Lahat ng Kabanata ng STEP CLOSER, MY STEP BROTHER : Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 80

Ariana's POVI slammed the door shut behind me and pressed my back against it, my heart racing like I’d just run a marathon barefoot on glass.I hated him.I hated how he made me feel.And I hated that I still wanted him.I paced the room like a madwoman, fists clenched at my sides. My fingers itched to tear something apart his face, his shirt, my own skin just to get him out of it. The walls felt too close. The air too tight. Every breath was a struggle, like my chest refused to rise with his name still clinging to it."Stupid," I muttered. "So stupid to let him in again."I was halfway to the window when the doorknob turned behind me.My eyes snapped up.Click.The door creaked open like it knew I wouldn’t be ready for what was coming.He stepped in without knocking. No hesitation. No apology.Roman.His shirt was half-unbuttoned like he hadn’t even bothered fixing himself after storming out of the hallway. His eyes? Wild. Red. Hungry. And pissed."Get out," I spat, pointing to the

Roman’s POVI hadn’t slept.Not really.I laid in the dark, eyes wide open, watching the ceiling like it held answers. But all it did was stare back at me blank, unbothered. Unlike me.The sound of the city, muffled through my windows, reminded me that the world kept moving. People were living. Laughing. Posting. And yet, everything inside me had stopped the moment Ariana broke down in my arms and told me what they did to her.What she did to her.Lana.Her name was enough to make my jaw clench and my chest burn. I gripped my phone tighter and refreshed the same search for the hundredth time. But Lana was gone. No digital footprint. No recent pictures. No check-ins, no comments, nothing. She’d vanished off the face of the earth, just like the coward she was.But Clara?Clara was still breathing like she hadn’t helped destroy someone’s life.Her Instagram stories were still going up. Her followers were still gushing over her outfits, her smiles, her pretentious captions. She was still

Ariana's POVThe silence in my mother’s house was different.It wasn’t like Roman’s, all tension and unspoken words.This silence was old. Familiar. Like it had always lived here, hidden beneath the creaking floors and tight smiles. A silence that said everything without saying anything at all.I stood in the hallway for a second too long, just staring at the framed photo of us on the console table. Me at sixteen, awkward and smiling. Her beside me, pretending to be proud.It felt like someone else’s life.“Ariana?” she called from the living room.I stepped in.She was sitting on the edge of the couch, hands clasped in her lap, eyes rimmed with something that wasn’t quite tears. Her hair looked thinner than I remembered. Her blouse, wrinkled. Her face, pale.She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.And then I remembered: maybe she hadn’t.I sat opposite her, my heartbeat loud in my ears. “What’s going on?”She didn’t answer right away.She just stared at her hands.Then slowly, she

Roman's POVThe sky was still dark when I opened my eyes.No alarm. No sound. Just instinct.Ariana’s body was curled beside mine, her breath soft and steady against my chest. The sheets were twisted between us, damp with sweat and heat from the night before.I stared at the ceiling for a long second, my heart still beating slow and heavy in my chest not from fear… but from her. From the way she let me touch her last night. From how she looked at me, like she was drowning but still held onto me anyway.I still couldn’t believe it.She didn’t say she forgave me. Hell, she didn’t even say she loved me. But she let me in. She let me have her again — not just her body, but something deeper. Something even more dangerous.She needed me last night.And I worshipped her.Every second of it burned itself into me. The taste of her. The sound of her voice when she came. The way her nails dug into my back like she couldn’t get close enough. That one tear that slid down her cheek while she kissed

Roman POV She got in the car without a word.No screaming. No slaps. No questions.Just silence.And that silence was worse than anything she could’ve said.I sat behind the wheel, soaked to the bone, hands still stained no matter how many times I’d wiped them on my jeans. I kept glancing sideways, trying to catch her eyes. But she wouldn’t look at me.Not once.She pressed herself against the door like she needed as much space from me as possible. Like I was toxic. Like she didn’t recognize the man sitting beside her anymore.And maybe she didn’t.The engine purred low, but inside the car it felt deafening. My thoughts were screaming.Why did she follow me?Why didn’t I notice?What the fuck did she see?How much did she hear?She flinched once when I shifted gears. Flinched.That cut deeper than Lana ever could.“I didn’t kill her,” I muttered, eyes on the road. “I swear, Ariana, I didn’t—”“I know,” she whispered.That single word cracked me open. But not in the way I expected.Sh