by K. I. Lynn
This exact putrid feeling is why I never wanted to be in a relationship, to never get married. I thought I’d avoided all this by never getting close to anyone, but I never noticed that Kira was always close. She was always there, next to me, from the time I was ten.
I’m tempted to call her and tell her everything, but I don’t. It’s the right thing to do.
The right thing.
The right thing.
Always the right fucking thing.
How can doing what’s right hurt this much?
Am I really doing the right thing by staying away from her?
I don’t know anymore. Don’t have the answers I desperately need. My mind is too fogged with the pain, the lack of sleep, the gallons of alcohol and ounces of weed I’ve plied it with.
All I have left is going back to staring at her picture and caressing it with my thumb like the lovesick fool that I am. Her words keep replaying in my mind.
“Oh, really? That’s why you’ve been busy fucking someone else. Right.”
That someone else is Amanda. There’s no doubt that I hurt Kira with every girl I ever slept with, but I went too far with Amanda. Too damn far. I gave her a title that only belonged to Kira.
A shadow falls over the corner of my vision. I pay it no mind. How can I, when my entire brain and body is fixated on the picture I’m staring at?
“Is that Kira?”
I almost jump out of my skin.
That voice. Saying Kira’s name.
It’s wrong. So wrong.
I don’t think about how much I’m about to hurt my girlfriend with my reaction. I only think about the fact that I never mentioned Kira to her, and somehow she knows her name.
And she just said it in a tone that I won’t fucking allow.
Slowly, I look up at Amanda.
The expression on her face is bitterness personified.
My heart thumps.
Somehow, she’s found out about Kira.
Found out how much Kira means to me.
Amanda’s arms are crossed. Her posture defensive. Her blue eyes are framed by the purplish bags under them, and they’re flashing with sadness.
Anger.
I’ll take it. I deserve it. She can aim all of that shit at me.
But if she even thinks of saying anything fucked up about Kira . . .
“You know,” she says in a low, enraged voice. “I thought last night—and the last few nights actually—were amazing. The way you fucked me . . . it was like never before.” Her chest trembles with her shaky inhale, and I realize she’s holding back tears. “Then you said her name last night, and I realized what it was really about.”
Fuck. I can’t even remember much of the night before. I spent it like I’ve spent every other night this week—in an infuriated, drunken stupor. I don’t even remember seeking out Amanda to sleep with her.
There’s no recollection of me saying Kira’s name, either, but I also don’t doubt it. She’s all I’ve been thinking about. Wallowing in. The only goddamned thing in the universe that I truly want.
“Who the fuck is Kira? Have you been cheating on me with her?”
Another girl whose heart I’ve broken.
I feel bad. Nothing I say or do at this point is going to make it better for Amanda. I never cheated on her. Not physically. But I was never truly hers. Never would be.
No one’s ever going to own me. Kira’s the only one. Her hold on me is too fucking powerful.
Physically, I never cheated on Amanda, but emotionally, I fucked her over in the worst way I could.
I always kept her at arms length, had never really brought up my family to her, much less Kira. She and Ryan don’t really hang or speak, either, so there was no way for her to know Kira is my stepsister.
Suddenly, I’m really fucking grateful about that. “We’ll talk about this after class,” I tell Amanda slowly. Again, nothing I can say will ever make this better for her, but I don’t want to have this discussion in public.
“The hell we will!” she screams just as the professor walks in—followed by none other than freaking Ryan. “You’re going to tell me who the fuck Kira is and why you were thinking about her while we were having sex!”
The professor stops.
Every head in the lecture hall turns in our direction.
Ryan stares at me.
The lack of surprise on his face registers.
He knew.
There might not be any surprise there, but I do see the disappointment.
Then, I see the fury start to build.
Shit. Another person I’m hurting.
This is it. The moment I have enough of everything. The moment I realize for a fact what a stupid mistake being with Amanda has been.
I was going to hurt a million people anyway. Piss off and disgust even more than that. But it should’ve never been Kira. I had the power to make her happy—make both of us happy—and I fucked it all up.
For what? To avoid exactly what’s happening now? Ryan was one of the biggest reasons I held back, and I still managed to disappoint him.
I’m fucking done with everything. Enough of this shit.
Roughly, I pick my bag off the desk, walk right past Amanda without even answering her, past Ryan, who’s glaring at me like he’s ready to kill me, and right out the classroom door.
Amanda, of course, follows me out, screaming at me and demanding an answer.
“Amanda, please, just leave me alone right now. Trust me,” I tell her over my shoulder, storming down the hall.
I need another drink. Now.
“No!” She’s still behind me. Sounds like she’s getting even closer. “I deserve to know!”
She does deserve to know, and I’m too emotionally screwed right now to think of a proper way of telling her the truth.
“You said you loved her, Brayden!”
I stop.
That word . . .
Another round of anger explodes inside me.
It’s the truth. I never . . . I never admitted it. Out loud, or to myself. It’s so pathetically obvious, but I could never bring myself to use the one and only word that could ever properly describe how I feel for Kira.
I never gave Kira that. Not even in my own mind.
I can’t. Fucking. Stand. Myself.
Whirling around, uncaring, forgetting that the girl behind me also feels something for me, I scream out, “I’m fucking in love with her, okay? Her. Not you. Not anyone else. It’s always been her!”
Oh God. God. I love Kira. I fucking love her.
My whole body goes cold.
I love her and Austin is about to take her away from me. If he hasn’t already.
I can’t let him have her.
Amanda stumbles, shock and pain flitting across her features. It’s enough to pull me out of the spiral I’m riding. To make me realize what I’ve just done.
Her blue eyes start filling with tears.
I’m the biggest motherfucking asshole on the entire planet.
“I’m sorry, Amanda. I’m an idiot. Just move on, okay?”
It’s the worst thing I can tell her, but it’s all I have to give. My heart’s too engaged on Kira. On the fact that no, I won’t be able to live if I truly lose her.
I whirl back around and head straight back home, head pounding.
The entire two-mile trek, I’m chased by that one word. It chews at my mind, slices up what’s left of my heart.
I love the girl and I’ve done nothing but ruin her.
Ruin us.
I make it upstairs to my room—and the hell breaks loose inside me when I see the disheveled bed, a dark pink bra still on it, and a used condom on the floor below.
Amanda was here last night. I don’t remember it, and she was gone by the time I forced myself to get up and go to class.
I fucked her there last night, imagining she was Kira.
I let out the roar that’s been building inside me all week and fling my book bag against the wall. It isn’t enough. I rea
ch for everything on my nightstand next—the lamp, the iPod docking station. By the time my textbook hits the wall, Ryan’s at the door to my room, staring at me.
He followed me home.
“Go ahead,” I say, voice hoarse, panting from exertion. I spread my arms out and face him. “Kick my ass. You know you want to. God knows I deserve it.”
His hands twitch at his sides, but he just stares at me, those eyes calculating as always. “I think you’re doing a good enough job of that on your own.”
I tear at my hair. What the fuck is wrong with him? Why is he so fucking calm? I want him to fuck me up. Want him to beat the shit out of me until I black out and escape this hell I’m in. “I’m in love with your fucking sister.” The words come out in a hiss as I continue to pull on my hair.
Hearing those words leaving my mouth is just as bad as Ryan’s huge fist connecting with my face would be. I pause, feeling like my world is shrinking in on me. I can’t take it anymore, and turn to storm into the bathroom.
Feeling like I’m about to heave my lungs out, I turn on the faucet, splashing water on my face over and over.
My throat is too tight. My ribcage is even worse. My entire life has become nothing but a fucking joke, and it’s all because of my damned feelings for a girl I shouldn’t even want.
I’m leaning over the sink, hyperventilating, when I feel Ryan at the door to the bathroom behind me.
The silence between us is stifling. I grab onto the sides of the sink, waiting for the anvil to fall and the punches to start flying.
Instead, Ryan surprises the hell out of me, asking me in a calm voice, “Is this the first time you’re admitting it to yourself? Because I’ve never seen you freak out like this.”
I wet my hand under the running water and run it through my hair, unable to look up at him. “I love her, yeah.”
“That’s not what I asked you. That part is obvious. Has been for a while.”
Those words are even worse than anything I’ve heard yet, inside my head and out. That part is obvious. Has been for a while. But it had, hadn’t it? The hold she has over me goes all the way back to the first time I fucking saw her, and I was only ten years old.
Oh God, I’m definitely going to throw up.
“Yeah. First time.” I stop, swallowing past the rolling wave of nausea that hits me.
She’s destroying me. She owns me, and she hasn’t even taken me yet.
Bullshit. She did. Without trying. Without me even knowing what being inside her is like.
She fucking owns me.
“Dude, step back.” Weakly, I wave at Ryan behind me. “I think I’m gonna hurl all over the place.”
“You’re fucking pathetic, you know that?”
That question is so like Ryan, so typical of the way we’re always hazing each other, that I find myself choking on self-disgust next. “Why don’t you hate me?”
“I’m trying really hard not to. But there’s also the fact that I came to terms with this shit a long time ago. A lot sooner than you, apparently. You think I didn’t see? Kira’s been trailing after you since we moved in next door. And the night our parents announced they were getting married, you flew off into a rage. Kira was so fucked up for days after that, and so were you. After that, you stopped talking, stopped hanging out. It was then I understood how serious you were.”
My reflection is weary, bogged down by the booze and every devastating emotion that won’t stop running through me. “I almost took her and ran off that night.”
“I know. Mom and Steven were still watching after you, shocked, and they didn’t see Kira crying. She sat there for a few seconds before racing after you.”
I let out a harsh sigh and swallow hard. “All I had to do was unlock the car.”
“You’ve always loved her, and I’m pretty sure she’s loved you from the first time you called her kitty, but she’s seventeen. Do I need to fucking remind you of that?”
I turn toward him, walking a few steps then dropping to the floor. “Why should that matter? It didn’t matter when I was seventeen and she was fifteen. I can still date her.”
“You can’t have sex with her.” I don’t miss the hard tone of his voice.
My jaw flexes, wanting to tell him he can’t tell me what to do, but then I remember who he is to both me and Kira. “I can wait.”
He arches a brow at me. “Can you?”
If I continue to stay away, yeah. “I’ve waited this fucking long, haven’t I? And her age shouldn’t matter.”
“It does to the law.”
“She’s the age of consent.”
“Not if Mom finds out.”
“Do you really think she’d press charges against me? Then her whole community would know her kids are fucking.” My stomach turns again. Every time I think about Kira as my sister, it does that. She’s not. I was a few months from college when they got married.
“Just fucking wait, asshole. It’s less than three months anyway.”
I groan. Just the thought of my cock sliding into her pussy gets me going, and then the thought of waiting until I do kills me. “Austin didn’t wait,” I grit out, ready to kill the fucker all over again.
Ryan leans forward, gaze hard. “You’re going to fucking do it as a favor to your best friend and her brother. Or I swear to God, I’m going to forget you’re my best friend and do to you what I’m dying to do to that piece of shit Reed.”
I cringe, then nod sheepishly. “Fine. For you.” But as soon as that girl turns eighteen, she’s mine.
She’s so fucking mine.
Christ. The decision blasts through me, liberating me.
Obliterating me.
Fuck everything. Fuck everyone. We’ll figure out how to deal with the consequences—people’s opinions—later.
I can’t live like this anymore.
Kira can’t either. I know it.
We have to be together.
But I have to wait. For Ryan, like I said.
Ryan shakes his head, as if he heard my thought. “Not for me, for her. It’ll give you time to get your head back on and form a plan, because I think she’s given up on you. So get this shit figured out. How’s it going to work?”
Fuck, his words are like a stab in the chest. I think she's given up on you. I want to find her and fix this mess. “It was never supposed to be like this. If they hadn’t gotten married, she would have been mine years ago.”
There's no response from him. He's been with me all these years. We've partied together hardcore. Traded girls back and forth. He's been there, watching me run through girls nonstop. Any hot girl that threw herself at me. I never said no.
I know he’s probably thinking he’s glad I didn’t end up with Kira back then. What he doesn’t understand is that I wouldn’t have needed all those girls if I’d had Kira.
That’s beyond sad considering all I’ve put myself through to stay away from her. “It would be so much easier if they weren't together. Dinner at Christmas was a strained masquerade.”
He nods. “Kira can’t stop complaining about their fighting. It’s gotten bad in the last year.”
“It never should have happened. It messed everything up, and no one’s been okay since then.”
“Well, if you can fix things with Kira, you two will be happy again.”
I still can't believe how calm he's being about this. I trail my eyes over him, taking in his stiff posture. The hands that are now clenched into fists.
No. He's not calm. Far from it. He’s just fighting hard to keep himself together.
“I'm going to make your sister happy.” Somehow. I have no real frame of reference when it comes to love. No clue what a healthy relationship even looks like. My parents were at war since I was really young. All I ever saw was them fighting.
I never paid much attention to Sonia and my father. If they were happy early on, I didn’t pick up on it the rare times I was around.
I have no damn clue how to be the proper boyfriend Kira needs, but I
sure as hell am going to figure it out. What I’ve been doing up to now has obviously not been working.
I’m going to make that girl happy if it ends up killing me.
“You better,” Ryan replies, staring at the wall behind me.
The tension is palpable, too palpable, and I just wait there, on the bathroom floor, letting him get his thoughts together.
He nods to himself, as if coming to a silent decision, and stands to leave.
Surprised, I stand too.
“One more thing.” He stops at the bathroom door, back facing me, fists still clenched at his sides.
I’d have to be stupid to miss the anger rolling off him. Anger I deserve. “Yeah?” I ask, hating myself because of how far I let this all go on.
This situation has to be fixed. For myself. For Kira.
For Ryan.
I’ve dragged all of us into a fuck-mess because of my decisions.
Ryan spins around, his hand lashing out and grabbing onto my collar.
I don’t have time to react.
His fist comes at me too fast. For a millisecond, I see the blur heading at me.
It takes another second for the nerves in my face to actually process the pain of the impact. It explodes outward along the bridge of my nose.
Another punch, right to the same spot.
At the third hit, I think I hear the bone crack.
I take it. All of it. Don’t even make a sound.
I owe him this, and I know it.
Ryan lets my shirt go so fast, I stumble backward and catch myself on the edge of the sink.
Hot liquid seeps down into my mouth. Blood.
Shit, I think he might have broken my nose.
“Brayden, if you ever, and I do mean ever, break my sister’s heart, if I ever see her like this again, I’m going to forget everything. You hear me? I’ll forget that I agreed to let you be with her. I’ll forget what you mean to me. I will kill you. Do you understand me?”
I wipe my face with the back of my hand, nodding. Motherfuck. Whatever little bit of endorphins had begun to kick in disappear on me, leaving nothing but the blazing ache pounding through my face.
“Tell me you understand,” he demands in a hoarse voice, and I can tell he’s on the razor’s edge. About to lose control. I’ve never seen him like this.