles, scrambling to take a few more sips of his coffee before sitting at the head of the table. "Let's do a mock run-through of our sections and we'll fill in the gaps as we go, alright?" 

I take a shaky breath. 

I'd volunteered to head the TV advert at the start of the week in a flurry of fleeting confidence. It's beginning to feel like a lot of pressure and I now realise why the others hadn't tried to wrestle me for it when I'd jumped at the opportunity to take the lead on it. 

My fingers tighten around the tablet, the PowerPoint presentation I'd spent all week grueling over ready to pop out at me in the left-hand corner. 

"Would you want to start Mads?" Zach gives me a comforting smile. "Come on, we won't bite."